Paper Trail

In this week's episode, Kate and Paul head to 1855 rural Ohio, where a farmer has died under suspicious circumstances. After an investigation and the rounding up of the usual suspects, a very unique situation arises.   

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years
writing about true crime.

Speaker 3 (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 2 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.

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

Speaker 4 (01:01):
Hey Paul, Hey Kate, how are you.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
I'm doing great. How about you?

Speaker 3 (01:06):
I'm doing good. What's been going on with you?

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Well, I've been watching a lot of true crime?

Speaker 4 (01:11):
Oh good guy.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
I probably need another project, you know. I mean, the
book has been out, Listener's all val has been out,
and the book tour stuff is over, and I know
you have endless book tours. I do not, so now
I'm you know, I've been writing my first mystery thriller.
I've been doing different things, but I have an extraordinary
amount of time to watch true crime, and I know

(01:34):
this is not something that you really do, right, No.

Speaker 4 (01:36):
No, I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
It's a hard note.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, I'm obviously very well planted in the true crime space.
I don't consume the content, rarely consume the content.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Well, I had a question. So I've mentioned this course before.
I teach a true crime podcast course at the University
of Texas. It's very popular. I have I think probably
about two hundred and thirty students each semester. You know,
we talk about cases that are meaningful to them, that
are meaningful to me. There is a generational divide for
sure about the cases that my students, who are somewhere

(02:07):
between eighteen and twenty two, what they think are sort
of these groundbreaking everybody knows everything about them, binge worthy
type of crimes. And then my generation. So I want
to ask you about what you feel like from your generation,
you know, growing up, what was that case that really
sort of made you either think about, you know, criminal

(02:32):
investigation or think about something that was you had never
heard of before. And I'd love to make a joke
about maybe Charles Manson, but I'm not going to because
I think it's probably going to be a little more
modern than that. Maybe not, though I don't know.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
Now, i'd say, you know, if you're talking about you know,
when I was growing up, I did not pay attention
to any of the crime cases out there, you know.
I think, of course, you know, the story of me
glomming on to getting into the field I got into
was because of a TV show, Quincy, But I'm not remembering,

(03:04):
you know, paying attention to the newspaper headlines or listening
to the radio. I would say the first true crime
case that I really dug into was David Carpenter. He
was the trail side killer out there on Mount tamil Pious.
And I remember I had already started working for the

(03:27):
Sheriff's office, but as a toxicologist, and I'm reading this
book about the serial killer, and it's in the Bay Area,
and he is going to restaurants in places where I
knew where they were at. I was just now reading
a book, you know, many years after he had actually
gone to these restaurants, and so I became fascinated, going, Wow,

(03:48):
this is real, you know. And that was sort of
what I would say really catapulted me into doing a
deeper dive into true crime, if you will, but I
was really focused on serial predators. I wasn't really paying
attention to other types of cases.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, I understand that. I think when I was younger,
I did pay attention to a lot of true crime stuff.
One was the yogurt Chop murders because I was their
age when these four girls were murdered and it's still
an unsolved case. I remember Columbine feeling shaken to my
bones that something like that would have happened, because again

(04:27):
that's my time period. And then John Benay, I had
never heard of anything like that happening before.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
Yeah, you know, And of course I remember I had
not heard of the yogurt chop murders until I got
into the true crime space.

Speaker 4 (04:40):
But I've now familiar.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
I've talked to people who are working on that case
within an official capacity. But of course, John Binney Ramsey,
I remember that hitting the headlines and Columbine, which I
don't know if there were if there was a school
shooting prior to that, but that was the one case
that really, you know, brought to public awareness, you know,

(05:02):
the school shooter. And unfortunately, you know, there's been a
rash of copycats, you know, ever since that's just it.
It's like a domino effect, you know, one copying the other.

Speaker 4 (05:14):
You know.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
For where I was at, I would say sort of
the watershed case was poly Class, and that was a
case I was with the Sheriff's office.

Speaker 4 (05:24):
But the the idea.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
That an offender, you know, this Richard Allen Davis, who
you know basically had been in and out of prison
his entire life, was able to go inside a house
where this little girl was at an abduct her while
her parents were still inside that house. And then some
of the communication problems between law enforcement agencies. Possibly I

(05:48):
wouldn't say they could have saved her, but they could
have caught him sooner, if you know, other agencies were
aware that there was a subducted girl. But that was
a big case out sort of like a man in
Texas or you know, yogurt shot murders is something that
was in that geosphere, and poly Class was one of
the notable ones early on in my career out there

(06:10):
in the Bay Area.

Speaker 4 (06:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Absolutely, And I think when I talk to my students
and I say, what are the cases that just haunt
you guys? I mean, it's no surprise they're in college.
They're saying Gabby Patito, and they're saying the Idaho for
the college students who were murdered in Idaho. And it
makes sense because it's it's there, it's their peers, that

(06:32):
group influencers, you know, young people who were on campus
feeling vulnerable. And so it was just interesting because they
had never heard of one of the cases. Maybe it
was called Peterson that I brought up. They were going, what,
so everybody has a has a different you know, lens
of which they look through true crime.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
Well, and I think if the case is happening while
you are paying attention to that type of content, you're
going to be invested in it. And when when you
and I were growing up, we didn't have the pervasiveness
of information on the cases like everybody does today. You know,
you might hear you'd read it in the newspaper, or

(07:10):
you'd see it on the news.

Speaker 4 (07:12):
That was it.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
You couldn't go online to find out more information about
the case or to track the case. As you know,
different aspects developed and became newsworthy, whereas today most certainly
like with Idaho, you know, you can follow the trial
you know online, you know, so it's it's a very
different environment than when we grew up, for sure.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yeah, absolutely, and I think so much more misinformation that
you know, as our show goes along over the years,
I'm definitely going to want to start dipping into the
rights and wrongs that happened in true crime, in the
true crime community as far as you know polyclass. I
just read an article it's a little bit older, that
was written by her sister in the New York Times

(07:58):
that just talked about the retraumatizing of her family every
time something happens. They've never approved of any you know,
program that has gone on about polyclass and just saying
this is it just over and over again for decades.
This has been going on.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
Yeah, you know, and I've seen that firsthand. We had
another case out in the Bay Area of Zianna, fairchild
girl abducted and ultimately killed out of a leo, and
I became.

Speaker 4 (08:23):
Friends with her mom.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
Biologically it's her great aunt, Stephanie Cahliculu, but in essence,
Stephanie's the one that raised Theanna, and I've seen Stephanie
go through those same types of waves of being traumatized.
Because of the public attention, you know, something becomes newsworthy
and now she's thrust in front of the cameras again.

(08:46):
And early on she was doing it because first she
was trying to find her daughter, and then once it
became obvious when Xianna Skull was found that she wasn't
going to get her daughter back, then it was we
need to get the killer. And that's when I got involved.

