Latest / Deadly Divas True Crime Podcast / Episode 44: The Greenbrier Ghost
Transcript
- 0:11Hello, all you true crime divas and dudes.
- 0:14I'm Sarah.
- 0:15Welcome back to your favorite true crime podcast, Deadly Divas.
- 0:18And I'm Tina, and if you're new here, welcome.
- 0:21We break down a new true crime case for you every Friday.
- 0:25So don't forget to follow us on TikTok and Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
- 0:29Make sure you don't miss a single case.
- 0:32All right, y'all.
- 0:32Get ready for our second Halloween Spooktacular episode.
- 0:37Sarah is about to tell us all the story of the Greenbrier Ghost, which is referred to as the only known case in which testimony from a ghost helped convict a murderer That's right, we are here for ghost stories.
- 0:52Ooh.
- 0:54It even says that on a historical marker in Greenbrier County in West Virginia, and I feel like we should be around a campfire in the dark with a flashlight under my chin.
- 1:04Right?
- 1:04Spooky vibes.
- 1:06Now, this case does involve severe domestic violence, so please listen at your own discretion.
- 1:13So our story starts with Elva Zona Heaster, who was born in 1876, and she went by her middle name, Zona.
- 1:23Love the name.
- 1:24I love that name, and I feel like if somebody named that kid now, it would be considered all hippie and new age.
- 1:29Definitely, yeah.
- 1:31But this is the 1800s.
- 1:31Mm-hmm.
- 1:32She was born into a farming family and was the only daughter of eight children.
- 1:38Oof.
- 1:38So she was really close to her mother, Mary.
- 1:40Oh.
- 1:42At 16 years old, Zona met a boy named George Waldridge, and they began dating, and unfortunately, Zona became pregnant, though sadly, her baby passed away at birth.
- 1:53Oh, man.
- 1:54That's a lot for a 16-year-old to handle.
- 1:55Yeah.
- 1:57George soon moved on and was married to another within a year of the baby's birth and passing.
- 2:02Zona was devastated from both losses, and she mourned for quite some time.
- 2:06Eventually she started to go back out into society, and she met another man.
- 2:11He was the new village blacksmith.
- 2:14Edward Trout Shue.
- 2:16What a name, y'all.
- 2:18What a name.
- 2:19Good old Eddie.
- 2:20She was still just a teenager, and he was 32.
- 2:23Edward was known as a charmer, an outgoing sort of guy with a magnetic personality whom everybody liked, except Mary.
- 2:31Mothers know best.
- 2:32They do.
- 2:33Zona's mom immediately disliked him.
- 2:36She saw through the charisma that everyone else was falling for, and she had him tagged as an egomaniac with an inappropriate eye for young girls, which I'm kinda not surprised.
- 2:47If I had a 16-year-old daughter and there was a 32-year-old man lusting after her, I don't think I would find that very appropriate either.
- 2:53Mm-mm.
- 2:54She did not like him at all, and as a result, Zona was banned from seeing him.
- 3:00We all know how that goes.
- 3:01Mm-hmm.
- 3:02Zona continued to see Edward, and he convinced her to run away and marry him.
- 3:07Wow.
- 3:08But unfortunately, her parents' gut instinct had been correct.
- 3:13No shocker there.
- 3:14Edward was not even Edward.
- 3:16His real name was Aramis Stribbling Trout Shue It's a mouthful You thought the first name was bad Right So he was actually living under a different name due to his past.
- 3:30His first wife, named Alice, and they had a child together, Gertrude, he treated both of them very badly.
- 3:39He was constantly unfaithful until finally, when Gertrude was almost two, he threw Alice and Gertrude onto the street and wanted nothing to do with them.
- 3:49He was just like,"Get out.
- 3:50You don't live here anymore.
- 3:51See you.
- 3:51Bye." Horrible man.
- 3:53He did spend some time in prison after that marriage for theft, and Alice filed for divorce on the grounds of abandonment.
- 4:00After he got out of prison, Trout, as he was known, married Lucy Tritt.
- 4:06However, just eight months into the marriage, Lucy died due to an unfortunate accident when Trout was repairing the roof and accidentally hit her in the head with a brick.
