Razor’s Edge

In this week's episode, Kate and Paul head to 1921 Portland, Oregon where a father is murdered and witness statements paint a confusing picture. With all the evidence collected and the police-work of the era, will there be enough to convict the suspect of the crime? 

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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):
Ay, Kate, how are you?

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I'm doing well, Paul, how are you?

Speaker 2 (01:05):
No, I'm doing good. I got my hot toddy here
and I'm ready for this next case.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
What's in a hot is that whiskey? Is that just
hot whiskey that you mic awave? Is that what a
hot toddy is? See how naive I am? Listeners? I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Uh well, I kind of fibbed a little bit. It's
a little room temperature, but yeah, it's a little whiskey.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
So that's all it is. It's warm whiskey is that
a hot.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Toddy by my definition. Yes, I mean, this is.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Not what I thought we were going to talk about today.
But they used to use whiskey for everything, didn't they.
Did you ever read in history everything that whiskey had
been used for, I mean, for like knocking out little
babies so they'd stop crying, to anesthegia, to everything you
could think of.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Sure, yeah, I knew about the anisc You know, if
they had to amputate the poor victim had to have
a bunch of whiskey inside and then have to bite
down on the leather strap to prevent biting his tongue. God,
what a horrific time, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Can you imagine? I mean, I just and you know,
in one of the other episodes, we talked about women
who died in childbirth and how a lot of the
times it's because the doctors weren't washing their hands and
they were getting in bacterial infection. I mean, how awful.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah, no, thank god we live in modern medical times. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
What I was going to tell you when when you
mentioned the hot toddie was it reminded me of American Sherlock.
You know my book. We were talking about Oscar Heinrich,
the forensic scientist at the center of my book. So
he got his start working at a pharmacy. When his
dad died, he had to quit high school and he
started working in a pharmacy. And he said that it

(02:37):
was the best thing that ever happened to him because
it was sort of like a school on handwriting analysis
because he could never interpret.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
The doctor's script.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
What the doctors yeah, So he said, there's that, and
then of course there's all kinds of chemistry and kind
of toxicology. He said it was most valuable for human
behavior because there would be drug addicts who would come
in and he said he would just watch them and
how they were trying to con the pharmacists into giving
them drugs that didn't belong to them. But one thing
that I noted. I had not known this was that

(03:09):
during Prohibition, the pharmacies really started ticking up on medicinal alcohol. So,
you know, if you needed to treat something. Oscar learned
how to make medicinal whiskey at his pharmacy, and I
didn't know this little fact. But it became such a
big business that Walgreens. I'm looking at my book now,
Walllgreens expanded from twenty stores in the United States to

(03:32):
more than five hundred stores, basically based on medicinal whisky
that was the only legal way to get it.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
I get it, I understand.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
And then we went back to your hot toddy, which
is I can't take cold whiskey, let alone hot whiskey.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
No. I know, I've tried to get you to imbibe,
but unfortunately you just seem to want to stick with
your cider.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
I do. I know. I love cider. Right now, I
have tea. But you know, like I said, if I
had any alcohol during our show, I would be in
the fetal position in sleeping on the floor of myself
about thirty minutes.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah. No, I need it just to kind of soothe
the nerves because I still get a little anxious before
you and I start our episodes. No you don't, yeah
a little bit.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Why because you're scared you're going to say the wrong thing,
or that I'm going to outsmart you see, I can't
even get that out without loud. I'll smart you. Well,
let me tell you. You'll need some whiskey for this one.
This is a story that's set during I mean Prohibition
nineteen twenty one. Love it great time period to talk about.
We're in Portland, Oregon. Portland is one of my most

(04:42):
favorite cities. And you said you've been there a couple
of times.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
I was there twice. The first time I went to
Portland was actually before a Golden State Killer, you know,
doing a kind of an early form of the genealogy process,
and found somebody that was up there in the Portland
area that I thought possibly was related to who I
was looking for, And turns out he was about nine
hundred years ago, so that didn't help. Wait what, No,

(05:08):
We collected DNA from this old man in a convalescent home,
thinking that possibly, you know, a Golden State Killer was
maybe a son or a cousin, and he just was
so distantly related that it was far beyond, you know,
the genealogy paper trail that we need to be able
to use. And then the second time I went to
Portland was during my book tour. But that's when I

(05:31):
had the hosts of Small Town Dixon interviewed me on stage.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
Oh that's nice.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah, So that was Yardley, Dan and Dave. And this
was the first time that Dan and Dave revealed their
identities to the world because they had been active law enforcement.
They had always kept their identities hidden, and so they
what do you want to say, stepped out of the
closet at that Portland event.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
That's good. So you have good memories of Portland.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Absolutely well, this is not a.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Good memory story, I'll tell you that. But I do
like going to places and time periods that I'm fond of,
and I love Portland and I love nineteen twenty one,
nineteen twenty one for me from American Sherlock is Fatty
Arbuckle case, which was really interesting, you know, very classic
old case. And so I remember a lot of sort

(06:18):
of Hollywood scandals that's not this. This is a little
bit of a mystery. And you know, we're we're really
going to dig into a lot of questions that I
feel like I haven't had answered by you yet. So
let's go ahead and get into it. Let's set the scene.
This is July eleventh, nineteen twenty one. Instead of introducing
you first of all, I guess to say the main players.

(06:41):
I'm going to start with the action here. There is
a neighbor named Robert Green. It's about midnight. He's getting
ready to go to sleep, which would have been about
three hours after I normally go to sleep. I go
to sleep at like nine pm. So midnight Robert Green
says it's time to go to bed. He hears screaming
from his neighbors. And the neighbors are a family called

(07:02):
the Age's, and they live across the street on North
Druid Avenue. And the family is interesting, I would say,
relatively young couple. That's Harry, he's twenty nine, Louise is
twenty six, and they have two young children, a three
year old who's a girl and a six year old
who's a boy. Robert here's screaming. He sees Louise, who's

(07:26):
the wife, running over to his house. She's in a
nightgown and she's saying someone is killing Harry, so someone's
killing her husband. Robert then sees Harry, the husband, staggering
to the door holding his neck before he collapses to
the ground. So Robert runs across the street with Louise
and they go to help Harry, who's now lying on

(07:48):
the floor in the house. His throat has been cut,
and when Robert looks down at Harry, he's awake and
his lips are still moving, but he can't talk, So
that's My first question is does that mean his larynx
was cut? Because I'm going to tell you this. Normally
I kind of hide this information, but a pathologist will

(08:09):
eventually say that whoever did cut his throat, unless it
was Harry, he had missed his jugular vein. So why
would he not be able to talk?

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Well, I think you know, when you start talking about
a cut throat, it is entirely possible that the trachia
could be transacted. Trachia is in the center of the neck.
Now you're they're talking about jugular veins. Yes, those often
are are cut, but it's also the deeper carotids, you know,
where when those are cut, obviously, death ensues very very quickly.

