The Hall-Mills Murder

In the mid-1920s, a double murder in New Jersey became a media obsession. On September 16, 1922, an Episcopal reverend and his choir-singing lover were found posed in a grisly tableau near a lover's lane. Social status, physical appearance, and, of course, money play a huge role in this sensationalized unsolved homicide.

SOURCES
https://www.nbfpl.org/local-history/hall-mills-murder-radio-broadcasthttps://www.nbfpl.org/george-wilson-collectionKatz, Hélèna. Cold Cases: Famous Unsolved Mysteries, Crimes, and Disappearances in America. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood Press, 2010.Kunstler, William M. The Hall-Mills Murder Case: The Minister and the Choir Singer. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1980.Tomlinson, Gerald. Fatal Tryst: Who Killed the Minister and the Choir Singer? Lake Hopatcong, N.J.: Home Run Press, 1999.


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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Hey, Hey, welcome back to Autumn's oddities. I'm Autumn. So
how's everyone doing with? You know everything? I like legit,
don't want to look at my phone anymore. And if
you know, we hear in the US get nuked, I
just hope that I don't survive the blast. I'm not
trying to be alarmist, but I feel like, really, anything

(00:56):
is possible at this point. I'm getting whiplash, you know,
just from looking at what feels like an infinite number
of headlines per day. And I think that we all
need to ask ourselves a question, when is enough enough?
As an elder millennial, I was in high school on
nine eleven, two thousand and one, and I've seen, you know,

(01:19):
the movie that is attempting to be rebooted right now,
the exact same plot. You know, anyone else remember the
WMDs that weren't actually there, the alleged presence of which
started a forever war with the country that didn't attack
us on that horrible day. Anyone else remember remember your
friends going to war and coming back a fucking shell

(01:40):
of themselves if they came back at all. Because I
know I do, and I doubt that If you're listening
to this podcast, you lean toward political extremism, so you
already know where I stand on things. I'm allowed to
have an opinion on whatever I want. People like to say, oh,
just stick to stick to whatever you're doing. You know,
podcasting isn't political. Everything is political. Literally everything now has

(02:04):
been politicized. You know, I'm allowed to have an opinion.
I have an educated opinion, especially on politics, because I
have a master's degree in the subject in political science.
I'm no longer accepting arguments from people who cannot answer
basic civics questions and somehow want to debate geopolitics, you know,

(02:26):
just because they used chat GPT. People think they've replaced
decades of knowledge and education and googling just does not.
You know, people are delusional. Anyone who says, do your
own research, educate yourself like I did and I am.
And those people couldn't even properly cite a source to

(02:51):
save their lives. There's no way, Like they don't know how,
they don't know what research is. They just go into
Google and find something that confirms whateverinion or bias that
they have. They don't understand how to site things, they
don't understand what is actual research material and what is
not just I know this is a huge rant already,

(03:12):
but just the anti antellect or the anti intellectualism movement
that seems to be going on right now, Like who
would not want to know things? I don't know? I
just don't. I don't get that I started college at
the height of the war in Iraq, And let me

(03:33):
just say this, political theater plots and wag the dog
events from that period are currently being recycled, and I
really fear where we'll go from here. Again, if you don't,
like I don't think any of my listeners are, I'm
not going to go into it anyway. I feel ormiss

(03:53):
to not speak about the enormous elephant in the room.
And I think that many, many Americans need to be deprogrammed,
you know, just like lots of other former cult members
have been. All of that to say, try to keep
yourself healthy mentally and physically in the midst of all
of this, even though I know it is really really difficult,

(04:16):
like especially those of us with children, like we're just like,
what the hell are our poor children's lives is going
to be? Like like you know, I again, I remember
going through all of this when I was my son's age,
and I told him the other night it was like,
I just, my god, I feel so sorry for your generation,

(04:37):
like that you that I feel sorry for them, and
like I feel happy that they don't know like how
good things were in the nineties, Like in terms of equality,
not so great, but like everything else pretty fucking good,
you know, before corporate minimalism and the you know, Soviet

(04:59):
blockification and brutalist style of a McDonald's. Like it's all just,
oh God, help me. Everything is just absurd right now.
I just feel like we are living in like there
was some sort of a timeline shift, and we are
somewhere that we are not supposed to be. Speaking of distractions,

(05:22):
today's case was one of the first big true crime cases,
and it still remains unsolved. I had never heard of
this case until I started researching it. And by the way,
if anyone wants to go off about like research, okay,
well I'm going to paste my citations in here, and
I'm going to do them in proper format. I probably

(05:45):
Chicago style, maybe MLA if I'm feeling foggy, and you
can look and see what a citation is for actual research. Again,
I know that sounds probably pretty condescending. It's not condescending though,
Like that's that's how citations are done, that's how research
is conducted. And if someone doesn't know how to do

(06:05):
it and they take offense to the actual correct citations
being used and proper research being done, that's a them
problem on me. So this case is pretty reminiscent of
the media sensation that the play turned into a movie
Chicago's based on kind of that, like rag time jazz

(06:28):
newspaper sensationalism, So let's get into it. In the mid
nineteen twenties, a double murder in New Jersey became a
media obsession. On September sixteenth, nineteen twenty two, a young
man who was married and his girlfriend discovered the bodies
of Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills on an abandoned farm

(06:50):
near New Brunswick, New Jersey. The reverend Hall was wearing
a dark suit a panama hat covering his face. He'd
been shot once, the bullet piercing his right temple before
exiting below his left ear. Eleanor, in a polka dot
dress and black stockings, had sustained three shots to the

(07:10):
head and a massive gash that nearly severed her neck.
Maggot's had already infested her remains. Someone had arranged the
corpses beneath a crab apple tree in a pose suggesting intimacy,
and this, of course further cemented the scandal. And also

(07:31):
there were love letters placed around and between the victim's bodies.
Hall had been a prominent episcopal minister and the husband
of a blue blooded wallpaper heiress with ties to Johnson
and Johnson Mills, a working class homemaker, was a soprano
in the choir at his church, and the wife of

(07:51):
the parish sexton. Over the next couple of months, the
slangs became front page news across the country, making celebrities
out of an eccentric cast of supporting characters, an odd
ball savant, a teenage flapper, and a theatrical hog farmer,
dubbed the pig woman who lived near the site where
the bodies were found. And of all the nicknames you

(08:14):
could get the pig woman, I'd be like, say, what now,
a pig woman gonna eat your ass? Did I just
say I'm recording the super early strike that from the record,
there will be no none of that. Despite the cases notoriety.
The initial investigation proved very inadequate at best, and only

(08:36):
after public interest intensified did the authorities turn their gaze
to some of the most obvious suspects, Hall's spurned widow
and two of her closest male relatives. Prosecutors failed to
persuade a grand jury to return any indictments, and readers
moved on to new sensations a specialty of the press,

(08:57):
of course, in the boisterous nineteen twenties. The jacket blurb
on William Kunsler's book, which I used for research on
the Hall's Mills case, dubs it the most fascinating unsolved
homicide in the Annals of American Crime. And I'm like, well,
that's up for debate because I've never heard of it.
It is fascinating, but I've never heard of it. There

(09:18):
was a national, even international sensation in September nineteen twenty
two when the bodies of the Episcopalian rector and his
choir singer from his church in New Brunswick were discovered
under that crab apple tree off a well known lover's
Lane just outside town. The pair had been missing for
two nights and a day when a young working class

(09:39):
couple stumbled across the grisly tableau which the murderer or
murderers had staged. So I know I mentioned it, but
now I'm going to get a little further into it.
It's pretty fucked up, for lack of a better term,
like somebody took great pains in displaying them like this.