- 4:19How do you accidentally hit somebody in the head with a fucking brick?
- 4:22So apparently he was up on the roof, and he was like,"Yo, Alice, I'm hungry.
- 4:26Bring me a sandwich." And when she was on her way to bring him something to eat, he was throwing bricks down off the roof, as trash, I guess, and accidentally one smacked her in the noggin, and bye-bye Lucy.
- 4:38Okay.
- 4:39I'm beginning to think he's suspicious, but continue.
- 4:42Yeah, thank you.
- 4:43Great.
- 4:43Well, an investigation was done, as it did seem suspicious, but no proof was ever found that it was intentional, so no charges were filed.
- 4:51I guess there's no witness, right?
- 4:53I mean, she's dead.
- 4:54She can't say,"He threw it at me." And he's the only one there, and he's saying,"Well, look, I threw down a whole ton of bricks.
- 5:00Who knew that this one was gonna hit her when I yelled for my sandwich?" Right.
- 5:03So Zona was actually his third wife, and when they married, Zona was still just 18.
- 5:08She had no idea about his previous marriages, and as soon as they were married, Trout showed what he was really like as a husband.
- 5:16And her family had disowned her due to the marriage.
- 5:18She was kind of stuck.
- 5:20Wow.
- 5:21After they had been married three months, Zona started to feel like she might be pregnant, and I'm saying that that probably wasn't very desirable for good old Trouty boy because he didn't want the last kid around, did he?
- 5:34Right.
- 5:35So on January 23rd, 1897, Trout asked a local 11-year-old boy, who often ran errands for people, to go check on Zona while he was at work because she hadn't been feeling well.
- 5:47The boy's name was Anderson Jones, known as Andy, and he had committed to other errands that day ahead of this one, so he said,"Sure, but I'll have to do it later." But after Trout came back two more times to ask him to go and started getting angry that he hadn't done it yet, he did as he was asked, and he went to check on Zona But as soon as he arrived at the house, he had a weird feeling on arrival.
- 6:12And as he walked in, he saw a trail of blood leading into the dining room, where he found the cold, dead body of Zona.
- 6:22Oh, no.
- 6:24Scary for a child.
- 6:25Right?
- 6:26Andy was so scared, he ran all the way home and told his mom, who immediately went to get Trout.
- 6:33Now, Trout returned to the home, saw Zona on the floor, starts to cry hysterically, and told Andy,"Go run into the town and get the doctor." And when Angie returned with the doctor, Trout had moved the body from the dining room upstairs to the bedroom, washed it, dressed it in a high neck dress, and put a veil over the face.
- 6:55I need five red flag alerts stat.
- 6:59We do need a button that we press and red flag alert- We do flashes in the corner of the room just for our benefit.
- 7:06Now, the doctor ruled that Zona had most likely died of what they called back then, the everlasting faint.
- 7:12Generally, it was women, I think it was usually during their period, but they would have a heart attack or anemia or something unexplained that doctors didn't know about back then.
- 7:22So it was the everlasting faint.
- 7:25Like, you fainted forever.
- 7:27What the fuck?
- 7:27It does make it sound very feminine, doesn't it?
- 7:29Yeah, it does.
- 7:31But what the fuck?
- 7:31Like- Oh, she died of the everlasting faint she died because she had her period.
- 7:36Like, give me a fucking break, y'all.
- 7:37Right.
- 7:38Now, Trout wouldn't let him inspect the body, so this is really the best guess he could come up with.
- 7:43Her body was returned to her family, but on the day of the burial, Trout would also not allow anyone near Zona's body, no one was getting near Zona.
- 7:53He insisted on being the main person to prepare the body for burial, and stayed beside her during the entire funeral procession.
- 8:02He insisted on having her head propped up with material on either side of her neck to hold it straight, and a scarf around her neck, insisting this was her favorite scarf that she wanted to be buried with.
- 8:14Because at 18, that's obviously a high priority to be like,"Hey, if anything ever happens to me, this scarf means more to me than anything, and make sure I'm wearing it," right?
- 8:24Because that's what every 18-year-old thinks.
