The Dayton Strangler

In this week's episode Paul and Kate go to early 1900s Ohio where a young girl sneaks out of a family gathering and doesn't return. After her body is found and the circumstances are weighed a massive manhunt uncovers some disturbing patterns. Is there a Serial Killer in Dayton? 

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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 Holles, 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 3 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried Bones. Hi, Kate, Hey, Paul, how are you?

Speaker 3 (01:04):
I am doing good. How are you doing today?

Speaker 1 (01:07):
I'm doing well. I had a interview with a forensic
chemist who specializes in arsons, and I found it really fascinating.
And at the end of it, I thought, I often
think of this with my experts. I thought my dad
would really like this woman. And then I started thinking
my dad would really like Paul holes And I think,

(01:28):
you guys, I mean that's a huge compliment, because my
dad was picky. I mean he was you know, he
encountered a lot of people, and I think he would
have really liked talking with you, particularly about cold cases.
You know, we talk about how involved he was with
the actual innocence clinic that he started before he died
in two thousand and five, and I think he really
would have liked you. You both had a real fascination

(01:51):
with cases that needed to be closed but hadn't been,
and maybe you could be the person to come in
and do it. And I am so scared of those
investigations like a nice tidy ending, and and you are
happy to look into these cases that you know, like
the Golden State killer, that are just they seem unsolvable.
So that's why we're different. I think my dad would

(02:12):
have just thought you were great and would have loved
to sit down and have a beer or some sort
of whisky something with you.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah, you know, with the unsolved, it's all about developing theories.
And that's where the discussion with your dad would be fascinating,
because now it's like you don't know what the ending
is and it's a matter of Okay, these are the facts,
these are the suspicions, you know, these are the leads,
this is the forensic evidence, you know, and how do

(02:38):
we go from here? And for me, I'm probably a
little bit on the weird side, it's all about the
hunt and even after, like with the Golden State Killer,
you know, once DiAngelo was caught, the hunt was over,
and so I'm not like continuing to be engaged to
learn everything I can about DiAngelo. And then we've seen
this past summer Long Island serial killer get solved. Yeah,

(03:00):
and it's sort of like, Okay, you know, I'm not
doing a deep dive on the you know, suspect in
that case right now. For me, it is the hunt.
It is solving the case. It's getting the families the answers,
it's getting justice for the victims. And then I just
kind of move.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
On, and you know what's funny and this is something
we should talk about at a different time. Also, is
I am someone who when I watch a lot of
Agatha Christie and I read a lot of Agatha Christie,
but I always find out who did it before I'm
finished with the book or the movie. Always I always look,
you know why, I know because I like to know
the little pieces and I like to see them come together.

(03:39):
And even when I know at the very end, I
love rewatching them over and over again so that I
could see every little piece that's put together. I guess
it's not the hunt for me. It's like seeing the
jigsaw and the brilliance of how these things come together.
And in real life cases, I think it's interesting to
see the way society react acted the way the witnesses acted.

(04:02):
You know, can I kind of predict what happens before
I get to the end of the research document?

Speaker 3 (04:07):
Yeah? You know.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
So are you the type of person that when you
buy a new new novel, you read the last chapter first?

Speaker 1 (04:12):
I do I or a google one? I know, so
sad to say. I know, I don't like surprises, and
I like spooky and scary, but I don't like surprises
and mysteries. I like to see them unravel and how
they're put together. I don't now, it's just it's weird.
So that's why we work well together, I think.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
You know, when you think about it, it's sort of
like like with buried bones. You are going after these
historic cases oftentimes there is an answer, and you know,
for me, I'm going after old cases where there is
no answer. So I'm kind of forward looking and you
are backwards looking.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, with this case that we're
going to be talking about now, it's set in Ohio
in the year nineteen hundred. This is a case where
the police really believe it's a serial killer working and
it's a string of unsolved murders. And for me, I
think this is the first time that really you can
draw on the Golden State Killer case on how do

(05:13):
you make the connections based on circumstances, witnesses? How with
very little information forensically, how are we able to look
and say, boy, this does make sense that one person
committed all of these crimes or oh, I don't know
if this makes sense. We've done this with the Nashville case,
We've done this a couple of other times, but this
really feels like they really could be related. But we'll

(05:36):
have to see what you think.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, no, I'm looking forward to hearing about it.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Okay, well, let's set the scene. So this is set in,
as I said, nineteen hundred, Dayton, Ohio. When we talk
about these areas, we want to talk about the time
period and we want to talk about you know, what
do we It's like when any police officer would want
to know when you start an investigation. You want to
know where you are, what's the suspect pool, Like, who

(05:59):
are the people around, what's the demographic? So I want
to give you that information. This is a really fast
growing city. There's a trolley system that people use, there's
lots of factories that are popping up, lots of work
men and women coming in and out all the time.
But the city is growing so quickly that there are
not enough street lights to light the streets to keep

(06:22):
people safe, and there is a smaller police force than
a city this size should have. So already this is
a great situation for criminals because we're going to assume
a little bit of a higher crime for a city
that's not quite used to it because they're exploding with
so many people coming in.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Well, what kind of industry is this? Like a steel town?
Is this a car town?

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Cars? So in the early nineteen hundreds, there are at
least ten separate factories that are turning out dozens of
models of cars. I know that's not the only industry,
but it gives you a little bit of an idea
of you know, the kind of workers who would have
been coming in, And I.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
Would imagine that these workers are probably residents of Dayton.
You know, it's not like, at least for my perception,
that these car factories would be bringing in you know,
large kind of transient workers for seasonal work. This would
be year round work. And residents are basically the ones

(07:18):
that staff these factories.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
So that that's.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Important to me, you know, is what kind of transient
population do we have when I start assessing potential suspect pools. Now,
it doesn't mean there isn't a transient population in Dayton
during this period of time, but it sounds like this
is really you know, the residents there are long term
occupants of this area.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
That's the impression I have too. But we're going to
really home in on one particular area because these crimes
span a decade, but they all are similar emos, and
they all take place within a few blocks of a
particular trolley stop. And the trolley stop as at McCabe Park,
and at this time, the reputation of this park was

(08:02):
that it had a lot of unsavory characters there and
a big CD reputation. So when these murders happen from
nineteen hundred till nineteen oh nine nineteen ten, this section
of the street where the trolley had stopped is considered
a dangerous place for girls, and it was known as

(08:22):
the death lane. So now you know why this is
unsolved because already we're talking about a place where people
are disappearing, women are disappearing, and young girls, this whole
area where they're already unsavory characters around. So it's not
going to be as easy as trying to take one
suspect that we know and kind of pinim on all
of these different murders. It's a little bit more like,
does this sound like this fits? Knowing what you know

(08:45):
about criminal profiling, But already we're at a disadvantage with
this stinking park right.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Here right, you know, and this is not uncommon. You know,
where we see many series happen is oftentimes in high
crime or higher risk environments, and that does open up
potential suspect pool. It also does make it difficult because
you may have regulars that are in this particular area,

(09:14):
regulars that are committing crime, and all of them are
potential you know, when you evaluate them from afar, they
potentially have red flags where you go, oh, I need
to dig into that person a little bit more. But
when you have a whole bunch of people you need
to dig into. Your efforts get diluted, and you know,
I remember investigating, you know, one jurisdiction, Golden State Killer.

