April 20, 2024 • 20 mins
This episode covers the 1922 "Mentor Marsh Murder" in Lake County, Ohio. Please give a listen and tell a friend about the show if you like it.
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All music by Kai Engel licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For more info, please visit https://www.kai-engel.com/.
Produced, written, edited, and hosted by Steve from Great Lakes True Crime.
*****Positive reviews really help out the show and are always appreciated*****
Sources
https://www.cmnh.org/mentor-marsh
Bellamy, J. (1999). Corpse in the cellar. Gray & Company.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-times-recorder-mrs-hazel-burns-body/69439152/
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7708252/hazel-m-burns
Buy Me Coffee (please!) - https://paypal.me/greatlakestruecrime
Website - www.greatlakestruecrime.net
TwitterX - https://twitter.com/greatlakescrime
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/greatlakescrime
All music by Kai Engel licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For more info, please visit https://www.kai-engel.com/.
Produced, written, edited, and hosted by Steve from Great Lakes True Crime.
*****Positive reviews really help out the show and are always appreciated*****
Sources
https://www.cmnh.org/mentor-marsh
Bellamy, J. (1999). Corpse in the cellar. Gray & Company.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-times-recorder-mrs-hazel-burns-body/69439152/
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7708252/hazel-m-burns
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
In June nineteen twenty two, HazelBurns and her husband, Henry Burns,
both took a weekend trip from theirhome in Cleveland, Ohio, to their
summer home in Mentor, Ohio.While there, the two fought bitterly,
with Hazel accusing Henry of cavorting witha local woman behind her back. The
(00:21):
following morning, Hazel went to thewoman's house to confront her, despite Henry's
insistence that he had done nothing wrong. That was the last day Hazel Burns
would be seen alive from the southshore of Lake Erie. This is Great
Lake's true crime. At nearly sevenhundred acres in size, Mentor Marsh is
(01:41):
one of the largest natural marshes remainingalong the Lake Erie shoreline, and it's
an important breeding and nursery area forthe many fish that call Lake Erie home.
The marsh has been designated as aNational Natural Landmark by the National Park
Service since nineteen sixty six, asit is one of the most species rich
(02:02):
sites on the Great Lakes shoreline.It has also been designated as an Important
Birding Area by the National Audubon Society. The marsh is located in Lake County,
about thirty miles east of the cityof Cleveland. For regular listeners of
the show, you may recall thatthis is not our first visit to Lake
(02:23):
County. Episode forty eight, TheGhost Cat of Fairport Harbor, took place
in Lake County, as did episodetwo The Kurtland Cult Killings. On October
twenty fifth, nineteen twenty two,two women sat in a car parked on
(02:44):
Blackbrook Road in Painesville, Ohio,just outside what was known as the B
and O Woods. The woods satadjacent to Mentor marsh and the two women
had come to the woods searching forchestnuts. While still in the however,
they saw a man holding up anempty basket while he walked nervously out of
(03:06):
the woods. He came right upto them and blurted out, there were
no nuts in those woods. Imight as well stop hunting. He then
hurried into a car and quickly droveoff. The women thought the man was
acting very oddly, and so muchso, in fact, that they wrote
down his license plate number four fivethree four six five. As if that
(03:31):
wasn't strange enough, The women nextsaw two dentists, DC. Cornell and
W. R. Beady running outof those same woods. While back in
the woods hunting. Apparently, themen came upon a grizzly pool of blood
on the ground. Right after seeingthe blood, the two dentists found a
(03:52):
blue felt hat, a pair ofglasses, and an unspent twenty two caliber
cartridge on the floor of the woods. All of the items were covered in
blood. The two men spoke withthe women briefly and then went to the
Lake County Sheriff's office to report whatthey had found. Two Sheriff's deputies,
(04:15):
Edward Graves and Edward Resmussen, whowent by big Ed presumably to distinguish him
from the other mort Domineved, arrivedon scene with Lake County Prosecutor Ralph Ostrander
and several other investigators. They quicklydiscovered more bloody items in the woods,
a stocking, black shoes, furcoat, and a blue skirt. After
(04:41):
discovering those items, they uncovered thebody of a deceased woman in a shallow
grave. The body had been placedon its side, with limbs pushed tightly
together, as if someone had triedto conceal the entire body in the grave.