- 8:27Yeah.
- 8:27I, am beginning to think there's something suspicious afoot.
- 8:31I think there's something fishy about Trout.
- 8:33All right.
- 8:35And her family were like,"We have no idea what you're talking about.
- 8:39She's never had a favorite scarf in her life." Right.
- 8:41When Mary went to kiss her daughter's cheek for the last time, she removed the sheet that was propping up the head, and she did notice that her daughter's head did slightly move.
- 8:50She wasn't alarmed at the time, though,'cause it just seemed that, you know, she'd dislodged something and something moved.
- 8:56When she got home, she washed the sheet and the water ran pink.
- 9:00Oh.
- 9:01On a white sheet.
- 9:03Interesting, right?
- 9:04She then started to have some really weird dreams, or they may have been visions, she wasn't sure.
- 9:12But in the first one, she woke to see a figure standing by her and realized that it was the figure of her dead daughter, Zona.
- 9:21And when she tried to reach out to her, Zona disappeared.
- 9:25Mm.
- 9:26So Mary started to pray that her daughter would visit her again and let her know what had happened to cause the death.
- 9:33And on the second night, her prayers were answered when Zona appeared to her again to let her know that she would be telling her everything to do with her death over a third and fourth visit.
- 9:45I'd be like,"Girl, you're here now.
- 9:48Spill the beans." Exactly.
- 9:49Tell me what I need to do so that I can get this fucker.
- 9:54So Zona told her mother the story of what happened over those next couple of nights.
- 9:59She told her mother, and I'm gonna quote what her mother said on the stand when this went in front of a jury"He came that night from the shop and seemed angry.
- 10:10I told him supper was ready, and he began to chide me because I had prepared no meat.
- 10:16I replied, there was plenty, bread and butter, applesauce, preserves, and other things that made a good supper.
- 10:24He flew into a rage, got up, came toward me.
- 10:27He seized each side of my head with his hands, and by a sudden wrench, dislocated my neck." And that was the quote.
- 10:35Mary had also never been to Zona's house with Shrout.
- 10:38If you remember, they were estranged, and after the wedding, they moved into their house, and her parents had never visited them there.
- 10:45But she said in the vision that her daughter described the house, and this is a second quote from Mary on the stand Then my daughter went on to describe the home where she lived and the surroundings in the neighborhood so that it was fixed in my mind as a reality.
- 11:01When I later described it for people living there, they told me they could not have been more accurate themselves.
- 11:08And she told me I could look back of Aunt Martha Jones in the meadow in a rocky place, and that I could look in the cellar behind a loose plank.
- 11:18Her house was a square log house hewed right up to the square, and she said for me to look at the right-hand side of the door as you go in, and in the right-hand corner, I saw the place exactly as she told me, and I saw blood there as she told me.
- 11:34Mary was able to also describe the dress that Zona had been wearing when she was murdered, having never seen it before, and as we know, Trout had changed her pretty quick before the doctor came, so really the only person that knew what dress Zona was wearing that day was Zona, Trout, and Andy.
- 11:52Mary Shares the content of the visions with others, who initially believe them to be the result of a mother's heartbreak, and I get that.
- 11:59Aw.
- 12:00She also shares them with the rest of her family, and no one's quite sure, is she just grieving?
- 12:06Is she elderly?
- 12:08Is she dreaming?
- 12:09However, she does manage to convince her brother-in-law, John Heaster, that there might be something to these visions, and he decides to go and visit Trout and question him about it And this conversation only convinces him more that there may have been some foul play.
- 12:26So he continues on to Andy's house to question him about the day the body was found.
- 12:31Armed with all this information, Mary and her brother-in-law, John, go to the prosecutor, who contacts the doctor, who confirms that he was not actually able to examine the body properly, so his cause of death was actually an assumption.
- 12:46this was crazy to me.
- 12:48Like, how can you just make an assumption and not do an actual investigation?
- 12:53I mean, I understand he was, like, unwilling, you know?
- 12:56Old Trout was like,"No, you cannot.
- 12:58I'm so distraught.
- 12:59Don't touch her." But, like, in today's world, that's not gonna happen.