(09:37):
Every rock I turned over I found just cockroaches and
suspects just fleeing all over the place. And it gets
to where it's like, well, how do I sort this out?
You know, especially if there is no DNA or fingerprint
evidence that could help identify one particular individual.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
And this is a big mystery. Boy, there's very little
forensic evidence for us to work with, but it's very interesting.
So let's start with the first case, which in a
lot of ways is the most sad for me. This
is mid October of the year nineteen hundred. There's a
family called the Lance family and they are having a
birthday party for a member of the family. They invite
a lot of people over and the party starts at

(10:16):
eight pm, and it's dark already. So while the adults
are having fun and drinking and having a good time,
there's a little girl named Ada, who is the Lance's
eleven year old daughter. She decides to sneak out into
the backyard. So party starts at eight The adults don't
notice that she's gone from the house until two hours later.

(10:37):
Lots of frantic searching, as you probably could guess, and
finally they make their way back to an outhouse at
the back of their property. And they have a pretty
big property surrounded by a fence, but there's an open
latch anybody could access this. They go to the outhouse
and they find her body had been stuffed down the

(10:58):
whole of the outhouse. They didn't know she was gone
until ten, so two hours, but they didn't find her
until an hour and a half after that. So there's
eight pm when the party started, and everyone knew she
was there until eleven thirty that night when she's discovered.

Speaker 2 (11:13):
So, yeah, the adults are occupied, yep. You know this
is a kin to the kids, you know, current day
where they slip out into the backyard where there's a pool,
you know, and they're not seen.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
For hours here. You know.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
The questions that I have is, okay, so you have
a lot of adults inside the house, Ada slips out
into the backyard. It's a fenced in backyard. You indicate
it's a larger property. Do we know what this property
backs up to? Is it forested? Are there railroad tracks.
Is there anything that would indicate why somebody might be

(11:48):
just lurking out there and Ada was a victim of opportunity,
or is there somebody who is drawn to the location
because of the party and happens to see Ada go
into the backyard and is able to slip out themselves
from the party and victimize Ata.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
My understanding is that it's at residence neighborhood, but again
it's pretty close to that park, so there are all
kinds of people sort of sneaking around who probably would
have noticed a little girl in the backyard kind of
on her own, and I don't know why she went
out there, but where the outhouse was. There's an author
who I'll talk about later who is a relative of
one of our future victims, and he wrote a book

(12:27):
about this and he described it as if you stood
on the back porch with a lantern in the middle
of the night, and you had a bright lantern, you
still wouldn't be able to see the outhouse. So it's
really far back and multiple entries I think for a
way to get into the yard, so it would not
have been hard for somebody to slip in. And this
is why eventually the police clear everybody at the party

(12:51):
because the neighborhood wasn't CD, but the park was drawing
ced people and it was just a block or two
from the park.

Speaker 3 (12:56):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
Yeah, And the way I'm kind of assessing this case
initially going in, if I'm responding out, is I've got
three bins of suspects. I've got people who are attending
the party who would have seen Ada and possibly seen
Aida isolate herself. Then you have the neighbors, you know,
the party, the noise from the party could have drawn

(13:18):
their attention. They're paying attention, and again somebody that decides
to lurk or is able to see Aida isolate herself.
Then you have the higher risk suspect pool the people
that are in the park and the fact that there's
this outhouse out there, is this something that would draw

(13:39):
I'm assuming these are people in the park and some
of them may be taking advantage of the outhouse just
to use the bathroom, and they happen to be going
to that yard on a periodic basis and then happen
to stumble across Aida being out there, or you know,
of course, they also could be hearing the commotion of
the party. And going, oh, what's going on, let's go
check it out, and then there's eighta out there in

(14:01):
the backyard.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah. Crime of opportunity, I guess. Let's talk about her
injuries and what caused her death. Her body is terribly mutilated.
According to the police. She has bruises and cuts all
over her face. She has a two inch gash on
her left side of her face that seems to have
been caused by a cane or a club. Her clothes
were torn to shreds, and she had been sexually assaulted.

(14:24):
Sexual assaults have happened in I think all of these cases.
It's ultimately determined that she was strangled and then she
was shoved headfirst into a fifteen inch hole inside the outhouse,
so that probably cost some of the injuries on her
face too. But ultimately the important part is that she
was strangled, she was sexually assaulted, and it just sounds

(14:47):
like brutalized.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
Part of the evaluation of her injuries. I mean, she's
she's an eleven year old girl. She's not able to
put up much resistance to an adult male. But if
she did resist, do some of these injuries indicate that
they're defensive in nature. And then the offender is just
physically overpowering her in order to get her under control.

(15:11):
The tearing of the clothes off. That is interesting, you know,
because I've had both, you know, sexually related homicides in
which the offender pulls clothes off as well as cuts
clothes off. But there are occasions where the offender purposely
tears clothes off, and this is what the offender likes
to do. This is part of their fantasy. So it

(15:33):
all just kind of depends on, you know, the pattern
that I would be seeing if there were really good
crime scene photos. But I key in on that tearing.
You know that in many ways, is this almost like
this frenzied act because most certainly right now, absent more information.
I'm assuming I've got an adult male that is attacking Ada,
and there's no reason to have to tear her clothes off.

(15:56):
He could completely overpower her and pull her clothes off.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
And some of these clothes are not easy to tear.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah, yeah, so that is part of why take the
extra effort.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
Well, keep all of that in mind, as I know
you will as we move forward through these cases. But
let's wrap up Ada's They arrest five men in connection
with the crime. These are guys who have just been around.
They knew that they were sort of sleazy. They were
in the vicinity. There were witnesses who said they were
kind of around, as were a lot of people in
this neighborhood. But there was a man named Harrison Blessing.

(16:30):
He was eighteen years old, and they got a tip
from somebody who lived in his home, a tenant who
said that Blessing had confessed to killing Ada to at
least two people. But we don't know if that's true,
and this is from a you know, the source that
we had to use was a couple of newspaper articles,
and when you follow up with these newspaper articles, nothing

(16:52):
ever came of this arrest. He was arrested and then
he was released. Nobody was ever charged with So if
that was true, it wasn't enough to hold any water.
And Harrison Blessing just sort of drops off because there
wasn't enough evidence against him, and Ada's case goes cold
in nineteen hundred and.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
With Blessing and these you know, he's confessing to others
in these unsolved cases. This is a frequent occurrence. And
the interesting thing is is that you will have guys
out there who are just trying to impress others. You know,
it's the street cred and we typically see it like

(17:35):
within the the methamphetamine groups, you know, the cranksters out
there where you know, somebody, you know, some horrific crime
occurs in the area and then they're like, well, I
did it because they just want that street credibility. And
then it just kind of, you know, the rumor mill
just goes wild, and then pretty soon somebody's calling in
that tip and it happens over and over again. So

(17:55):
right now, I can't put much weight on Blessing's confession,
especially considering that they weren't able to move forward back
in the day on that, and the.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
Police in Dayton over the next ten years feel very
strongly that the cases we're about to discuss are all connected.
And Harrison Blessing never comes up again. So I'm assuming
they've kept him and they're kind of checking in on him.
But this is what's unusual to me, and it won't
be unusual to you. I think, based on the Golden
State Killer, nothing happens again for six years. Things happen, obviously,

(18:28):
people are murdered, people are sexually assaulted, but not this
motive or not this sort of circumstance doesn't happen until
nineteen o six. Is that surprising I'm assuming not?