(08:43):
You know, right now, I would only speculate as to
well why he couldn't talk without more descriptors of what
the pathologists found. But yes, if your throat is cut
and your trachya is transsected, or the larynx has somehow
been affected, that could prevent you from talking. And there's
no stab wounds to his chest or anything like that.
It's just all through the neck, right.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yep, you got it. So Robert is traumatized. The neighbor
he leaves Louise and Harry on the ground and he
runs to the neighbors. Not everybody has a phone in
this neighborhood, so he goes to the neighbors whom he
knows does have a phone. They call the police. The
little boy who's six wakes up and you know, he

(09:26):
is on the porch when he sees his father die,
which is terrible. So there is now a confusing crime scene.
And this will come up very quickly for question number two.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
For me.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
A lot of neighbors wind up gathering on the porch.
There's a commotion. Of course, there's already Louise had been
screaming to begin with. There's Harry, the neighbor who's dead
on the porch, and they are already going through the
house before the cops even get there. So of course
what I write down on my notes is a contaminated
crime scene. But before I ask you about that, I

(09:57):
wondered when it became a thing to really secure a
crime scene in history. So listen to this. This is
an article written by Livia Gershaan and she says that
the first practical guide to investigating a crime scene was
written by Austrian jurist Hans Gross in eighteen ninety three
and translated into English in nineteen oh six. So what

(10:17):
Gross said was there were instructions to an investigative officer
who would lead the effort. They would secure the perimeter,
protect the scene from contamination, including from the officer himself.
And you know, he said, you will have as an officer,
the impulse to immediately touch any object of apparent significance.
You have to fight that impulse essentially. So they have

(10:39):
been talking about securing crime scenes for you know, decades,
So I was wondering about that. I mean, I have
written so much about this time period, neighbors just walking
all over the place, and how it must have been
awful to get a conviction if you have a good
devinse attorney saying, how do we even know that these
are this person's fingerprints or you know anything?

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Right? Well, and that's, you know, fundamentally why crime scenes
have to be secured as soon as you possibly can.
Of course, life preserving measures take precedence, and so whether
it be you know, patrol officers arriving first, securing the house,
making sure there isn't a thread inside the house, rendering

(11:21):
first aid, e MTS coming. You know, there's a lot
of chaos if there is going to be any type
of medical attention going on. But once that step, if
that step is needed, once that step is done, then
absolutely freezing the scene and preventing unnecessary entry into the
scene is critical because a lot of evidence is very fragile.

(11:47):
You mentioned fingerprints. You know, you could have let's say,
the killer's fingerprint on a doorknob, and now a patrol
officer trying to secure the house grabs that doorknob to
open up the door and eliminates the fingerprint and shoe impressions,
you know, tracking blood you know, all over the place
as you walk through the house. That now confuses the

(12:09):
blood patterns inside the crime scene, and on and on
and on. So you know, in this particular case, obviously
it is a very contaminated crime scene. Maybe so it
just depends on, you know, where the actual violence occurred
in the house, did the people go in to that

(12:30):
location or not. And then Harry's body, his clothing is
also part of the crime scene and has critical forms
of evidence that can be interpreted.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
When police are reporting or CSI whoever it is, and
everybody is securing a crime scene and collecting evidence and
all of that. Is there some sort of systematic way
that all officers across the nation are taught, Like, is
there a standard that says this is how many officers
we need with the yellow, this is what you should
do next, this is what you should do next, or

(13:03):
does everybody just do whatever they want to do and
depending on their jurisdiction, you.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
Know, I would say that there's in essence best practices.
Every crime scene is different. Now you can kind of
group crime scenes into kind of clusters as to the circumstances.
You have an outdoor scene versus an indoor scene as
the first obvious thing, and then how you deal with
an outdoor scene versus an indoor scene, you know, you

(13:29):
take certain steps as a result, depending on the circumstances,
there may be additional measures that have to be taken
to protect the scene, and sometimes you don't have to
take as many measures, you know, and that's really upon
the expertise of the people that are arriving on scene,
you know, whether it be the patrol officers or the

(13:49):
CSIS or the forensic scientists. You know. I know, like
by the time I got out to my crime scenes,
I was a you know, reputy share of krimlist. That
crime scene became mine. And I've seen in other jurisdictions
that the investigators control the crime scene and oftentimes they
don't have the wherewithal about the physical evidence because they've

(14:12):
never done the work themselves, and then they often inject
certain biases into how that crime scene is processed, you know.
And so I really like the model of having that
independent CSI that once they're there, they are controlling how
the processing of that scene, the documentation of scene, who

(14:32):
goes in and out of that scene, because they're sort
of like this independent physical evidence investigator that should be
paired with, you know, the actual investigators as sort of
a check and balance.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
Well, there doesn't seem to be anybody in control of
this particular crime scene of Harry's death, So that's unfortunate
for us. As we know, the forensics available in nineteen
twenty one were pretty limited. Yes, there are microscopes. Yes,
they can look at hair and kind of determine what's
animal hair, what's human hair. No blood typing yet, and

(15:08):
fingerprint analysis is a thing ish, I mean, not great yet,
So it's pretty sketchy. We're in the middle of the
third degree era of policing, so finding out who did
this would be tough. I have a photo of the
exterior of the house and a map of the interior.
I don't think I'm going to show it to you

(15:29):
just yet. Just know that I have it. So Harry
is now dead. It is confirmed he has been cut
across his throat, and the pathologist will have a little
bit more information. But let me set the scene inside
the house so that we can start to figure out
what the police are trying to figure out. What is
the motivation to kill this man when his wife is
also right there and there are these two little kids.

(15:51):
So he is dead by the time the police get there,
and the scene seems very confusing. It seems apparent to
the police from all of the blood in the bed,
in Harry's bed, that Harry was first attacked when he
was lying in bed, he was lying next to his wife.
It's midnight, they're sleep. It looks to investigators like whoever

(16:12):
attacked him had stood behind the head of the bed
and mend over him. Now, I'm not sure how that
came they came to that conclusion. Can you think about
would that be the spray or would what do you
think that would be for them to determine that?

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Well that I guess I'm puzzled because typically nowadays, the
head of the bed is pushed up against the wall,
and so this bed is potentially out in the middle
of the floor or somehow positioned where they the offender
could have accessed Harry from behind the headboard. Is that
how you're interpreting that?