Without going into dee details, itwas obvious to the officers that the
(05:02):
women had been badly beaten, andmost of her clothing had been removed.
A trail of blood could be seenfor about one hundred and seventy five feet
to the nearest road. Some jewelrywas found nearby. Later, an autopsy
would show that the woman had beenburied while likely unconscious but still alive.
(05:26):
This was about as brutal a murderas can be imagined. The two sheriff's
deputies did not recognize the woman's remains, but luckily those two concerned women in
the parking lot had jotted down thatlicense plate number. The license plate was
tracked down and found to have beenregistered to a man named Henry Burns,
(05:47):
who lived at four to one fiveto two Lorraine Avenue on the near west
side of Cleveland. Police obviously wantedto talk to Henry about their findings,
and roadblocks were set up in theCleveland area near his home. Police also
went directly to Henry's home looking forhim, only to find it empty.
(06:12):
Local police were well acquainted with HenryBurns, however, and only a couple
days later he was picked up atthe popcorn stand that he operated on West
twenty fifth Street, across from Cleveland'sfamous West side market. While interviewing Henry,
investigators showed him the bloody clothing andjewelry that was discovered near Mentor Marsh.
(06:33):
They also gave Henry the news thatHazel had been beaten to death.
His reaction to the news was verysurprising. What was surprising about Henry's reaction
is that he showed no surprise.In fact, he really had no reaction
at all. The only thing hesaid in response was a claim that he
(06:55):
had last seen her the previous dayat the popcorn stand Doom, that she
had gone to stay with friends orrelatives since that time. Police noticed that
Henry's hands were injured and bandaged.When asked why, he was evasive and
could not provide a reasonable explanation forthat. It was then that Henry Burns
(07:17):
was arrested for the murder of hiswife. Henry was transported to the Lake
County Jail in Painesville, where hewas interrogated in a most aggressive way,
to say the least, for fiftysix straight hours. For much of the
interview, Henry was forced to lookat photos of his wife's battered body while
(07:42):
the Lake County sheriff and deputies screamedat him by the time the questioning was
over, Henry is said to havebeen cowering in his jail cell, simply
repeating I didn't do it, overand over and over. After the initial
questioning, Henry was taken to themorgue to look at his wife's body in
(08:05):
person. Gruesome photographs were posted inhis jail cell. At night, he
would be woken up by deputies screamingat him and making other loud noises.
After a couple days of this torture, it was clear that Henry was not
going to confess, and he wasfinally allowed to sleep. Investigators also knew
(08:26):
that, even though this was ina time where we still didn't have Miranda
warnings, any confession that could getout of Henry at this point would likely
not hold up in court, consideringthe abuse that he went through. The
News of Hazel's murder and Henry's arrestspread like wildfire throughout Lake County. Curious
local residents started showing up at thecounty jail to catch a glimpse of Henry,
(08:50):
but sheriff or a Spink put aquick stop to that. He lashed
out, saying that Henry had beenthrough enough and would not be displayed like
a zoo animal. One week afterthe murder of Hazel Burns, it was
clear that the investigation of her murderhad not gone well up to that point.
(09:11):
Although the murderer left lots of evidencelying around in the woods, sheriff's
deputies had failed to locate much ofit. They also didn't search the clothes
that Henry had come to jail in, not noticing that he had a knife
and two shotgun shells in his pockets. Police did find a bloody raincoat button
(09:35):
in the area where Hazel's body hadbeen buried, but they didn't find the
rest of the coat. Fortunately forinvestigators, a group of boys did stumble
upon the raincoat while playing in adump about four miles from the murder scene.
When it comes to searching the crimescene, however, police were substantially
(09:58):
outnumbered by curious on It was estimatedthat fifteen thousand people stopped by the scene
to have a look, having beenenthralled by what newspapers were calling the mentor
Marsh murder. One of these onlookerspoked around the shallow grave where Hazel's body
(10:20):
had been found. What we calla grave was actually a small pit with
a fair amount of water in it, and this curious onlooker took a long
stick and started poking around in thewater. He must have been a little
more thorough or maybe luckier, thanthe Shaff's deputies were, because he actually
came across a gun in the grave. The gun found in the grave had
(10:48):
two unfired bullets in it, butthey were both nicked by the hammer.