(10:00):
Reverend Hall and Eleanor Reinhardt Mills lay on their backs,
side by side. She had a scarf draped over her
neck and her head was resting on the minister's outstretched arm.
He had his glasses resting on his nose, and his
face was partially covered by a panama hat. Again, someone

(10:21):
set this up to make it look like they were
just like lying under a tree, like cuddling. Incriminating love
letters from missus Mills and the Reverend Hall were strewn
about the bodies, and the minister's calling card or his
business card with his name printed in Gothic letters, was
carefully propped up against his lifeless foot. The forty one

(10:44):
year old minister had been shot once in the head,
and the thirty four year old soprano had three bullets
in her skull. The woman's throat Moreover, as I said,
had been slashed with such violence that the head was
nearly severed. And immediately, I think we can look at
these facts and say, huh, somebody went to all this

(11:05):
trouble not just to shoot them, but to display them
a manner in which, like in a way that displays
their infidelity. We've got the love letters, we've got the
card propped up against his foot. They're arranged to look
like they're like embracing under a tree, almost, And it

(11:26):
seems as though most of the violence was directed toward
you know, the woman here, the other woman. I think,
you know, you can think, well, everybody in this case
is long dead, so I guess we can say whatever
we want, because again this is still unsolved. But to me,
this indicates like a level of rage. I don't know

(11:47):
if it does to you or not, like slicing. I'm
not laughing because it's funny, but like it's kind of obvious.
I'll just leave it there. So to this day, residents
will still regale, you know, newcomers of New Brunswick with
rumors that the victim's bodies were also sexually mutilated. There's
no credible supporting evidence for such claims. The autopsy report

(12:08):
at least noted that Hall's genitalia were quote normal, whatever
that means. More striking was the discovery, first made by
a doctor conducting an autopsy four years later in nineteen
twenty six, on the exhumed body of Eleanor Mills, her
tongue and vocal chords, remember she was a choir singer,

(12:29):
had been cut out and removed. Now again, that seems
even more personal. I don't know what to think, but
that seems pretty damn personal to me. It seems as
though someone would have had to know that she was
a singer and specifically cut out the instruments of her gift.
We may never know who performed these deeds, but even

(12:51):
without the satisfaction of that certainty, there is something for
everyone in the records of this astonishing case, a number
of which are in the Special Collections of Rutgers University Library.
In terms of profiles of the women involved in this case,
these records are pretty rich. Like for so many criminal proceedings,

(13:12):
they are windows into the daily habits, reactions, and routines
of a group normally hidden from history. From the proud
Francis Hall, whose aristocratic privacy was forever to the eccentric
farmer and raiser of livestock Jane Gibson, labeled the pig
woman Jesus Seriously, whose accusations helped bring the widow and

(13:36):
her two brothers to trial in nineteen twenty six, To
the flamboyant Charlotte Mills, who protested that the dilatory efforts
to find her mother's killer, while proclaiming herself a flapper
in the press. To the scores of indignant New Brunswick
matrons who announced their quote firm belief in missus Hall's
absolute innocence in a petition published in the local home News,

(14:01):
To the victim herself, whose very awkward declarations of love,
which had been written in happier days and kind of
like a schoolgirl's vernacular, were destined to be read aloud
by nervous court clerks for the world to hear. The
Hall's Mills case belongs particularly to women. I know there

(14:21):
are girls with more shapely bodies, but I do not
care what they have. Eleanor Mills had declared in one
of these letters, which the police had gathered up from
the scene of the crime. I have the greatest of
all blessings a noble man, deep, true and eternal love.
My heart is his, My life is his. All I
have is his, poor as my body is scrawny, as

(14:43):
they say my skin may be, but I am his forever.
I'm like, okay, girl. First of all, these ain't Shakespearean times.
And second of all, he's married, Like, give me a break.
He's a noble man. Okay, Well he's cheating on his wife.
And also he's a friggin past he knows better. Isn't
that one of the ten commandments? Or do we just

(15:04):
ignore that conveniently in religion, you know, when we feel
like it. The suggestion that the testimony and other records
of criminal trials offer a wealth of materials for social
historians like this, this is some good stuff anthropologically and sociologically,
and especially for historians of women. You know, it's not

(15:25):
a new phenomena. Anne Jones in Women Who Kill surveyed
America's female murderers from colonial times till present, and I
found some new cases in there, some pretty interesting stuff.
Rutgers University Library, where most of the case information is housed,
is near the famous mansion on Nicol Avenue, where the

(15:47):
rector of Saint John's Church, set out never to return
on the evening of September fourteenth, nineteen twenty two. He
left behind his wife Francis, his kind of strange resident,
brother in law Willie Stevens, a housekeeper named Louise Geist,
and his ten year old niece, Francis Vorhees, who was
visiting from New Jersey. Long after Francis Hall and her

(16:11):
brothers were acquitted of some such crimes, which took place
later that evening a few miles away. She and Willie
lived in the three story mansion then which occupied a
full city block, was one of the grandest residences in
town and had been their childhood home. Soon after Missus

(16:32):
Hall died in nineteen forty two, the house was purchased
by the then Women's College at Rutgers and was the
home of the dean of the Women's College until the
university went co ed in nineteen seventy two. Back to
our victims, I know that was like just it's just
kind of like the Mison scene of the thing. I'm
setting the scene here. All of this took place pretty

(16:55):
much on Rutgers campus. The bodies weren't found on Rutgers campus.
They were found nearby, but ever anything else took place
like on their campus. To the case at hand, Edward
Wheeler Hall and Francis Stephens Hall were already well known
New Brunswick residents by nineteen twenty two, though for some
somewhat different reasons. Edward had been born to comfortable but

(17:18):
not wealthy, middle class parents in Brooklyn. In eighteen eighty one.
He earned a degree in Liberal Arts from the Brooklyn
Polytechnic Institute and attended General Theological Seminary somewhere in Manhattan,
and he had served in churches in New York and
in basking Ridge, New Jersey, before he was installed in
nineteen oh nine at Saint John's Church in New Brunswick.