- 13:01In today's world, that would never happen, and you'd also have a specialist.
- 13:05Remember, this doctor, probably birthed the lambs, too.
- 13:08Right.
- 13:08You know what I'm saying?
- 13:09He probably did, yeah.
- 13:09He did everything for everybody.
- 13:11Yeah.
- 13:11The prosecutor, on further investigation, realizes that Trout's previous wife also died after less than a year of marriage, and decides that the body of Zona needs to be exhumed and an autopsy needs to be done.
- 13:24They inform Trout of this, and he changes his story to,"She fell down the stairs." Come on y'all.
- 13:32Come on.
- 13:33And that's even more suspicious, because he was at work.
- 13:35How would he even know?
- 13:36Right.
- 13:37But seems like maybe he knows they're gonna find a broken neck.
- 13:40Mm-hmm.
- 13:41And you don't get that from the everlasting pain.
- 13:43Mm-mm.
- 13:44Now, when the body is exhumed, it was only about a month after it was buried, and it was in perfect condition, as it had been very cold, and the cold weather had preserved it.
- 13:54Local neighbors were called in to help dig up the coffin, and Trout and poor little old 11-year-old Andy were forced to stay for the entire exhumation and autopsy, which took three days.
- 14:09Uh-uh.
- 14:10I'm sorry, can you write me a note for school?
- 14:12I'm not gonna be in for three days,'cause I have to sit through this autopsy.
- 14:15Literally.
- 14:17Now, the doctor checked for poisons and other methods of murder, and confirmed that Zona had not been pregnant.
- 14:23Eventually, he discovered that her neck had bruises under the scarf.
- 14:26Eventually?
- 14:27So you checked the system for poisons before you took off the scarf and saw the bruises?
- 14:31Did he start at the toes and work his way up?
- 14:33I mean, he seems like he's just not that bright.
- 14:36Like, hello?
- 14:37What?
- 14:38Now, these bruises under her scarf were similar to those that might be caused by hands and fingers around the neck, and her neck was indeed broken in two places.
- 14:49Now, the autopsy reads,"The discovery was made that the neck was broken and the windpipe smashed.
- 14:55On the throat, the marks of fingers, indicating she had been choked." And the neck was dislocated between the second and first vertebrae, and the ligaments were torn and ruptured.
- 15:06The windpipe had been crushed at one point in the front of the neck.
- 15:10It doesn't specifically say it in the autopsy itself, but apparently his best theory was the neck had been stomped on.
- 15:19No.
- 15:21Not stomped on.
- 15:23So her death was now declared a murder, and Trout was arrested.
- 15:27Ugh.
- 15:27Now he, of course, denies it, so it goes to trial.
- 15:31Because, of course, she fell down the stairs while everlasting fainting.
- 15:34Right, and the steps stepped on her neck.
- 15:37Right.
- 15:38While in jail awaiting the trial, Trout spoke to jail mates and reporters about the case, stating that he knew there was no evidence against him, and he fully expected to be found innocent.
- 15:48And he also revealed that it was actually his ambition to wed seven times during his lifetime.
- 15:54That's his ambition in life?
- 15:55That's his ambition, yeah.
- 15:56Not to have seven wives at once, but to have seven wives one after the other.
- 16:00And he'd already got three.
- 16:01I mean, I think that just points more to you being more likely to have disposed of a couple.
- 16:06Right, because you gotta get rid of six to get seven.
- 16:10During the trial, the prosecution did not use the ghostly visions as any kind of evidence.
- 16:15To them, it did not matter how the medical evidence came to be found, just that it did, and that alone proved that Zona had been murdered However, the defense decided to call Mary Hester and question her about the visions in an attempt to make the case look flimsy and unbelievable.
- 16:32Mary told the court what she saw and what the ghostly visions told her.
- 16:36To back up her story, Mary had eight letters from witnesses that she had spoken to before the autopsy, stating that Zona's neck was broken and that she had been strangled by Trout.
- 16:49The judge allowed her testimony to be on the record, but encouraged the jury to base their decision on factual evidence from the autopsy only, which is crazy.