Speaker 4 (09:03):
In that case.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
But since then, there's been multiple reasons for Stephanie to
have been put out there, and she really, you know,
struggles with that. And I actually did present Zianna's case
in Mitzi Sanchez, which is also a corresponding case out
there at Crime Con And before I did that, I

(09:24):
talked to Stephanie. I got her permission to make sure
that was something that she was okay with.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
So when you and I talk about these cases that
really catch people's attention and then sort of live in infamy,
there are definitely cases that you and I talk about
that I think have been forgotten in history. But at
that time period, we're just so infamous. They can't all
be Lizzie Borden's and Jack the Rippers, and so you know,
that's our goal is to bring these stories back to

(09:51):
see what we can learn.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
Well, I think, you know, when you think about it, it's,
you know, it's very much like celebrities. You think about
some of these individuals that you know, Hollywood, you know,
and they were so famous, let's say back in the
nineteen twenties. M there's a few exceptions, but many of
them have just kind of faded because now new generations

(10:13):
the celebrities have occurred, and the new generations of consumers
are paying attention to that. And so I think the
same thing happens, you know, within the crime stories. You know,
of course, a huge case O. J. Simpson, you know,
for our generation, you know, that was momentous in terms

(10:33):
of so many for so many reasons. But I imagine
a lot of the kids that you are teaching, they
may have heard of the case, but it probably doesn't
resonate the same way.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
I think that my students when we've talked about OJ Simpson,
they understand the facts of the case, they understand the
controversy around it. They had heard of Marcia Clark. I
don't think they understand the social context around why it
was so momentous, you know, around I racial inequalities and

(11:04):
everything was so polarizing. I don't remember a case not
even Manson that was as polarizing, particularly along you know,
racial lines, as OJ Simpson. So when I talk about that,
they just kind of look at me like what I
just thought? It was this you know, ex football Heisman
Trophy winner who killed his ex wife and her you

(11:25):
know friend, And it's so much deeper than that, and
I think sometimes you just have to live through it
to understand the impact.

Speaker 4 (11:32):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
You know, you have a celebrity that many people looked
up to as a hero. You know, he had a
very engaging personality. You know, I know I was stunned,
you know when that case happened, when that crime happened,
And so there's I think with that type of offender,
you get to where, you know, you have a personal
attachment to that celebrity. And to be frank, you know,

(11:56):
O J. Simpson killed Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman, I
don't want to dance around that.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Well, now, let's talk about a case that I found
really interesting because while it was not polarizing along racial lines,
it is polarizing around gender. And we are going really
far back eighteen fifties and it's I think been a
while since we've dipped our tone into something this far back,

(12:21):
but I think you'll find this case really interesting. It
seems simple sort of from the beginning, but then it
gets more complicated as we move along. So let's go
ahead and set the scene. So this story takes place
in the mid eighteen fifties in Miami County, Ohio, which
is between the towns of Piqua and Colesville. I don't

(12:46):
know how large these places are now, but then they
were small. Piqua is about thirty miles north of Dayton
and as a population of about three thy three hundred
at the time. Colesville is a rural community. It's about
ten miles south of Piquas. So we've got two different
places that we're talking about.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
Here.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
We are in April, April third, eighteen fifty five. It's
a Tuesday, and the main person at the middle of
this story is a guy named Arthur Reagan. He is very, very,
very sick. He is suffering from severe stomach illness. And
his physician, who is a guy named doctor Brownell, says
that Arthur has all the symptoms of gastritis or stomach

(13:29):
inflammation with vomiting. If we're talking about that now and
it's something that you've ingested, leave off the poison because
I know that'll be your go to. Is there anything
is it gastritis or what he's experiencing? Is that Could
that be food poisoning? Could that be taking the wrong
medicine and having a bad interaction. What would that be
in today's terms?

Speaker 4 (13:50):
I think all of the above. You know.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
The first thing that came to my mind would would
be like a food poisoning. You know, we've all had that.
You know that oftentimes is some sort of nasty bacteria
you know, you know, got out of control on the food.
But of course you could have all sorts of different
substances that aren't necessarily intended to be poisons, but they

(14:15):
have they have irritating properties.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
So I was wondering about milk pasteurization. Is there a risk?
I know there's a risk for pregnant women if you
are having cheese or milk that's not pasteurized. Now And
why is that?

Speaker 3 (14:33):
Well, the pasturization process is in essence to eliminate the
bacteria that are present during the milking process kind of
contaminates the milk, and so they bring the temperature of
the milk up to a certain level to kill the
the microorganisms.

Speaker 4 (14:51):
You know to a point.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
You know, of course, after a period of time, milk
will still go bad, but the pasturization gives a logger
shelf life. So unpasteurized milk potentially has a greater likelihood
of having a microorganism that your body isn't going to like.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
So this story is in eighteen fifty five, and I
was just thinking about this. In eighteen sixty two is
when Louis Pastor came up with the germ theory, which
is just what you're saying. You know, the boiling and milk,
bringing it to a high temperature actually can kill the
bacteria in the yeast because before there were these contaminations
that were coming out, like tuberculosis. So I was thinking

(15:33):
that when he was complaining to his doctor about stomach pains.
Right now, he's sort of on a farm in between cities,
and what he could be eating that is not nefarious
at this.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
Point, no, not at all. And you know, you think
it's not necessarily something that he purposely ingested. You know,
he could have, you know, working on the farm. You know,
imagine the hygiene. How many times he's putting his his fingers,
you know, into his mouth or something like that, and
how dirty his hands could be. You know, contaminate it.

(16:05):
Let's not to be too too graphic, but contaminate it
like with animal fecal matter, you know, and of course
the bacteria that are present there, or just the meats
that they're eating. Now you get into the food side
and you know potential contamination with you know, microorganisms that
the body doesn't like.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
Now, I'd like you to come up with a new
list of possible natural contaminations based on what Arthur does
for a living. And there might not be any there there. Well,
I'll tell you. Have you heard of a craftsman called
a cooper? No, so it seems like a present tense
term actually from when I looked at it, But a
cooper in the eighteen hundreds, with someone who makes tubs

(16:47):
and vats and wooden barrels that could be used for
wine making. And I first thought when I thought about
his symptoms, I had done a story on a man
who had asthma and was working, you know, with spraying
all kinds of paint on, spraying paint on cars, and
sometimes you wouldn't wear a mask, and it just sounded awful.