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Well, maybe that's my cue to go ahead and show you.
Let me share. I don't see. This is how I
find stuff out. Let me share What I would say
is a very crude drawing, but I know you find
these helpful. So this here in the lower left hand
corner is the map of the room. So if you
see the little dashes from bed, I think that means

(17:12):
his pillow is in the center of the room and
their feet are toward the wall, unless you interpret that differently,
and then I think the dashes are there showing you
Harry's root to get on the front porch where he
ultimately died.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
I guess I haven't seen a bed positioned like that.
But you know, this is a what I would call
it bird's eye view, sort of a crime scene sketch.
Showing the inner layout of the house, you know, with
the various bedrooms, their relationship to the living room, dining room,
as well as the door that Harry went out to

(17:46):
get out onto the porch, the bed that I'm I'm
assuming Harry originated from where there's all this blood. It
does look like they've somewhat drawn in the pillows to
the part of the bed that is actually sticking out
into the floor. And so I think I agree with
you is that, yes, the foot of the bed is

(18:07):
actually what's pushed up against the wall. In terms of
their positioning of Harry, this is where it's critical to
understand what the pathologists found. It sounds like Harry's throat
is cut while he's laying there, possibly while he's asleep.
You know, I'd be looking for the possibility of defensive
injuries on his hands, indicating that he was, you know,

(18:31):
conscious and aware that he was being attacked. But if
he doesn't have those defensive injuries, then I think it's
possible that he was asleep when his throat is cut. Now,
in terms of you called a spray when your throat
is cut, and if it's cut deeply enough to where
it breaches the carotid arteries. While your your heart is

(18:53):
still pumping, you can get what is called an arterial spurt,
and that's a pretty significant blood pattern if it's present
and you have an artery that's been breached. If the
carotids were not cut as a result of this neck wound,
then in essence, what you're going to have is more
passive bleeding. And it sounds like the or I think,

(19:16):
if I remember correctly, you said the pathologist said his
jugular veins weren't cut. Correct. This is interesting because typically
with with you know, when you have a throat that
is cut, the knife wound is going directly across the
front of the neck, and you know, the jugulars are
fairly superficial, and so if the jugulars are not cut,

(19:39):
then it sounds like this incision is pretty focused in
the front of his neck, which might indicate that his
trachey or larynx was damaged as a result of this. However,
if there's bleeding after that neck wound, now like when
he stands up, he's breathing, or even with these laying down,

(20:00):
he could potentially be breathing in this blood. This blood
is getting into his trachea, potentially his oral cavity, and
if he is gasping, you know, trying to breathe, you
get potentially these expiratory patterns of blood that come out
of the mouth, and so that can look like blood
spatter and that can often be misinterpreted as to what

(20:25):
caused that type of pattern. So blood patterns, when you
do blood pattern analysis, you always want to know what
the autopsy results are first so you can correlate the
injuries with the patterns at the scene.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
Well, one thing to note about this is this is
a small house. So look, it looks like it's only
two bedrooms. You walk through the front porch where Harry died,
and there's a living room in a dining room, and
then it looks like the master is on the left
where he sleeps with Louise, and there's the kitchen, and
then there appears to me to only be one other bedroom,

(21:02):
which is I'm assuming we're the boy and the girl
are sleeping with just the kitchen separating them, and then
we've got a back porch and then a back one
bathroom it looks like for the house. So just noting
that we're going to end up coming back to this sketch,
and I do want to show you here's the photo
of the house. It's just a very small, modest house,

(21:22):
but I thought you might be interested in access. Like
we're not talking about the deep back top floor where
they are. I mean, this is pretty exposed and it's
right on a big street.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Well, at least per this sketch, it looks like there's
just one door into this small house, single story house.
There are multiple windows. I can't see all the windows
around the house, but in the sketch I can see
the location of the windows. I mean, those could potentially
be points of entry for an offender if an offender

(21:53):
actually got inside this house, you know, And I think
we'll have further discussions on that. And then it looks
like he came out that front door and collapsed right
on that porch.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
So setting the rest of the scene here, so we
know that the police think that the origin where this
happened was Harry was in bed. All the blood is there.
He holds his neck, he kind of crawls, slash staggers
out onto the front porch and he dies. So they
go and they look and they say this place is
a mess. In the bedroom Harry's pant pockets are turned

(22:28):
inside out and they were just you know, wherever he
left them last the drawers and the bureau opened Louise's
purses on the floor. It's open. Now, why we have
to go back. So this is obviously looking like a burglary.
Why we have to go back? Something weird. There is
a pile of jewelry and some silverware found on the
ground outside the house, underneath a dining room window, So

(22:54):
we'll go back to the photo that I showed you.
But the dining room window is locked from the inside,
so no one went out through it, or at least
it's locked by the time the police get there. And
the jewelry, the police say, looks like it was placed.
It doesn't look like it was flung. It was almost
like it was stacked outside and it was dropped from

(23:16):
a few feet up. So they thought that this was curious.
And the dining room is on the opposite side of
the house of the bedroom. So let me show you
what I'm talking about, because they're starting to try to
figure out as this staged burglary or something you know,
bigger happening here. When you see this sketch down here,

(23:36):
and it says Jay, that's where the jewelry was. So
you see the bedrooms kind of in the upper left
hand corner. Whoever did this had to go through the
bedroom into the living room, hang a left at the
dining room, and then I don't know, this stuff ends
up out of this window right here, so it's curious.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yeah, and that window is locked from the inside. So
if this jewelry was dropped out of this window, then
that person closed the window and locked it. Early on
in my career, I processed a fair number of burglary scenes.
That's how I really learned sort of the fundamentals of
crime scene investigation. Burglars don't do this. So you know,

(24:23):
when a burglar enters into a house and is gathering
up items of value, there's usually a container that they use,
whether it's something that they've brought themselves or something from
inside the house. A common container that burglars use are
pellow cases, you know, So any jurisdiction has these pellow

(24:45):
case burglars. You know, so they don't have any burglary
tools on their person as they're walking through the neighborhood,
but they can get inside the house and now they
can start gathering up items and sometimes a significant number
of items that they can place into a pellow case
or the homeowner's backpack or you know, whatever container that
they can find. You know. So for a burglar to

(25:07):
take these items of jewelry and toss them out the
window and then lock the window, that isn't right, you know.
So that's a red flag to my mind. But I'm
kind of curious to see what else, what other details
you provide.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
Okay, let's go back to the scene. So the police
are automatically just like you. This is a big red
flag for them, especially just the locked window, the way
that this is piled up neatly. They said that maybe
the killer robbed the house of jewelry and silverware, put
it out the window and it landed weirdly. I don't
know about that, then locked the window and then went

(25:44):
back to the bedroom to look for cash. And then
Harry woke up and saw the person but didn't make
it out of bed. Because I guess this is a
burglar who came armed with a knife or a razor
or something. The police are saying this is a thing.
They don't really think that's what happened. They feel like
this is you know something that pretty clearly was focused

(26:05):
on Harry and murder and not on jewelry and money.
So when they make a discovery in the street twenty
five feet away from the front door, police find a
straight razor with a black handle and it has blood
on it. This is not belong to Harry, so they
think maybe this is the murder weapon. But this is

(26:26):
not Harry's straight razor. First of all, when they say
straight razor, I'm assuming it's the kind of razor, the
old school razor that men used to shave with.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
Is that right?

Speaker 1 (26:36):
Is that what you would think?

