NEARLY DECAPITATED IN A LOCKED APARTMENT: The Mysterious Murder of Helen Knabe

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome Weirdos. I'm Daryn Marler and this is Weird Darkness.
Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lower crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre,
unsolved and unexplained coming up in this episode of Weird Darkness.

(00:31):
Georgette Bauerdorf was a young socialite with a grand future
when her life was cut short in the dead of night.
Her screams went unanswered and her murder became a mystery,
and Georgette's murder remains unsolved almost eighty years later. A
child walking into their parents room in the middle of

(00:53):
the night is something every parent who has ever had
a child is experienced on multiple occasions, but one parent's
experience ended with a dark twist. The bat is a
mysterious creature to some, such as the Chinese, it is
considered a symbol of luck. To others, such as the

(01:14):
Europeans and many Americans, it's seen as something scary, and
of course, horror films see it as the flying form
of Bela Lagosi. But the Mayans might have the strangest
or maybe coolest depending on your outlook opinion on the bat.
They believe it is the representation of a deadly vampire god.

(01:36):
Helen Knabe's life was remarkable in the best sense of
the word. Unfortunately, her death was also remarkable, but in
the worst possible way. Blanche Bonnier was kept locked in
her bedroom for a quarter of a century. When finally rescued,

(01:57):
she looked inhuman. What her mother did to her was inhumane.
An historian has come forward saying that his father, the
former commander of White Sand's missile range in the nineteen forties,
analyzed some of the material found at the UFO crash
site at Roswell. I'll tell you what he found. The

(02:19):
lynching of Sheriff Henry Plummer poses one of the most
haunting mysteries of the Old West. But I'll share some
of the details that not everyone has heard about this
grim eighteen sixty three incident. Now bolt your doors, lock
your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me

(02:39):
into the weird darkness. Helen NAB's life was remarkable in
the best sense the Unfortunately, her death was also remarkable,

(03:04):
but in the worst possible way. Nabe was born in
eighteen seventy five in Rugenwalt, an area by the Baltic
Sea that is now the Polish city of Darlowe. She
grew up bright, fiercely ambitious, and determined to become a doctor.
Feeling that her native land offered her few opportunities to

(03:27):
follow her chosen profession, she decided to move to America.
Her destination was Indianapolis, Indiana, where several relatives had already emigrated.
Upon her arrival, she found work in the household of
an Indianapolis doctor, acting as cook and general housemaid. She

(03:47):
learned English, and through sheer hard work and self denial,
saved enough money to enter the Medical College of Indiana.
Nabe proved to have a great natural aptitude for medical research,
so much so that by the time she graduated in
nineteen oh four, she had become an instructor at the college.

(04:09):
She eventually became the State Board of Health's assistant pathologist,
then Indiana's very first official bacteriologist, an incredible career trajectory
for a woman of her day, and a solid tribute
to her skill and discipline. She was a recognized expert
in rabies and sexually transmitted diseases. In nineteen oh eight,

(04:34):
she resigned in order to open her own medical practice,
which was an immediate success. By the time, Nabe was
only thirty five. She was personal physician to many of
Indianapolis's elite. She had an unblemished reputation and was highly
and justifiably respected, the ideal example of a self made woman,

(04:58):
so the obvious question is why would anyone want to
murder her. On the morning of October twenty fourth, nineteen eleven,
Catherine McPherson, Knabe's assistant, entered the doctor's apartment house, which
also served as her office. The front doors had been
locked from the inside, and everything in the outer rooms

(05:21):
seemed completely normal. However, Nabe herself seemed to be absent.
The puzzled McPherson searched the apartment for her employer. The
mystery of Nabe's absence was quickly solved when McPherson entered
the doctor's bedroom and found her dead body. The corpse

(05:41):
lay on a blood soaked bed. It was immediately obvious
that this was a murder, and a particularly brutal one. Unfortunately,
for the course of the investigation, McPherson completely lost her head.
Instead of immediately phoning the police, she summoned and some
of Nabe's friends and relatives to gawk at the horrid

(06:04):
site and generally do a splendid job of contaminating the
crime scene and wasting valuable time. When the police finally arrived,
more than an hour after McPherson's initial discovery, they found
that someone had cut Nabe's throat so viciously that she
was nearly decapitated. As the body was wearing a night dress,

(06:26):
it was presumed she'd been attacked while she slept, probably
very quickly and efficiently. Incidentally, there were no signs that
she had been sexually assaulted. Only one item was missing
from the apartment, an instrument called a microtone, which was
used to cut extremely thin sections of material for microscopic examination.

(06:50):
It was presumed that this had been the murder weapon.
Investigators soon realized they faced a twin mystery question not
only of who had murdered Nabe, but how the crime
had been committed. All the doors and windows were locked
from the inside, with the exception of the windows in

(07:11):
Nave's bedroom. These were opened, but securely covered by screens.
The outside windowsills were coated with a thick layer of dust,
indicating that the murderer had not entered or exited through them.
It was thought Nabe must have let her killer into
the apartment, although no one was able to say who

(07:31):
this person might have been or why the doctor would
admit this person into her apartment in the middle of
the night. This inability to satisfactorily explain how anyone could
have gotten into then out of Nave's apartment, coupled with
the lack of any evident motive for murder, led William Holtz,

(07:52):
the chief of detectives, to argue that the doctor had
not been killed at all, she had committed suicide. He
pointed to the fact that Nabe's launching of a private
practice had left her heavily in debt, something that had
worried the normally financially prudent doctor. Working against this theory

(08:12):
was the fact that the knife used to slash Knave's
throat was never found. It was pointed out that even
the most determined suicide would have trouble nearly cutting off
their own head and then disposing of the weapon. The
body also had a defensive wound in one forearm. Two

(08:33):
days after Nabe's death, police received their first lead. A
man named Joseph Carr told them that on the night
Namee died, he had walked past her apartment. At about
one am, he heard two screams, which were followed by
a man exiting the alley behind the building and running
up the sidewalk. When this man realized he had been seen,

(08:55):
he quickly covered his face with a handkerchief and dashed off.
Carr thought the man was about forty years old and
was dressed in a dark suit. Another witness came forward
to state that around eight pm on the fatal night,
a man who fit the description of the one encountered
by Car asked him for directions to Knabe's apartment building.

(09:17):
A woman who lived near Nabe stated that at the
same time car saw this mystery man, she heard someone
running past her house. The particularly baffling circumstances of Nabe's
death proved to be an excellent breeding ground for increasingly
cracked pot theories. Some stubbornly clung to the suicide scenario.

(09:40):
A letter of Nabes, where she discussed her interest in Buddhism,
caused others to mutter of crazed Buddhist death squads. My
favorite suggestion came from another female physician, doctor Carrie Gregory.
Gregory stated that one of Nabe's female patients had been
suffering from an olment that was drying up the blood.