(17:08):
So I was wondering if any of those proses that
you would do to make those even in the eighteen hundreds,
they must have involved some kind of chemical, right, I
would think.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
You know, I imagine that there's some sort of sealant that
they're using, and so that'd be my first guess. Tubs
in vats, you know, at least with what I am
picturing from this time frame, they're probably having to shape
you know, form wood, you know, steam it form it

(17:38):
and somehow get it bound together. And there's mechanical ways
to bind it together so the planks you know, stay
in place. But if there it's going to be water tight,
then I think that there's going to be some sort
of seal it, whether it's a tar based sealant or
you know they using you know, rubber, you know selant,

(18:02):
you know, you know, more of a natural type of thing.
But it also could be something from crude oil, you know,
that they've processed out, just like vacoline, you know, petrol, adam,
jelly you know, is something that comes ultimately from crude
you know, So is there something that they are they're
a waxy substance that they get from crude oil, and

(18:24):
then of course there could potentially be a variety of
whether it be mineral based toxins to even organic benzene
for example, could be present.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
I'll just tell you sort of what was used commonly,
and this does not mean this is what Arthur was doing.
But these wooden hubs were sort of temporary tubs. They
basically looked like barrels or sometimes they were like water troughs,
so you would dunk yourself in there. So they were
heavy wood, and then they would use iron bands to

(18:58):
reinforce the wooden vertical parts of it, and then sometimes
they had a linen cloth to protect the bather from
getting a little splinter in your bum. So essentially you
know the iron bands and you're right. There must have
also been a seilant in there somewhere, so we don't
really know if that contributes to it. I'm just saying
this is something that he does that we have to

(19:18):
look at too. So Arthur first became sick on Friday.
So when he gets really really sick too, is the
following Tuesday. So I'll give you kind of the chronology,
so he can becomes sick on Friday, he gets better
when doctor Brunelle takes care of him on Sunday. We

(19:39):
have had several cases of a doctor coming to the
aid of someone and they turn out to be the killer.
This is still a true crime show, so you can
imagine this is not a simple illness. And I'm not
saying the doctor is a suspect, but you do have
that access. You have somebody there and he's administering medicine.
Doctor Burnelle leaves and then Monday back to being sick again,

(20:01):
and it doesn't seem like he's recovering. So he got
better than he got worse. Floating around and trying to
take care of Arthur is his wife, who is twenty
two years old. She is a church going woman. Her
name is Jane, but everybody calls her Elizabeth Reagan. She's
pregnant at the time. She talks to the doctor and

(20:23):
she says that she thinks that Arthur has purposely poisoned himself, okay,
to make himself sick and then potentially take his own life.
She doesn't give a great explanation for this, that he's
been troubled, he's lived a hard life. This is probably
the tenth story that I've done where fifty percent turn

(20:47):
out to be someone who has intentionally poisoned themselves. In
fifty percent. It's the spouse saying, yeah, he's this and that,
and then it turns out that they're poisoning them.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
Is she expressing that he has any suicidal ideas, you know,
is there a life insurance policy, et cetera. You know,
sometimes people will commit suicide, but they need to make
it look like a homicide in order for these policies
to actually be dispersed. Yeah, and you know, so that's
you know, part of what I would be looking at
on this front.

Speaker 4 (21:17):
You know, with Arthur.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
So, Arthur does not have a life insurance policy that
I can find. He is not particularly wealthy. I don't
have his exact age, but it looks quite a bit older.
You know, there are not a lot of people who
can sort of come around and talk about their marriage
in general. She is saying that he has a troubled
mind and that this is what she thinks is happening

(21:39):
with him, but she's being pretty vague about it. You know,
Like I said, I had thought, with these excruciating symptoms,
this is not the way most people would have chosen to,
you know, take in their own life. That being said,
you have and no go into this, Paul, but you
have told me about some pretty horrific ways, including a
table where people have decided to take their own lives.

(22:02):
So now I'm done being incredulous about something like that
and expecting anything.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
Sure, but for somebody to poison themselves, they're not necessarily
wanting to do it over a long period of time.
They're trying to do an acute poisoning, so they die rapidly.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
Okay, let's continue on and see what we come up
with with Arthur. Elizabeth. When the doctor says, what are
you talking about? You think he's poisoning himself, Elizabeth said
that he had eaten cream of tartar the night before,
which she now suspects was laced with arsenic. I know
what arsenic is. My mom kept a container in the

(22:43):
spice rack of cream of tartar. I know it's used
in baking. I can't remember or ever using it, but
I know it's there, and I think it's still there. Frankly,
it's thirty years old. I have a list of things
that they would have used it in. But just off
the top of your head, do you have any idea
what that's use would be in a kitchen?

Speaker 4 (23:00):
It's the cream of tartar.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
As far as I know as a baking ingredient, I
think it's you know, I don't know anything more about it.
I'm not a baker. It doesn't seem like it's something
that you would take by itself. It would be something
that'd be added, you know, to you know, something that's
cooked or something that's baked.

Speaker 4 (23:18):
But that's all I know.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
One of the things I found out is that cream
of tartar in the eighteen hundreds was used medicinally for heartburn.
And I think it would be mixed with milk, I
would suspect, or you know, like a fiber powder would
be today, so you know, it was mixed up. And
I think she's saying that he had an upset stomach
and he took it. Now she says, I actually think

(23:41):
that this is arsenic that he took, and he was
pretending to take the cream of tartar to. I don't
know what it would be. Spare her feelings, I will
say cream of tartar was used also in the making
of wine, and we know that, you know, he would
make wine barrels. So all of this is connected in
an odd way. So I don't know.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
Is who makes up this cream a tartar, who gives
it to him or does he go and get it himself?

Speaker 4 (24:07):
You know what is the wife saying?

Speaker 2 (24:09):
She says that he did it. So he got it, okay,
and took it. He consumed it. I don't think he
was taking it by this spoonful. I think because it
was medicinal. The insinuation is is that he was using
it because he had an upset stomach or some heartburn.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
So obviously, if there's still the source of this cream
a tartar, that's evidence.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
Yeah. And then on top of that, Arthur has been vomiting,
and so there the doctor had the foresight of making
sure he knew where all of this vomit was because
it was in multiple places, to make sure that if
something was going awry here with Arthur, that there would
be some kind of evidence. And the reason is that
Arthur denied it. When he came back on Monday, Arthur

(24:48):
had improved and then he started to go downhill and
he had a conversation with the doctor and he said,
I did not take it myself, despite what Elizabeth said,
And he said, I think I'm being poisoned. And when
the doctor pressed him on it, he would not say
who did it? He just said, I'm pretty sure I'm
being poisoned.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
I think you know two thoughts. You know, the doctor
shows up and Arthur starts feeling better, and whether the
doctor gave him something, you know, charcoal or whatever. But
the presence of the doctor may have prevented the offender
from being able to add to whatever poison is being used.
Maybe it is this arsenic you know, on that particular day,

(25:29):
and now Arthur's starting to recover, either from the medicinal
intervention or just from the lack of ingesting more poison.
But then starting Monday, he's back to feeling symptoms and
either the medicinal intervention or off or now he's starting
to ingest more poison. And then, of course, who has

(25:50):
you know, the access to Arthur. We know the wife
Elizabeth does, but is there anybody else that is accessing
either Arthur directly or anything that he might be ingesting
inside the house. Let's say a maid going into the
pantry and spiking the cream of tartar with arsenic.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Well, let's keep going and find out. Arthur gets worse
and worse, and that day that the doctor's there, he
dies because of what he said and of course what
Elizabeth said. The doctor calls in the authorities, which in
the eighteen fifties could have been just like a local constable.
It could have been a deputy, it could have been
you know, various people, no one, I don't think with

(26:29):
in depth experience, however, I think you're going to be
a little surprised by this. They gather the stomach contents
once there's an autopsy, and they get a dirt sample
from outside the Reagan home. And they get this dirt
sample because when he threw up, somebody who was in
the house, probably Elizabeth, collected it and threw it outside

(26:51):
to get rid of it. And so they collect this
dirt sample and they send it off for analysis in Columbus, Ohio,
big city. They run five different tests, so they had
the capability of looking for arsenic and it comes back
arsenic positive, positive for arsenic. And I was wondering if
you were going to be surprised if they had that
capability back then to look for arsenic.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
I'm not shocked, I guess is the way to put it,
you know, like I do have the you know, the
Essentials of Forensic Medicine book from eighteen ninety two, and
it's surprising in terms of the depth of chemistry knowledge
that the toxicology experts.