Speaker 2 (26:38):
That's how I'm interpreting it. And that's what barbers use today.
So you go get a shave at of barber they
use a straight razor.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
That would terrify Have you done that? That would scare
me to death? That would somebody come at me with
one of those with a handle on a razor? I
guess you're used to it.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
I actually have, Yeah, and it is you know, you
sit there and you think this person with a single
stroke could end my life.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
Yeah, little sweeny tadd action happening. Well, that's what they have.
They have this straight razor. They assume this is what
the murder weapon is. It's got some blood on it.
So you know, this has all become a mystery. Louise
is hysterical, and the neighbors, everybody's trying to console her,
and the police are investigating, and they don't think it's
a burglary. So now we have to learn a little

(27:19):
bit about the couple. This is not straightforward the way
we think it could go. There's some complications here. And
I will say I usually say this at the top
of the episode, but I want to say it now.
This is something he said, she said, This is what
this story is about, he said, she said. And I
don't even have that many of those. So it's interesting
to see how people perceive the main players in a

(27:40):
murder case, especially in the nineteen twenty one, which is still,
you know, a conservative We're not in the roaring twenties,
yet it's still a very conservative country. Many people think
women should be wearing corsets still, so you know, this
case kind of brings up some different things as far
as our culture. Let me tell you about these folks.
So they moved from the Ozarks region of Missouri Beautiful

(28:03):
to Portland. They had known each other their whole lives.
They grew up on farms next to each other, which
is sweet. They got married when Louise was seventeen and
Harry was twenty. And then, you know, Harry wanted to
work in a World War One shipyard, so they moved
to Portland. And since moving to Portland, they had very

(28:23):
robust social lives. They were members of a church, They
had a lot of social clubs that they were active in.
Louise played trombone in a local band and took private lessons.
We have not had a trombone player involved in any
of our cases yet. I thought that was interesting.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
I guess that's surprising for a female trombone player from
this era. You know, I'm not sure I've seen that,
you know, watching old historic you know, like the jazz
musicians from that timeframe. So interesting.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
Okay, let me tell you what Louise said to investigators.
Now that we know about Harry and Louise. She said
her kids are asleep. That the night that Harry died,
they had both gone to bed about ten o'clock and
she had fallen asleep pretty quickly. She assumed Harry had.
She was woken up two hours later by his moaning,

(29:16):
So she climbs over him, runs to the front door,
which this is not a big place, as we talked
about before, it was you know, a few steps. Basically,
she saw someone running through that front door at the
same time, wearing a long overcoat. You know. One note
I would say, as my first instinct I guess was
why did she not stay there and tend to him.

(29:38):
She was not covered in blood, so that's not what
she did. She wanted to run out and get help.
Is there a wrong reaction to have in that situation?
You're either you know, trying to help your husband but
there's nobody who knows help needs to be called because
they don't have a phone, or you're trying to you know,

(29:59):
get help and you're leaving your husband there bleeding out.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
Well, I think it really comes down to what is
her perception at the time. Right now, I'm just hearing
that she's hearing her husband moaning, you know, is this
akin to he's having a bad dream, you know, or
does she see something that causes her to you know,
climb over him and run out. We can never say

(30:25):
that there's the perfect way somebody should respond, you know,
when there is a crime that has occurred. You know,
we've seen that over and over again. Some people, you know,
their loved ones have been killed, and they respond a
certain way, and other people respond a different way. And
of course, you know, you pay attention to the response,

(30:46):
but it's not a reliable predictor as to whether or
not somebody was involved in the crime because they didn't
respond the way that you think they should have. So
in Luis situation, it's you know, I guess I'm just
kind of confused. Harry's moaning and now she's running out
of the house. She must have, you know, taken in
more information or sent something more than just hearing him moaning.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yep, she must have. I mean, I think the big
deal to me is she didn't have any blood on her.
I don't know why I didn't think that she wouldn't
at least touch him if there was that much blood.
And she's lying next to him, but they report that
she doesn't have any blood on her, and she says,
I didn't clean up anything. I just knew something was
wrong with him and ran and then she saw this
person leaving in a long overcoat.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
Right now, I do want to address that though, when
people see a very bloody crime scene, and it sounds
like the bed has a fair amount of blood in it.
A lot of that blood possibly was deposited after Louise
left the bed. So that's you know, because you have
to think about the dynamics. If Harry's laying there, his

(31:56):
throat is cut, yes, he's going out, there's going to
be some external bleeding, gets up and she gets out.
There's not a lot of blood that has saturated the
sheets or the mattress or the pillow whatever this, you know,
the circumstances are. And then as Harry lays there for
a period of time, now you get more blood being deposited.

(32:16):
But then also fabric causes blood to spread even further
even if there's not more blood being deposited. So when
you now go into and take a look at this bed,
it looks like half the bed is covered in blood.
It was like, well, it's actually wasn't like that when
Louise was in the bed.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
That makes sense. If things happen the way that Louise
said they happen, I would say the police are very
suspicious of Louise because there's nobody who else is there around.
I mean, you know, if they're thinking this is not
a burglary. Somebody's targeting Harry. They're looking at her first.
I'm not saying that's the right thing. I'm saying that's
where we are right now.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
Sure, now, I think, you know, going back to you
know what was observed in the room where his hands have,
pockets turned out, drawers have been pulled out, You've got
money and jewelry that has been deposited outside. This all
must have occurred before Louise got up and got out
of that bed. So now that's part of the assessment

(33:18):
of Louise and how and why is somebody doing this
while she's asleep next to Harry? And then why does
that offender only attack Harry when Louise was laying right
next to him asleep. So there are there again, there's
some red flags here. So I want to know more.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
But you know, we go back to the theory that
you say all the time, which is you eliminate the threat.
Louise isn't a threat, right, I mean, Harry is the
threat with Louise. He can probably intimidate her and he
can do whatever you take, whatever he wants.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
Right, Well, you eliminate the threat, but you're also eliminating
the witnesses. So if you're taking the step to kill Harry, yes,
you kill him first, but then you would also eliminate
Louise and this offender. At least per Louise's statement, it's
not like she's in the bed and seeing somebody standing
over her in the bed like he was about to,

(34:11):
you know, take further action against her. It almost sounds
like she wakes up, Harry's throat has been cut and
the offender is running out of the house, you know,
So that seems more of Harry is targeted, you know,
And that's that's odd that the offender has taken the
time before killing Harry to go through the drawers and

(34:32):
go through his pockets and put the jewelry outside. Something
is not adding up here.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
Well, the police agree. A physician who works for the
corner will later say that he believes it looked like
Harry's windpipe had been severed, and he's calling bs on
Louisa's story. He's saying Harry would not be moaning or
not enough to wake her up. Yeah, now what do
you think about that? Remember Robert, the neighbors said Harry's

(34:59):
mouth was moved, but no words were coming out.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
Yeah, no, And that that adds up the trachia, the windpipe,
you know, being transsected. Absolutely, if you can't get you know,
air up through your vocal cords, you can't utter a sound,
but you still are able to mouth. You know, you know,
you don't have all these nerves that have been severed.