(17:42):
There After briefly courting a parishioner of rather limited means,
the handsome rector turned his attentions to Francis Stevens, the
only daughter of one of the town's most prominent families,
who also taught at the Saint John's Sunday School. Francis
was seven years older than Edward, and when the pair

(18:04):
married in nineteen eleven, she was thirty seven and he
was thirty and the closest or reporter ever came to
a compliment on her physical appearance, which again was heavily
focused on because you know the times, the misogyny of
it all. The closest thing to a compliment on her
physical appearance was the admission that missus Hall was quote

(18:27):
not wholly, not wholly, not like h O l y,
but wholly meaning totally unattractive. And I'm not explaining that
to you like you don't know it. I'm just saying,
like you can't see how it's felled. Some assumed that
at the time of their marriage that the groom had
his eye own money and status, and perhaps that was

(18:49):
the case through their mother and aunt, Francis Stevens and
her two brothers, heirs of the Johnson Surgical supply fortune.
And if that sounds familiar, it's because the company would
later become Johnson and Johnson. Yeah, they were errors of
almost two million dollars, and at the time I didn't
even look what that would be now like with inflations,

(19:10):
probably like three trillion dollars. You know. Just it's all
in a day's work. It's easypasy stuff. Really. The newlyweds
immediately moved into the bride's family home, Lowdie Doll and
Edward assumed the responsibility of monitoring the weekly allowance for
Francis's older brother Willie, who was not employed. He was

(19:33):
somewhat of a gentleman of leisure and he spent a
lot of his time at the New Brunswick Firehouse. I'm
sure they were probably like, oh my God, get this
asshole out of here, but they couldn't make him leave
because he was, you know, a rich weirdo in a town,
and you know how that goes people with a lot
of money. So it was not a terribly exciting domestic
life at least in the beginning. Church activities were pretty

(19:55):
much all consuming. But you know, you can already kind
of see like lots of motives building up. Like Francis's
brother Willie, he's being doled out in allowance of his
own money by you know, this guy who married his sister,
who has nothing to do with their family really except
marrying into it, and now he's calling the shots on

(20:17):
who gets what money. So the minister normally ate breakfast
with his wife. That's what a typical day looked like.
He worked in his study in the morning and he
made calls in the afternoon. After dinner around six point thirty,
there were more evening calls or you know, maybe some
more meetings at the church. Five blocks from the Halls,
on Carmen Street, in a Rundown frame house lived James

(20:41):
and Eleanor Mills. He an ex shoemaker, and I saw
it reported that he was a school janitor, but he
was also a church sexton. She a soprano in the
choir since age fourteen, married at fifteen, and mother of
two children, and also a pillar of the Ladies auxiliary
of the church. James Mills. I don't know why this

(21:03):
was an important detail, but I guess they just wanted
to illustrate that they didn't have a lot of money.
James Mills never made more than thirty eight dollars a
week in his life. That's roughly six hundred dollars today.
And I mean, if you've made that amount of money,
or making that amount of money right now, I have
before with with degrees. Unfortunately, you know, because nobody wants

(21:25):
to pay anybody fairly. Everybody wants money for free. And
you know, no education in YadA YadA, and you go
and get the education. I'm not going to go on
this spield that millennials, you know, we were told, oh,
you have to go to college, you have you must
go to college, or you'll never get a job. And
then you get out of college and they're offering you
like fifteen dollars an hour, and you're like christ on

(21:46):
a cracker, like that won't even cover like one of
my utility bills, but go off. So either way, that
was like six hundred bucks today. And Eleanor and again whatever,
who cares? And Eleanor Mills apparently found solace in romantic
novels and church activities, and she went to Saint John's
almost every day. So it kind of just seems like

(22:08):
very young woman, no life experience whatsoever. Her life isn't
like particularly exciting, she says, a normal life. She's into
her romance novels, which I don't have a problem with,
but you know, like back then that was some sort
of a form of escapism. Might have, you know, might
have led a little toward what happened. Not blaming her.

(22:31):
Exactly when the affair with the reverend mister Hall began
is unclear, but by the end of nineteen nineteen, he
was already calling on the Mills home almost every day.
Mister Mills told a reporter shortly after the murders that
Reverend Hall was his best friend. Mills seems and this
is how the media portrayed him. Not media, but newspapers

(22:54):
portrayed him. They called him something of a simpleton, though
he obviously knew more than he appeared to. In this way,
he and Willie, Missus Hall's brother, were a lot alike.
Mills may have been willing to take advantage of the
money that Hall was spreading about, and so he put
up with his wife's affair. In any case, he had

(23:15):
a moderately good alibi for the night of the murder.
Missus Hall too, said that she had been at home
that night and a housekeeper's word backed her up, and
later that testimony would be challenged. Missus Hall, like mister Mills,
claimed to know nothing about the love affair of their spouse,

(23:36):
but it seems clear that Missus Mill or Missus Hall,
she did know a great deal. Certainly, most of the
parishioners at Saint John's and a good many others in
town were aware of the relationship. They were apparently not
super discreet. On the morning after the murders, Missus Hall
told Mills that her husband had been gone all night,

(23:59):
and the sex and replied, huh, my wife's been gone
all night too, And he added, do you suppose they
have eloped? And that reported remark would cause him some
embarrassment later down the line. The first obstacle to discovering
what happened was the fortuitous fact of a county line.
Both the Millses and the Halls lived in Middlesex County,

(24:22):
but their bodies were found near the notorious Lover's Lane,
which was in Somerset County. Both county prosecutors then got
into the act, you know, as both New Brunswick and
Somerset or Summerville Somerset's the county police had done earlier. Moreover,
almost as soon as the authorities at the police station

(24:43):
in New Brunswick learned about the murders on Saturday morning,
September sixteenth, the newspaper reporters and a number of private
citizens made their way to the site, where they trampled
the ground and began to strip the bark off the
crab apple tree for some sort of macob souvenirs. Yeah,
I mean, and people still do that kind of crap today.

(25:05):
Dark tourism is a big thing. I'm guilty of it myself.
Soon after the funerals, early the following week, judges in
both Middlesex and Somerset counties urged the grand juries to
begin hearings on the case, and the two county prosecutors
rivaled one another in interviewing people and turning up stories.

(25:25):
I'm like, yeah, you probably shouldn't do that. You'd probably
work together. And after two weeks passed with no leads,
the governor, who had been feeling pressure to solve the crime.
Remember this was a pastor and he was married to
a very wealthy woman, said he the said, okay, I'm
done with that part. Yes, that was me stemming slightly. Sorry.