(10:03):
Nabe opted to treat this woman by transfusing the patient
with two courts of blood from Nabe's own body. Sadly,
this novel treatment wound up killing the doctor. In order
to cover up this embarrassing turn of events, Nabe's fellow
physicians simulated a murder by slashing her throat and smuggled

(10:24):
the body into her apartment. I don't know how successful
doctor Gregory was in her chosen profession, but she would
have wowed them as a Gothic novelist. NAB's murder soon
went into the police's cold case files, and it remained there,
getting chillier by the day. The Indianapolis chapter of the

(10:47):
Council of Women hired a private detective named Harry Webster
to look into the mystery, but he seemed to have
as little success as the police. Then, in March nineteen twelve,
a sailor named Seth Nichols was arrested for public drunkenness
in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Before Nichols had a chance sober up,

(11:07):
he told police that a man he only knew as
Knight had paid him fifteen hundred dollars to murder doctor Nabe. However,
it soon became disappointingly evident that Nichols's story simply did
not stand up under examination. When records proved that Nichols
had been on board his ship The Knight, Nabe died,

(11:28):
authorities quickly lost interest in him. Nothing more was heard
of the mystery until December nineteen twelve, when a grand
jury was convened to debate the question of just how
doctor Nabe died. During this hearing, a vital piece of
evidence was presented that had inexplicably been ignored until that time.

(11:50):
A bloody handprint had been found on Nabe's pillow. Harry
Webster also presented his findings. The result of all this
was that the grand jury returned two indictments in Nabe's death.
Doctor William Craig, president of the Indiana Veterinary College, was
charged with murder, with an undertaker named Alonso Ragsdale being

(12:13):
named as Craig's accessory. Craig and doctor Nabe had been
an item since soon after they first met in nineteen
oh eight. However, shortly before Nabe's death, their romance had
hit a rocky patch evidently over Craig's assumption that she
would give up her career after they married. According to

(12:35):
some of their acquaintances, Craig had decided to break off
their relationship. In fact, he was seeing another woman. Nabe,
it was suggested, was not going to take the break
up quietly, thus giving Craig a motive for murder. A
man named Harry Haskett claimed he had seen Craig leaving
Nave's apartment building around eleven PM on the night Nabe died.

(12:59):
Of course, if you wish to pin the murder on Craig,
This testimony clashes with the other witnesses who allegedly saw
a man fleeing the scene two hours later. One doctor,
Eva Templeton, stated that Craig's housekeeper told her that on
the night of the murder, Craig arrived home late and
had immediately changed his clothes. Curiously, it's not clear if

(13:21):
the housekeeper herself ever verified Templeton's story. As for Alonso Ragsdale,
he had been the administrator of Nabe's estate. Found in
his possession was a kimono that had belonged to the
dead woman. Tests showed that it had been bloodstained, then
washed in a strong chemical solution. The assumption was that

(13:43):
he had helpfully removed this bit of evidence as a
favor to Craig. It was never explained why Ragsdale would
keep such a massively self incriminating item. For his part,
Ragsdale said that he had a number of Knave's more
unimportant possession, and there was no evidence that this kimono
was even in Nabe's apartment at the time of her death.

(14:07):
Craig stood trial in November nineteen twelve. When Harry Haskett
was put under oath, he suddenly became much less certain
that he had seen Craig leaving Nave's apartment. Several of
Knave's neighbors testified to hearing screams around midnight, one hour
after this alleged sighting of Craig. In short, the prosecution

(14:30):
so singly failed to present any evidence that Craig was
the murderer that on December nine, the judge instructed the
jury to dismiss the case. Accordingly, the charges against Ragsdale
were also dropped. The ignominious failure of the case against
Craig was the end of any formal investigation into Helen

(14:51):
Nabe's death. The question of who murdered the pioneering female
doctor and why will almost certainly remain unknown. Indianapolis psychics
and leaders of ghost tours insist that Knave's spirit still
haunts the city. If such is the case, the Lady's
wraith has shown a disappointing failure to elucidate the mystery.

(15:25):
Up next, Georgette Bauerdorff's life was cut short in the
dead of night when her screams went unanswered and her
murder went unsolved, and still is now almost eighty years later.
The Mayans might have a unique opinion on the bat.
They believe it's the representation of a deadly vampire god,

(15:48):
and Blanche Bonnie was kept locked in her bedroom for
a quarter of a century. When finally rescued, she looked inhuman.
What her mother did to her was inhumane. These stories
and more when weird Darkness returns. Chinese cultures see the

(16:32):
bat as a good luck sign, and the Europeans fear
it as evil. In ancient Maya beliefs, Camizotes was a
vampire bat god. Camizotes means death bat in the Kike
Maya language, associated with knight, death and sacrifice. Camizotes was

(16:55):
often depicted holding his victim and a knife. Jiah considered
him a terrifying god who served death and ruled the
domain of twilight. He lived in bloody grottos and other
dark places that people tried to avoid for fear of
disturbing him. In the beginning, bats in pre Columbian cultures

(17:18):
were not associated with evil. They were believed to be
powerful creatures, spirits, and even gods. For example, in the
Taijing pre Colombian stone sculptures of Vera Cruz, vampire bats
are depicted as gods and are also mentioned in epic
myths and in the Book of Creation popel Va. In

(17:40):
one story Kamazots, a death bat takes the head of
one of the twin heroes who entered his underworld domain,
and this head is later used in the ritual ballgame.
In most of the pre Columbian codises, such as for
example Codex Borgia, bats having human in form or personality

(18:01):
are depicted as involved in human sacrifice. Among many beliefs
of the zatzil Maya, an indigenous Maya people of the
central Chiappas Highlands in southern Mexico, there was one especially
important because it explained the origin of these people. These
Maya used to call themselves zutzil unique, which means batmen.