Speaker 4 (27:31):
Back in the day actually had.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
And so the soil that they're looking at, they're obviously
not using modern instrumental techniques, nor are they utilizing anything
really advanced. There in essence reacting that soil with various
compounds that they know respond a certain way in the
presence of a certain toxic and so they a compound.

(27:56):
I don't know what they would have used, but they
probably reacted that soil oil with a compound and maybe
microscopically saw a certain shape of crystal and they go up,
that's positive for arsenic. In this day and age, it's
just a presumptive test, but back then that's they probably concluded, Yes,
this is arsenic. There's arsenic in this soil sample, and

(28:18):
his vomit is mixed with that dirt.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
And then you have to think, with arsenic in so
many products that were so easily available, I mean, mostly
rough on rats and products used to kill animals. They're
on a farm type situation, is this something that he
would have ingested accidentally somehow, some way. But there's a
newspaper in nineteen ten that says that he had ingested

(28:41):
enough arsenic according to the people who tested it, to
kill quote half a dozen men. Now that's vague, but well,
it sounds like a shit ton of arsenic to me?
Is that the scientific term?

Speaker 4 (28:55):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (28:56):
You know, I think, well, I kind of have a
problem because I don't think that there would be any
way back in eighteen fifty for them to do what
we would call a quantitative analysis. You know, in essence,
there's probably a subjective opinion by the I'm going to
call the person a toxicologist that is going this is
a strong reaction, stronger than what they typically see. But

(29:20):
it's in many ways it's out of context. You know,
you're dealing with something that you know, is it hasn't
been concentrated because of you know, the vomit aspect and
in the soil, and is there something going on there?
So I don't know, I really am skeptical about an
opinion like that, but I think what I would conclude

(29:42):
is is that if this person actually has some experience
testing a variety of arsenic containing samples, that they saw
a very strong and quick reaction and concluded, oh, there's
a lot of arsenic here.

Speaker 4 (29:54):
That's probably about the extent that they can say.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Well, of course the suspicion is on Elizabeth. I don't
think anybody believes, including the doctor, that he took all
this stuff himself. It would have been so painful and
as he said, over such a long period of time, right,
It just seemed sure, especially after Arthur said I think
I'm being poisoned. I don't know why he didn't say anything.
Maybe he didn't have conclusive proof that it was his

(30:19):
wife or a neighbor. We've certainly heard about, you know,
neighbor disputes, So there's a list of suspects that could
pop up right now. They're really homing in on Elizabeth, though.

Speaker 3 (30:30):
Well, I think with Arthur making that statement about I
think I'm being poisoned, you know, in many ways, that
negates him doing this to himself, because if he was,
he's now undoing the reason he would be poisoning himself,
you know. And now he's saying it's a homicide, right
or somebody's trying to hurt me, and ultimately it's a

(30:50):
homicide through poisoning. So this does seem to indicate that
somebody with Elizabeth the primary person having access, is trying
to kill him utilizing the arsenic. Now, Elizabeth is prime
suspect for sure, but I also go to, well, if

(31:11):
Arthur's going in himself to the cream of tartar, is
there somebody else that could be adding arsenic to that
cream of tartar?

Speaker 4 (31:19):
Yeah? Oh, versus just Elizabeth.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
I don't believe they're finding arsenic anywhere in the house.
I don't believe they find the cream of tartar anywhere
that you know we're talking about, But that's not reported,
so I don't know it could have been there, and
I think that if it had been tested, there probably
would have been a note about that. But the way
we're going into this is because of what he said

(31:43):
and because of Elizabeth planting it very early that she
believed that he was trying to take his own life.
People of course, are looking at the wife. Sure, so
the police are thinking what kind of physical evidence do
we have? And so far they don't. They don't have
any physical evidence that they can say that would prove

(32:03):
aside from his statement you know that I didn't do this.
Who would have done this to him? If the doors
are unlocked and there are other people in his life?

Speaker 3 (32:13):
Well, and that's where you know it's his victimology. You
have the spouse and you know what is that relationship, Like,
how would she benefit if Arthur is no longer around
and has died. But then what else has Arthur been
involved with? And is there a way for somebody on
the outside to have accomplished this poisoning if Arthur is

(32:37):
not leaving the house during this time that he's ill.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
Okay, well, let's get into what becomes the more scandalous
parts of this story, which are to me with some
of the most interesting. So a simple mistake leads to
some pretty big accusations. So here's what happens around this
time when the investigators are working on the case and
the doctor is trying to figure out what happened. There

(33:00):
is a man who shows up to the investigators. His
name is J. L. Temple. He is the assistant postmaster
of a town nearby Colesville called Troy, and he comes
with this I think damning information months earlier, so January.
We're in April when Arthur dies. So in January he

(33:22):
had gotten a letter that he found really troubling. It
was returned to the post office after it had been
given to the wrong person. Eventually, when he gets this
letter back, and there's a man named Murray who returns
this letter and says, this is not me, It's meant
for somebody else. Then JAYL Temple looks at this letter

(33:42):
and realizes that he gave it to the wrong person.
The letter was not meant for a man named Murray.
It was meant for a man whose last name was Maori.
So James Maury was supposed to get this letter. And
it was dated December sixth, about a month earlier, and
it was sent from a different town, the Piqua town

(34:03):
that I was telling you about before. So it was
so disturbing that the postmaster made a copy and then
gave it to the rightful owner of this who was
James Mawy. This is kind of a long letter, but
I feel like you're going to want to hear all
of it. So this guy's name is James. It's written
to James, and it says, dear Jimmy, once again, I

(34:24):
am seeded to write a few lines to you. I
said I would not write anymore, but you know I
can't refrain from it, and as I have been living
in a perfect hell. If you will allow me the
expression it is a hard one, but nevertheless true. And
I have been tormented day and night since I came home.
He so we don't know who he is, saw me

(34:46):
kiss you and that was enough. Oh, I have had
to suffer for it. I did not think he saw me,
but he was watching me. I'm so near beside myself.
I hardly know what I am doing. He says, I
shall not go home anymore, and he says he will
not get me any more clothes, and then I can't

(35:08):
go as much as I have. Now, I can't stand
this any longer, and I appeal for your help. There
is another part of this letter, Paul, but it's unsigned.
I will say this eventually does get tied to Elizabeth Reagan.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
Yeah, that's what I kind of figured. I mean stating
the obvious. Obviously, Elizabeth seems to have a relationship with James,
and that relationship was discovered by Arthur. Now she is
confiding in James on how her life at home is
miserable because he's basically taking over control and what she's

(35:45):
doing as well. As it sounds like Elizabeth under the
guise of going to see her parents is possibly when
she's slipping out to go see James, and so Arthur
is going You're not doing that anymore, You're staying home.
This letter, at least with what you've read so far,
makes it sound like Elizabeth is feeling trapped. Now, she's

(36:09):
having to figure out how do I get out of
this trap? And it sounds like she's possibly appealing to
James to help her at this point in the letter.
What a letter to be delivered to the wrong person.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
I know this isn't me and this is somebody else?
Can you not read? It is not Marie, it's mottle Boy,
it's Maori. Well do you want to hear the second
half of this because then it gets really specific?