(25:47):
The governor said that he urged the two county prosecutors
to cooperate with one another, and of course they did,
and one of their first acts in early October was
to go to twenty three Nickel the House and take
Willie away for questioning without even letting him tell his
sister where he was going. Missus Hall, in the meantime,

(26:08):
had hired her own attorney to investigate her husband's death,
and that attorney asked whether missus Hall could expect the
same treatment. But you know, chivalry ain't dead, and the
prosecutor maintained that they certainly would not treat a woman
that way. Missus Hall had only been questioned once, very gently,
two days after the discovery of her husband's body. Meanwhile,

(26:32):
others were being questioned and not so gently, in particular
the fifteen year old factory worker named Pearl Bamber and
her sometimes twenty two year old married boyfriend who had
found the bodies. The boyfriend, Raymond Schneider, stated that on
the night of the murders, a second young man had

(26:54):
been with him and that they had followed who he
thought this other young man thought was his girlfriend and
her father, who were walking together in the neighborhood of
the killing. The boyfriend maintained that his companion, who had
also dated the girl, you know, the person he thought
was they were following, suspected that the father was guilty

(27:15):
of incest and intended to do away with him. He
swore that this young man called Clifford Hayes had killed
Reverend Hall and Eleanor Mills in a case of mistaken identity,
and pretty shockingly, Hayes was arrested and charged on October ninth,
Of course, this version of the story did not explain

(27:36):
the love letters, or the cutthroat or you know, a
multitude of other things. But clearly the need for an
instant suspect was very great given the pressure from the
state and the press. Also, the suspect you know, very
conveniently came from the right social class. While missus Hall
and her brother were highly respected citizens, James Mills was

(28:00):
grudgingly left alone for the time, since his neighbors had
indeed seen him within an hour of the alleged killings
and had heard him like doing woodwork, pounding nails, YadA, YadA,
throughout the whole period in question, so it seems he
does have an alibi. Soon it was clear that only
the Somerset prosecutor had wanted an arrest, and Middlesex citizens

(28:22):
protested that it was no accident that wealthy folks from
Somerset should want to pin the crime on a New
Brunswick lad Hundreds from the town called the Boy's home
to express sympathy, and a justice fund was created to
pay for Hayes's defense. Many of these people knew that Schneider,

(28:42):
you know, the married twenty two year old dating of
fucking child was a liar, and sure enough, a couple
days later, that young man confessed to the lie, and
Hayes was released and the prosecutors were once again without
any suspects. Vendors, meanwhile, and I do mean vendors, hawked

(29:03):
balloons and soft drinks near the murder site every day
as hundreds came to visit. God, y'all didn't have nothing
to do back then, like for real. Though, analysis of
blood and the soil taken at the spot the bodies
were found did suggest that the murders had had in
fact taken place there. Again, I'm gonna say, I don't

(29:24):
know how they could know that back then, with what
little technology they had. So the Somerset prosecutor was indeed
the correct one. They were allegedly killed in that county city, County, YadA, YadA.
By that time, however, Mills, mister Mills, had sold a
diary of Reverend Halls and some of his letters, which

(29:46):
had been in his wife's possession, to a New York newspaper.
Yeah that's cool. I mean, I guess he needed money
and his wife did fuck him over kind of get it.
A State Supreme Court judge unhappy with the bungled investigation
turned it over in late October to the state Attorney
General's office. Unlike the Somerset prosecutor, the newly appointed special

(30:08):
Prosecutor took seriously the testimony of an eccentric woman who
had come forward in mid October after the Hayes accusation
to say that she had been an eye witness to
the crimes and that she could not let an innocent
person suffer. She contended that Missus Hall, her two brothers,
Willie and Henry, and a cousin also named Henry Carpenter

(30:31):
were all on the scene the night of the murder.
This woman, Missus Jane Gibson, or Easton as she sometimes called,
declared that she had heard and seen the murders as
she lay in wait outside near her fields, hoping to
catch whoever had been stealing her corn. So she was
out there for totally different reasons claims she witnessed the murders.

(30:54):
Jane Gibson was admittedly a peculiar individual, and her account,
which featured her mule Jenny, changed with each retelling. So
really a super reliable witness, and also, like the whole
she was an attractive thing and she didn't have money
back then. I mean still, that was like a character

(31:15):
and that was like, you know, just an indictment of
their character, which is insane, but you know, human nature,
I guess. But there was enough other testimony by then
which raised doubts about the whereabouts of Missus Hull, her brothers,
and the cousin to lend some credibility to the story
of the pig woman. As the papers referred to her, yikes,

(31:38):
like I would sue their asses so fast. Still, the
Summerset Grand Jury, which met in late November for five
days and heard sixty seven witnesses, decided in the end
not to indict. The case was dead, or so it seemed.
Nearly four years later, the affair was brought back to

(31:58):
life when the husband of life weeze Geist, who was
one of the former housekeepers in the Hall family, filed
a petition for annulment of his marriage at this on
the grounds that his wife had withheld knowledge of the
Hall's Mills case. He claimed in the petition that his
wife had told Missus Hall on September fourteenth, nineteen twenty two,

(32:21):
the day of the murders, that she knew that her
husband intended to elope with missus Mills. He also alleged that,
along with Missus Hall and Willie, his wife had been
driven out to the lover's lane that evening and intercepted
the minister and the choir singer, and that she had
received five thousand dollars for quote her part in the

(32:42):
matter and for keeping quiet about it. And I'm like, okay,
so did you divorce her because she didn't share that
money with you? Or did you divorce her because she
ate it and abedded? Well? Never know, I guess the newspapers,
especially the Daily Mirror in New York, went to town
on the new evidence, you know, which Geist's husband obligingly supplied.

(33:05):
The New Somerset prosecutor, who was you know, kind of
dragged into action, arrested Missus Hall in the middle of
the night, along with her two brothers and cousin. She
alone would be released on bail until trial and after
the state Senator from Hudson County, Alexander Simpson was named
special prosecutor, or maybe a special prosecutor, with the intervention

(33:27):
of Governor A. Harry Moore. All right, now, it appeared
that the national press attention had renewed to resolve you know,
to find out whether Francis Stevens Hall and her relatives
have any involvement in the crimes. I don't know do that.
In the four intervening years, however, masses of evidence had vanished.

(33:49):
You know, there was not really a whole lot of
procedure protocol back then for handling evidence, including autopsy reports
and of course, grand jury testimony. It began to look
as though the previous Summerset prosecutor, who had been so
eager to pin the murder on a poor young worker,
had systematically mislaid in air quotes vital evidence. His brother,

(34:12):
a druggist, turned out to have the grand jury testimony
in his personal possession and was caught trying to sell
it anonymously to a newspaper. That's like the theme of
this whole thing is just selling evidence to newspapers. And
also like, I guess there was no chain of custody
back then. I guess there were no ethical rules for
attorneys on you know, documentation, evidence, things of that nature. Confidentiality.