This lined up with the theory policehad been going with that the killer first
tried to shoot Hayes Hazel, butthe gun mal functioned and he ended up
using it to bludgeon her to deathinstead. That turned out to not be
the only significant evidence found in thearea, though. Also uncovered in the
(11:13):
area were a blood stained axe,Henry Burns's driver's license, a photo of
Hazel, and a blood stained handkerchief. It's as if the killer wanted to
be found. But wait, there'smore. After Henry was arrested, police
(11:35):
searched his car in Cleveland, butwaited five days until doing so. This
left plenty of time for evidence tobe destroyed or lost. It turns out,
though, that the car still hadplenty of evidence in it. In
fact, Henry's car had about onehundred separate blood stains in it, some
(11:56):
with fingerprints visible in them. Therewas blood on the steering wheel, the
seats, the bumper, the doors, and other areas on both the inside
and the outside of the vehicle.And this was all just at Henry's house
and car in Cleveland. Remember,Henry and Hazel had their summer cottage and
(12:18):
mentor, which police searched next.At the cottage, they discovered a bloody
flashlight in the kitchen and a fiftycount box of thirty two caliber bullets.
Only three bullets were missing from thebox, with three bullets of the same
caliber having been found at the murdersite. As the physical evidence against Henry
(12:46):
mounted up, a string of witnessescame forward to confirm that Henry and Hazel
had been in a very toxic marriage. Henry had actually been married twice before,
with his first wife having died andthe second marriage ending in divorce.
Hazel had also been married once before, having had her first husband at the
(13:11):
age of fourteen. That marriage endedwhen Hazel's husband turned out to be abusive.
The marriage to Henry seemed to havestarted off okay, but within a
couple of years, Henry was spendingmost of his time at the Mentor Cottage,
while Hazel usually stayed in the LorraineAvenue apartment intended to the popcorn stand.
(13:33):
Hazel did come out to Mentor andvisit Henry on occasion, although she
told friends that she was frightened ofhim. The weekend, right before Hazel's
murder, she had made one ofthose trips to visit Henry at the Mentor
Cottage. She arrived with a couplefriends, Joseph Tomato and his wife.
(13:58):
That Sunday, the friends over atthe Mentor Cottage, Hazel confronted Henry about
a woman with whom she accused Henryof having an affair. The argument got
fairly heated, so heated, infact, that Joseph saw Henry reach for
a pistol that he was known tokeep under his pillow. While reaching for
(14:20):
the pistol, Joseph told his friend, I wouldn't do anything. I'd regret
later. It didn't matter, though, as the pistol was not there.
This enraged Henry even further, knowingthat Hazel had taken the pistol from its
usual hiding spot. In time,things finally cooled down a bit that night,
(14:46):
but the next morning, Hazel wentover to that young woman's house to
confront her. When reaching the house, the woman told Hazel that she and
Henry were nothing more than friends,and after argum doing some more that day,
Hazel drove back to her Cleveland homewith Missus Demato after giving Henry's pistol
(15:07):
back to him. That was thelast time anyone would see Hazel alive.
The murder trial of Henry Burns beganon February twenty sixth, nineteen twenty three,
(15:28):
in Painesville, Ohio, near Mentor. The evidence in the trial was
almost entirely circumstantial, but there wasplenty of it. The Burns marriage was
known to be toxic, to saythe least, so Henry had motive.
He also had opportunity and means.The likely murder weapon had been found,
(15:50):
along with loads of bloody evidence aroundthe crime scene. As the trial went
on, Henry seemed to be bored, staring out the window while the proceedings
took place. He did, however, dress very nicely every day, and
the courtroom was packed mainly with womenwho wanted to catch a glimpse of the
so called wife killer. Prosecutors arguedthat Henry's murder of Hazel was well planned
(16:18):
and carried out mostly according to plan, although very sloppily. This is important
because premeditation meant Henry could be foundguilty of first degree murder and first degree
murder carried a sentence of death byelectric chair at that time in Ohio.