(35:23):
You know, you still have you know, motor control over
the innervations and the muscles that are in your face.
So you know, it comes down to what exactly is
this moaning sound with this doctor saying his trachya is transsected,
his windpipe is transsected. He's not vocalizing anything, but there

(35:44):
is going to possibly be air passing it in and
out of this wound? Is she hearing that?

Speaker 1 (35:51):
She can't even identify it. She just assumed it was
something woke her up, sounds of pain. So the police say, okay,
tell us about the suspect that you saw running out
the front door when you were running to go get
help from your neighbor. So the only description she was
really able to give, because his back was to her
and he was wearing a long overcoat, was that he

(36:11):
was short and squat. The issue is the next day
she says he was tall and lanky. So I'm going
to go back to what you've said before, which is,
you know, inconsistencies can be alarming. At the same time,
witnesses stink sometimes they can't remember anything. And my description
of short and squatty as a woman might be different

(36:32):
than your description of one.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
Well for sure. And she's also seeing this individual in
what sounds like like a trench.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
Coat in the middle of the night.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Yeah, in the dark, you know, And so this is
where you know. Of course, if she's being interviewed and
he's short and squatty and then the next day he's
now tall and lanky, then the follow up is, well,
why are you changing your description? And if she's saying,
you know, I started thinking about it, and I remember
I can remember him, you know, running past let's say,

(37:05):
the living room sofa, and now as I think about,
you know, how tall he is relative to the sofa,
he was taller than what I initially thought. Is Is
there a really good reason for her to change so
dramatically in this physical description.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah, well, let's see. There is a corner's inquest held
three days after Harry is killed. Of course, the police
are still interviewing everyone in his life, including Louise. Still
the corner is a guy named doctor Earle Smith. I mean,
the jury agrees that Harry was killed by a sharp object.
There's now an interesting debate on whether or not the

(37:41):
corner looked at Harry's neck wound and can say it
was this razor. He's not sure it was the razor.
Multiple doctors who examined the body agree that this looked
a little bit more like a large knife. And here
in lies my question to you. This is their description
and the reason why they think it was a knife

(38:03):
and not this bloody razor, this straight edge with a
handle that was found twenty five feet away. They said
the cut had been deeper in the middle than on
the ends, and that hairy skin had been damaged by
what looked like the hilt of a knife. So, I mean,
I know it matters in a way. Can they really
tell that based on a neck wound.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Which one is describing the neck wood? Is this the pathologist.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
It's like four of them, and they're all kind of
having the same agreement that it's deeper in the middle
than on the ends, and it looks like kind of
a jagged cut.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
Okay, so yes, you know, they can make assessments. They
can even determine a pathologist can determine is it a
single edge or a double edged knife, you know. But
of course assessing the wound in terms of the depth
of the wound, with it being deeper in the middle
than on the sides, well, that helps explain why the

(38:53):
juggler veins the carotids aren't cut because those are on
the side of your windpipe of the trachia. So this
knife wound sounds more like it has more of a
stabbing motion to the center of his neck than like
an ear to ear type of incision that we often
see with throats that have been cut. Now you can

(39:17):
stab the knife in but also do an incisive movement
and then pull it out, and that would explain almost
it would almost look like a V shaped neck wound
from the skin surface of the skin into the neck structures.
And that's now he's got his trachia transected. He can't

(39:39):
talk yet his jugulars are intact, as crowdits must be
intact unless the knife went underneath the jugular on one
side and possibly severed acrot it. I mean, there's got
to be. I imagine some significant bleeding going on. If harryus
is getting up and walking out of the house and
collapsing due to loss of blood or potentially do sort

(40:03):
of almost like an asphyxia because his lungs are filling
up with blood. But either way, he's got a significant
bleeding injury inside his neck. But it's not like both
carotids are completely cut, you know, like if we have
a homicidal throat slashing, you know, this can often be
near decapitation and that person dies within a matter of

(40:26):
seconds because the brain absolutely has no blood pumping up
into it. The carotids are completely transsected, and all the
bleeding is going there's no blood pressure up to the brain.
That type of neck wound, it's close to instantaneous death.
We don't see that with Harry. So Harry is getting
enough oxygen up to his brain to be able to

(40:49):
get up and walk out of the house before collapsing.
So the description of these medical experts of the neck
wound it makes sense to me. But there is is
going to be something happening in terms of significant bleeding
and right now, yeah I'm not hearing Oh yeah, the
jugglers were cut or the crowd as were cut. There
are other blood vessels in the neck that this knife

(41:11):
probably transacted and that's the source of the blood.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
So do you agree with them based on their description
that this is more likely to be a large knife
instead of a straight edge, which is consistent all the
way across based on what they're saying, because it makes
a difference, Paul, I'll tell you that.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
Well, you know, in terms of the size of the knife,
you know, I right now I don't have any information
that would be informative as to the size of a knife. However,
you know, envisioning the typical straight edge, where you know,
the front, the top of the blade is blunt, and
then you have the working edge of the blade along

(41:50):
you know, just the single edge, and then you have
that handle, I could envision a way that that blade
could have been used to inflict a similar looking neck wound.
They're observing the hilt of a knife handle in the neck. Well,
necks aren't very big, you know, So if this knife

(42:11):
is going all the way up to the length of
it's played to where now you have this part of
the handle contacting the skin, that doesn't sound like a
very long knife to me. At all, you know, we're
talking a few inches. I'm not sure what they mean
by a large knife. Are we talking about like a
chef's knife. No, because in order to get that hilt

(42:32):
to contact the skin, for them to see that that
knife has gone completely through the neck and into the bed,
you know, so they would be seeing that complete, you know,
through and through type of injury.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Well, let's continue on because there's a lot more ahead here.
So the newspapers, of course, are yellow journalism. They're reporting
this all over the place. It's a really big story,
and you know, people are fascinated with the idea that
police think this woman might be responsible for murdering her husband,
and public opinion starts to shift against her. She is arrested,

(43:09):
but as a this is an interesting phrase. Is this
a real thing? Witness under arrest, but she's not charged?
So what is that nowadays? What would we call.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
That a false imprisonment?