(34:36):
I guess that just didn't exist back then. As new
statements and documentation were being collected in the late summer
of nineteen twenty six, Missus Hall invited the press to
her home. Her hair had turned completely white in those
four years. Yeah, I can imagine a lot of stress,
but her manner was utterly at ease. She complained to

(34:57):
reporters about being made an ogre by the press, and
she said, quote, the trouble is I'm more or less
an ordinary person and that is not sufficiently pissed picturesque. However,
I am not going to cry about it. I'll make
the best of it. I can. Again, literally everything revolves
around the way women look in this story. It's absolutely wild.

(35:20):
She's like, I know I'm not the prettiest, but I'm
doing my best, and I'm not going to cry about it.
It's like, I don't know who cares what you look like.
This is about murder, not what you look like. This
time in Somerset or the Somerset grand jury, prompted both
by the national attention and you know, buy some new testimony,

(35:40):
indicted all four who had been charged in September, although
in the end the state's prosecutor succeeded in a motion
to try separately the cousin, Henry Carpenter, with a d
against whom witnesses testimony was the least substantial. They didn't
think they could get any sort of a conviction, and
they're like, you guys know, and if he gets acquitted,

(36:01):
then that's it. You know, you get one bite at
the apple. The trial itself lasted a month, beginning November three.
The state's prosecutor opened by naming Missus Hall as responsible
for wanting to catch her husband and Missus Mills in
flagrante delacato or you know, she wanted to catch him
in the act and asking her two brothers to join her,

(36:22):
And that really seems plausible to me. The prosecutor pointed
out that the calling card of the at the minister's
foot was found to have Willie's thumb print on it,
and the witnesses would testify that Missus Hall hired private
detectives who had bribed key witnesses against her. And again,
a thumb print doesn't prove that he was there, only

(36:44):
that he touched the card. But again, like, he knows
who his brother in law is, so I don't know
why he would be, you know, receiving a business card
from him. Witnesses for the prosecution included Saint John's vestryman
Ralph Gorsline, who was assistant manager for one of the
companies owned by the Johnson family, who admitted what he

(37:06):
had denied in nineteen twenty two, namely that he was
present at the Lover's Lane with a young woman from
Saint John's whom he was distressed to admit was not
his wife, so he'd withheld his testimony because he was
out on Lover's Lane with somebody that wasn't his wife,
and he said that he heard shots at about ten

(37:26):
fifteen PM. A former private detective from New York also
identified Gorseline as the terrified man who had visited his
office a few weeks after the crime. Gorseline, he said,
acknowledged that conscience troubled him since he had not only
heard the shots, but had had an encounter on the
site with Henry Stevens, missus Hall's brother, who had told

(37:50):
him to get out and later had taken him to
a lodge room and made him swear he'd never tell
what he'd seen. Although Gorseline continued to the detective statement,
others identified him as part of an informal network of
spies for lack of a better term, which included Minnie Clark,
a Sunday school teacher from the church who had kept

(38:12):
Missus Hall informed in the summer of nineteen twenty two
about meetings of her husband and the choir singer, and
had also intercepted some of the letters that Eleanor Mills
regularly left for her lover in a book in his study. Again,
these people were not discreet like they were not if
they thought they were hiding their affair, they were not

(38:33):
doing a real good job. Another witness testified that she
saw Henry Stevens in New Brunswick the day after the crimes,
when he insisted that he was still at his home
in another part of New Jersey. Several others stated that
a private detective hired by Missus Hall had attempted to
bribe them to stay quiet hey't look good. In addition,

(38:55):
a hers driver testified that on the day of Reverend
Hall's funeral, although the widow or a heavy veil, he
did briefly glimpse her face and observed that there were long,
fresh scratches on her left cheek. Other prosecution witnesses stated
that Willie Stevens had told them on the day after

(39:16):
the murders, but the day before the bodies were discovered,
that something terrible had happened. Still, the States case was
weakened in part because of a number of its witnesses.
They were either or appeared to be sleazy in their
terms or unreliable. Their star witness, Jane Gibson, who was

(39:38):
the pig woman who was hospitalized at the time for trial,
made a dramatic appearance when she was brought in on
a stretcher, like you can't write this stuff. And her
testimony was backed up in many details by other witnesses
who saw her that evening and also saw the cars
that she mentioned near the lover's lane. But the defense

(39:59):
did indeed succeed in blasting her testimony with standard courtroom
sexual politics and character assassination. They began to question her
about her marital status and her previous husbands, and the
woman's vague, evasive replies were sufficient to persuade the jury
that nothing she said needed to be believed. And also,
back then women were not allowed to serve on juris.

(40:20):
I should mention that you probably already know that, but
there were no women on this jury. It was twelve men,
twelve angry men. That's a really good movie. Watch it.
It goes a lot into courtroom proceedings. I like that
it's an older movie. God, I can't remember who's in it.
Jimmy Stewart. I think it's good. So one juror so
basically anyone who any woman who comes forward and has

(40:42):
any evidence whatsoever, which seemed to be quite a few
continually or just discounted because they're either not super attractive,
or they're not married or you know, they don't have
husbands currently, and any evidence they have that seems to
be corroborated by many other witnesses. Testimony is just kind
of thrown out again. It's all dudes, all dudes back

(41:06):
then being being dudes. Unfortunately, Wonderer admitted afterwards that he
would stay there thirty years rather than to convict anyone
on the evidence. The pig woman gave cool Why because
she's not attractive and she's unmarried, and okay, she came
in on a stretcher, dude, like I believe she probably

(41:29):
is telling the truth or was telling the truth. Francis Hall,
by contrast, was presented as a paragon along with her
two brothers. Have they been thugs? Her lawyer asked in
summing up, Have they criminal records? Are they thieves. No,
they are refined, genteel, law abiding people, the very highest
type of character, church going Christians who up to this

(41:52):
time enjoyed the perfect admiration and respect of their friends
and neighbors. So to sum up with this guy saying,
they've never been caught committing a crime, and even if
they had been caught committing a crime, they could probably
buy their way out of it, so they could not
possibly have committed this crime, even though there are lots

(42:12):
of eyewitnesses saying that they were offered bribes, that they
were threatened to keep their mouths shut, so on and
so forth, or you know, in the case of that
poor woman who they dubbed the pig woman. I'm gonna
call her Jane because that's her first name. She saw it,
she said she saw it. But it couldn't be because

(42:34):
they don't have any sort of a criminal record, and
they go to church and they're of the very highest
type of character. How anyone's come by that, you know, summarization,
I just don't know how anyone's come by that information.
How they could possibly know that they have the very
highest type of character. I'm like, is it just money?
Is that it? And I think it is. I mean,