(18:26):
Their story of origin claims that their ancestors had once
discovered a stone bat and considered it as their god.
Mayans of Central America believed the bat was the guardian
of the underworld and a powerful force against enemies. According
to one myth, the hero twins were skillful ballplayers. One day,

(18:47):
the lords of Zibalba, the Maya death gods who ruled
the underworld in kik Maya mythology, organized a contest in
the underworld. They summoned all the best ballplayers, and the
hero twins saw this as a great opportunity to avenge
their own father's death. They successfully went through all the
tests they were given. They survived in a house of cold,

(19:09):
escaped from the house of jaguars, and passed unharmed through
the house of fire. Their problem appeared in the house
of bats when one bat cut off one of the
hero Twin's head. The lords of Zibalba took the head
to the ball court as a trophy, but the other
twin luckily managed to return the head to his brother

(19:30):
and rescued him Blanchemonnier was once a beautiful French socialite

(19:59):
living in Poitier from a well respected bourgeois family. Monier
was renowned for her physical beauty and attracted many potential
suitors for marriage. The Monie's beautiful young daughter, Blanche, was
described by the neighbors as very gentle and good nature.
The young socialite had simply disappeared in her youth, just

(20:21):
as high society suitors had begun to come calling, but
no one had seen her in close to twenty five years.
No one gave much thought to the disappearance of a
young girl, and the family went about their lives as
though it had never happened. Louise Monie did not simply
keep her daughter out of the public's eye. She locked

(20:42):
her in a dark room with sealed windows. Blanche had
no interaction with outsiders except her mother, brother, and on
occasion a servant. The famous bourgeois family did not allow
her daughter to get off the bed and did not
permit her any sort of basic hygiene. For half of

(21:04):
her life, Blanche Monnier laid in the bed where she ate,
urinated and defecated. On May twenty third, nineteen oh one,
the Attorney General of Paris received an anonymous letter claiming
that a well known family in the city was hiding
something beyond the closed walls. The author of the letter

(21:25):
is still unknown. The letter revealed the incarceration. Monsieur Attorney General,
I have the honor to inform you of an exceptionally
serious occurrence. I speak of a spinster who was locked
up in Madame Monie's house, half starved and living on
a putrid litter for the past twenty five years, in
a word in her own filth. The letter prompted an

(21:49):
investigation of the Monie estate. At first, the police were
not certain, as the community regarded the Manie's as a
pillar of virtue and service. So the police made a
customary search of the estate, but did not come across
anything out of the ordinary that would point to a
finel case until they noticed a rotting smell coming from

(22:12):
one of the upstairs rooms. Upon further investigation, they realized
that the door had been padlocked shut for years. The
police smashed the lock and broke into the room. One
policeman described the horror this way. The unfortunate woman was
lying completely naked on a rotten straw, mattress. All around

(22:35):
her was formed a sort of crust made from excrement,
fragments of meat, vegetables, fish, and rotten bread. We also
saw oyster shells and bugs running around Mademoiselle Mongue's bed.
The air was so unbreathable, the odor given off by
the room so rank, that it was impossible for us
to stay any longer to proceed with our investigation. The

(22:58):
rub was so dark that policemen did not notice the
food and litter on the floor. Only after they managed
to crack the window down they were able to see
how the monies have kept Blanche locked in for twenty
five years. The stench was so overwhelming that they found
it difficult to breathe. When the policeman cracked the window,
it was the first time Blanche had seen the sunlight

(23:20):
in twenty five years. Blanche had been kept completely naked
and chained to her bed since the time of her disappearance.
Her condition was so bad that she couldn't even stand
by herself and only weighed twenty five kilograms or fifty
five pounds. Blanche was covered in her own filth and

(23:41):
was surrounded by her own feces and rotting scraps. Police
covered the naked and frightened Blanche and transported her to
a hospital. The hospital staff reported that Blanche was awfully malnourished.
She was quite lucid and remarked how lovely it is
to breathe fresh air again. The New York Times, published

(24:02):
on June ninth read Time passed and Blanche was no
longer young. The attorney she so loved died in eighteen
eighty five. During all that time, the girl was confined
in the lonely room, fed with scraps from the mother's table.
When she received any food at all. Her only companions
were the rats that gathered to eat the hard crusts

(24:24):
that she threw up on the floor. Not a ray
of light penetrated her dungeon, and what she suffered can
only be surmised. Turned out that when she was twenty
five years old, she expressed her desire to marry the
man of her dreams. Her mother, Louise disapproved and argued
that her daughter could not marry a penniless lawyer. Louise

(24:46):
locked her in a tiny dark room in the attic
of her home. The years came and went, but Blanchemonnier
had hoped that someday she would see the sun again.
Even after her lover died, she was kept locked in
her cell with only rats and lice to give her
company for more than two decades. Neither her brother tried

(25:07):
to help her, nor any of the family servants tried
to help her. Although it was never revealed who wrote
the letter, one rumor suggests a servant told the secret
to her boyfriend, who was frightened and sent a letter
to the Attorney general. Blanche's mother was arrested and was
in fine condition, but died fifteen days later after seeing

(25:28):
an angry mob in front of her house. Blanche's brother,
Marcel Monnier appeared in the court and in his own defense,
Marcel Monier claimed that it was his mother who was
in charge of the family, not him. Although the court
had difficulty in finding him guilty, he received a fifteen
year sentence in prison for his role in Blanche's imprisonment

(25:50):
and mistreatment. Marcel himself was a lawyer, so he appealed
the decision by the court and stated that he never
behaved the same as his mother and was not violent
in any way to his sister. He won the appeal
and the court dropped all the charges, as France did
not recognize it as a crime to not free someone

(26:11):
whom you did not imprison yourself. Life wasn't easy for Blanchemonnie.
After she was released from the room, she continued to
suffer from mental health problems. She was diagnosed with various disorders,
including anorexia, nervosa, schizophrenia, exhibitionism, and coprophilia. All the disorders

(26:31):
led to her admission into a psychiatric hospital in Blois, France,
where she died in nineteen thirteen in apparent obscurity. However,
later the story was discovered and news of Blanche Bonnie's
captivity was covered all over France, and as a result,
Marcelle's family, who was once the prestigious family, had to
go into hiding to escape the anger of the mobs.

(27:17):
Born to an oil tycoon in New York City in
nineteen twenty four, Georgette Bauerdorf lived a life of privilege.
She and her older sister attended a convent school on
Long Island, where they were trained in goodness and propriety.
When the girl's mother died in nineteen thirty five, the
Bauerdorf siblings and their father moved to California, where Georgette

(27:40):
was once again enrolled in a school that befit her
place in society, alumna of the Westlake School for Girls
in Los Angeles, including Shirley Temple and miRNA Loy. Upon
graduation in nineteen forty one, young Georgette moved to West
Hollywood to pursue an acting career. By the age of twenty,
she found work the Los Angeles Times, in the Women's

(28:02):
Service Bureau and at the Hollywood Canteen, a dining and
dancing club that catered to young men in uniform. Georgette
called El Palacia her home, a grand Spanish style house
that played host to numerous celebrities. Her evenings were filled
with nights out on the town. She was courted often
and enjoyed the attention of her many suitors. Exactly what

(28:26):
happened on the night of October eleventh, nineteen forty four
remains a mystery. It was a Wednesday. Georgette was at
the Canteen, where her role as a junior hostess meant
she danced with and entertained the servicemen on layover in
Los Angeles. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary that night,