Speaker 1 (43:21):
I guess person of interest who's been collected by the way,
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
Here in the United States, you have to have probable
cause in order to deny somebody their freedom, you know,
that's a constitutional right that we have. And so now
to say that she's a witness under arrest that you know,
at least the way that I'm interpreting that where Okay,

(43:47):
they don't have a they don't have a sufficient probable cause,
but they think she's the one responsible. She's a suspect.
That's how I would describe her. She most certainly is
a suspect. But you still need to cross that probable
cause threshold in order to deny somebody their right to freedom.
And it doesn't sound like they've got that with what

(44:09):
you've told me.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
Yet, I agree, And she is doing the right things.
She's clamming up. She's not talking to anybody about her attorney,
which just drives the press crazy and the police, but
especially the press, and you know, they start describing her
as a caged tigriss gross because she had reddish hair,
and they start to sexualize her very much. I would say,

(44:31):
speaking along those lines, the police are saying and the
prosecutor are saying, Okay, what's our motive here? And I
will tell you they don't have a great motive. So
the neighbors are saying, they seem like a good couple.
Of course, we never know. She is taking trombone lessons
from a handsome man his name is J. H. Klecker.
He is leazy. I will tell you that. And the

(44:53):
police say that they think that these two people were
having an affair and that she wanted things to get
more serious, and you know, the way to convince Glecker
that she's serious is to kill her husband. They also
think maybe they were in on it together, and this
is where we come up with sort of desperate police

(45:14):
trying to find a motive. And at the same time
that he said, she said, so I can tell you
more about Klecker the trombone teacher, or what the police
are thinking, I will tell you they never do a
good job settling on. Did Luis do this to draw
her boyfriend in or did they do it together so
they could be together. There is zero evidence for either

(45:37):
one of these theories.

Speaker 2 (45:38):
No, but you know, at least during the investigative stage,
this is I would say a decent theory from the information.
This crime scene does have an element of staging that
is a parent you know, Tupac is obviously turned out

(46:00):
of Harry's pants, drawers being pulled out, the money and
jewelry being weirdly positioned outside. You know, considering Harry is
in essence executed. You know, that's where I'm seeing contradiction.
I'm seeing staging. And anytime you see staging, that suggests
that the person responsible, in their mind thinks that they

(46:22):
are likely going to be considered a suspect. And so
that would be Louise, and that would be somebody she
is an intimate relationship with, which is this JH trombone player. Now,
whether or not Louise acted alone in order to make
herself free to be able to continue on a relationship

(46:43):
with JH, or she convinced Jah to come over and
make this look like a burglary, but kill Harry so
those so Louise and JH could have a future together.
Either scenario, I mean those are real. You know, either
one has had and time and time again throughout history.

(47:03):
So you know, I think during the investigator stage that
is a decent theory. But now you have to prove
that you know? And and is JH? You know the
man in the overcoat and Louise is lying about well
it's a stranger versus why I knew exactly who it was?
And what is Jh's description? Is he short in squat

(47:24):
or is he tall and lanky? You know, is there
a reason where she goes, Oh, maybe I described him
too accurately the first time. So now I'm going to
go the opposite way and say he's the opposite You know,
the strange man in the overcoat is a taller guy.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
Yeah, yeah, And I think he's a medium guy. He's
not short and squat, he's not super tall. He's in
the medium range. Number one, Get that out of the way.
Number two. Here's the problem with Clecker, I think is
that Louise said, I am not sleeping with this guy.
I am not having an affair with this guy. Klecker says,

(47:58):
I don't know if she killed her husban or not.
We were not having an active affair. We had some intimate,
inappropriate intimate moments. I had a girlfriend who was in
San Diego who is supposed to be moving up to Portland.
He says, basically, this hot woman, Louise, who was married,
was hot for me, and a couple of things happened.

(48:20):
That was not a big deal. I wasn't interested in her.
I have no idea if she wanted anything deeper with me.
She didn't profess her love for me. I don't know
if she killed her husband he had no proof, and
Louise says, this guy's nuts. I did not sleep with
this guy at all. But the police are using Clecker's
story to really kind of bolster their idea of why

(48:41):
would a woman who is a homemaker, whose husband makes
a good living, who seems to have a good marriage,
why would she in nineteen twenty one kill the golden
goose and go with this trombone guy who doesn't have
a steady job. He brags about sleeping with her or

(49:02):
fooling around with her. I think that there is a
little bit of a disbelief of why this would happen.
But there's zero proof. I mean, Louise denies sleeping with
this guy, and he can't come up with anything. There's
no witnesses who saw them out. I mean, there's just nothing.
And I'll say one more thing, Paul, because I know
you probably want to say something. Here. His family, Harry's family,
and Louise's family all come from Missouri. No one believes

(49:25):
this story. Everybody is behind her, including Harry's brother. They've
known her the whole life. I mean, they live next
door to each other on this farm, and everyone says
this is nuts. She did not do this at all,
and she wasn't sleeping with.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
This guy, you know, the police saying that why would
Louise do this? Yes, it appears that her life with
Harry at the relationship with Harry at least on the
surface is good. On the outward appearances of things is good.
But we've seen time and time again that it's what
the person is feeling on the inside. I right now

(50:00):
cannot just say, oh, no, you know, Louise is not involved.
It's like Louise very much could still be involved in this,
even though everybody, including her friends and Harry's family are
you know, saying no, there's no way she would have
done this. You know, right now, I've got a stage
crime scene and one of the individuals that has the

(50:25):
access to Harry as he's laying in bed is Louise.
So she's still in my mind a suspect. The relationship
with this J. H. Klecker, you know, that has to
be drilled down on because now it's not to eliminate
other possibilities, but it doesn't seem like this is where

(50:46):
you have a random stranger who's broken into this house
and was trying to commit a burglary and then decided
to just you know, cut into Harry's throat. That's not
how these crimes occur. The staging really suggests that it's Louise,
this Clecker, or somebody else that's close to this family

(51:06):
circle that is committing this crime. And at least right now,
the two potential suspects, or that what I would say,
The two suspects are Louise and or jh. There may
be somebody else that comes along, but right now they're
the suspects and Harry's homicide.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
Okay, well, let's continue on Louise and Harry's families. As
I said, all think this is crazy. This is not
what happened. Harry and Louise had a great marriage. Because
the whole family is in from out of town, the
trial is pushed up from September to July, so this
is less than two months after Harry is murdered. And

(51:45):
the prosecution, Boy, I was shocked when I read this.
They're looking at the death penalty for a woman.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
So now we've moved from Louise being a witness under
arrest to Louise being charged for Harry's murder.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
Right, and it is totally based on clicker what he
tells the police, and he again is not saying she
didn't confess to me. I don't think she did. You know,
he's not saying anything except yeah, we had some inappropriate
relationship stuff. But that was it, I mean, he was
That was the extent of it, and they ran with this.
There's no other evidence. The police said, that's why we're

(52:19):
arresting hers because of what this guy said.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
It's flimsy, very flimsy. He's offering very interesting information for sure,
as a witness, but you need to corroborate that somehow,
some way, you know, And of course in this day
and age, we would be looking for physical evidence, you know,
such as you know, like this straight edge razor, is

(52:43):
that Harry's blood on it? And if it is, that
likely is the murder weapon whose DNA is also on
this razor, you know, on the handle. I know they
don't have that technology today, but you know this Trombone
instructor saying, well, we had sort of inappropriate thing. She
was kind of coming on to me, and Louise is

(53:04):
completely denying it. You know, It's like, God, that's not
enough to push this up to where, oh yeah, I'm
confident that Louise is Harry's killer. Yeah, you know, she's
still a suspect, and potentially a strong suspect. You know,
maybe there is some motive there, but I'm unconvinced right now.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
Okay, Well, let's talk about flimsy. One of the neighbors.
The prosecutor loves this. One of the neighbors who came
to the house before the police showed up, one of
those contaminators I call them, said that Louise's side of
the bed did not look like it had been slept in,
Like the pillow was too fluffy. You know, I don't

(53:42):
know how I feel about that, and I know you're
One of the things you'll say is like, I don't
know if that makes a difference. Number One. To me,
it's what's more important is that there's no blood on her.
That seems a little bit more important than whether the
pillow was fluffy. And it's a neighbor, a layperson who's
determining that to begin with, what do you think?