Speaker 2 (18:40):
No, you know, there, I think the average layperson assumes
that a serial predator is just on this regular clock
and goes out and kills or rapes, sexually assaults, you know,
on this very periodic basis.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
And some some offenders do do that, you know, and
it's not.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
Necessarily you know, every other day, you know, it's not
that type of pattern, but it's there's a certain frequency
in which they're going out. But then you also see
offenders who strike out in clusters. So you'll see, you know,
one case and then a pause, and then maybe three
cases very close together, and then another pause. And there

(19:20):
are offenders that when they go out and commit crimes,
it's because they've got certain stressors that are occurring in
their personal life that somehow, some way causes them to
want to go out and commit to this type of crime.
There's also just sheer opportunity things come up in these offenders'
personal life, you know, that prevent them from going out

(19:42):
of committing a crime. And when all said in those
things that were preventing them subside. Then they go out
and they may commit a cluster of crimes because they've
been waiting, they've been jumping at the bit in order
to go and commit the crimes. They've been fantasizing about it.
So it really varies. So in this case, we have
atus case and then a six year gap, and then
you're going to start telling me about what I'm assuming

(20:03):
is a similar type case.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah, so after Ada's case goes cold, there is a
twenty year old woman named Donna Gilman. So now let's
just talk about the ages. So we have Ada who's eleven.
We have Donna, and this is a very similar circumstance.
We have Donna who's twenty. Does that surprise you if
this is the same person.

Speaker 3 (20:25):
No, not at all.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
And this again is something that occurs frequently within a
series where some offenders are a little bit more particular
about the age, gender looks of a victim. Other offenders aren't.
And when you start talking about let's say we have
a twenty year old female and adult female and an

(20:48):
eleven year old girl either pre pubescent or pubescent, this
is where we get into this phenomenon what we call
crossover a fence where now an offender is willing to
victimize individuals that have different age, look, gender characteristics. And

(21:09):
this is much more common than what you would think.
Oftentimes it's a victim of opportunity, like Ada was a
victim of opportunity. This particular offender may not prefer to
have a child as a victim, but will victimize a
child if the opportunity presents itself, or it's the opposite,
whereas this offender prefers is a preferential or situational child

(21:35):
molester if you will, or child killer.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
And then in this.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
Recent case with a twenty year old, now she's the
victim of opportunity. So it happens all the time.

Speaker 1 (21:47):
I think you're right about this because I know all
the information in you don't. And I think the oldest
victim is they said, early twenties, okay, And there are
younger victims than this.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
Well, and part of this and this is where you
know I got this. You know, I have a mentor
on the behavioral side, the Sharon Hagan, who is a
California DOJ profiler, and she's long retired now but brilliant
in terms of assessing a criminal behavior and she flat
out told me, Paul. Oftentimes the offender makes up his

(22:19):
mind to attack a victim when he sees that victim
from Afar, and so now has a certain mental image
of who that victim is. But when gets closer finds out,
oh that is that is not a twenty year old woman,
that's an eleven year old girl. But has already made
up that mindset that he's going to pursue the attack.

(22:42):
And so, like an Ada's case, you know it may
be from Afar. Let's say somebody's on the other side
of the fence and sees from Afar.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
You know, a girl.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
I don't know how she's dressed, if she's got a
dress on or whatever, but in his mind is like,
this is a sixteen year old girl, or this is
a twenty year old girl, and goes and proceeds to
attack and finds out no, we are dealing with a
child here, but he doesn't care at that point.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
I'll show you a picture of Ada. It's not a
good picture, but maybe it'll give you some more information
before we go on and talk about Donna. So the
one in the middle, So, I mean, just typical curly
haired girl. But we don't know how tall she is.
I'm assuming it's a party in nineteen hundred. She's got
to be wearing a dress, right, So maybe he did

(23:26):
mistake her. If she's taller, maybe he did mistake her
for somebody who is a little She is the youngest victim,
I'll tell you that. But we have another victim near
the end who is not much older than this. So
I really buy into your theory. Here it's dark, he
can't see anything. Who knows? Who knows? Well, let's get
back into Donna. So she is twenty years old and

(23:47):
she is coming home from work, and she was last
seen on the trolley line that she took every single
day Monday through Friday. But the trolley that stops near
this park that we've been talking about and near Ada's
house doesn't take her all the way to her house.
She has a long walk when she gets off the
stop along this poorly lit pathway to get to her house,

(24:08):
but she never makes it there. Her family's panicking, but
she gets close, it sounds like because her brother the
next morning finds her body about two hundred feet away
from the family house in a weedy lot right across
the street. So now we've got two murders, a girl
and then a woman. But in the dark, we don't

(24:30):
know how different age wise they might have looked. And
they both have been assaulted. It sounds like and dumped
very close to where they live, so this is right.
It sounds like she was almost on her doorstep and
she got snatched. What do you think.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Do you have any information in terms of what was
done to her, her injuries, any other behaviors by the offender.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
Yes, okay, let me just give you all of the
physical stuff. The coroner said that her next shows signs
of strangulation. She has cuts and bruises on her face,
clothing torn to shreds, underwear is missing, and of course
there are signs that she was sexually assaulted, and there
were some odd things here to me. They gave a

(25:10):
time of death based on rigor mortis, and they said
that she was described as damp, damp on clothing, not muddy.
So the reason I bring this up is because there
was a big rain the night before and her clothing
wasn't muddy. She was a little damp. So the police
are beginning to think that this happened somewhere else, because

(25:32):
if it had happened right here in this weedy area.
She would have been muddy. And when she her arm
is sticking straight up in the air. So they estimated
her time of death at around six point thirty the
night before, precisely when she was supposed to be home.

Speaker 3 (25:50):
Her arm is sticking straight up in the air.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
Yes, she's described as being damp, and her arm was rigid,
sticking straight up.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
When limbs enter into rigor, and it's a slow process.
It starts with the smaller muscles and then goes to
the bigger muscles. It's not like they move as these
muscles stiffen up. So her arm being in a position
that does not sound like it would naturally be laying
if she were dead and entering rigor would suggest to

(26:20):
me that she entered rigor and then was moved, you know,
and I would need to evaluate so much more, you know.
Part of evaluating, you know, did the victim lay after
being deceased at a location for a period of time
and then was moved either flipped over or moved to
a different location, you know, part of rigor can provide
information on that.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
Also, what is what we call.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
Liver mortise lividity where blood you know, after the heart
stops pumping, the blood you know, goes towards gravity, and
then after it sits, if I'm laying on my back
and I die, all my blood is going to go
to my back, and you know, then my back will
look purple if it sets. If I'm in that position,

(27:05):
laying on my back for a long enough period of
time and then somebody flips me over, the lividity won't change.
And so that's how I would be able to tell, Oh,
this person was moved after they had laid in a
location for a period of time. So Donna's arm being
sticking straight up sounds like, yeah, she was killed and

(27:25):
laid in a certain position. Body was in a certain
position for a period of time rigor formed, and then
she was moved. It doesn't mean a distance. It could
just be flipped over and then found, probably relatively quickly
after that. But there's so much more I'd have to evaluate.
But that's what I'm thinking right now.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
What about the muddy clothing part that they were talking
about the fact that her clothing wasn't really muddy and
if there had been some big sexual assault and murder,
that her clothes would have been filthy because the area
surrounding her was filthy from the rain.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
That could be a very legitimate observation. I'm assuming that
you know, her body is laying, You've got exposed soil,
and so she's being assaulted in that location, and I
would agree, I would expect there to be a lot
of soil transfer, mud transfer onto her clothes. Now, is
it possible that she was assaulted, you know, ten feet

(28:20):
away on grass and then drug to a more hidden
location where now you have you know, more exposed soil
that the original investigators are.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
Keying in on.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Or she could have been assaulted on you know, pavement
or something like that, and then her body is pulled
back to hide it a little bit later.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
So the sexual assault, the strangulation, and the ripped clothing.
Are those three things enough, despite the fact that these
victims are nine years apart and six years in a
time span apart, Is that enough so far to say
could be related?