(16:40):
At first, it looked like Henrymaybe in for a very lengthy trial.
A couple weeks into the trial,however, on March fifth, nineteen twenty
three, Henry's attorneys stood before thejudge and advised that their client had agreed
to plead guilty to second degree murder. The Lake County prosecutor accepted the plea
agreement, and Judge Reynolds immediately sentencedHenry Burns to life in prison. His
(17:07):
sentence also included two days per monthin solitary confinement and three days a week
doing hard labor. Judge Reynolds askedHenry if he had anything to say at
the sentencing, but Henry replied withnot a word, your honor. Not
surprisingly, the public was disappointed withthe plea bargain. After all, it
(17:30):
took away their opportunity to hear allthe gory details come out in the trial.
They were also disappointed In the foeconfession that Henry gave to the sheriff
on the way to prison, heessentially made up a half cocked story about
Hazel grabbing Henry's pistol and then havingto beat her off him in self defense.
(17:52):
Of course, Hazel was not aroundto dispute his ridiculous claims, but
it seems unlikely that many people believedhenry story. The body of Hazel Burns
was brought to her hometown of Zanesville, Ohio, on the night of Friday,
October twenty seventh, nineteen twenty two, and she was laid to rest
(18:15):
two days later. Her remains areburied at Greenwood Cemetery in Zanesville. She
was buried next to the graves ofher parents. Before I let you go,
I wanted to give you a quickstreaming recommendation. I've been watching Law
and Order Toronto and it is verywell done. If you like the different
(18:41):
Law and Order series, I'm sureyou'll love this one. Also, it's
got some familiar faces in it.Kathleen Monroe, who played Annabelle on a
few episodes of Republic of Doyle.It's one of the main characters. Also
Karen Robinson, who played Ronnie inShit's Creek. He's also on there.
(19:03):
Definitely check it out if you can, although I'm not sure if it's streaming
anywhere officially outside of Canada yet.I know it's on City TV in Canada,
but I'm sure it will be availableon some of the streaming services soon
if it's not already. And thatis it for this episode of Great Lakes
True Crime. You can say hito us on Facebook and Twitter just search
(19:27):
for Great Lakes True Crime. Youcan also check out the show notes for
sources and more information. Please sendany thoughts or case suggestions to Great Lakes
Truecrime at gmail dot com, andif you like the show, please give
us a positive review that really helpsus out for Great Lakes True Crime.
(19:48):
This has been Steve, your hostand producer. Thanks for listening. Buys
into Complicating, totting every protect thepeople, the attic content, contempt,
(20:22):
the attitut to continued contact the problem
In June nineteen twenty two, HazelBurns and her husband, Henry Burns,
both took a weekend trip from theirhome in Cleveland, Ohio, to their
summer home in Mentor, Ohio.While there, the two fought bitterly,
with Hazel accusing Henry of cavorting witha local woman behind her back. The
(00:21):
following morning, Hazel went to thewoman's house to confront her, despite Henry's
insistence that he had done nothing wrong. That was the last day Hazel Burns
would be seen alive from the southshore of Lake Erie. This is Great
Lake's true crime. At nearly sevenhundred acres in size, Mentor Marsh is
(01:41):
one of the largest natural marshes remainingalong the Lake Erie shoreline, and it's
an important breeding and nursery area forthe many fish that call Lake Erie home.