(28:46):
At the end of her shift, she climbed into her
sister's Pontiac coupe and drove home at eleven a m.
That following morning, Georgette's maid and a janitor arrived to
clean a apartment. They were met with an locked front door.
The cleaners entered and found Georgette's lifeless body face down
in the bathtub, the water still running. She was wearing

(29:10):
the top part of a pajama set. Her hair floated
in the water. When police surveyed the scene, they found
little evidence of a struggle, though the coroner later confirmed
the bruises on Georgette's body suggested she put up a
fight before her death. A partially unscrewed light bulb outside
her front door led investigators to believe that her killer

(29:32):
had hidden in the darkness, perhaps even entering the apartment
before Georgette arrived, lying in wait to make a move.
Police assembled a rough timeline of Georgette's final moments. They
believed she came home late, ate a snack in her kitchen,
and was then killed by someone who may or may
not have been a stranger. A downstairs neighbor heard screaming

(29:56):
at about two thirty am along with shouts of stop
your killing me. The neighbor assumed it was a domestic
dispute and returned to sleep. The janitor himself claimed he
heard the sounds of high heeled footsteps from Georgette's apartment
and then a crash, as if something had been dropped,
yet he couldn't confirm if there had been a second

(30:17):
person in her apartment. Whatever occurred, Georgette's last moments were
certainly a desperate attempt to save her own life. In
the days following the murder, police received a letter from
a Sergeant Gordon Adland. Adland claimed that a woman matching
Georgette's description gave him a lift through Hollywood on the
night of October eleven. In the letter, he described the

(30:39):
woman as appearing quite nervous, though he would downplay this
claim in later years. The killer meanwhile vanished into the
night after the slaying, driving off in Georgette's car. The
vehicle was found some distance away, abandoned and out of gas.
It was the last trace of the killer in a

(31:00):
case that quickly went cold. Georgette Bauerdorf's body was shipped
back to New York, where he was interred in a
family owned plot in a Long Island cemetery. While much
has been written about the killing, little is concretely known.
Some speculators associate Georgette's death with that of Elizabeth Short,

(31:21):
also known as the Black Dahlia, claiming that the same
man murdered the two Hollywood hopefuls. Implicated in this theory
is a tall individual with a limp named Jack Anderson Wilson,
who plays a part, although peripherally, in both stories. The
murder remains a mystery to this day. Seventy years from

(31:42):
that fateful night, there's little chance that Georgette's death will
ever be solved. When we're darkness returns. A child walking

(32:04):
into their parents room in the middle of the night
is something every parent who has ever had a child
has experienced on multiple occasions. But one parent's experience ended
with a dark twist, and a historianists come forward saying
that his father, the former commander of White Sand's missile
range in the forties, analyzed some of the material found

(32:26):
at the UFO crash site. Roswell. I'll tell you what
he found. We lived in Louise because my husband was military.

(33:03):
He had lived on the base for eighteen months it
was not a happy place to live, and when I
finally learned that we were going to be stuck there
for a while, I decided I wanted a house. We
looked at three houses that were for sale and settled
on one. It was a little fixer upper, but I
loved that little house. Now for a fixer upper, it
didn't need a lot of work and needed paint, some

(33:26):
new flooring, and a few new appliances, mostly cosmetic. It
was all of twelve hundred square feet. It had three
bedrooms and two bathrooms. Coming from Base Housing, it was
a huge upgrade as we only had nine hundred square
feet and two bedrooms and one bathroom for our small
family before this happened at night. We had two small

(33:47):
girls at the time. My husband has always been very
big about not having the kids sleep with us. He's
kind of a big guy. He worried if a kid
was in the bed, he might squish them. I was
always the one that if a kid woke up, they
would wake me up and I'd usher them back to bed.
I've always thought of myself as a heavy sleeper, but
always woke up when the kids came in the room.

(34:10):
Nothing bothers my hobby when he sleeps. I remember it
was three or three thirty in the morning. I was
woken by my daughter Jace standing by the bed. There
was a window next to my side of the bed,
but she was standing just outside the light of the window,
in the shadows. She was holding her blanket. Both of
the kids had blankets they were very attached to. I

(34:31):
remember sitting up standing and saying, Jacy, let's go back
to bed. Come on now. I was not asleep, and
this was not a dream. I'm one of those people
when I am woke it at night, I am very
awake and can struggle to go back to sleep. I
got out of bed and walked the three or maybe
four steps towards Jacy, thinking that she was very black,

(34:53):
and was surprised not more light was coming in the window,
and there was quite a bit of light that came
in the window, one of the reasons I liked my
spot in the bedroom. As soon as I was maybe
a step from her, I realized this was not JAC.
It didn't feel like Jayce feels in feeling a person's presence.
It's too small to be JAC. It looks wrong. It's

(35:16):
not responding to me. The supposed. Jacey suddenly blew apart.
The blackness exploded and it reminded me of black glitter
as she rained down, and the black glitter just disappeared
into nothing. I remember I ran out of my bedroom
across the hall to Jace's room. Jace was in bed sleeping.

(35:36):
I went back to my bedroom and stood there. I
went back to Jac's room and got very close to her.
I thought maybe she was pretending to sleep. How did
she make it back to her room and get to
sleep so fast? Was she playing with me? I realized
she was sleeping, and the emotions feelings I had knowing
that what I saw was not Jace, came flooding back

(35:57):
to me. I left Jac's room, checked on our other daughter,
who was also sleeping soundly. I was up for close
to an hour and did one of my tours of
the house where I'd walk all through the house a
few times over, and I went back to bed. I
considered waking up my husband, but I didn't know what
I'd tell him. It took me a long time to

(36:19):
go to sleep after that. In an extraordinary confirmation that
the roswell UFO debris was tested by select engineers and scientists.

(36:41):
A noted historian has come forward to state that his father,
the former commander of White Sand's missile range in the
nineteen forties, was made to analyze some of the material
found at the crash site. Robert McLaughlin, who died in
two thousand, was an engineering graduate for the US Naval
Academy who had a remarkable career with a demonstrated expertise

(37:05):
and intelligent missiles. In time, he was assigned to White
Sands Proving Ground now White Sands Missile Range in New
Mexico as commander overseeing all naval research units, and was
also the chief of the Naval Rocket Unit. He rose
to the rank of captain and was a patent holder
with top secret clearance. His research skills and management skills

(37:28):
were integral to the continued success of White Sands's most
vital programs in the nineteen forties. As such, he circulated
on a personal and professional level with such well known
personages as doctor James van Allen who discovered the Van
Allen Belt, meteorologist Charles Moore, astronomer Clyde Tumba who discovered Pluto,

(37:49):
the aerospace and rocket pioneer Werner von Braun McLaughlan had
several German V two rocket engineers under his auspice. McLaughlin
maintained deed an interest in the UFO phenomenon. He reported
his own UFO siding on May ninth, nineteen forty nine,
during a rocket launch at the proving grounds, and even
wrote a piece for True Magazine in March nineteen fifty

(38:13):
titled how Scientists Tracked a Flying Saucer. His son tells
me that somewhere in storage he has the correspondence of
McLachlin and James Van Allen discussing the possible origin of
the discs. This author is long suspected that White Sands
capabilities would be tapped if the crash was of extraterrestrial origin.