Speaker 3 (28:55):
Oh for sure?

Speaker 2 (28:56):
Okay, you know, especially the torn clothing, and you know
there there are aspects to the tearing. Some offenders will
have a desire to do take the clothing off in
a certain way, and so part of the evaluation would
be taking a look at Ada's clothing and how they
were torn off versus Donna's clothing and how they were

(29:16):
torn off, and if there is overlap with something unusual, then.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
That would further tie these two cases together.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
However, right now, I would say, you know, sexual assault
is strangulation. You know that's common when you are dealing
with these types of victims. If the offender tore the
clothing off in a particular way in both instances, then
that would increase my confidence that these two cases are related,
even though we have such a dramatic age difference between

(29:48):
the two victims.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
Okay, well, let's talk about two circumstances that the police
look into that seem a little off the wall. Well
maybe not. One is There's a tip that comes in
about a guy named Dvid Curtis, who's been nicknamed baby Dave,
and he is an eccentric newspaper vendor, and there's just
a tip that says somebody said, look at him for

(30:09):
Donna's murder. And he quickly confesses. So he said that
he followed Donna on her commute home, which she did,
you know, every day, was very regular, and he sprang
upon her and fastened his fingers in her throat, ultimately
strangling her to death. But he later recants and says

(30:30):
that he was coursed, which we know what that means
by investigators, and then he's released and never charged and
never connected to anything.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
Yeah, and that's not specific enough information that would cause
me to say, yes, this guy knows things that only
the killer would know it. And I would imagine if
there is any press that the cause of death was
very possibly published in the newspaper during this timeframe.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yeah. Absolutely. One of the things that the police key
in on is there's a neighbor named Robert Keys who
said he heard sounds of a struggle coming from inside
Donna's home, inside the Gilman home on the night that
Donna died, and this leads the police to arrest her mother,
her older sister, and her brother who is the one

(31:17):
who found her across the way, you know, in the
weeded lot, in connection with the crime.

Speaker 3 (31:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
One thing that the corner found when they checked under
Donna's nails was a piece of a nail cuticle that
he presumed was from the attacker. It wasn't one of
Donna's cuticles. The corner says that this piece of cuticle
belongs to a white male. Is that possible to know

(31:43):
that in nineteen hundred, to know the race of somebody
based on their cuticle? Okay, it's such a you have
a quizzical look on your face.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
So there's a nail cuticle.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
So I guess when I think about what the cuticle is,
I'm looking at like at the base of the fingernail.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
I think it's like the soft When I think of cuticle,
I think of like from manicures. It's the little soft bit.
So it's flesh, I think.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
But I don't know how they would just from a
visual appearance, be able to identify that as cutical.

Speaker 3 (32:16):
Material versus you know, let's say, bald.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Up skin from Donna scratching the offender. Yeah, that's confusing me.
I'm skeptical that it's actual cutical material. I would say
possibly more likely, which we typically see in these types
of close encounters between the offender and the victim, is
skin being bald up underneath the fingernail. And I don't

(32:43):
think I would put any weight, based on my experience
and looking at this type of evidence, to be able
to determine race based on what would be present underneath
the fingernails of the victim.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Okay, So the rumor was that Donna's house was hostile,
even abusive, and at the time of her death, the mom,
even though people were saying she was abusive, was experiencing
really bad health, including a heart condition, And so the
police began saying to each other, and then the press
began saying, could this really happen? Did this woman really

(33:17):
do this? Because she's not in physical shape to do it.
But the bigger deal was the police nobody could figure
out why this would have happened to begin with, and
they eventually drop all the charges. This is a common
theme in this episode, drop all the charges against the
Gilman family, and the mom actually dies shortly after that,

(33:37):
so it feels like they're grasping at straws with this
particular case.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
This is typical even today in that most law enforcement
is unfamiliar with how to recognize that they potentially have
a sexually motivated defender and possibly somebody who's fantasy motivated
and cereal. You know, law enforcement is very good at

(34:04):
working crimes in which the victim and the offender know
each other, as in gang bang homicides or domestic violence.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
Disputes.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
But when you have the weird happen, you know this,
most law enforcement has never worked a serial predator case
and they don't know how to recognize it. And so
in this instance, where you have an adult woman who's
been you know, her body has been disposed of, her
clothes have been torn off, she's been sexually assaulted and strangled,

(34:32):
my initial assessment is I'm dealing with a fantasy motivated offender.
This is not a family member. This does not have
the hallmarks of something that is domestic in terms of
the types of violence that's being inflicted. So when the
original investigating agency is arresting the family, that informs me
about their experience in working these types of sexually motivated crimes,

(34:57):
which is basically, they don't have any.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
And it's of course at the detriment to the family
members who are obviously upset about Donna being killed. And
now the police are grasping its straws. So this goes cold,
but the police have to turn their attention to another case.
So this is about a year later. So we've gone
from nineteen hundred with Ada to nineteen oh six with Donna,

(35:21):
and now we're in August of nineteen oh seven, and
these are three people who become victims all at the
same time. So this is a twenty something couple early twenties,
Anna Markowitz and Abe Cohen, and they are going into
a park called Lakeside Park, which is very close to
McCabe Park, and Anna's little sister Bertha came with them.

(35:45):
It is very dark outside. As the three of them
are wandering around this park, a stranger approaches from behind
and Abe swings around and the man hits him on
the back with a blunt object which is believed to
have been like a baton. And we remember that the
police thought that Ada had been attacked by maybe a cain,
could have been a baton, that's what they thought. One

(36:06):
of the marks on her face was so Abe was
hit on the back with a baton. As he confronts
the man, he has then shot two times in the stomach.
So now there's a gun involved. So let me finish
this bit of the story and you can tell me
what you think. So, now that he has shot Abe,
he turns to Anna and Bertha, and Bertha runs the
little sister. She escapes and runs towards a local home

(36:30):
and gets help. Soon a group of officers comes to
the park. Abe is dying on the ground, and in
the nearby bushes they find Anna. She has been beaten,
she's been sexually assaulted, and she's been strangled. She's got
scratches on her face, bruises as well as lots of
injuries from hits and her clothing it doesn't stay torn,

(36:51):
but has been pulled up violently above her waist. So, now,
what three people at the same time.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Yeah, Well, the offender has a the risk to him
and he sees an essence a family, and he goes
after the biggest threat, the male. It's important that he
not only has a bludgeoning weapon with him, but he.

Speaker 3 (37:11):
Also has a gun with him.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
He uses the gun to neutralize the male and loses
control of the youngest girl, but then focuses his attention
on the adult female. And you know, this is where
he's He's assessed his risk and has decided, based on
the weapons he's equipped with, based on the location, that

(37:36):
he would be able to take control of these three people.
And so this is very telling to me that this
offender is very self confident, and the fact that the
offender has both a bludgeoning weapon as well as a firearm.
You know, he is out there looking to attack somebody
and he's waiting for the right opportunity.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
Well, let me show you where this happened, because I
actually do have a photo of the crime scene. It's
a newspaper photo, but we'll take what we can get
on this show. It says the cross marks the spot.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
Oh, I see the crust.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
Yeah, so picture of this at night. I mean there
is brush everywhere, trees everywhere.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
There is no visibility, at least from the vantage point
of this photo.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
There is such dense vegetation.