The marsh has been designated as aNational Natural Landmark by the National Park
Service since nineteen sixty six, asit is one of the most species rich
(02:02):
sites on the Great Lakes shoreline.It has also been designated as an Important
Birding Area by the National Audubon Society. The marsh is located in Lake County,
about thirty miles east of the cityof Cleveland. For regular listeners of
the show, you may recall thatthis is not our first visit to Lake
(02:23):
County. Episode forty eight, TheGhost Cat of Fairport Harbor, took place
in Lake County, as did episodetwo The Kurtland Cult Killings. On October
twenty fifth, nineteen twenty two,two women sat in a car parked on
(02:44):
Blackbrook Road in Painesville, Ohio,just outside what was known as the B
and O Woods. The woods satadjacent to Mentor marsh and the two women
had come to the woods searching forchestnuts. While still in the however,
they saw a man holding up anempty basket while he walked nervously out of
(03:06):
the woods. He came right upto them and blurted out, there were
no nuts in those woods. Imight as well stop hunting. He then
hurried into a car and quickly droveoff. The women thought the man was
acting very oddly, and so muchso, in fact, that they wrote
down his license plate number four fivethree four six five. As if that
(03:31):
wasn't strange enough, The women nextsaw two dentists, DC. Cornell and
W. R. Beady running outof those same woods. While back in
the woods hunting. Apparently, themen came upon a grizzly pool of blood
on the ground. Right after seeingthe blood, the two dentists found a
(03:52):
blue felt hat, a pair ofglasses, and an unspent twenty two caliber
cartridge on the floor of the woods. All of the items were covered in
blood. The two men spoke withthe women briefly and then went to the
Lake County Sheriff's office to report whatthey had found. Two Sheriff's deputies,
(04:15):
Edward Graves and Edward Resmussen, whowent by big Ed presumably to distinguish him
from the other mort Domineved, arrivedon scene with Lake County Prosecutor Ralph Ostrander
and several other investigators. They quicklydiscovered more bloody items in the woods,
a stocking, black shoes, furcoat, and a blue skirt. After
(04:41):
discovering those items, they uncovered thebody of a deceased woman in a shallow
grave. The body had been placedon its side, with limbs pushed tightly
together, as if someone had triedto conceal the entire body in the grave.
Without going into dee details, itwas obvious to the officers that the
(05:02):
women had been badly beaten, andmost of her clothing had been removed.
A trail of blood could be seenfor about one hundred and seventy five feet
to the nearest road. Some jewelrywas found nearby. Later, an autopsy
would show that the woman had beenburied while likely unconscious but still alive.
(05:26):
This was about as brutal a murderas can be imagined. The two sheriff's
deputies did not recognize the woman's remains, but luckily those two concerned women in
the parking lot had jotted down thatlicense plate number. The license plate was
tracked down and found to have beenregistered to a man named Henry Burns,
(05:47):
who lived at four to one fiveto two Lorraine Avenue on the near west
side of Cleveland. Police obviously wantedto talk to Henry about their findings,
and roadblocks were set up in theCleveland area near his home. Police also
went directly to Henry's home looking forhim, only to find it empty.
(06:12):
Local police were well acquainted with HenryBurns, however, and only a couple
days later he was picked up atthe popcorn stand that he operated on West
twenty fifth Street, across from Cleveland'sfamous West side market. While interviewing Henry,
investigators showed him the bloody clothing andjewelry that was discovered near Mentor Marsh.
(06:33):
They also gave Henry the news thatHazel had been beaten to death.
His reaction to the news was verysurprising. What was surprising about Henry's reaction
is that he showed no surprise.In fact, he really had no reaction
at all. The only thing hesaid in response was a claim that he
(06:55):
had last seen her the previous dayat the popcorn stand Doom, that she
had gone to stay with friends orrelatives since that time. Police noticed that
Henry's hands were injured and bandaged.When asked why, he was evasive and
could not provide a reasonable explanation forthat. It was then that Henry Burns
(07:17):
was arrested for the murder of hiswife. Henry was transported to the Lake
County Jail in Painesville, where hewas interrogated in a most aggressive way,
to say the least, for fiftysix straight hours. For much of the
interview, Henry was forced to lookat photos of his wife's battered body while
(07:42):
the Lake County sheriff and deputies screamedat him by the time the questioning was
over, Henry is said to havebeen cowering in his jail cell, simply
repeating I didn't do it, overand over and over. After the initial
questioning, Henry was taken to themorgue to look at his wife's body in
(08:05):
person. Gruesome photographs were posted inhis jail cell. At night, he
would be woken up by deputies screamingat him and making other loud noises.