Speaker 3 (36:35):
Of course, I do you know? Of course you know
I'm now questioning the pregnancy and who's the father?

Speaker 2 (36:41):
This is what else? Now it says is Elizabeth is
the letter writer here, even though it's not signed. I
have thought of one more plan. I'm going to make
one more proposition to you, and if you will do it,
I will grant you the request you have so long
asked of me, as soon as you do what I
want you to do or before, if you will only

(37:04):
do what I want you now, it is this, You
make a proposition to him to go with you to
look at some new country to Oregon or Wisconsin or
some other place, and name the period right off. And
if he says he has not the means, you tell
him you will furnish him with the means if he
will go for company. So clearly James and Arthur know

(37:26):
each other. Ye, And then I will persuade him to go.
And then you can go on horseback or on the cars.
And you can take your two horses and go part
of the way on the cars, and you can take
the horses and go the rest of the way, that
is till you get a good ways away from here.
And you can procure your poison and administer it in

(37:48):
his oysters, and he will never know the difference. You
can eat your oysters on the road, or you can
give them to some farmhouse. They will never know the difference.
And you can pretend to take it hard, to think
you have to turn back.

Speaker 4 (38:02):
So to pretend to take it hard.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
Like if Arthur dies as a result of eating oysters.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
Oh that's it. And then he's so upset he has
to move. He gets to go back home.

Speaker 3 (38:13):
He gets to go back. And now she's promising him.
I guess the way that I'm interpreting the early part
of the second part of the letter is it sounds
like James has been asking for a more involved relationship
with Elizabeth, and so she's now saying, you do this, basically,

(38:35):
kill Arthur, and I will do what you've been asking for,
which sounds like whether that's a marriage or something more
involved than what they've been able to do while she's
been married with Arthur.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
I will inform you now that James is married with children,
So then it gets more complicated. Well maybe not, I
mean a little look on your face and maybe not.

Speaker 3 (38:58):
Well what tangled?

Speaker 4 (38:59):
Well they weave? No, yea.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
I was just thinking oysters in the middle of the country.
I've never had oysters. I don't think I can ingest
a whole creature like that.

Speaker 4 (39:11):
I'm very picky when it comes to.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
Eating food, jesting whole creatures.

Speaker 3 (39:16):
Maybe one of these days, with a sufficient bourbon in me,
I might try.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
Yeah, not with me, buddy, I don't like oysters either.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
Oh, but I was just thinking why specifically oysters, and
I imagine oysters in the middle of the country were
probably a common source of food poisoning.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
They were a delicacy in the eighteen hundreds in certain parts,
and certainly I would think Ohio, I would think it
would be very difficult, no matter what the risk is,
for somebody like Arthur Reagan to say no to something
like that, because it would have been pricey for them
to get them, and I wonder if they're packed correctly,
they would be salty, like with salt water. I don't

(39:56):
know what arsenic tastes like, but for some reason, I
have heard of oil being poisoned with arsenic before. So
this doesn't seem novel, but it's definitely a choice. Cream
of tartar seems like it's looking pretty good at this point.

Speaker 3 (40:09):
Okay, so the use of the oysters is really just
you know, it's like offering up you know.

Speaker 4 (40:14):
Nice chocolate, right, It's yeah, Okay.

Speaker 3 (40:17):
So she has devised a plan and she is manipulating
James in order to in essence, take care of Arthur
for her.

Speaker 4 (40:29):
That's interesting.

Speaker 3 (40:30):
It'll be interesting to see how Arthur ends up being
poisoned in his own house, because it doesn't sound like
this trip must have happened. He didn't receive this well.
He received the letter well before. Arthur actually ends up
being poisoned.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
Right, it's January, yes, so that's what three or four
months before.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
I wondered, did the postmaster actually tell James, hey, this
was accidentally delivered to somebody else who opened it and
read it. Or did he just kind of repackage the
the letter and give it to James without divulging that
you know. And so now James is kicking into motion
what Elizabeth wants, but later in time than what Elizabeth

(41:11):
initially thought would happen.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
So the postmaster copies this letter. So to me, that
means he clearly didn't turn it over to the investigators.
So he turned this back over to James, but kept
a copy of the letter, which is very smart. There's
a little bit left. Tell me if this makes sense
to you. So the last thing she says to him
is pretend like this is terrible and that you're so

(41:34):
upset you have to go back home. When you have
accomplished what I have told you. Mayah, she's manipulative. When
you accomplish what I have told you, then you can
telegraph to me that he is dead. I will tell
the templars and have them make up thirty dollars and
send to you to bear his expenses, So Arthur must
have been a member, is what I'm assuming. If you

(41:57):
will come up as soon as you get this, I
will tell you better. Now, dear, do come. You know
I love you, you are well aware of it. I
will write no more till I see you come up
right away. My ink is pale. You're right, it sounds
like he wants more because she seems to be emphasizing

(42:17):
to him and reassuring him how much that she loves him,
and then she's asking this huge thing. She obviously trusts
him enough to not go to authorities.

Speaker 3 (42:25):
Yeah, but also there's there's a two way street here,
or maybe a three way street, because James is married himself,
you know. So now even if he carries out this
plot that Elizabeth is launching and gets rid of Arthur,
well that frees up Elizabeth. But he has a family

(42:46):
at home that isn't necessarily going to be very accepting
of Elizabeth in his life, you know. So James is
sort of in a in a pinch from that perspective.
So something has you know, I guess what are the
quest since I have? Did James and Arthur actually go
on a trip to find this plot of land or

(43:07):
did that just dissolve over time for one reason like
Arthur's Like, now I'm not interested, and so now Elizabeth
and James have to concoct a different way of getting
rid of Arthur.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
Yeah. I think once we get into the legal part
of this, maybe that'll answer some questions. I don't believe
the trip ever happened, and I think that they had
to kind of punt regarding James's family. I don't think
James is thinking very far ahead, is the impression I'm getting.
So James is thirty two, married with children. As I mentioned,

(43:40):
he has brought. Now explain this to me. He's brought
to court for a preliminary trial. Is that the same thing?
Do you think as a preliminary hearing? This is not
a murder trial. It sounds like it's in for questioning.
But there are people testifying, including Elizabeth.