- 16:59You can't un-hear that.
- 17:00It took the jury only one hour to find him guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
- 17:0710 of the 12 jurors had voted for the death penalty, but he did not get it because it was not unanimous, which infuriated the general public, who subsequently formed a lynch mob to take him from the jail and hang him.
- 17:22They actually got as far as meeting at 10:00 PM one night with a plan to go to the jail, but one of them decided against it at the last minute, headed off to the sheriff, who promptly came and disbanded the effort.
- 17:32A few years later, Trout died in prison of influenza and was buried at the prison when no one claimed his body.
- 17:40This fact to me was just really telling of what kind of person he must have been.
- 17:46I mean, usually even if you're a scumbag, like even if you're a murderer or whatever, you've committed the most heinous acts imaginable, somebody like your mom especially, like your mom's gonna come and claim your body and make sure you get buried.
- 17:58That says something.
- 17:58Yeah.
- 17:59Yeah.
- 17:59That's crazy.
- 17:59Nobody wanted his ass.
- 18:01Mary Hester never saw the ghostly apparition of her daughter again.
- 18:05The State of West Virginia has erected a state historical marker near where Zona Shue is buried, and it reads,"Interred in nearby cemetery is Zona Heaster Shue.
- 18:18Her death in 1897 was presumed natural until her spirit appeared to her mother to describe how she was killed by her husband, Edward.
- 18:26Autopsy on the exhumed body verified the apparition's account.
- 18:30Edward, found guilty of murder, was sentenced to the state prison.
- 18:34Only known case in which testimony from a ghost helped convict a murderer." Wow.
- 18:41And that is our ghost story- Mm for our spooktacular October.
- 18:46So what do you think?
- 18:47Do you think that she really saw a ghost, or do you think there's some other explanation?
- 18:52I'm skeptical about ghosts and things like that.
- 18:54Mm-hmm.
- 18:54I do think that her mother, maybe while sleeping, her subconscious put two and two together and said,"I don't believe that she just fell over and died, and I'm suspicious of the fact that Edward wouldn't let the doctor examine her.
- 19:11I'm suspicious of the fact that he wouldn't let anybody near the body.
- 19:15I'm suspicious of the fact that he put her in a high neck dress.
- 19:18I'm suspicious of this favorite scarf that has to be on there." And maybe it just didn't take too much for her subconscious to put two and two together and say,"Something fishy is going on with Trout, and why won't he let anybody near her neck?" And maybe in her mental state, she's an older person, she's grieving, that came to her as her daughter in a dream saying,"Yeah, look at my neck." Yeah, and all of that is, of course, compounded with the fact that she just didn't like him from the get-go.
- 19:50No.
- 19:50She had the alarm bells going and the mom instinct.
- 19:53Mm-hmm.
- 19:54I think that anything is possible I don't necessarily, quote-unquote, believe in ghosts, but I've had things happen in my life that I cannot explain, and I think we're gonna talk about that on an episode and give two- Right, we were.
- 20:08Mm-hmm a couple of spooky stories.
- 20:08But, um, I don't know.
- 20:10I- It doesn't explain how she knew about the dress.
- 20:13It doesn't explain how she could describe the house her daughter lived in when she'd never been there.
- 20:17I think the only way that she could have known that, the only logical reason, is if the little boy, Anderson, had told her, and that is a possibility.
- 20:25Possible.
- 20:25Mm-hmm.
- 20:25Yeah.
- 20:26We'll never know, because this happened so long ago, but I think that is literally the only way that she could have known.
- 20:32And if that didn't happen, then it's ghosts.
- 20:35That's the only other option.
- 20:37I mean, the state of Virginia states on a state historical marker that it was a ghost.
- 20:42We need to go see the Greenbrier Ghost site.
- 20:45We will.
- 20:45Yeah.
- 20:46Where, where is it?
- 20:46Is it West Virginia?
- 20:47West Virginia.
- 20:48Maybe we can do, like, a road trip, go there, go to the Lizzie Borden...
- 20:53Bed and Breakfast, go to Salem.
- 20:55All the things.
- 20:56Mm-hmm.