After a couple days of this torture, it was clear that Henry was not
going to confess, and he wasfinally allowed to sleep. Investigators also knew
(08:26):
that, even though this was ina time where we still didn't have Miranda
warnings, any confession that could getout of Henry at this point would likely
not hold up in court, consideringthe abuse that he went through. The
News of Hazel's murder and Henry's arrestspread like wildfire throughout Lake County. Curious
local residents started showing up at thecounty jail to catch a glimpse of Henry,
(08:50):
but sheriff or a Spink put aquick stop to that. He lashed
out, saying that Henry had beenthrough enough and would not be displayed like
a zoo animal. One week afterthe murder of Hazel Burns, it was
clear that the investigation of her murderhad not gone well up to that point.
(09:11):
Although the murderer left lots of evidencelying around in the woods, sheriff's
deputies had failed to locate much ofit. They also didn't search the clothes
that Henry had come to jail in, not noticing that he had a knife
and two shotgun shells in his pockets. Police did find a bloody raincoat button
(09:35):
in the area where Hazel's body hadbeen buried, but they didn't find the
rest of the coat. Fortunately forinvestigators, a group of boys did stumble
upon the raincoat while playing in adump about four miles from the murder scene.
When it comes to searching the crimescene, however, police were substantially
(09:58):
outnumbered by curious on It was estimatedthat fifteen thousand people stopped by the scene
to have a look, having beenenthralled by what newspapers were calling the mentor
Marsh murder. One of these onlookerspoked around the shallow grave where Hazel's body
(10:20):
had been found. What we calla grave was actually a small pit with
a fair amount of water in it, and this curious onlooker took a long
stick and started poking around in thewater. He must have been a little
more thorough or maybe luckier, thanthe Shaff's deputies were, because he actually
came across a gun in the grave. The gun found in the grave had
(10:48):
two unfired bullets in it, butthey were both nicked by the hammer.
This lined up with the theory policehad been going with that the killer first
tried to shoot Hayes Hazel, butthe gun mal functioned and he ended up
using it to bludgeon her to deathinstead. That turned out to not be
the only significant evidence found in thearea, though. Also uncovered in the
(11:13):
area were a blood stained axe,Henry Burns's driver's license, a photo of
Hazel, and a blood stained handkerchief. It's as if the killer wanted to
be found. But wait, there'smore. After Henry was arrested, police
(11:35):
searched his car in Cleveland, butwaited five days until doing so. This
left plenty of time for evidence tobe destroyed or lost. It turns out,
though, that the car still hadplenty of evidence in it. In
fact, Henry's car had about onehundred separate blood stains in it, some
(11:56):
with fingerprints visible in them. Therewas blood on the steering wheel, the
seats, the bumper, the doors, and other areas on both the inside
and the outside of the vehicle.And this was all just at Henry's house
and car in Cleveland. Remember,Henry and Hazel had their summer cottage and
(12:18):
mentor, which police searched next.At the cottage, they discovered a bloody
flashlight in the kitchen and a fiftycount box of thirty two caliber bullets.
Only three bullets were missing from thebox, with three bullets of the same
caliber having been found at the murdersite. As the physical evidence against Henry
(12:46):
mounted up, a string of witnessescame forward to confirm that Henry and Hazel
had been in a very toxic marriage. Henry had actually been married twice before,
with his first wife having died andthe second marriage ending in divorce.
Hazel had also been married once before, having had her first husband at the
(13:11):
age of fourteen. That marriage endedwhen Hazel's husband turned out to be abusive.
The marriage to Henry seemed to havestarted off okay, but within a
couple of years, Henry was spendingmost of his time at the Mentor Cottage,
while Hazel usually stayed in the LorraineAvenue apartment intended to the popcorn stand.
(13:33):
Hazel did come out to Mentor andvisit Henry on occasion, although she
told friends that she was frightened ofhim. The weekend, right before Hazel's
murder, she had made one ofthose trips to visit Henry at the Mentor
Cottage. She arrived with a couplefriends, Joseph Tomato and his wife.
(13:58):
That Sunday, the friends over atthe Mentor Cottage, Hazel confronted Henry about
a woman with whom she accused Henryof having an affair. The argument got
fairly heated, so heated, infact, that Joseph saw Henry reach for
a pistol that he was known tokeep under his pillow. While reaching for
(14:20):
the pistol, Joseph told his friend, I wouldn't do anything. I'd regret
later. It didn't matter, though, as the pistol was not there.