Speaker 4 (43:55):
It was this related to Arthur's death.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Then yes, it's not a murder trial. It sounds like
a pulmonary hearing. But they're calling it a trial just
to see if it should go on to trial.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
That sounds more I think akin to like a grand jury. Okay,
with preliminary hearings, that's after somebody has been arrested, charged,
or reigned, right, and so there you have a defendant.
So if there isn't a if you don't have a
defendant and they're just hearing the facts of the case,
it sounds like either a coroner's inquest or maybe a

(44:27):
grand jury.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
I think this is probably you're right, akin to a
grand jury. He's not under arrest, and I think they're
just trying to figure out if there's any there there.
And we do have Elizabeth explaining a lot. So now
tell me what you think if you are a defense
attorney for James and a defense attorney for Elizabeth, what

(44:52):
is the best way to go. The only thing implicating
James right now is this letter, the stinking letter. We
know a fingerprint. They're not doing any of that kind
of stuff. They're not putting arsenic in his hand. But
then he knows that his girlfriend is going to sit
on the stand and you know, testify maybe against him,
maybe not. I don't know if he knows. So I'm

(45:15):
not quite sure what the best tact is for either
of these people who are now under suspicion for killing
Arthur Reagan.

Speaker 3 (45:21):
Well, the defense is going to be these two pointing
fingers at each other. But you think about James. You know,
this letter, it's addressed to him, but it's not signed
by Elizabeth, you know, so of course Elizabeth's attorney is
going to say Bett didn't come from Elizabeth. How can
you prove it came from Elizabeth? You know in eighteen fifty,

(45:43):
like you said, no, no fingerprints, no DNA, no signature,
handwriting analysis. You know, maybe somebody says, well, it looks
like her handwriting. So that's that's pretty weak, you know,
from just the letter itself. Nor does does it even
Arthur's name?

Speaker 4 (46:02):
It's he, you know.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
So there's a lot of wiggle room that I could
see a defense attorney exploiting under those types of circumstances
with that letter to defend Elizabeth. You know, right now,
the biggest thing is is arsenic is found. Elizabeth has
access to Arthur has access to the cream of tartar.
The doctor has been inside the house, you know, he

(46:25):
mostly you know, has to be considered, and you could
see a defense pointing at the doctor and saying the
doctor's one that did this. It would be really tough.
I think James is in the best position, you know,
at least with what you've told me is he lives
a distance away. Unless somebody have witnesses that could put James,
you know, lurking around the house around the time Arthur

(46:46):
starts getting sick, It's going to be tough to put
the poisoning on James from the distance. But it sounds
like Elizabeth in this letter is asking James to come
visit her. So does that visit a her?

Speaker 2 (47:00):
Well, let's get into what everybody says here. Elizabeth has
been romantically involved with James in the past before they
both got married. Okay, so when she is talking at this,
let's just call this grand jury testimony. When she is
doing this, she is saying, you know, we were together
before we met our spouses, then we stopped being together

(47:23):
after that. What she says how they reconnected is interesting.
She reconnected with him. So Maren was confused, as am
I about this last summer a year ago, so you know,
she hasn't seen She says that they have not seen
each other for a while, and she was visiting her
father's home in Colesville. She says she was nursing her

(47:45):
baby at her dad's house when James, who lived in
the area, showed up and declared his love for her.
You know, that is kind of a pretty bold statement.
She says that she said, I'm not interested James. I've
got a baby. But at some point the baby passes away.
She sees James again a few months later. She's in

(48:07):
a state of grief. She's very vulnerable, and she succumbs
and they start this affair. There doesn't seem to be
anything nefarious about the baby dying. I'm sure it was
like bacterial effecture something like that. They're not suspecting anything,
but it sounds like from the beginning of this testimony
she's definitely sort of setting herself up as the vulnerable

(48:28):
young woman slash young girl. So she would have been
probably twenty twenty one when this started. James is ten
years older, so you know, who is sort of falling
for this and this affair begins. So she sounds like
she's being honest. She's saying, yes, we were having an affair,
we were sleeping together, which in the eighteen fifties would
have been something else to say, but she's being honest

(48:50):
about it. So what do you think so far?

Speaker 3 (48:52):
Well, this is just you know, typical human relationships. You know,
whether you've got the marriages or you have you know,
some partner that you're with, but then you've also got
you know, feelings for somebody else. I mean, this is
a long term relationship between the two relatively speaking, something
caused both of them to marry somebody else. But then

(49:15):
most early it sounds like James is still pining for Elizabeth.
I guess Elizabeth actually has also got emotions for him.
When they restart and rekindle this affair, you know, and
this is possibly the pregnancy, maybe a result of the
sexual interactions you know, during this affair. But then Elizabeth,
you know, Arthur finds out and now Elizabeth is capitalizing

(49:40):
on James's emotions for her to manipulate him to get
rid of Arthur. And I imagine in eighteen fifties, the
idea of a divorce is probably a tough thing to accept.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
It would be difficult. But do you see anything any
credibility in what she's saying, which she is I just
lost my baby, And probably she's framing Arthur as crotchety,
maybe not the best husband in the world. She's having
this affair that she was manipulated into. She doesn't know

(50:14):
how to get out of it. And so she's saying,
do you see how that there's a world where that
could also be happening when you have an older person
like James sort of pressing against her constantly, because she says,
Paul that James said, run away with me. Every single
time she was in town visiting her dad, he would
find her. And then he says, let's poison Arthur to

(50:36):
make this much easier on both of us. That's what
she says.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
He says her perspective is a possibility, but also sounds
like she's minimizing, you know, in essence, she's saying, he's
the manipulator. I kind of succumbed to the manipulation, and
he's the one that is like, let's get rid of Arthur. Well,
that's I think possible.

Speaker 4 (50:59):
But if we.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
Believe the letter came from Elizabeth, that's not what the
letter says.

Speaker 4 (51:06):
She's the one.

Speaker 3 (51:07):
I mean, she's she's still saying he's really pining for
her in that letter, But she's launching the plot, a
very sophisticated plot, relatively speaking, you know, to get Arthur
out away from the small town and to poison him
with these tainted oysters. You know and then James can

(51:28):
finally get what he's been asking for. So at that point,
she really is the manipulator. I think, Elizabeth, there's probably
a lot of truth in terms of how the relationship
occurred in James feelings for her that she's expressing while
she's testifying.

Speaker 4 (51:45):
But I'm not buying that.