(38:35):
I located and contacted the son of Captain McLaughlin, John McLaughlin,
and John's the president of the Silicon Valley Historical Association.
He is an acknowledged authority on the history of high
technology companies in Silicon Valley. Robert McLaughlin passed away in
two thousand and from his son, John, we learned what
he confessed about his involvement with the uncanny metal like

(38:58):
material that he he was asked to have tested. In
the late nineteen sixties, when John was in his early twenties,
there was an interest in UFOs amongst many young people,
and John was no exception. He had a copy of
the classic sixties book Flying Saucer's Serious Business by Frank Edwards.
When he got the chance and the time was right,

(39:20):
he discussed his father's prior involvement in ufo study and
an item that he had read in Edward's book. Edwards
makes one of the very few public references to Roswell
prior to the early nineteen nineties with the influx of
Roswell books and documentaries. Edwards, on page seventy six of
his book says, there are such difficult cases as the

(39:42):
rancher near Roswell, New Mexico, who phoned the sheriff that
a blazing disc shaped object had passed over his house
at low altitude and had crashed and burned on a
hillside within view of his house. We were not told, however,
why the military cordoned off the area while they inspected
the wreckage. One was also astounded to see that his

(40:02):
father was mentioned in the book. He's referred to as R. B.
McLachlin for his true article on flying saucers. Knowing this
and of his father's high level technical position at White
Sands at the time of the Roswell crash, he asked
his father about it. Was he aware of anything? His
father replied that, in fact, he himself knew something, implying

(40:25):
that it might relate to the UFO subject they were discussing.
He related to his son that in late nineteen forty
seven an unusual event had occurred. While at White Sands.
McLaughlin was visited by an Army major from the Roswell
base about a forty five minute flight, who arrived at
McLaughlin's office with a very strange piece of material. McLaughlin

(40:47):
described it as a metal like cloth or fabric with
a peculiar drape or bend, But the feature that stuck
in his mind the most was its sheer toughness and
material strength. Two decades on and McLaughlin could still recall
to his son the incredible impenetrable properties of this material
as the damnedest thing. The major had one request to

(41:11):
McLaughlan try to punch a hole in it. The military
labs apparently did not have the needed equipment to try
to penetrate the material. Because they were unsuccessful, but White
Sands might, they took it to the workshop. There the
metallurgical technicians tried repeatedly to drill the material to make
a hole in it with an advanced car by drill.

(41:33):
John states according to my father, they couldn't even make
a scratch, no doubt. Both perplexed and disappointed, the Roswell
Army Major took back the material and abruptly left without elaboration.
At the time, White Sands, which is adjacent to and
supports Holoman Air Force Base, had a world leading capability
in aeronautical metals technology. There was astonishment that even with

(41:58):
the best available equipment, that were unable to dent, scratch,
or in any way perforate a metal fabric. There were
many types of debris found at the Roswell craft site,
from memory metal to larger canoe shaped pieces, to a
weird filament like material, to a metal like eye beam
with embossed ethereal violet hieroglyphic symbols. But another type of

(42:22):
material found at the crash was a mysterious metal cloth
or fabric that was very liked and tough. This debris
is not often discussed, but in fact, several witnesses spoke
of a similar metal fabric material that was also recovered
at Roswell. Roswell based intelligence agent Jesse Marcel spoke of

(42:42):
several types of debris, including a dull metal like porous
fabric like material with memory properties. Doctor Robert Sarbacher, former
consultant to the US R and D Board at the
time of the crash, said that some of the debris
comprised a strange, lightweight fabric. The structure of the metal
fabric didn't become apparent until the nineteen sixties, when they

(43:05):
finally developed suitable microscopic analysis tools. He was likely referring
to the advent of the scanning electron microscope in the
nineteen sixties. He said, they found out that the fabric
had been welded or machined at the molecular level. This
yielded impossibly tough material. Mac Brazil's neighbor, Sally Strickland Tatalini,

(43:29):
recalled that as a child, she was shown an odd
piece of material by Bill Brazil, the young adult son
of Mac Brazil, the manager of the ranch where much
of the craft debris fell. It impressed her so much
that even decades later, she was able to vividly recall
the metallic looking memory metal fabric that was incredibly strong,
yet had a fine hand to it, smooth like silk

(43:52):
or satin. The fact that in the late nineteen sixties
Captain maclauchlin said to his son that he suspected that
the debris he investigated in nineteen forty seven was related
to the crash, and that it was a strange, tough
metal of a clothlike consistency is extraordinary. The corroboration, as
some of the fallen debris being similar to an indestructible

(44:14):
metal cloth was not known until testimony was secured decades
after the nineteen sixties. It certainly makes the captain's claims
to his son more credible. Nothing short of amazing is
that other sons of US Navy research officers have offered
me similar stories as John McLaughlin. This includes the namesake

(44:36):
son of George Hoover. His father's considered the godfather of
satellite technology. He was with the Office of Naval Research
for many years and worked closely with Werner von Braun
on various projects. Hoover's namesake son, George Hoover Junior, jd.
Is an engineer and US patent and technology attorney of
some renowned He states that, like John in the nineteen sixties,

(45:01):
his father related to him his involvement in analysis of
the debris material from the nineteen forty seven crash while
he was a high level officer with the Navy. This
was itself corroborated by a researcher who met Hoover in retirement,
where the senior Hoover confirmed this. A common pattern to
this aspect of the Roswell story is that when a

(45:21):
material scientist or engineer is presented with a piece of
unusual material to test, they are never told that the
material is from a UFO crash. They gather that because
they know when a material is engineered and what is
possible to engineer on Earth. An unnamed officer presents a
sample of the material to a laboratory with a simple

(45:42):
singular directive to achieve something with it or learn something
about it. He returns, gets the material and results, and
leaves without comment. He offers no explanation, no backstory on
the material, and often not even his name. This is
precisely Captain Robert McLaughlin's experience. Incredibly Robert maclachlin knew all

(46:05):
about Mogul, the balloon project to eavesdrop on Russia's nuclear detonations.
That was the Air Force's later explanation for what had
crashed at the Foster Ranch near Roswell in July of
nineteen forty seven. In fact, McLaughlin knew about this project
and therefore that it could not be the cause of
the Roswell debris field back in the nineteen forties, decades