Speaker 2 (53:58):
Yeah, I mean, it's an observation, but it's sort of
like I would need to, you know, see the photos
of that to verify. Is there something that seems to
be inconsistent with Louise having slept on that side of
the bed that night. But that's very subjective. Now, the
blood on Louise or the lack of blood on Louise.
That's where I need to see the photos of the bed.

(54:20):
You know, I need to know the extent of the
blood patterns. I need to know better, you know, the
the you know, the the blood patterns on Harry, in
order to assess whether or not somebody could have been
on Louise's side of the bed and gotten up and
left without getting any blood on them. And you know,

(54:40):
part of that assessment is also, as I explained earlier,
well how much blood was there when Louise would have
been in the bed versus how much blood is being
seen at the time that these contaminators are walking into
the bedroom.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
Yeah, I mean, and I'm not sure this occurs to
the police. I mean, they really focus in on who
is the most likely suspect and they can't get around Louise.
Now I will say, I mean Klecker. I don't know
how I feel about him. I don't know who to
believe her or him, but I'm sure he is whiplashed
by what the prosecutor does. Klecker is the prosecutor star

(55:15):
witnessing this, and the prosecutor cannot seem to decide whether
or not Clecker and Louise did this together or it
was Louise alone. So you've got this trombone teacher sitting
on the stand testifying for the district attorney, and the
district attorney is in some ways accusing him of doing this.
They cannot settle on anything, I will say this, so
things get a little complicated. You have not I'm surprised

(55:38):
you haven't asked this yet. Did Harry have any money
or did Harry have a life insurance policy? I'm sure
you were going to get to that though, right Well.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
After looking at the house, I'm pretty confident that there
wasn't a ton of money in this family, you know,
most certainly it's all relative, you know, it's what is?
What is something? I mean, I've seen a woman killed
for five dollars, Yeah, you know, so it's all relative.
I hadn't, you know, even form the thought of the

(56:06):
possibility of life insurance. I should have, but I didn't.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
Okay, well, good, I'm glad I caught you in something
I did not smart you. So they find out that
Harry did have a life insurance, a modest one, although
you're right, I mean it's all relative. Forty five hundred
dollars in a life insurance policy today that would have
been about eighty thousand, which doesn't seem like it's a
lot to many people. And as you pointed out, modest neighborhood,

(56:33):
modest family. Sure, so there's that. Okay. The biggest weird
thing that happens in this case is this Klecker is
on the stand and the prosecution sits down and there's
cross examination. Okay, Now Louise's defense attorney produces something and
it's a piece of evidence that shocks the whole courthouse, Okay,

(56:55):
including Klecker. And the reason that he's able to do this,
I'm gonna tell you what it is in a second,
is that there is no discovery in nineteen twenty one.
There are no discovery rules. Will you quickly and swiftly
explain the concept behind discovery rules and why they're important,
and how this lawyer can really throw a gotcha at
Klecker on the stand, you know, in.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
A nutshell, and this isn't going to be you know,
the real legal description. So any prosecutors out there listening
to me, don't don't cringe too hard. But fundamentally that
the prosecutors have to turn over everything that they have
in their case to the defendant's attorneys. This is the discovery.

(57:36):
Now there are select items that can be withheld, but
that's very limited. And fundamentally this process is that if
the people who are prosecuting the defendant have information half
evidence that is potentially exculpatory, you know, that's what the

(57:58):
defense attorneys are looking for. And that way, the discovery
process guarantees that the defendant is able to mount the
most rigorous defense possible with all the evidence and all
the information that the investigating agency in the prosecutor's office
has compiled. And this is now where there's a case

(58:23):
decision of Brady v. Maryland, which really cements the obligation
of the prosecutor to the point of potentially being personally
liable if it is found that they've withheld potential exculpatory
information from the defense. So like when I was working

(58:44):
for the DA's office, one of the most impressive things
that I saw was how rigorous the prosecutors from my
office were at ensuring that the defense got everything that
they could possibly get there's always going to be some
some things that are contentious in this adversarial system as

(59:04):
to whether or not it was actually turned over under
discovery or not. Now, in this scenario, it sounds like
Louise's attorney is producing evidence. Now the defense doesn't have
the same discovery obligation, you know. So this is where
if the defense discovered evidence, and sometimes you know, defense

(59:26):
attorneys hire their own investigators, et cetera, then that is
something that they could potentially produce if there is sufficient
relevance to defending you know, the defendant. Sometimes the defense
will do let's say, scientific testing on the people's evidence,
evidence collected by you know, the investigating agency. Well there,

(59:48):
now there's a little bit more of okay, you need
to inform the prosecutors in terms of what you know
you've done with with our evidence, you know, with the
people's evidence. But under this scenario, it doesn't sound like
the situation would require the defense attorney to have divulged

(01:00:08):
anything up front under any type of discovery process. And
I may be completely wrong, but that's my understanding, yep.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
And you're right. I mean that's what leads to this
what I can only describe as a Perry Mason moment
in the courtroom. So let me know you what happens.
Louise's lawyer reaches down looking at Cleicker into a bag
and he produces an overcoat, and we remember the notorious
overcoat that the suspect, Louise says, was wearing as he

(01:00:39):
was running out the door after murdering her husband. It
is bloodstained. There's a hunting knife in one pocket. There
is trombone. I really want to get through this without laughing.
There is sheet music.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
In the other pocket for trombone.

Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
Yes, try, yes, it would be not great if it
were clarinet, but yes, for a trombone. So there's trombone,
sheet music. There's a knife in the other pocket. And
then it's blood soaked, they say, with human blood. So
I have never gotten I have looked everywhere. I've never
gotten a satisfactory answer about whose blood this could have been.
Of course, the defense attorney is proclaiming that this is

(01:01:19):
Clecker's coat, that you know, he's the one who murdered Harry,
and then he discarded this, so then I have more information,
but I want to get your reaction first. I don't
know whose blood this is. They say it's human. I
am dubious that this would be human blood. I mean,
unless we really believe that this is the overcoat of

(01:01:40):
the person who murdered Harry.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
Yeah, you know this right off the bat, there's issues.
You know, of course today need to see is that
Harry's blood on the coat. But going back to nineteen
twenty one, you know, this is where if Harry is
in essence, is his the front of his throat, his
windpipe is being transsected, and the offender immediately runs off.