Speaker 3 (51:48):
You know, James is the one that is, you know,
behind Arthur's death, is the one that is coming up
with that idea. I think she's the one. She's the
one that's expressing she's feeling trapped because Arthur found out
about her and James, and Arthur probably knew that those
two had previous relationships before the marriage has occurred.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
Well, this is what Elizabeth said about exactly what you're
talking about. She said, I thought he was crazy. I
was not interested in doing that. I was not interested
in leaving Arthur or killing him, especially until Arthur put
his hands on me. And then that's when things changed
for me. She said. James put it in my head

(52:29):
a little bit that this was a possibility. Let's poison him.
I'll leave my wife, He'll be dead. Whatever money Arthur
has could be ours. She mentions in that letter she
reiterates that Arthur saw her kissing James and Arthur freaked out.
This happened in December. She said, he grew enraged, he

(52:50):
put his hands on her, he shook her. He said
exactly what she said. I'm not buying you any more clothes.
You are never going to your father's again, and you
are not going to see this guy again. And then
that's when she sends this letter, just saying I can't
deal with it. I'm not gonna be able to live
the next forty years with this guy. And she's pregnant
and I don't know yet, but of course we're suspecting

(53:12):
that she's probably not having sex with Arthur. She's having
sex with James though, so she is feeling trapped. So
you know, she saw James in January and he had
not gotten this letter because of this whole like mumbling
mix up thing that happened. But she said he's the
one who said, let's spike Arthur's coffee with Arsenic. So

(53:35):
again he comes back with even though there's this letter
that's got her plan in it, he's kind of insinuating
this all sounds like it's going to take too long.
Why don't you just get arsenic and put it in
his coffee.

Speaker 3 (53:45):
Well, you know, fundamentally, a crime has occurred and the
crime resulted in Arthur's death. That's a homicide by poisoning.
So it really comes down to in the investigation, who
is the one providing Arthur the arsenic? Who is the one,
whether it be in his coffee, whether it be in
the kreama tartar, Who is the one that is doing that.

(54:06):
It doesn't matter that a discussion occurred months before, even
if James is the originator of the idea, if he's
not the one that is actually dosing Arthur with the
actual murder weapon, the arsenic, you know, he is not
culpable for the murder. It's the person that is doing it.
And so that's where we get into Okay, No, obviously

(54:29):
Elizabeth is inside the house, she most certainly could do this.
Does James have an alibi? Is do we have anybody
putting James into a position to either be inside the
house or to spike something of food stuff that ultimately
makes its way into the house. You know, And then
we're talking about, Okay, what is the culpability of the

(54:53):
person who's providing let's say the kreama tartar that spiked
versus the person who is actually giving the cream of tartar.
And then if it's Arthur who is self consuming, you know,
he goes in, then there's intelligence from inside the house
to the person outside the house of this is what

(55:13):
the victim always eats or always drinks. So now you
could see from a distance how somebody like James could
be culpable for the homicide because he is now exploiting
that type of intel in order because he you know,
just through that information, he is in essence dosing Arthur himself,

(55:34):
even though it's from a distance.

Speaker 4 (55:35):
If that makes any.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
Sense, Yeah, absolutely, I think that you could believe, as
a man in the eighteen hundred's, you know, sitting as
a judger on a jury, that a woman could be
manipulated by a man who is older than her, for sure.
But the detail and how well she thought out that
plan of taking him on a horseback and the whole oysters,

(55:58):
I mean, she really thought out every detail. So you know,
I am then leaning him a lot more towards she
was manipulating James more than anything else. But let's continue.
So she says, you know, I bought arsenic. He told
me to. I mixed it into Arthur's coffee. It made
him sick, but it didn't kill him. So that must

(56:19):
have been the Friday into the Sunday when the doctor
shows up, right. She said she tried again after the
doctor left that Sunday and she put it in his
chicken soup and he said it tasted great, and then
he died the next day.

Speaker 3 (56:36):
So she is.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
Fully admitting this, which is what makes this case to
me even more interesting. We don't know why she testified.
She was not compelled or made to do it. There
were some sources that said she did it because she
was going to be promised sort of immunity later on.
Because really people did think she was being manipulated, that
it wasn't him. She had given birth, she was breast

(57:00):
feeding on the stand, and this would have been really shocking.
I mean, it would be shocking now, I think, but
it was really shocking, and she was saying, I have
to be able to do this. So then you think
about that. Is that a level of manipulation? What is
that doing to the people who are listening to this information.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
Yeah, to me, that's blatant manipulation in terms of trying
to become more sympathetic to the.

Speaker 4 (57:22):
Jurors or to whoever.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
If this was just maybe a you know, you just
have a judge a magistrate that's hearing the testimony. But
in essence, here I am, you know now a single mother,
you know, and I've got to take care of my baby.
I couldn't imagine a judge actually allowing that to occur
during session. But eighteen fifties and small little area out

(57:45):
there in Ohio, who knows how their trials are run.
But fundamentally, she is confessing to murdering Arthur on the stand.
She's the one that is putting the arsenic in different
things that Arthur is ingesting. So it's not just a
one time thing. She does it in his coffee, she
does it in his chicken noodle soup, you know. So

(58:08):
that from my perspective, is cut and dry. You know,
she murdered Arthur. Now, all this talk about the relationship,
you know, you've got from Elizabeth's perspective in one of
the things I wanted to address, I don't disbelieve her
in terms of Arthur got physical with her after finding
out about James, right, you know, but does that that's

(58:31):
not a get out of jail free card in terms
of this type of homicide, because she's now plotting, She's
sending the letter with a very detailed plot. She's now
putting arsenic and multiple food stuff that ultimately kills kills Arthur.
So standalone, you know she is responsible for murder. The

(58:53):
reason she murders Arthur could come into play in terms
of assessing kind of the sentencing you will you know,
and where the crime charge is. I don't know what
Ohio's murder statutes are. You know's this a second degree murder?
Doesn't could You could even argue maybe there's a first

(59:13):
degree aspect with all the malice, a forethought, you know,
the pre planning. So from my perspective, she's absolutely responsible
and it's confessing to the murder of Arthur. It just
now comes into well, what is James' role in the crime.
You know, it's one thing to be in a relationship
and to discuss this, but does James provide the arsenic?

(59:36):
You know, does he instruct her how to do it?
You know, there's there. I think there's different levels of
culpability that may or may not be there for James.

Speaker 2 (59:45):
Well, she admits she bought it herself, and one of
them doesn't know what they're doing because she didn't give
him enough to begin with. You know, so if James
did kind of try to give her advice on how
much to administer, heate and know what he was doing
either because he didn't kill Arthur the first time.

Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
Yeah, I have a hard time, at least within the
murder of Arthur, seeing how James has any significant culpability.
Does he lie to the constable or to law enforcement?
Does he have knowledge and fails to come forward, even
though that's not necessarily a crime, But if he lied

(01:00:24):
while being interviewed to a peace officer or to the court,
if he testified, then yeah, maybe he could be charged
with a type of crime. But the mere fact that
he was aware that Elizabeth was possibly plotting against Arthur
and had tried to involve him, he could have reported
Elizabeth at that point. You know, she's in essence trying

(01:00:46):
to hire a hitman, right, Yeah, what ended up happening
to James.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
So here's what happens. James is never tried for Arthur's death. Okay,
there's any evidence against him? Yeah, and you know, he
had denied all of this to begin with, so we
don't know what his role was. He has kept quiet.
We don't know what happened to him after that that
he has let go. After her testimony, she is arrested

(01:01:14):
and they want to put her on trial for murder.
I don't know if it was first degree. I can't
imagine would be for maybe it would be first degree,
I don't know. Let me kind of preface this by
telling you what a reporter says, who was in that
preliminary trial, and it was sort of the sentiment of
everyone there because it was very clear to them that
she was confessing when she was giving this testimony. He says.