Speaker 2 (38:23):
It happens to be occurring at a curve in the pathway,
and I'm seeing somewhat of a bridge, like a little footbridge, yeah,
little creek there from two different vantage points. You know,
of course, the victims walking down this path, if the
offender is hiding in the brush, you know, his visibility
at night is zero. They would have no clue as

(38:45):
they walked past that there was somebody in this brush
and he could pop out right behind them and try
to hit abe in the head with the blunt force instrument.
But also it's taking a look from the offender's perspective,
is what is his vision how far can he see?
How many different people can he see walking on this path.

(39:07):
Chances are he's back there and he's just waiting for
somebody to come, or he's followed them and then has
somehow been able to just hide until he finds the
right location, which this appears to be a very good
location in order to proceed with the attack I would
like in this guy, we have a type of offender,

(39:30):
the typical example of woman walking or running on a
trail and then somebody pops out of the bushes, grabs
and pulls back into the bushes. Right, This is to
me as like a trapdoor spider, So I call this
like the trapdoor offender. He's taking advantage of the environment
and just waiting for the prey to get close enough
in order to be able to grab and then pull

(39:53):
back into the dense forest or the dense brush to
prevent being seen so he can do what he he wants,
particularly with the adult female in this particular attack.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Does this now seem to teally with what happened with
Ada and what happened with Donna. What happens with Anna
and ab happens very close to Donna. But are these
different enough for you to say, oh, gosh, this doesn't
sound like the same guy.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
No, I think when I start assessing these types of cases,
obviously there's a difference in terms of the number of
victims in this last case and the fact that there's
a man present. But take a look at worthy offender
is focusing his attention. It's on the adult female. He
is isolating the adult female away, he is inflicting the

(40:40):
same types of injuries. He's killing that adult female in
the same way as Ada and Donna. The clothes are
at least moved out of the way in order to
accomplish a sexual assault. So his primary motive for this
attack was directed at the adult woman. And there is
enough overlap with the previous two cases that at least

(41:03):
there has to be consideration that this is the same offender,
particularly when you start talking about the geography of where
these attacks are occurring.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
So after the police discover Anna and they take her
away in the corner, looks at her and you know,
says strangulation, sexual assault. Abe dies two days later from gunshots,
and he is no help in identifying whoever did this.
Bertha is somewhat She gives a very vague description understandably,

(41:47):
so she's completely traumatized. Her older sister has been murdered,
and she says she didn't get a good look at
his face, but she describes him as being between twenty
five and thirty tall, well groomed, wearing dark clothing. She
does not give a race. Would that be unusual in
the dark pitch dark trauma, trauma, trauma happening?

Speaker 3 (42:11):
No, not at all.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
And you know I've had cases where witnesses have described
the race and they're wrong. We just have to take
into account that Bertha. You know, she's giving a general description.
I wouldn't put much weight on the age, but you know,
you do have the height information, which if she's able

(42:33):
to relate the height of let's say the offender relative
to Abe, you know, that would be significant. If she's
able to basically say he was taller than Abe, you
know that gives me as an investigator at least some
confidence in that characteristic.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
Okay, before long, the police arrests somebody and he is
a black man who's described as developmentally disabled. His name
is Leyton Hines, and there are two reasons why he
was arrested, tried, and convicted for this double murder. Nothing
about weapons, nothing about motive, nothing about alibi. Really it

(43:12):
is that he was spotted not far from the murder
scene and that he had confessed to killing Abe and Anna.
When he gets to court, he says, I did not
mean it. I got quote unquote coerced by the police.
I didn't do it. He's still convicted, but then later
he's exonerated and released because these murders don't stop and

(43:34):
the police are so convinced that this is a serial killer.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
Yeah, So in essence, he got lucky that the offender
continued to attack this Otherwise he likely would have spent
the rest of his life in prison or have received
the death penalty.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
Who knows.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
Yeah, So the next thing happens. The next event happens
in late January nineteen oh nine. So here's the math.
I hate math, but I did it nine years after
Ada's murder, the first murder, and about a year and
some change from the last murder, which were ab and
Anna's murders. Now we go back down in age. So
this is a fifteen year old and her name is

(44:10):
Mary Froshner. And again all within the same few blocks
of these parks, in this trolley line, and you know
this road. She was headed to the bank where she
was sent to deposit from her family nine dollars. So
she leaves her home at six fifteen pm on this
late January night, and when she isn't home several hours later,

(44:34):
her stepfather and a few other acquaintances start looking for her,
and that night they find her body on a nearby estate,
a piece of land which isn't far from where the
previous victims have been discovered. Same thing. She had been
sexually assaulted and strangled to death, clothes pulled apart, pushed up, everything.

Speaker 3 (44:51):
You know.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
This is where, you know, in terms of the circumstances,
you have a victim who is who is isolated, you know,
And that's that's an important aspect that I always take
a look at, you know, is what kind of risk
the offender has taken. And when victims are isolated, you know,
that lowers the offender's risk, and the offender is more
willing to attack when there's low risk to himself.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
A similar type of victim.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
Even though you know you talked about a girl that's
fifteen years old. You know this offender so far, you know,
from eleven up until the early twenties. He seems to be,
you know, focusing in on that segment. Similar you know,
you got the sexual assault. In any sexual assault, you
typically see clothes awrye. You know, that's something unless there's

(45:40):
something unusual that that's not necessarily a characteristic that can.

Speaker 3 (45:44):
Be relied upon.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
But are are they indicating in all these cases they're
saying indication of sexual assault? Are we just talking rape?
Are we seeing other types of sex acts occurring on
these victims?

Speaker 1 (45:57):
Well? Out of propriety, I'm not sure how they would
be in the newspapers or any of the trial stuff.
They're just saying indications of sexual assault that could mean
the removal of the panties. And what I had read
on one of the second victim, on Donna severe bruising
on her thighs was their indication. But I'm not sure

(46:17):
they went as far as doing the autopsy to search
for seamen or whatever they would be looking for. In
nineteen hundred, let me give you a couple more details,
which I don't know that will be helpful, I'm sorry.
So based on the prince left on Mary's neck, and
we haven't heard this yet, Based on prince left on
Mary's neck. The latest victim of the fifteen year old.

(46:38):
The attacker had enormous and powerfully large hands and was
likely very tall, and they're basing that on the handprints
on her neck, and also on two sets of footprints
found at the scene. There was a small print which
they think is Mary, of course, and then the offender
they said they were inconsistently laid out because they think

(47:00):
that Mary had been dragged to the location where she
was ultimately assaulted and killed. Now, the motive does not
seem to be robbery, because they found the nine dollars
near her body and he didn't take it.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Okay, and nine dollars back in this timeframe is a
fairly significant amount of money.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Well, you're right, this is worth three hundred and twenty
six dollars today, So that is a significant amount of
money for him to not take that.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Well, that is a little bit contradictory with the idea
that you are dealing with. Let's say this somewhat transient
population that's living in that park, because I would imagine
that those individuals are a little cash poor, and the
opportunity to grab nine dollars. You know, from now this

(47:47):
victim that you've killed.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
It would be way too tempting. They would want that.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
So now I'm a little bit curious as to why
that nine dollars wasn't taken. If we think the offender
is coming out of this park and is somewhat destitute,
So if it's like three hundred and twenty seven dollars today,
now maybe this offender is somebody that doesn't need the
money and he's just happening to prow for victims in

(48:14):
this particular neighborhood for some reason, and minimally he has
familiarity with his neighborhood.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
Well is this when we talk about geographic profiling.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Well, we most early can. Now it's really tough. Right now,
I've just got this very vague. All these attacks are occurring,
you know, near this trolley area as well as this
park where you have a transient population living. You know,
that's significant from a geographic profile. However, the specific locations

(48:43):
of the attacks are also as important and offenders. There's
differing theories on how offenders operate. Some offenders will purposefully
attack away from their home base or some other anchor
point in their life.