(42:54):
it's similar today, except we know that the people with
the most money are in fact the worst people out there,
and if you think they're not, you're out of your
goddamn mind. The defense, in fact, suggested not so subtly,
that either Mills, mister Mills, or the pig woman herself
were more plausible suspects. Sure, okay, and Francis Hall and

(43:16):
her two brothers were acquitted. Okay, Again, I could see
that mister Mills has a motive, he does have an alibi.
And also, this is some pretty I don't know, I
don't want to say sophisticated, but in terms of, you know,
setting up a tableau, I doubt he studied much art history,
you know what I'm saying. That seems something that a

(43:38):
more genteel and refined person would know about, you know
what I mean? Like, Okay, I'm gonna move on in
a case study or in a study of the case.
In nineteen sixty two, the lawyer whose book I used
partially to research this case, William Kunzler, agreed that the

(43:58):
jury at least the correct verdict, and I disagree. In
his view, this is stupid. I'm just gonna say it.
The KKK, I'm not gonna pronounce their name because fuck
them was responsible. Kunsler points out that the Klan, which
refounded in nineteen fifteen from the original Civil War group

(44:18):
Show your Face as Bitches, was strongly committed to strict
standards of sexual morality and known to punish severely anyone
violating marital fidelity. Yeah fucking right, like they weren't all
cheating on their wives too, and still do because we
all know the KKK still exists and the various other
hate groups that you know have different names but still

(44:41):
be covering their face. If you're so proud of your
racism and your bullshit, show your face, you fucking coward. Yeah,
today's episode is not suitable for work or children. They
rarely are. But you know, this shit gets me riled up.
It's current again. Some fucking how in the year twenty
we're dealing with this bullshit with masked racist assholes kidnapping people. YadA, YadA, YadA.

(45:08):
You can say they're all criminals that are being arrested,
they're not. Statistically, they're not at all. Like a very
I saw statistic which the current administration self reported that
the percentage of actual criminals being arrested is very very
very small by ice, and half of them aren't even

(45:30):
federal agents, they're just deputized corrections officers. And that they
are being paid like a bounty on each person, said
thousand or fifteen hundred dollars just to bring them in.
I don't even know if they get it like for
like contingent upon a conviction. But you can see where
I stand on that. If there are actual criminals, get
them out. If not, fuck off and don't be going

(45:54):
to people's immigration hearings when they are following the rule
of law and arresting them their immigration hearings while trying
to become United States citizens. I have no problem with
criminals being arrested, actual criminals and deported everybody else, No,
especially not if they're going through the unbelievable amount of

(46:17):
you know, hoop jumping that it takes to become a
United States citizen or to be here legally. If they're
trying to be here legally, you don't go stand at
their hearing and try to take them like, what the
fuck is happening anymore? I don't understand. And again I
don't need to hear anyone's bullshit, apologist nonsense on this
whole issue. This ain't right. You know it's not right.

(46:43):
If you think it's okay, fuck all the way off.
I got nothing else to say. Anyway, that was a tangent.
I do apologize for all the F bombs, but again,
I'm an adult. This is my podcast. If you're listening
to this with kids, I'm sorry, but this is about murder.
So come on, man, put your headphones in. Don't be

(47:05):
letting your kids listen to murder murder stuff. This should
not be normalized for them. We are adults. We understand
how much evil there is in the world and how
much just nonsense and things that make you want to
rip your hair out because you're just like, where has
common sense and decency gone? Like any of it? Where

(47:27):
has humanity gone? Where his empathy gone? Any of it? Really?
This shit is crazy. I'm not trying to put a
target on my back, but uh yeah, I don't. I
just don't even. I got nothing. Where was I at?
I don't know I was at the KKK anyway that
oh yeah, that they were. They could have killed people

(47:49):
that were having an affair because they give a shit
about that about two white people having an affair. No,
they don't yet. Although he demonstrates the clans strengthen new
at the time, Counsler cannot tie the case directly in
any way to the KKK and admits his evidence as circumstantial.
It's horseshit. Moreover, all other instances he cites of vigilante

(48:11):
retribution fall short of murder. You know, they did tar
and feathering, beatings, crossburnings that was all or no crossburnings.
That was for black people only that they liked to do.
That too, were common in adultery cases. Tarring and feathering
and beating, not murder, because you know they'd be killing
each other if that was the case. Kunsler's was not
the last word that God, and perhaps there will never

(48:33):
be one. But there was something new evidence which showed
how jury trials are at the mercy of the fact finders.
And that's true for there was some evidence which never
came to light until nineteen seventy when a retired gas
station owner who thought he was about to die, ended
an almost forty eight year silence when he confided what

(48:56):
he knew about the case to a patrolman and then
to the New Brunswick Home news. This man, Julius Ballyog,
who was a seventy year old Hungarian, explained that he
had played an unwitting role in the double murders as
a delivery man for guess who, Missus Hall herself who

(49:16):
transmitted or yeah, like wired. There was no wiring back then,
so she gave it to this guy six thousand dollars
through him to two small time New Brunswick hoodlums. Bolyog,
by the way, passed two polygraph tests, which again they're
not admissible in court anymore, but back then, shit that
was gold and Bolyog reported that he and Willie Stevens

(49:40):
were old friends, which is of course Missus Hall's brother,
which was entirely credible since Willie spent many hours with
residents of the town's Hungarian community around Somerset Street. This
guy was just a friggant hang about. I'm sure everybody
wanted him to fuck off, but he just like could
not take a hint. Willie had often told his friend
how unhappy he was with his brother in law, who,

(50:01):
with his sister's approval, controlled his inheritance Boom through a
trust fund, and gave him twenty five dollars a week
or so, not nearly enough to suit him, you know,
because he was special. He needed money because he was
friendly with a widow in town and he wanted to
get married, so he needs more money. According to Bolyog,

(50:22):
Willy also confided that his sister knew of the affair
and wanted to give her husband money to go away.
Willy said he hoped to quote take care of the bum,
meaning his brother in law, but Bolyog refused, or you know,
so he said, to introduce him to local thugs who
specialized in such jobs. About six months later, the day

(50:45):
after the murders, when Hall was still missing, Reverend Hall
and Francis had informed the organist get This at the
church that her husband would not attend choir practice because
he was out of town. Willie found Bolliogl and told
him he urgently needed his help. According to Baliog, Willie
led him down to George Street, where his sister was

(51:07):
waiting in a parked car with a man at the wheel.
Willie asked him to take envelopes from Francis and give
them to two young men standing in an alleyway, which
he did so to recap there missus Hall before like
her husband had been found, well, he was just missing.