(01:01:35):
We have no desire to injure Missus Reagan to magnify
her guilt or to lessen the mitigating circumstances in her case.
On the other hand, we would gladly see her restored
to innocence and happiness if it were possible eighteen fifty five,
for the sake of her sex. We would rejoice to
see the responsibility of her crime thrown upon man, if

(01:01:58):
it could be done justly. It is more fitting, less
shocking that man should commit such a monstrous crime. But
Missus Reagan has placed it out of our power or
the power of any man to injure her case. She
is a self convicted murderer and nothing can save her
from death. But the clemency of the governor her life

(01:02:20):
may be saved, and we hope it will, but she
can never be restored to society again. Now this is
before she's charged with murder, but it will kind of
give you an idea of the mindset of particularly the
men in this case, who just don't want to do this.
They do not this would have been a capital crime.
Obviously she would have been executed. They don't want to

(01:02:42):
do this. Nobody wants to do this. And then she's
been breastfeeding on the stand for part of her testimony.

Speaker 3 (01:02:47):
She most certainly is a sympathetic defendant. You know, young,
young female, feeling trapped, possibly being abused. You know how
they viewed the affair eighteen fifth you know that probably
was something that really was a mark against both her
and James. I can see twenty two year old, that's

(01:03:11):
how old she was, right, twenty.

Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
Two at the time.

Speaker 3 (01:03:14):
You know, I've got a daughter that's ten years older
than that, but I know, you know what she was
like when she was twenty two. And I've got a
daughter that's, you know, senior in high school. You know,
I mean this this is such a young age.

Speaker 4 (01:03:27):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
In some ways you can say this is a bad
decision and you feels sorry that she. I mean, you
feel sorry for Arthur. He lost his life. But she's
just showing such poor judgment in terms of how to
get out of what she feels trapped in. Would there
have been other avenues that she could have taken where

(01:03:49):
she doesn't resort to murder, you know, And that's that's
the big thing. My surprise is the capital punishment side
for this case. And maybe it's just speaking to the
eighteen fifties, you know, it seems like that is a
kind of excessive punishment, a death penalty for this particular case,

(01:04:15):
even though it is a murder case.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
Yeah, I understand that. I mean, this would be a
time period though, where if you're an habitual thief, they
would have put you to death. Also, this was pretty extreme.
Let me tell you what happens all of this, Paul
is to say that she is never put on trial
for murder. I don't know if this is the district
attorney or the sentiment in general that they will not

(01:04:39):
convict a woman and sentence her to death, but that
would have been the only option, and nobody wanted to
do it. I think there was a feeling that she
was manipulated by an older man, that potentially Arthur had
been abusive. She had a baby in her arms, she
was young, so she is not convicted. She has let go.

(01:05:02):
She eventually leaves Piquat and she goes to Indianapolis, and
that newspapers say that at one point an old friend
was leaving a church and Elizabeth was there working at
the church in Indianapolis and went on presumably to live,
you know, a hopefully quiet life, but that's what ended

(01:05:22):
up happening. They both get out of it, and we
have no We just know somebody has poisoned Arthur Reagan.
And nobody's been held responsible ever for this case.

Speaker 3 (01:05:30):
Right, but you have you have Elizabeth confessing to doing
the poisoning.

Speaker 4 (01:05:35):
Yeah, the DA does have discretion.

Speaker 3 (01:05:37):
However, you know, when you when you were talking about
even with these you know, Elizabeth talking about the potential abuse,
the idea that she's being manipulated by an older man,
thirty two year olds, These are what I would call
her mitigating circumstances, and those can be taken into account
by the district attorney in terms of how is she

(01:06:01):
going to be charged, and the judge can also take
those mitigating circumstances in terms of the penalty. I think
my primary problem is is that she had somebody commit murder,
admits the committing murder, and they're not held responsible. I
think that the mitigating circumstances could have been used to

(01:06:22):
potentially reduce what Elizabeth was convicted of and how long
her sentence would have been, but I still think she
needs to be held responsible. That's kind of the position
where I would come in. This wasn't a self defense
scenario that sometimes you do see with women that are

(01:06:42):
being abused by men, and we don't. It doesn't sound
like it got to that level. She is able to
take her time and poison Arthur and kill them in
a very slow, painful way, even though she's young and
there's those mitigating circumstances. I do feel that she should
have at least been responsible, you know, to a point, for.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
Sure, I agree, but I will point this little bit
out so you know, we've done stories before about women
who feel trapped because they're pregnant by their boyfriends who
they're having an affair with. So if she is pregnant
in December or January is what they keep pointing to,
saying January by month four, I'm assuming that Arthur would

(01:07:23):
have started to see signs of this pregnancy by April
and they're not having sex. I'm presuming I could be wrong.
Of course there could be obviously for sex. But I
just wonder if there was like this ticking clock with
the pregnancy she doesn't mention that. That would not be
a good thing for her to mention, obviously, But that's
what I was thinking in my head this whole time,

(01:07:44):
is she's pregnant, He's going to know it's not his.
She's going to get bigger and bigger, and how much
longer can she hold out on this? And then it
would have just been fireworks in that small community in Ohio.
It would have been awful for her.

Speaker 4 (01:07:56):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
So yes to mitigating circumstances, no to execute. Yes to
I guess James leaving and getting out of this. But
you know, of course, we think James is looped in
here somehow, some way, and I wonder what happened with
his wife and his kids. If she just said, Okay,
I'm out of this, that's it.

Speaker 4 (01:08:14):
But in the eighteen fifties, it's that grounds for divorce.

Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
It was like an act of God to get a divorce.
I mean you had to go to the state legislature
to get a divorce in that time period. I know
it was really it was really difficult. So you have
worked so extraordinarily hard that I think you do need
a couple of weeks off. So we are on a
hiatus week next week, are we? I mean, listen, you
can come back next week. I'm not going to be here,
but I can leave the fireplace on in the cottage.

Speaker 3 (01:08:41):
And I can pine for you, hoping that you will see.
You could step into your cottage there you could just.

Speaker 2 (01:08:47):
Make I know, you could fulfill some kind of a
dream for us to switch roles and you can tell
me a story and I can pipe in with different information.

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):
There's no way, yeah, I could not hold a candle
to your storytelling.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
So Paul, Paul, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
I will see you in two weeks. We'll come back
with the case in a completely different era, because I
need a break already from the eighteen fifties.

Speaker 3 (01:09:12):
For sure, Okay, sounds good. Well, you take care of
yourself and we'll see in a few weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
This has been an exactly right production for.

Speaker 3 (01:09:24):
Our sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot com
slash Buried Bones sources.

Speaker 1 (01:09:30):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emosi.

Speaker 3 (01:09:33):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Speaker 4 (01:09:40):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 3 (01:09:44):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgaroff, Georgia hard Stark, and Daniel Kramer.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Buried Bones pod.

Speaker 3 (01:09:54):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Now, and Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life Solving
America's Cold Cases is also available now.

Speaker 3 (01:10:07):
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