(46:27):
before it was proffered by the government as the cause
of the Roswell incident. Writing in his blog in September
two thousand and eight, noted researcher Kevin Randall states that
in a letter dated May twelfth, nineteen forty nine, to
famed astronomer James Van Allen, Robert McLaughlin tells Van Allen
about military meteorologist Charles B. Moore, who's been had a

(46:48):
project Mogul for the Air Force. Some have speculated that
the silver metal like porous cloth with unique drape as
described by McLaughlin and others, may be the material of
the silver metal ultra tough, skin tight spacesuits clinging around
the alien bodies in the desert and difficult to remove.
Maybe it's a material, a construction of the craft, or

(47:10):
perhaps it was meant to cover or shield something. Though
its existence will now forever be known, its purpose may
never be up Next, the lynching of Sheriff Henry Plumber

(47:33):
poses one of the most haunting mysteries of the Old West.
But I'll share some of the details that not everyone
has heard about this grim eighteen sixty three incident. The

(48:41):
lynching of Sheriff Henry Plumber poses one of the most
haunting mysteries of the Old West. The story is well known.
In eighteen sixty three, miners at the booming gold camp
of Bannock, then in Idaho Territory now in Montana elected
a sherifff spoken, young Easterner proved to be an efficient lawman,

(49:03):
Yet in eighteen sixty four he was lynched by vigilantes.
Their apologist, Thomas Dimsdale, explained to the populace that the
sheriff had been a very demon who directed a band
guilty of murdering more than a hundred citizens. The aunt
of vigilante prosecutor Wilbur Sanders described the outlaw band's countless atrocities.

(49:24):
The sheriff was the captain, Mary Edgerton wrote, and the
victims were murdered and robbed, and then their bodies cut
into pieces and put under the ice, others burned and
others buried. But she continued, these murders had not been
discovered by the people. Here. Missus Egerton was describing the
mutilation of corpses that had never been discovered, despite the

(49:46):
absence of actual bodies and the vigilantes' failure to do
so much as question the man hanged for directing the
alleged mayhem. Dimsdale branded Plumber a murderous outlaw chief. The
June nineteen ninety two issue of Wild West Magazine includes
a more traditional account of Plumber. Austerity has expressed little
concern that the accused sheriff received no trial. Instead, historians

(50:11):
have blindly accepted the story given out by the very
men who plotted and carried out Plumber's murder. Research of
the past three decades, however, suggests that the Montana Vigilantes
may very well have hanged an innocent man. In Dimsdale's
eighteen sixty six book, The Vigilantes of Montana, the outlined
Plumber's supposed record of crime. It's understandable that posterity would

(50:35):
trust Dimmesdale, he was a pious teacher and editor. In addition,
historians thought that Dimmesdale's name was not on the vigilante
role and therefore naively believed his claim that his book
was impartial. And finally, criticism aimed at the vigilantes had
been uniformly squelched. There's the glaring example of Preacher's son,

(50:56):
Bill Hunter, who expressed his outrage by shouting on a
mining camp street that pro vigilantes were stranglers. Weeks later,
Hunter's frozen corpse was found dangling from the limb of
a cottonwood tree. Despite such warnings to vigilante critics, a
few rumblings of dissent did emerge, rumblings that should have

(51:18):
raised doubt about the vigilantes' version of events at Bannock.
For example, in eighteen sixty four, the Sacramento Union Correspondent
hinted that the gang's high degree of organization and its
atrocities may have been exaggerations. The number of murders, the
correspondent suggested, could be fewer than one hundred, perhaps no

(51:39):
more than ten Decades later, Judge LEW L. Callaway, a
friend and admirer of vigilante Captain James Williams, admitted that
at the time of the lynchings, some good people considered
the vigilantes themselves outlaws. As for the true character of
the maligned Plumber, Judge Frank Woody described him as the

(51:59):
last man that one would take to be a highwayman.
William Henry Plummer, originally spelled Plumer, was born in eighteen
thirty two in Washington County, Maine, the youngest child of
a prominent pioneer family. His father, older brother, and sister's
husband were all sea captains, but the youngest son, intelligent,

(52:21):
good looking, and of a slight build, had consumption and
could not carry on the sea going tradition. Thus his
parents provided him with what was described as a good
early education in a village near the family farm. But
apparently William Henry shared the adventuresome spirit that had lured
his sailing ancestors to such exotic spots as the Canary Islands.

(52:44):
In eighteen fifty one, the nineteen year old caught the
California gold Fever, and on April twenty seventh, sailed from
New York board the US mail ship Illinois. Passengers debarked
at Aspinwall, Panama, and by mule train, crossed to Panama
City to board a floating palace named Golden Gate. At
precisely midnight on May twenty first, they steamed into San Francisco.

(53:09):
Plumber's coast to coast trip to the gold fields took
only twenty four days. His funds depleted, the eager youth
had to take a job in a bookstore, but after
a year he had saved enough to buy a ranch
and a mine in Nevada County, about one hundred and
fifty miles northeast to San Francisco. A year later, he
traded his mind shares for a business in the county seat,

(53:31):
and fellow merchants, who were impressed by his business integrity,
persuaded him to run for the position of town marshall
and city manager. Since Nevada City was at the time
the third largest settlement in California, the job would offer
state prominence. In an election held in May eighteen fifty six,
Plumber won by the narrowest of margins, but it did

(53:53):
not take the genteel young merchant long to earn the
reputation of a dutiful Marshal. He was not only prompt
and an energetic citizens noted, but when opposed in the
performance of his official duties, he became as bold and
determined as a lion. Amongst the daring manhunts that kept
him constantly in the public eye was his pursuit of
Jim Webster, a murder suspect who was terrorizing two counties.

(54:17):
Our Efficient city. Marshall, the local newspaper, Crowned, found Webster
and companion asleep in bed with their pistols under their heads.
The pistols were quietly removed and the two taken into custody.
In eighteen fifty seven, Plumber handily won reelection. Recognizing the
colorful twenty four year old as a rising star, Democrats

(54:38):
chose him to run for the state Assembly. Considered a
shoe in, he seemed destined to become the youngest man
sent to the California Legislature, But in a twist of fate,
the Democrats argued and split one faction, launching a devastating
smear campaign against the other. Plumber went down to humiliating defeat.
Despite his blackened name, Homer' sufficient and charisma might have

(55:01):
revived his faltering career had he not become involved in
the marital problems of John and Lucy Vetter. John was
in an ept gambler who not only abused his wife
but also at times abandoned her and their sickly daughter.
Desperate because he could not find housing in the overcrowded town,
John heard that residents in trouble could go to mister
Plumber for advice. After listening to John's plea Plumber vacated

(55:26):
his own home and allowed the Vetters to rent it.
Soon after, a passing pedestrian heard cries coming from the house,
rushed to the door and saw John beating Lucy. Noting
that he was observed, John shouted for the intruder to
leave or he would kill him. On another occasion, a
neighbor reported watching John knock Lucy to the floor and

(55:47):
then pinch her nose until she could scarcely get her breath.
When the observers notified Plumber of this battery, it provided
Lucy with a police guard and also sent a lawyer
to counsel her. Although John had won and held a
knife to Lucy's throat and demanded that she leave him,
he now became livid when she asked the lawyer to
arrange a divorce, ranting that he would kill the marshal.