(51:30):
Told the organist at church that her husband was out
of town. No, he had no trip plan. That was
not a thing. Why would she lie about something like that.
That's really strange. So Willie told his friend that the
pair had been forced into a car, murdered and then
brought to the lover's lane. But later testimony and forensic evidence,

(51:51):
I'm not going to say it proved that they had
gotten there on their own, that the couple had gotten
there on their own, because forensic evidence back then, give
me a break. I just don't know. I don't think
there's any way at all to know for certain. Also,
there would have had to be a tremendous amount of
blood because she was almost decapitated. I just don't know

(52:15):
if I'm buying that. If Bali Oog was telling the truth,
Willie was either lying or had been lied to. There
is no wonderful murder mystery ending that ties together all
the loose ends, although a tantalizing statement taken in nineteen
twenty two deserves mention. A minister friend of Reverend Hall

(52:38):
called Paul Hamborski, who served the Hungarian community in New
Brunswick and once traveled with Reverend Hall to a minister's conference,
told a newspaper at the time of the crime that
Hall had confided to him that his new wife knew
or that his wife knew all about the affair with
the choir singer, and that one of her relatives had

(52:58):
threatened to kill him unless he stopped seeing her. How
many people need to come for this guy is also
a minister, Ugh Hall, he said, told him that he
had no intention of giving her up, and that he
was going to run away with Missus Mills very soon.
Hamborski had quoted Hall on the subject of his wife.

(53:19):
So this is what the reverend said about his own wife.
Missus Hall is a very cool woman, and he doesn't
mean like she's cool, like she's cold. She has changed
very much lately, and I am very much afraid that
she will do me bodily harm. Well, you are cheating
on her, I mean, was Hamborski lying, Well, we'll never know.

(53:40):
He vanished on the eve of the trial in nineteen
twenty six. Come on, ma'am, this is some shitty police
work or somebody got paid a lot of money. After
the trial, the depositions and grand jury transcripts from nineteen
twenty two in nineteen twenty six, as well as many

(54:01):
other documents and physical evidence, remained in the prosecutor's office
in Somerville, where the case was tried. A subsequent Somerset
prosecutor who had long been interested in the crime, when
Arthur Sutchfn Meredith, built a display case for some of
his evidence, but a number of years later he left

(54:21):
that post for a judge ship. In nineteen sixty five,
and a successor notified him that he was about to
dispose of all of the Halls Mills case material. Meredith
agreed to take possession back, and then in nineteen eighty one,
just after the Rutgers Press reissued the Chunsulerbook, Counselor Book,

(54:42):
Judge Meredith gave the Halls Mills evidence to the Alexander
Library at Rutgers. The current collection does not include all
the materials that Kunseler had consulted in nineteen sixty two
when the inventory was made. Unfortunately, the depositions and grand
jury testimony from nineteen ten, twenty two, and nineteen twenty
six are no longer there. However, there are original newspapers

(55:06):
and photographs, police correspondents, many letters from Francis Hall to
Henry Stevens, written between nineteen twenty two and nineteen twenty six,
letters to and from the Prosecutor's office, letters from Edward
Hall to Missus Mills, and from Missus Mills to Reverend Hall,
Diary transcripts from Hall written for his lover, and physical
evidence including clothing and personal effects of the victims, fingerprints,

(55:30):
and a ghoulish plaster cast of Missus mills head used
in the trial to describe her wounds yikes. In addition,
there are some university materials relevant to the case, in
particular an issue of the college humor magazine The Chanticleer,
which was banned by the Rutgers President Rutgers President in

(55:52):
nineteen twenty six when the New Brunswick City Council objected
to its satirical treatment of the trial. Okay, I think
that's what like a joke newspaper is. The issue contains
several cartoons, including one of the pig Woman's mule and
another of a sign announcing welcome to New Brunswick, the
town that made Somerville famous. By now, all of the

(56:15):
principles in this wild affair are long dead, and there
is no telling whether the truth of the identity of
the murderer or murderers will ever be uncovered, But the
documents themselves have many other truths to tell about forgotten
lives in our past. And surely I think this is
one of America's most unfascinating or fascinating unfascinating, it's fascinating

(56:40):
unsolved homicides. All right, yeah, okay, I I feel like
this one's solved without you know, any convictions, based on
literally all the evidence and testimony presented. I think it

(57:01):
was Missus Hall and her and her brother and brother
or brothers and cousin, Like, really, how many witnesses did
they need? And some of them were also clergymen, Like
it's not like these are just random people off the street. Well,
I mean, a clergyman was cheating on his wife and
with a choir singer. It's not like they're saints or anything.

(57:22):
I'm not saying that, but so many people came forward
and said Missus Hall and her male relatives committed these murders.
I mean, come on, it does seem like like Missus Hall,
she had the alibi, she paid a housekeeper, like she's

(57:43):
the housekeeper came forward or her husband came forward years
later and divorced the housekeeper because she was involved in
these murders and she had lied about it, and she'd
received hush money for it. Again, like, what reason does
he have to use that to obtain an annulment. I Like, again,

(58:03):
there's not really a motive there. Sure, he'd want to
get in the newspapers. I'm sure he had things to
sell to the press, but that's just kind of revenge.
I mean, wouldn't you if you found out that something
like that happened in your spouse had received a hush
money payment and live in court and dragged your family
into it and had been lying the whole time, I'd

(58:26):
be like, I'm going to sell all your shit to
the newspapers. You should not have any expectation of privacy,
Like you're you're a real piece of work. There are
two murdered people, and you're you're just letting this family
get away with it because they have money enough to
pay you off. And you know, clearly, if you're willing
to take hush money and be involved in a double murder,

(58:46):
you're not a great person and not someone that can
be trusted. So I mean, there's that, there's the Hungarian
community that came forward. There's the unfortunate Jane, the pig woman,
who said she saw it and was you know, just
not believed because she wasn't super attractive and she wasn't married.
And the twelve men sitting on the jury were like, oh,

(59:06):
I don't like her face. They're calling you the pig woman.
For Christ's sake. I mean, you can see where that's going.
And you know, Porm is his hall. Also, I say
poram as his hall. She yeah, it sucks that she
was getting cheated on. I think we can see what
happened here, though. I think it's pretty plain to see.
The Reverend Hall was interested in someone who didn't have

(59:29):
a lot of money, and then he found out that this,
you know, Francis Hall, had a whole bunch of money.
He married her, he took over her finances. He's doling
out money to her brother, who thinks he should be
getting more. Her brother, Willie, had some loose lips. He
was telling shit all over town. He told multiple people

(59:51):
allegedly that they had committed the murders, like I just
don't know how many other and just the way that
the were displayed. Someone who is randomly murdering. Like, okay,
you guys say that the pig woman had motive to
murder them? What motive did she? Okay, sure, let's say she'diculum.