Speaker 3 (49:00):
Other offenders will.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
Attack near their anchor points because that's where they are
spending their time and they have familiarity, so it really
just depends on the layout I would have to, you know,
And this is what I did with I've done this
in many cases, but notably Golden State Killer, where I
have so many data points you know, on Google Earth.
I put push pins on every single attack location and

(49:25):
started paying attention to the patterns, you know, the primary
arterial roads, at the distance between attacks, et cetera, in
order to assess, you know, what I could discern about
the offender. And without going into great detail at all,
I'll just say, you know, part of the geographic assessment
I did was, well, this guy's Sacramento based, and it's

(49:46):
one of the things I was very right about when
I was trying to predict who the offender was and
where he was at once we caught the agelo, well,
he was still living in Sacramento and was very Sacramental based.
From you know, his is middle school age all the
way up through adulthood, with a few exceptions in between.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
Well, all of this seems to speed up and he
is very comfortable with this area. So this will be
interesting for you to hear. Wants this information about this
fifteen year old Mary Froshner gets out. People are horrified
and the murder of this young girl really freaks people out.
A number of people come forward who are witnesses. So
here is everything that has happened. There is a witness

(50:28):
whose name is Sam Morris. He said that the night
that Mary died around nine to twenty pm, now she
went missing at six fifteen pm. Around nine to twenty pm,
he saw a man sitting on a fence and he
was looking at a dark spot in the fields, which
is about where Mary was found. He was sitting on

(50:49):
the fence. When Sam tried to find out what the
man was up to. He didn't get very close because
the guy had a gun and threatened him and Sam
walked off. Now again, nobody is giving a good description.
No one's even saying race. I mean, I don't know
why I'm surprised by this, but it just doesn't seem
like anybody has a good beat on who this person
could be. There are several other instances. Do you want

(51:11):
me to tell you about those or do you want
to comment on that?

Speaker 2 (51:13):
Well, I guess the question I have is he's sitting
on the fence. I mean, how tall is this fence.
Is this just a short fence that he's just kind
of sitting and hanging on, or is he like on
top of a six foot fence, like he's getting over
a barrier and then taking advantage of being up high
to spot a potential victim off in the distance.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
I don't know. It just has sitting on a fence
and glancing at a dark spot in the fields. That's
all that Sam could see. Okay, we have to think
this is her killer and he has a gun. If
he has a gun, why not shooter? I mean, I
don't know. I don't even want to get into shooting
versus strangling.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
It just no, that's what That's actually a very important
point is I mean offenders will carry a firearm for
self preservation in case they are confronted, either by other
men or by the police, but their intent is not
to use the gun on the victim. Some offenders the
primary mode of a sexual assault, and how they kill

(52:10):
the victim doesn't matter to them because all they're doing
is eliminating the witness. For other offenders, your fantasy motivated
serial killers, how they kill the victim is just as
important as what they do to the victim. Sexually or
with other behaviors. So this particular offender, strangulation is his preference.

(52:31):
The gun is just a backup for self preservation in
case something goes sideways like Abe.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
Like Abe, for sure, Abe made things go sideways, and
that's why he was shot twice in the stomach. Okay,
so I've said that Sam Morris saw this creepy guy
sitting on a fence staring at something, and he was
threatened with a gun. There is a woman who reports
that just before that, twenty minutes before, around nine o'clock,
she got off of a trolley near her Again, all

(53:01):
of this from all the way back from nineteen hundred,
within blocks of each other. She got off of the
trolley near her home. She said a guy appeared out
of nowhere and began chasing her, and he gave up
when she made it into her house. Of course, she
couldn't describe him. I mean, nobody has a description of
this guy. So that's twenty minutes before Sam Morris saw
him sitting on a fence.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
So if it's the same guy, and I've worked cases
where you have these types of incidences that are not related.

Speaker 3 (53:29):
But let's make the assumption it's the same guy.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
He's obviously just waiting for a victim in the right place.
And so if he sees this last woman what was
her name.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
Her name was missus John Chef.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
If missus Chef just happened to be the first potential
victim he ran across, she gets away, he's still out there.
It's not like, I mean, you think about this is
there's got to be this mindset of well is she
alerting law enforcement now? Back during this timeframe. It's not
like she's probably getting on a landline and calling in.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
Right, So you know, this probably reduces the offender's concern about, uh, oh,
I just chase this woman. The cops are going to
be swarming the area, and I need to get out
of here. So he probably realizes he still has the
ability to hang out in his hunting ground and wait
for another victim that isolates herself. And that's where now
you've get the fifteen year old girl that if he's

(54:30):
up on that fence and spots her, he's now going, Okay,
there's another victim, and this man approaches him and he
just waves a gun at him and has no concern
because nobody's calling law enforcement.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
During this era.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
Well, then something else happens. Two days after Mary was
killed and Missus Shiff was attacked, there's a woman who's
living close to the crime scene who's identified anonymously Missus
Powers in the papers. She said she was assaulted by
a stranger. So this is two days later. She said,
I was standing outside my house. A man came out

(55:05):
of nowhere, grabs her, begins to strangle her, leaving bruises
on her throat. She must have been in an isolated
place because he then starts to forcibly remove her clothes.
Starts ripping off her clothes, but before he sexually assaulted her,
the husband appears and chased him off, so she was
full on attacked. He doesn't sexually assault her only because

(55:26):
the husband shows up right outside her house two days later,
right near the crime scene of the last one. Yep,
it's like a frenzy.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
This is a HUNTI gravity well and he's snowballing.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
It sounds like Bundy. Remember when Bundy escaped. I think
it was the first time when he escaped her. I
can't remember which one. It was just like this spree
that he went on. It feels like a frenetic thing.
Happening with this guy.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
And this is a cluster and whether or not it
continues for any you know, length of time, or it's
just in a discrete period of time. You have giving
me those details yet. But let's evaluate the East ariioapist series,
the Golden State Killer. But he had the Northern California
phase of sexual assaults. There were times when he would attack,

(56:13):
you know, once a week, twice a week, and then
there would be gaps and no attacks, and then there
are times when he attacked several times a day, and
then we have longer gaps of several months during this series.
And it turns out I've learned subsequently that like one
of the biggest gaps, a family member had come up
from southern California and he was hanging out with that

(56:34):
family member and he couldn't go out and prowl and attack.
So it's just, you know, life circumstances happened that prevent
the offenders from attacking. YEP. Now, if we have this
cluster out here in Dayton, it's telling me the offender
is able to get out to commit these attacks during
this timeframe, but possibly there is something going on in

(56:55):
his personal life that is causing him to want to
go out and attack.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
We have one murder left that we can say police
feel like belong in this string of a serial killer.
So Mary is murdered in late January. This happens in
early February same year, so you have to think within weeks.
There's an eighteen year old named Elizabeth Fulhart. She had
just moved to Dayton and she vanished for weeks. They

(57:23):
had no idea where she was. Finally they find her
body in the cistern of a vacant house right next
door to a synagogue. And I know it's weird that
I'm bringing up the synagogue. It's important in a little bit. Okay,
So you know a cistern, do we have to talk
about that? I think we've talked about a sistern before.
I've written about it. It's not a well, but it's
a place where you would keep water in the eighteen

(57:45):
hundreds early nineteen hundreds. It's water proof, it's lined with something,
so it's not like you're dumping water into a well.
So her body was found in a cistern, which would
not feel too different than shoving someone's body in an outhouse,
which is what happened with Ada and nineteen hundreds.