(56:10):
John scurried from store to store asking to borrow a gun. Again.
Citizens notified Plumber, who confronted the raving husband, assuring him
that he was a friend he would not resent it,
even if John should spit in his face. This unexpected
passivism brought a temporary truce. On the night Lucy was
to catch the departing two am stage, Plumber sent her

(56:33):
usual guard, and at midnight arrived to assume the duty himself.
As Plumber sat by the stove watching Lucy pack, John
tiptoed up the back stairs, swung open the door and
pointed a pistol at him. Your time has come, the
gambler said, and quickly fired twice. Both shots missed, but
when Plumber fired back, he was right on target. Mortally wounded,

(56:56):
John fled down the stairs, collapsed and drew his final breath,
and Lucy dashed into the street, crying hysterically that the
marshal had killed her husband. After two trials, a jury
which concluded that a marshal who would send a lawyer
to break up a marriage must be a seducer found
the defendant guilty of murder in the second degree. The

(57:18):
judge pronounced a sentence of ten years in San Quentin.
During the trials, Plumber had been ill with consumption and
under inadequate prison care. His condition rapidly deteriorated. But while
he lay in the prison sick ward on the verge
of death, a former policeman was hurrying to Sacramento with
a petition for the Governor, Henry Plummer. The document read

(57:40):
as a young man having an excellent character. This protest
Plumber's innocence bore signatures of more than one hundred officials
of two counties. Governor John Weller immediately granted a pardon,
but instead of exonerating Plumber, he chose to cite the
less controversial grounds of imminent dangers of death from consumption.

(58:01):
The disgraced and ailing ex lawman returned to Nevada City,
gradually recuperated, and then resumed mining. Though he did his
best to behave like a miner, jingling oar samples in
his pockets and supervising work at his claims, he could
not shake his law man ways. First, he made a
successful citizen's arrest of San Quentin, escapee ten year Smith,

(58:24):
and later attempted an arrest of escapee buckskinned Bill Riley.
When Riley whipped out his bowie knife and slashed the
ex marshal across the forehead, Plumber shot his assistant, killing
him instantly. Immediately, Plumber surrendered himself to police, who locked
him in a cell and called a surgeon to suture
the gaping wound. Police agreed that Plumber had acted in

(58:45):
self defense, but fearing that his prison record would prevent
a fair trial, counseled him to leave the area and
then allowed him to walk away from the jail. Eventually,
Plumber followed the gold Stampede trail to Washington Territory. Although
associated with other fugitives from justice, he continued to behave
like a peace officer. In the streets of Lewiston. He

(59:07):
dissolved a lynch mob with an eloquent address. These men
may be guilty of the crime a murder he pled,
but we shall not be less guilty if we put
them to death other than by due process of law.
This heroic effort on behalf of law and order put
Plumber in bad steed with the provigilante factions always present

(59:28):
in the mining camps. Soon after, saloon keeper Patrick Ford
ejected Plumber and companions from Ford's Orothino dance hall, followed
the men to the stable and fired at them with
two guns. In return fire, Plumber killed Ford, and the
dead man's Irish compatriots raised a mob bent on lynching Plumber.

(59:49):
He fled to the eastern side of the Bitter Root Range,
but a Sacramento Union correspondent residing in the area reported
that all unite in bearing testimony that Plumber acted on
the defensive. After this third instance, in which he had
been forced to kill a man in order to stay alive,
Plumber felt too disheartened to try to rebuild a career

(01:00:09):
in the West and decided to return to Maine. While
he was at Fort Benton, head of navigation on the
Missouri River waiting for a steamer, the agent of the
government farm on the Sun River rushed into the fort,
begging for volunteers to defend his family against an anticipated
Indian attack on the small stockade. Plumber agreed to ride
back to the Sun River with Agent James Vale, as

(01:00:32):
did Jack Cleveland, a rowdy horse trader who had trailed
Plumber all the way from California. During his pursuit, Cleveland
had loaded up on whiskey and then boasted at the
saloons that he was the great hunter. On the trail
of his meet Henry Plumber, Cleveland kept from his audiences
the information that he had gotten into trouble in California

(01:00:53):
and that his pursuing law officer had been none other
than Nevada City's former Marshall, Henry Plumber. Within the steak
walls of the small stockade set on the banks of
the Sun River, both Cleveland and Plumber fell desperately in
love with Electa Bryant, the delicate and pretty sister in
law of Veil. Inspired by Electa's returned love for him,

(01:01:15):
Plumber rekindled his dream for a lofty career on the frontier.
In an autumn courtship conducted alongside the peaceful river, mirroring
massive yellow leaved cottonwoods, Plumber promised that in the spring
he would return to Mary Electa. When he bid his
betrothed farewell to head to Bannock, the latest gold discovery site,

(01:01:36):
it was with the resentful Cleveland riding alongside, bolstered by
whiskey courage, Cleveland finally put his long awaited plan into effect.
On January fourteenth, eighteen sixty three, as Plumber sat warming
himself at the fire in Bannock's good Rich Hotel saloon,
the boisterous horse trader attempted to provoke a shootout. Even

(01:01:58):
after Plumber fired a warning show into the saloon ceiling,
Cleveland would not back down. Twice he went for his revolver,
and twice before he could get off a shot, he
took a ball from Plumber's pistol. Cleveland died of his wounds, but,
following the code of justice at the mines, that self
defense was judged according to who first went for a weapon,

(01:02:19):
a miner's jury honorably acquitted Plumber. In May eighteen sixty three,
the same miners elected Plumber the sheriff of Bannock and
all surrounding mines. The young man who now became the
law at the new mines had received a majority that
far surpassed that of any other official. No man, a
Sacramento Union reporter stated, stands higher in the estimation of

(01:02:43):
the community than Henry Plumber. The newly elected sheriff organized
a deputy network throughout the camps and triumphantly rode to
sun River for a June wedding. After he'd settled his
bride into their log home at Bannock, he convinced citizens
of the need for a detention facility to end the
current practice of immediate hangings. With subscriptions of two dollars