This enraged Henry even further, knowingthat Hazel had taken the pistol from its
usual hiding spot. In time,things finally cooled down a bit that night,
(14:46):
but the next morning, Hazel wentover to that young woman's house to
confront her. When reaching the house, the woman told Hazel that she and
Henry were nothing more than friends,and after argum doing some more that day,
Hazel drove back to her Cleveland homewith Missus Demato after giving Henry's pistol
(15:07):
back to him. That was thelast time anyone would see Hazel alive.
The murder trial of Henry Burns beganon February twenty sixth, nineteen twenty three,
(15:28):
in Painesville, Ohio, near Mentor. The evidence in the trial was
almost entirely circumstantial, but there wasplenty of it. The Burns marriage was
known to be toxic, to saythe least, so Henry had motive.
He also had opportunity and means.The likely murder weapon had been found,
(15:50):
along with loads of bloody evidence aroundthe crime scene. As the trial went
on, Henry seemed to be bored, staring out the window while the proceedings
took place. He did, however, dress very nicely every day, and
the courtroom was packed mainly with womenwho wanted to catch a glimpse of the
so called wife killer. Prosecutors arguedthat Henry's murder of Hazel was well planned
(16:18):
and carried out mostly according to plan, although very sloppily. This is important
because premeditation meant Henry could be foundguilty of first degree murder and first degree
murder carried a sentence of death byelectric chair at that time in Ohio.
(16:40):
At first, it looked like Henrymaybe in for a very lengthy trial.
A couple weeks into the trial,however, on March fifth, nineteen twenty
three, Henry's attorneys stood before thejudge and advised that their client had agreed
to plead guilty to second degree murder. The Lake County prosecutor accepted the plea
agreement, and Judge Reynolds immediately sentencedHenry Burns to life in prison. His
(17:07):
sentence also included two days per monthin solitary confinement and three days a week
doing hard labor. Judge Reynolds askedHenry if he had anything to say at
the sentencing, but Henry replied withnot a word, your honor. Not
surprisingly, the public was disappointed withthe plea bargain. After all, it
(17:30):
took away their opportunity to hear allthe gory details come out in the trial.
They were also disappointed In the foeconfession that Henry gave to the sheriff
on the way to prison, heessentially made up a half cocked story about
Hazel grabbing Henry's pistol and then havingto beat her off him in self defense.
(17:52):
Of course, Hazel was not aroundto dispute his ridiculous claims, but
it seems unlikely that many people believedhenry story. The body of Hazel Burns
was brought to her hometown of Zanesville, Ohio, on the night of Friday,
October twenty seventh, nineteen twenty two, and she was laid to rest
(18:15):
two days later. Her remains areburied at Greenwood Cemetery in Zanesville. She
was buried next to the graves ofher parents. Before I let you go,
I wanted to give you a quickstreaming recommendation. I've been watching Law
and Order Toronto and it is verywell done. If you like the different
(18:41):
Law and Order series, I'm sureyou'll love this one. Also, it's
got some familiar faces in it.Kathleen Monroe, who played Annabelle on a
few episodes of Republic of Doyle.It's one of the main characters. Also
Karen Robinson, who played Ronnie inShit's Creek. He's also on there.
(19:03):
Definitely check it out if you can, although I'm not sure if it's streaming
anywhere officially outside of Canada yet.I know it's on City TV in Canada,
but I'm sure it will be availableon some of the streaming services soon
if it's not already. And thatis it for this episode of Great Lakes
True Crime. You can say hito us on Facebook and Twitter just search
(19:27):
for Great Lakes True Crime. Youcan also check out the show notes for
sources and more information. Please sendany thoughts or case suggestions to Great Lakes
Truecrime at gmail dot com, andif you like the show, please give
us a positive review that really helpsus out for Great Lakes True Crime.
(19:48):
This has been Steve, your hostand producer. Thanks for listening. Buys
into Complicating, totting every protect thepeople, the attic content, contempt,
(20:22):
the attitut to continued contact the problem
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