Speaker 2 (58:02):
Right, that's another place to hide the body. So you know,
most certainly there's enough overlap victimology, you know, geographic aspects,
body disposal.

Speaker 3 (58:13):
Sounds like it could be the same offender to me.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
So here's the problem. The situation feels different to investigators.
The issue is that she's been water logged for a
couple of weeks, so they can't find obvious signs of
strangulation like fractured bones, because obviously she's so decomposed that
they think is the only way they would really be
able to determine if she were definitively strangled. What do

(58:38):
you think about that? So they can't tell if she's
actually been strangled.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
So that there are harder structures that probably would still
be present with her body, such as you know, the
cartilage structures to her you know, trachea, her voice box,
as well as the hyoid bone, which when there is strangulation,
these structures can be damaged, and that damage, several weeks
later possibly would still be present for the pathologists to

(59:04):
be able to ascertain that there had been violence inflicted
to her neck. Those types of injuries are not always
present in strangulation, you know, so it's possible she was strangled,
and yet you don't see those structures showing damage.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
Well, let's talk about the couple of things that seemed consistent.
So one, let's just assume she was strangled. We're not sure,
but we can assume she strangled. Maybe Number two, this
is very close to the trolley stop, which is not
far from where the other victims were found. This is
also a case where she was missing her underwear, so they,
of course at this point don't know whether she was

(59:39):
sexually assaulted, but there's no underwear, which happened in a
couple of the cases. So that's what really made them
feel like this was connected. And especially of course because
Mary had just been murdered. These women had just been
attacked a few weeks earlier. It just seemed too coincidental.
The things that are not consistent, and you tell me
if this is a big deal or not. They were

(01:00:01):
really feeling like the other women and the girls who
had been murdered were sort of not hidden very well,
they were just dumped. Even Ada in nineteen hundred, the
eleven year old was in her family's outhouse, so she
would have been discovered but Elizabeth was hidden very well
in the cistern. I mean it was weeks and weeks
before people found her. She had been fully clothed, her

(01:00:24):
clothes were not ripped apart, and actually her body had
been wrapped in a burlap sack. So this is different.
But is it different enough to say, oh no, I mean,
there's no way this is the same guy.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
I would put this as a tweener because there are cases,
you know, like I've assessed series of victims where we
know the offender has committed all the cases, and it
is very typical to see differences from case to case
to case. These offenders don't necessarily commit crimes. It's not

(01:00:57):
cookie cutter, you know, there is differences either. These differences
are because of the circumstances that come up during the attack,
the environment in which the attack occurs, who the victim
turns out to be, you know, the victim algy as
I say, victimology is huge. Or sometimes offenders, you know,

(01:01:18):
they they will change their mo based on prior experience
in order to help them continue to commit attacks. In essence,
they're recognizing they've made mistakes and so they learn from
their mistakes, or they like to experiment, and that experimentation
is where you know, they've heard of something, they've read something,
they've seen something, whatever, and they go, well, I want.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
To try that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
And so you may have this this weird case that
looks completely different than the previous cases and you go,
that's a different case. Well it turns out no, it's
just the offender, you know, playing around, trying to say, oh,
I think I might get off doing this behavior if
you will, and then deciding not, that doesn't work for me,
and then going back to the typical mo You know,

(01:02:02):
with this last case, they're at least the geographic proximity.
You have a female victim, you have a body disposal.
You know that is in line with these previous cases.
The difference is, you know, the lack of the removal
of the clothing and due to the time passage can't
determine cause of death or potential sexual assault. But I'm

(01:02:26):
not so concerned that she's been hidden. That just may
be the offender is aware that that features present and
put her body down there. The Burlop sack is something
that's that's different. Again, I would have to assess, well,
what is the purpose that sack is needed? Is that
for transport purposes, and if there is any you know,

(01:02:48):
some of these burlop sacks have like labels on them,
you know, is there anything that would indicate, you know, the.

Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
Origin of this burlap sack, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
So that could be a significant piece of evidence just
because it's occurring in the same geography, we have the
same dictimology, if you will, in terms of female in
the right age. I would at least consider this as
being part of the series, but also need to make
sure that I'm looking at the possibility it isn't.

Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
Okay. Let's fast forward about one hundred years, because no
one is arrested for Elizabeth's murder either. So these are
all cold cases, whether they're together or not, none of
them have been solved. So in twenty fifteen, there is
a man named Brian Froshner. You recognize his last name.
This is Mary Froshner, the fifteen year old who left

(01:03:40):
with the nine dollars. This is her great nephew, and
he writes a book called Cold Cereal, The Jack the
Strangler Murders. Great title and head of the publication. Brian
has worked tirelessly to try to link all of these cases,
and he said, it seems really to be based on location,
and as you were saying, sort of the the way
things are laid out, he thinks he knows who the

(01:04:03):
killer is and it's someone who the police had looked at,
and it was really I think based on really the
last case, he thinks it's a guy named Smith Hick White.
This is a black man. This is why I think
the burlap sap comes in. Okay, So this is a
man who has a pretty extensive history of violent, sexually

(01:04:25):
motivated behavior. In nineteen hundred, the same year that Ada
was murdered, he had been arrested for trying to drag
a little girl underneath the fairground stand to sexually assault her.
And in nineteen ten, after this last murder, he was
convicted of raping and choking a girl at the synagogue
next door to where Elizabeth was found. Remember the vacant

(01:04:47):
house with a cistern. He was a janitor at that synagogue.
So I wonder if he is finally in a location
where he knows he has privacy. He's at the synagogue
and he knows next door the a vacant house, and
maybe the burlap sack is finally like the thing where
he thinks I should have been able to do this,
but he was koma causing the rest of the time.

(01:05:09):
And now finally this is like a situation where maybe
he can control the evidence a little bit better. I
might be wrong about that, but that's where I was
wondering if this is the same guy. I wonder if
it's like, Okay, well, finally he can take a moment.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
Well, and that may be. You know, the fundamental change
is instead of being out in the wild, so to speak,
with the other cases, you know, now he has a
victim in a protected environment and with Elizabeth being found
in the cistern fully closed. Offenders do redress their victims,

(01:05:44):
or make the victims redressed before killing them. You know,
I gave a presentation a few months back to the
International Corners Association and I told this entire group, I've
got seven hundred plus pathologists and death investigators from all
across the world, and I say, I don't care if
the victim is fully clothed, you still process her body

(01:06:06):
for sexual assault evidence and other DNA evidence because offenders
do redress victims. So there may be that aspect because
now he could take time with Elizabeth in this protected environment,
assuming it's occurring either in the synagogue or at this
vacant house, and now he's taken the time to redress
her and then knows of the sister and knows that

(01:06:28):
she won't be found for a period of time. The
burlap sack is still interesting to me. You know, anytime
the offender does something that is not needed, that's where
I start focusing in on. And I have to see
how this burlap sack was used. It may have just
been to ball her up inside this sack. So if

(01:06:50):
he's seen outside carrying this heavy object, nobody can recognize
it as a human body. It maybe has something just
a disguise. I would have to evaluate it a little
bit further. The dragging the little girl at the fairgrounds,
you know, kind of to a hidden area. I think
that's how you described it. He remember I mentioned that
trapdoor spider type of offender. Yeah, that's what he was doing.