(01:02:06):
It's entirely possible that offender has zero of Harry's blood
on him or her And that's where evaluating the blood
patterns at the scene and Harry's injuries, all of that
has to come into play as to whether or not
the blood patterns on this overcoat are even consistent with
the crime scene. You know, so, I mean this could

(01:02:29):
very well just be mocked up evidence. At this point.
There was absolutely no chain of custody. It's not being documented.
It doesn't sound like as to where it was collected from,
you know, who's had possession of it, documenting that the knife,
the trombone music, you know, the blood was all there
when that overcoat was first found. So, you know, I'm

(01:02:50):
very skeptical about this evidence at least right now. You know,
it just seems like this seems too I'm going to
use the term staged again. I mean, come on, trombone
music inside the pocket.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
Well, listen to this. Louise's dad is the one who
found it. You didn't even take a sip of your drink,
you put it right back down.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
Yeah. Well yeah, but is the dad trying to put
the suspicion on J. H. Klecker? You know, my daughter's innocent.
He's the killer. You know, this is where and there's
questions about the veracity of the evidence right off the bat,
and that's where, you know, definitely investigation into this evidence,
forensic testing into this evidence has to be done in

(01:03:33):
order to even determine does it have relevance to this case.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things is
that he found it. He said he found it in
the neighborhood, rolled up under a fern plant. And you know,
one of the issues that the police say is that.
And then he turned it over to the defense attorney.
The police say, listen, how long do you think this
has been here? And of course the dad's like, well,
obviously the killer deposited it there and hid it there

(01:03:59):
after the killing, which was four weeks earlier. It had
rained numerous times and there was no sign of rain
water washing out this blood. And the sheet music was
yeah perfect. I mean, I'm surprised they didn't ask Klecker
to perform whatever the song was that was in his
pocket at the time.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
Well, you know, the complexity is this is now being
produced by the defense in court, so there isn't an
opportunity to really scrutinize this evidence. And this is where
you know, the prosecutor I think, would be very much
in the right to be able to object to relevancy. Yeah,
you know, without you know, further scrutiny of that evidence,

(01:04:40):
not just the dad getting on the stand and saying
I found it here. There needs to be a deep
dive into this evidence. Do you determine whether or not
you know, it is what the defense claims it is.

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
Yeah, well, none of that happens. I mean, they can't
get it thrown out. The jury has heard it, the
judge is allowing it to be heard. This is the
life asked major murder trial in Oregon to have an
all male jury. They deliberate for thirty minutes, that's it,
half an hour, and they come back with a verdict.
Her life is on the line. This is a capital case.

(01:05:14):
What do you think, Paul Holes, they came up with
guilty or not guilty?

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
Well, there's what I think they should have come up with,
based on the case against Louise. But my fear is
is that with such a short deliberation, all male jury,
this Perry Mason moment with the overcoat, I have a
feeling that they convicted Louise.

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):
No, they acquitted her. Oh wow, I think that there
was enough. There was you know, witnesses who were saying, well,
the coat could have been there, and they were him
and Haun. I don't think anybody liked Klecker because he
came off as leezy. And I still think in nineteen
twenty one, there was absolutely the belief that a woman
couldn't have done this. She didn't testify, and that was

(01:06:00):
that they never found out or never convicted anybody of
murdering Harry and Louise and the two kids, the boy
and the girl leave town and she dies in nineteen
eighty six at the age of ninety one.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
Oh Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
Okay, so that's the end of that story. I mean,
what do you think.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
I don't have a problem with Louise being acquitted, though
I'm still think that she is potentially Harry's killer. Yeah,
I think the prosecution jumped the gun on charging her,
didn't build up a good enough case. Nor am I
convinced about this J. H. Klecker not having any involvement.

(01:06:39):
I think this investigation got up to a point where
two suspects were developed and they could have acted independently
or they could have acted in concert, and they didn't
do enough to incriminate or exonerate either one of these suspects.
Further investigation was needed before the before or anybody was charged.

(01:07:01):
And you know, now, unfortunately, you know it's over one
hundred years later. You know, Harry's death is there is
no justice, there's no answer.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
Yeah, two kids with no dad. Yeah, boy, what a story.
And I think that it was it really did come
down to that he said, she said, and planted evidence,
weird evidence, sleazy trombone teachers. I just think this was
a complicated case.

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):
Well, and I know the way that I would be
looking at this case if I was with the investigating
agency is okay, one of the suspects has been acquitted,
can't go after Louise anymore due to double jeopardy. However,
j Je Klecker is still in play, and that now
let's really try to determine was he involved or not,

(01:07:51):
And there could be all sorts of investigative tactics used
in order to try to you know, wean that out,
including potentially gaining cooperation from Louise because she now could
turn stace witness and said, yeah, I hired Klecker to
kill my husband, but you can't do anything about it

(01:08:12):
because I've been acquitted, you know, But she could say
he's he was the man in the overcoat. You know,
there's all sorts of things that could have happened if
they decided to pursue the case. But you know, I've
seen sort of the philosophy with prosecutors is that, well,
we knew we had the right person, they just got acquitted,
and therefore we're not going to pursue the case any furthers.

(01:08:34):
I've got a woman in the early seventies dumped, had
been raped seemen evidence. Vaginally they charged a guy and
he was acquitted of her murder. You know, many decades before,
and I was like, well, I'm convinced that he is
her killer, where's the DNA? And the prosecutor was like,
what doesn't matter. It's like, it's an unsolved case. If

(01:08:56):
it's an acquittal, it's an unsolved case. We now have
the technology, you know, prove whether or not the person
acquitted was the actual killer, or maybe we would actually
find the real killer and be able to arrest and
charge that person, you know. So it sounds like in
Harry's homicide. You know, once Louise is acquitted, then you know,

(01:09:17):
the investigating agency in the prosecutor's office just drop pursuing
it because they were convinced that Louise was Harry's killer.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
They put all their eggs in one basket, and then
that basket got acquitted in left Town. So there you go. Well,
next week we will not have this type of case.
I'm going to stay away from both straight razors, which
scare me, and also having knives, and we'll be going
for a different weapon. I can tell you that already.

Speaker 2 (01:09:42):
All right, Well, as always, I'm looking forward to it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
All right, see you next week.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
All right, Thanks Kith.

Speaker 1 (01:09:51):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 2 (01:09:54):
For our sources and show notes go to exactly Rightmedia
dot com slash Buried Bones Sources.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
Our senior producer is Alexis Emirosi.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Speaker 2 (01:10:09):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 2 (01:10:14):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark, and Danielle Kramer.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Barry Bones Pod.

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decote the
criminal mind, is available now, and

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life Solving America's Cold
Cases is also available now