(01:00:13):
Let's say she thought that they were the people stealing
her corn and she killed them. Now, why would she
not just shoot them? Why would she nearly decapitate and
remove the tongue and vocal cords of a choir singer
and then arrange a very grisly scene to pretty much

(01:00:34):
let anyone know who found those bodies, that these two
people were committing infidelity, adultery, and you know, posing them
in such a way that there could be no dispute,
with the love letters everywhere, with his calling card propped
up on his foot like that takes that takes a

(01:00:54):
lot of hatred to do. That's a very personal crime.
And removing the instruments of a choir something. You know,
maybe missus Hall thought that's why he fell in love
with Eleanor Mills, was her beautiful singing voice, and so
she removed or you know, had removed the instrument of
you know, that desire from her husband. It just seems

(01:01:18):
way too personal and way too violent and way too
stage to be any random person. Mister Mills. Again, he
had an alibi, and I just don't think I don't
think he had the the the gumption, the where with
all the sophistication to pull something like that off. Also,

(01:01:42):
if you're going to kill two people to able bodied adults,
one person doing it just doesn't seem super likely. And
then the arranging and all of the other things, it
would seem more likely to me that it was two
or more people involved in the murder. Whether I'm missus
Hall pulled the triggers, I don't know. I would guess though,

(01:02:05):
that if she did have anything to do with the murders,
she was the one who nearly decapitated her husband's mistress
and did the you know, the butchery, it seems more
likely the anger seemed to be directed toward her. Even
though that's like crazy, it's like, well, if that was
missus Hall, it's your husband that she did. Yeah, it

(01:02:25):
sucks that she was involved, but your husband is the
one that's married to you. This woman doesn't owe you anything.
She's not married to you. She's not your spouse. He's
your spouse. Direct that anger toward him. If you're gonna
kill somebody kill your husband, you know what I'm saying, Like,
you don't have to take her with him like she can.
You can just out her for having an affair, and
maybe her husband would leave her. Who knows, maybe he wouldn't.

(01:02:49):
All of it is just way too personal to be anybody.
But one of the spouses of the two murdered people,
and of course one has an l and I just
don't think that that man would have been able to
do it by himself. I don't think Missus Hall would
have been able to do it by herself either. And
the sheer amount of people who came forward and said

(01:03:12):
I know, I was told I saw Missus Hall and
her brother and cousin blah blah blah do this. They
told me about it. I transmitted money for them unknowingly
to assassins. YadA, YadA, YadA. I don't know who pulled
the trigger. I don't know who did the throat slashing

(01:03:34):
or the mutilating or any of that, but I could
guess that the arrangement of everything was it was absolutely
someone that was married to one of those two people.
And again, one of those people has an alibi. And
literally no one came forward and said that they suspected
this man, police cleared him, you know again, like nobody

(01:03:56):
thought it was him, and there was just a mountain
man of circumstantial and eyewitness evidence, and the eyewitness evidence
was discounted only because they didn't like hearing her talk.
The jury didn't like hearing her talk. Somebody shut that
woman up giving that vibe. When will science find a
cure for a woman's mouth like doctor spitchemen vibes thirty Rock.

(01:04:22):
If you don't watch and are not familiar, I think
we can safely sorry. There is a most likely suspect
or set of suspects. And even if they didn't commit
the murders with their own hands, which I think they
might have just because of the brutality committed against you know,
eleanor Mills, then they certainly paid someone to do it

(01:04:46):
or to you know, do the whole arranging afterward kind
of thing, Like they could have killed them somewhere else.
It said they were killed there. I don't know, maybe
they were killed there. I have no freaking idea, and
neither do that. Them talking about forensics in the early
nineteen hundreds like a dog might as well have been
talking about it like they knew as much then as

(01:05:08):
a literal like pet, like a house pet. They didn't
know anything they knew like you know a little bit
like they they didn't know and they couldn't know what
they didn't know back then. So I think it's pretty
safe to say that there's there's likely suspects here, and
I think the wrong people were acquitted. And I think

(01:05:31):
it's real fucked up that, like some this poor boy,
if someone hadn't come forward. Oh I'm sorry, Wait, wasn't
the pig woman's testimony the thing that got Hayes commit
like got him off the hook for murder? Remember the
working class boy from New Brunswick that was accused of

(01:05:52):
the murders because you know this lying ass dude who's
with a married with a teenage girlfriend who discovered the
body so that his friend did it thinking it was
somebody else. Yeah, it was the pig woman's testimony. She said, no,
I saw what happened and it wasn't him. So we're
gonna believe her testimony in this case, but not in

(01:06:13):
any other case when it's incriminating a wealthy woman who
they don't want to incriminate from a very wealthy, very
wealthy family, you know, pre Johnson and Johnson, but they
were super wealthy even at the time. I didn't look
up what two million dollars back then is in today's money,
but again a conservative guess of a trillion dollars like

(01:06:35):
again with inflation, I'm sure it's extremely high. But they
were very wealthy. But it's strange how the pig woman's
and I know I keep calling her the pig woman.
That's how they referred to her. I don't know if
they meant like that's how she looked, or she was
a pig farmer. Not sure either way. I think it
could probably go either way given the parlance of that time.
But it's funny how they take her testimony in one

(01:06:58):
case and not the other. She's a credible witness in
one scenario and not the other. It's funny how things,
how things work, and how you know, just sheer misogyny
has shaped so so so much, and you know, class
and social status and having money, and it's funny. Nothing changes,

(01:07:23):
does it. We're seeing the same old shit today, same
as it ever was. All Right, I'm done now. If
you like what you hear, you can hear more episodes
on Friday, released on all podcast platforms on social media.
I'm no longer on X because god it's a dumpster fire.
I am on Threads at Autumns Podcast, on Instagram at

(01:07:47):
Autumns Podcast, Patreon at Autumn's Oddities if you all want
to come back. Because I paused subscriptions for a while,
I think Patreons started charging randomly even though I told
them not to, which is super not cool. So for
my Patreon, that was not on purpose. That was Patreon
being a dick. I don't know where it gets the
nerve to do them, but I am going to put

(01:08:08):
some bonus content on Patreon for my Patreon family members
because that was not me doing that, and I apologize,
and I didn't realize Patreon was again capitalism. Capitalism. Patreon
was trying to make its money and I guess did
not want to take no for an answer. Either way,

(01:08:28):
there's going to be some new content on there for you.
I've already gotten a couple of things written, like the
Lost Society of Atlantis or the Lost Whatever of Atlantis.
I haven't named it yet Atlantis it's about Atlantis. Either way,
you know where to find me. As always I do
appreciate you listening, and remember, if it's creepy and weird,

(01:08:48):
you'll find it here. T