(01:07:14):
And so that right there lines up with the way
the offender, at least with the you know, up until Elizabeth,
the way the offender was attacking the prior victims. So
that's consistent. I think there's something to be said about
with what the author Froshner is writing, I'm going, Okay,

(01:07:37):
you know there's enough there where I would consider him.
I always see there's always suspects, but I would I say, Okay,
I've got a prime suspect. However, I caution I've seen
too many prime suspects that add up and only to
be eliminated with DNA, you know. So that's that's the
frustrating part sometimes with these really old cases. We've talked

(01:07:58):
about Jack the Ripper, and I've said, well, that's an
uns case. You can come up with circumstantial evidence against
multiple men as being Jack the Ripper, but you can't
prove it. I don't care how many circumstances that you
bring up. Same thing with this particular suspect. There's some
circumstances there I like, but because I've been burned by
circumstances turning out to be coincidences, now, I'd want to

(01:08:20):
see that objective, identifying evidence to say, yes, he is right,
but I give him kudos that he's at least identified
somebody that I having some expertise with this go yes,
he's looking at the right to characteristics, and.

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
Just to add to it. When White is kind of
publicized as maybe a suspect. All kinds of people come
forward in this time period and say he was a predator.
He tried this with me, he tried that with me.
He also has large hands. I know that doesn't really
make a difference, but that's just another little bit, now,
last little bit of circumstantial evidence, and tell me what

(01:08:58):
you think about this. So the first instance happens in
nineteen hundred with Ada, that's the first murder, and he
goes to prison in nineteen ten for raping and choking
a girl at the synagogue I told you about where
he worked. So he's never been arrested at all for
any of these murders. It's simply going to jail for

(01:09:20):
rape and for choking a girl. While he is in
prison in nineteen ten, this all stops. It never happens again.
No more rapes like this, not with these circumstances. So
he's convicted in nineteen ten. He escapes in nineteen twelve.
He goes to Cincinnati area, not far from Cincinnati, and

(01:09:42):
he's on the run for ten years into a girlfriend
turns him in. In that ten years, three women in
that area vanish and they feel like it's connected. Brian
Froshner at least feels like it's kind of weird that
this happens. I don't have a lot of details of
these women going missing, but the big point was all
of it stopped when he went to prison in Dayton.

(01:10:05):
At least.

Speaker 3 (01:10:06):
Yeah, you might be disappointed at my answer with this.

Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
Ah, I know what you're gonna say. He could have
just moved or he was done, he aged out of
all of this.

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
I have just looked at so many men I know,
you know, and that's a data point where oh, they're
in custody and we don't have any attacks while they're
in custody, or you know, they've died, and no more
attacks after you know, this person died and it turned
out that was just coincidence. There's something to be said
about Smith, and he's definitely a prime suspect in my

(01:10:39):
mind in terms of how the details, the characteristics of
his known predatory behavior, and his geographic proximity that all
seems to add up. And it's just I can't ever
get away from knowing that coincidences do occur. You know,
Thursday list of suspects these Dayton cases, he's got an

(01:11:01):
asterisk by his name in my mind as demarking him
as a prime suspect. You know, my hope would be
is that, and it's a long shot. I've rarely seen
departments with you know, cases from this vintage still having evidence,
you know, but if they happen to have it, of course,
the technology today exists to be able to show whether

(01:11:23):
or not Smith was truly responsible for some, if not all,
these cases.

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
Well, and I don't want to harp on this, but
I find it interesting that some of these suspects were
black and all of the victims were white. I don't
know if it's the time of night when this happened,
the trauma, everything, but no one can even talk about
race in this case Smith Hick White is black. Yeah,
so you would think that's the first thing in nineteen

(01:11:50):
hundred someone would say, what does that say? Does that
say the trauma and the darkness and the just fastness
of all of these crimes coming in and doing it
and leaving? Is that just all? Say? Boy, you can't
even do an identification that you would at least think
they would be able to say whether the person was

(01:12:11):
black or white.

Speaker 2 (01:12:12):
All of that in terms of you know, the traumatic
aspect as well as the darkness, but also recognize, you know,
you're dealing with just a few potential witnesses. We don't
even know if these witnesses saw the actual offender, except
for Bertha, the family group that was out there walking.
But this type of offender is committing a blitz attack.

(01:12:35):
We know with Abe, he comes up from behind, and
Abe just happens to sense something to start turning around
before he's hit on the head and then shot. He
doesn't get a good look at the offender. Bertha is
running away right, you know, and this is at night.

Speaker 3 (01:12:51):
It's sudden.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
We have so many limited witnesses, and I think it's
only Bertha that truly can say she saw the offender
in that particular case. So it's not surprising that we're
not getting a description that has a.

Speaker 3 (01:13:09):
Strong you know.

Speaker 2 (01:13:10):
The race characteristic is one of those things that typically
is a very you put a lot of weight on
it because most people, under the right circumstances are able
to say I'm seeing white, I'm seeing black, you know,
I'm seeing somebody of color. But in this under these circumstances,
it doesn't surprise me at all.

Speaker 1 (01:13:27):
Well, I think Smith Hick White is an excellent suspect
in all of this. And I want to give the
family member, Brian Froschner, incredible credit for this, for a
great nephew one hundred years later trying to solve, you know,
a case that came from his family. And I talk
about this all the time in the books that I
write in the podcast, how important it is in your

(01:13:50):
family history that these mysteries have closure, even if you
didn't know these people. Hundreds of years later, there are people,
I mean this spent years trying to figure out if
his family member had been part of a string of
serial killer murders and he believes it. I give him
a lot of credit for that. Boy, that was a
lot of work that he did.

Speaker 2 (01:14:12):
I do think, you know, based on everything that you
told me, that there is a serial killer at work
here and Smith is a prime suspect. But again, if
and when you know the physical evidence exists and can
be processed, there's always just going to be you know
that little footnote. Yeah, in terms of circumstantial case, don't

(01:14:34):
know for sure?

Speaker 1 (01:14:38):
Well, Paul, I might. I can't believe I'm saying this.
I might might might be warming up to unsolved cases. Well, maybe,
don't be expecting these every week. It's not gonna happen
every week, but I am gonna. I'm gonna keep a
good eye out for you because I know you enjoy
him so much. They just give me the heb GB sometimes.

Speaker 3 (01:14:58):
Well, think of it this way.

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
You've got a good book in front of you, and
you get to write the last chapter.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
Oh that was very profound, Paul Hols.

Speaker 3 (01:15:09):
Every now and then I pull something out.

Speaker 1 (01:15:12):
With that. I'll see you next week.

Speaker 3 (01:15:14):
All right, sounds good? Take care.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
This has been an exactly right production for our Sources
and show notes go to exactlyrightmedia dot com slash Buried
Bones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Emosi.

Speaker 2 (01:15:29):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.

Speaker 1 (01:15:33):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

Speaker 3 (01:15:36):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.

Speaker 1 (01:15:38):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Daniel Kramer.

Speaker 1 (01:15:45):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
buried Bones pod.

Speaker 2 (01:15:50):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder, and the Race to Decode the
Criminal Mind is available now.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):
And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life solving America's
cold cases is also available now