- 20:57And now I wanna go to that little town where they filmed Practical Magic.
- 21:00In England?
- 21:02No.
- 21:02The original one And then they start and finish the new one, and it's a little town in, like, New England or something.
- 21:08I didn't know that was, like, a thing.
- 21:09Yeah, it's a thing.
- 21:10So where is it?
- 21:11You don't know what state?
- 21:12I wanted to say New England, but I could be wrong.
- 21:15I want to go.
- 21:16I've never been to New England, You know where in the first one where she suddenly realizes she's in love with him and she runs down that road to, like, meet him?
- 21:23Yeah.
- 21:23And you can see the water and where their shop is and everything?
- 21:26Yeah.
- 21:26That is a whole, like, set up.
- 21:29Ah, okay.
- 21:29Yeah.
- 21:29So we'll do a whole East Coast top to bottom- type deal.
- 21:33Yeah.
- 21:34Okay.
- 21:35All right I'm not 100% ruling out that this could have been a ghost, y'all.
- 21:38I'm not.
- 21:39Um- There's definitely some things in there that can't be explained.
- 21:42Mm-hmm But I think also mother's intuition is very, very strong and she was close.
- 21:48The only daughter of eight.
- 21:50Yeah.
- 21:51Mm.
- 21:51Sometimes there's weird connections.
- 21:53I'm close to my mom.
- 21:55Her and I sometimes have had the weirdest, like, connections, and we live in two different countries.
- 22:00I have that with my youngest niece.
- 22:03I can't go into detail about it,'cause every scenario is very personal.
- 22:06But, like, it creeps her out because she's like,"How do you just know things?" And I'm like,"I don't know.
- 22:12I just be knowing." The most weird thing that happened in the last few years, so my brother's name is Stuart.
- 22:18Mm-hmm.
- 22:19And he and I are really close.
- 22:21Mm.
- 22:21He's one of those people where I fear that something's gonna happen to him, and it would devastate me.
- 22:25Yeah.
- 22:25So one night I have this dream that Stuart died.
- 22:28Oh, God.
- 22:29And it was very, very real to me.
- 22:32Right.
- 22:33And I wake up, and I start texting him.
- 22:35And I'm like,"Hey, I just need you to tell me you're okay." He's a very busy guy, and he couldn't get back to me.
- 22:40So I call my mom, and I'm like,"I just need you to tell me that Stuart's okay." Uh-huh.
- 22:45Her next-door neighbor, whose name was also Stuart, had passed away.
- 22:48Shut up.
- 22:50so freaky.
- 22:51He passed away, like, a couple of nights before, but she had just been told that night.
- 22:55Right.
- 22:56And she believes that, like, in her brain, she's, thinking,"Oh, my God.
- 23:00I can't believe Stuart's dead,"'cause it was an unexpected passing of a- Right younger person.
- 23:05And she thinks that came in through to me as,"Oh, my God, Stuart's dead." That's crazy.
- 23:10And she was in London, and I was in Atlanta.
- 23:12My brother completely laughed it off as being a coincidence.
- 23:15Of course.
- 23:16But I think women have more of that intuition We definitely do So that's my Greenbrier ghost story.
- 23:23My other spooky October story is definitely a lot more disturbing.
- 23:29Definitely sends chills down my spine.
- 23:32I mean, I live for all things spooky.
- 23:34You know that.
- 23:35I love slasher movies and ghost stories, but those ones about possession, woo, they just really terrify me.
- 23:42So get ready for that one, y'all.
- 23:44But your one will be in between?
- 23:45Yeah.
- 23:46I am gonna have the Ouija board murder.
- 23:49That was one I couldn't wait for.
- 23:50Ouija boards fascinate me.
- 23:52Yeah.
- 23:53That one's wild.
- 23:54All right.
- 23:55Can't wait to record it.
- 23:56All right.
- 23:57We will see you guys next time.
- 23:58We hope you enjoyed the spooktacular episode.
- 24:01Of the Greenbrier ghost.
- 24:04Ooh.
- 24:04Until next time.
- 24:05Be divas.
- 24:06Not deadly.
- 24:07Bye.
- 24:08Bye.