(01:03:06):
fifty cents, which Plumber personally collected, he constructed the first
jail in what's now Montana. To his bitter political enemy,
Nathaniel Langford, Plumber confided, now that I'm married and have
something to live for and hold an official position, I'll
show you that I could be a good man among
good men. Even Langford conceded that Plumber had wonderful executive

(01:03:29):
ability and was oftener applied to for counsel than any
other resident. Instituents praised to the sheriff's exhaustive efforts to
protect the camps, commenting that crime in the area seemed
to be played out, and the Union League, a Bannock
political group, voted unanimously to recommend Plumber as a deputy
U s Marshal. The Plumber depicted in early diaries and

(01:03:53):
journals is a far cry from a bloodthirsty demon addicted
to robbery in Mayhew. Instead, pioneers recall seeing the genteel
mannered peace officer fastidiously neat in his elegant overcoat patrolling
Bannock's streets at dawn. But during the final months of
eighteen sixty three, a rash of crime swept the Bannock

(01:04:15):
and alder Gulch mines. Not the alleged one hundred murders
and robberies, but four alarming occurrences a murder, two stage robberies,
and the attempted robbery of a freight caravan. Although Plumber
increased his effort to offer protection while he was escorting
a freighting party to Fort Benton, pro vigilante forces organized

(01:04:36):
in an ensuing hanging spree that lasted a month. Vigilantes
eradicated twenty one men suspected of belonging to an outlaw gang.
Among the untried victims was Plumber himself, who had publicly
stated that he intended to put a stomp to the lynchings. Thus,
in eighteen sixty four, a popularly elected law officer in

(01:04:56):
a US territory was, without due process of law, deprived
of his inalienable right to life. The matter should not
be taken lightly, for there is not a single shred
of evidence linking Plumber to any crime committed at Bannock
or alder Gulch. Some historians now regard the rumored outlaw

(01:05:17):
gang as mere myth. On the mining frontier, rumors of
huge bands complete with passwords, spy networks, and codes for
marking targeted coaches were rife in vigilante days and ways.
Langford wrote that Plumber had previously headed an outlaw band
in Lewiston for three years. In fact, Plumber was residing

(01:05:39):
in California at the time, and preserved documents suggest Plumber
spent just three weeks in the Lewiston area. As for
the Bannock outlaw gang, vigilantes claimed that it was the
most perfect organization in the West. Yet study of the
four aforementioned crimes in Plumber's jurisdiction reveals that there was

(01:05:59):
no connection between them nor any ear marks of an
outlaw organization. The two stages robbed were not even carrying
gold shipments, while the botched robbery of the caravan transporting
over seventy five thousand dollars in gold dust was carried
out by only two men, one timid and the other inept.

(01:06:20):
The method that vigilantes used to confirm that local outlaws
had united into a fearsome gang, was to loop a
noose about the neck of suspect long John Frank and
repeatedly hoisted him until the nearly strangled man gasped that
there was indeed a gang. But when Long John attempted
to lead vigilantes to gang headquarters, he came up empty handed.

(01:06:43):
Aristis Yager, another suspect put under similar duress, supposedly dictated
to a vigilantes scribe the names of the gang members.
Though vigilantes claimed that this dictated membership role had guided
their executions, the authenticity of Yeager's list is doubtful for
several reasons. For one thing, none of the four copies

(01:07:04):
of the list agree with each other, and oddly enough,
the name of Deputy John Gallagher, lynched at Virginia City,
does not appear on any of the four lists. In
addition to the suspicion aroused by the list of discrepancies
the four bungled crimes, the forced confessions, and the lack
of connection between the four crimes, is the sobering fact

(01:07:26):
that during their entire spree, the vigilantes never once encountered
the resistance of the West's most perfectly organized gang. Instead,
their own heavily armed band relentlessly tracked the victims through
deep snows, victims who were too crippled and ill to
walk to the shadowy cottonwood limb or the ominous pole

(01:07:47):
slanted across a corral. On January tenth, eighteen sixty four,
a mob armed with revolvers, rifles, and shotguns surrounded the
ailing Plumber's cabin and lured him from his sick bed
by threatening lynch a robbery suspect in custody. Unarmed Plumber
stepped outside and argued for the suspect's right to a trial,

(01:08:08):
but vigilantes surrounded him and marched him to the pine gallows.
Up the gulch, they provided no drop, but instead bound
his hands, slipped a noose over his head, and gradually
hoisted him in all probability. The peace officer, who slowly
strangled to death on that moonless winter night, led no
outlaw band, but instead had intentions of standing the rise

(01:08:31):
of vigilantism in Montana Territory. On a positive note, Sheriff
Henry Plummer, after one hundred and twenty nine years, finally
received due process of Law on May seventh, nineteen ninety three,
a posthumous trial. Montana's Twin Bridges Public Schools initiated. The
event was held in the Virginia City, Montana Courthouse. The

(01:08:54):
twelve registered voters on the jury were split six to
six on the verdict, which led Judge Barb Brook to
declare a mistrial. Had Plumber been alive, he would have
been let go and not tried again, walking away a
free man. If you made it this far, welcome to

(01:09:23):
the Weirdo Family. If you liked this episode, please cheer
it on your social media or tell a friend or
family member about the podcast and maybe they'll become a
weird O Family member too. All stories in Weird Darkness
aren't purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you
can find source links or links to the authors in
the show notes. The Deadly House Call is from Strange Company.

(01:09:47):
The Unsolved Murder of Georgette Bauerdorf was written by Elizabeth
Tilsra for the lineup. The Child Not Really There is
by Crest from Your Ghost Stories Camazots. The death Bat
Vampire God is from A Sutherland for Ancient Pages. Locked
in Her Room for twenty five Years is by Bugged

(01:10:08):
Space Navy Captain tested Roswell. UFO Debris is from Anthony
Brigilia for UFO Explorations, and the Lynching of Sheriff Plumber
was written by Ri E. Matterer and R. E. Boswell
for wild West Magazine. We'd darkness theme by Alibi Music,
and now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll

(01:10:28):
leave you with a little light. Second Thessalonians three, verse sixteen.
Now may the Lord of Peace himself give you peace
at all times and in every way. The Lord be
with all of you. And a final thought, treat people
like mirrors, and watch how you reflect in their eyes.

(01:10:52):
I'm Deren Marler. Thanks for joining me in the weird darkness.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}NEARLY DECAPITATED IN A LOCKED APARTMENT: The Mysterious Murder of Helen Knabe

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

All Episodes

NEARLY DECAPITATED IN A LOCKED APARTMENT: The Mysterious Murder of Helen Knabe

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce