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The Unsolved Murder of Hall and Mills · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck And this is another edition of Stuff you Should
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Know is ongoing low key true crime. Sweet.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been a while, if you.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Like, I'm trying to think of the last one, but yeah,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: I mean clearly it has been if I can't think
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: of the last one, but yeah, I like it every
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: once in a while. I was just kind of add
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: to it. And it's just this kind of thing because
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: they're interesting, especially if you're not looking at them like
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: a total gawker, you know.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Agreed.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: So we're talking today about what I hadn't heard of.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Let me ask you this before we get started. Yeah,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: did you get your idea from People Magazine? No? Because
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: People Magazine ran an article on this very murder on
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: June twenty sixth, twenty twenty five.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Oh really, Yes, Like, where did you get this idea?
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: Well, I know it wasn't People, because you know, I
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: just I didn't read People. I'm not against it. If
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: I'm like, you know, waiting for the doctor or something, Well.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: You're really digging yourself into a hole. Here.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I'll pick up a People magazine. That's fine.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: I'm wondering now if this was a listener suggestion that
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: I need to look up.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: I searched it and I did not really anything about it.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: That's why I was like, holy cow, People magazine. He
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: really got it from there.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: Maybe, I mean sometimes I might go so low as
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: to search for, you know, unsolved crimes or something.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Sure, there's nothing wrong with that. That my ideas well.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: The crazy thing about this is it's I've seen it
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: described as like the first truly sensationalized trial of the
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: century in the United States, or that it was like
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: their first big trial of the century, something like that,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: and I was definitely up there. I've seen it compare
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: with some other ones. Yeah, that came later closely on
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: the heels. But I never heard any of this. I've
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: never heard of any of these people. And yet some
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: other people say, hey, this might have even inspired the
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Great Gatsby in some ways.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I have a feeling that's how it came to me.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: And now I'm wondering if that was the search term
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: that I should have used for listener's suggestion.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Oh Great Gatsby, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't search
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: for that either. Well, well, I have to get to
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: the bottom of this, like a couple of true detectives.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Now, because you feel like we're letting someone down.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we probably are, but we do need to get
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: their name. But I wonder if if this thing is
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: sent post June twenty six, twenty twenty five. Bet they
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: got it from People, Okay, because the People magazine article,
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: like in the headline it said that it inspired the
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Great Gatsby.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I definitely remember. That's what drew my
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: attention to it. But if you're trying to root me
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: out as a People Magazine reader, you're going to fail.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to stop. I'm not going to stop
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: until i'm successful. So just look out, buddy, because you're
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: my crosschairs. Now.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Who knows.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about this crime. In short, there was
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: a reverend, well known reverend in New Brunswick, New Jersey,
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: home of Rutgers, and this reverend was having an affair
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: with one of his church members, a woman named Eleanor Mills.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: The reverend's name was Edward Hall. He was about seven
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: years her senior from what I understand, and one night
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: or one morning, I should say, they turned up murdered,
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: brutally murdered, and it became, like I said, a very
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: sensational story, not just in New Brunswick, not just in
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: nearby New York, but everywhere across the country. I would guess,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: probably out of the country as well. Who knows, how
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: would you find something like that out I.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: Don't know, People magazine probably, yeah, probably in People International.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: So yeah, Ed Hall was in his early forties, forty
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: one years old at the time of his death, and
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: he was a pastor, like you said, at Saint John's Episcopal.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: About twenty miles from where I lived in New Jersey.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: And his wife's name was Francis Hall. She was seven
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: years older than him, interestingly, because I guess his mistress,
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: Eleanor Mills, was seven years younger.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Anything to that, I think it's just a fluke of nature. Yeah,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I think so too. But and this is kind of
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: key here.
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  Speaker 3: She his wife had come from a you know, it
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: seems like a pretty wealthy, well to do, well connected
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: family in the area because he was just a pastor,
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: and you know, they didn't make a lot of dough.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: Yet they lived in a really fancy house they had
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: a chauffeur, they had a staff, they had maids that
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: work there, which will come into play in this story.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: And they had been married about eleven years. His miss Dress,
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: who was also brutally murdered. She was a homemaker, married
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: to a school janitor named James, who also kind of
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: helped take care of the church. They had a couple
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: of kids. She sang in the choir, and this is
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: also key. She acted as sort of a very close
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: personal assistant to the reverend, like very closely assisted him,
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: if you know what I'm saying.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do know what you're saying. So one other
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: thing about Edward Hall and his wife Francis's fortune. He apparently,
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: when he first got to take over the church, the
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: Saint John's Episcopal Church, it was a hostel takeover. He
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: started courting a lovely parishioner, but she didn't really have
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: any money. He dropped her and put his sights on
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Francis Stevens, who would become Francis Hall his wife. And
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: from what I've read, there's not a lot of note,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: or there wasn't a lot of note about Francis Stevens
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: aside from her wealth, and she was wealthy. She shared
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: what would be worth today a forty million dollar fortune
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: between herself and her two other brothers, So she was
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: definitely wealthy, and so in addition to running around on her,
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: he also seemed to just have been after her money.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: And let's not forget he's an episcopal reverend leading an
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: entire church. So that to me, when I put all
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: those things together, I was like, I don't really like
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: this guy.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, fair enough. So it was not a secret
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: among the church. You know, it's kind of one of
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: those things, you know, back in nineteen twenty two where
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: people might it might have been pretty clear and even
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: probably in a modern day church that somebody was having an affair,
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: but you didn't really talk about that kind of thing,
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: and so it was basically an open secret. After you know,
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: the sermons and after Sunday would end, they would spend
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: a lot of time together in his study. Apparently they
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: would leave love notes, and that will come into playing
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: the story for each other with a little secret system
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: where they would put it in a book on his
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: shelf and trade notes that way. Well, do you think
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: it was the Great gatsty just.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: They traveled in time?
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: They did the day that the news broke though, The
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: New York's Time, The New York Times came out and said,
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: and this is how they would have to put this
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: kind of thing back then, they said they had long
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: been friendly.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Right, so yeah, like you said, this is an open secret.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Apparently their spouses knew. James Mills and Francis Hall both
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: seemed to have known about the affair. For one, when
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: they turned up missing that first day. Apparently, Francis Hall
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: the first time she spoke to James Mill, her husband's
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: mistress's husband, James said, do you think they eloped? That
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: was his response when he found out that they were
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: both missing. And apparently, also this is important too, Francis
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Hall had a informal network of spies among the congregation
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: who kept tabs on those two and informed her of
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: their doing. Essentially, so both of them knew full well
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: what was going on.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: Right, they knew, but they didn't project that publicly. Publicly
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: they both said, like my head didn't know this was
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: going on. And as we'll see later in court, she
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: even testified that you know, her marriage was perfect and
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: those these supposed love notes are fake and they were
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: not having an affair.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: No, for sure, I think her first public response was
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: go wois So.
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: On the day of the murder, this was Thursday, September fourteenth,
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: they each you know, left their respective houses, and another
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: couple reported to seeing them meeting up on a bridge nearby.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: And then a couple of days later another couple came forward.
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: This woman named well woman, she was fifteen years old.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: She was a young girl named Pearl Bomber. Yet she
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: was in a relationship because this was in nineteen twenty
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: two with a guy who was anywhere from nineteen to
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: twenty three who can tell. His name was Raymond Schneider.
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: They came upon the bodies a couple of days later
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: on Old Philip Swarm. This is the other side of
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: the Raritan River there, and this is about ten thirty
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: in the morning. They went to the closest house, had
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: the owner called the cops, and the cops showed up
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: pretty quickly.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the bodies. They it was pretty disturbing. So they'd
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: been left on a path off of Derusi's Lane. This
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: is a dure road I think in Somerset County, and
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: it was a well known lover's lane. Like this is
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: the kind of time where you had to go out
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: to a lover's lane to either have an affair or
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: have premarital sex or both. This is where their bodies
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: were found, on a path off of this lover's lane. Right, Yeah,
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: a reverend Hall had been shot once through the temple
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: and exited the opposite temple and that was it for him.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: But Eleanor Mills, his mistress, she had really been worked over.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, she was shot three times in the head
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: and her neck was cut so severely that she was
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: close to being decapitated. His shot was point blank, sort
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: of you know what we'd call execution style, with a
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: thirty two caliber pistol.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: And the bodies were posed.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: Together after that, they were under a crab apple tree,
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: kind of posed as cuddling lovers. Her head was placed
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: on his arm, not you know, separate from her body,
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: just laid against him, and a scarf was draped over
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: her cutthroat, and he had a hat, a Panama hat
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: kind of partially covering his space. So, you know, from
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: twenty yards away or whatever, looked like a couple just
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: sort of laying there, cuddling, maybe taking a nap under
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: a tree.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So that's how they were found. But apparently as
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: Pearl and Raymond were coming upon them, they saw very
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: quickly that they were dead. There was one other thing
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: that wasn't noted at the time when the bodies were
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: found in nineteen twenty two, but it would be noted
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: when the case was reignited four years later in nineteen
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: twenty six, that that Eleanor mills tongue and vocal cords
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: had been cut out and removed. That had been missed
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: in the first autopsy, but a subsequent optopsy found that.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: So this was the state that these bodies were found in.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: I think also, the Reverend Hall's business card was found
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: propped up against his foot. I think that's the only
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: other thing we left out. Oh no, there's one other thing.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: This is really important too. This is the clue to me.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: You ready, Chuck, I'm ready. There were love letters that
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Eleanor Mills had written to Edward Hall, the Reverend Hall,
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: and they had been placed all around them. So this
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: was a highly staged crime scene. Not just the bodies
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: were staged, but there were actual props involved among an
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: executed and a mutilated body left out in public, essentially
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: to be found almost immediately after they were killed.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the business card almost feels like, hey,
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: if anyone stumbles upon this, who's not from around here?
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: This is who this is?
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Right? You know, yeah for sure?
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Like what else could that be?
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean they're sending some sort of message.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: If that's not that, there's something else that they're sending,
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: Like that's a that's pretty in your face, you know.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. So the bodies were found locals. You know,
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: word gets around a little bit, locals starts showing up.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: Then once the new newspapers get a hold of it,
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: like you said.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Earlier, it became a big deal. And I guess this
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: was such a.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: Sensational thing at a time where this kind of thing
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: didn't happen much that like people really started coming to
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: this town to like just see what happened. They wanted
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: to walk on the grounds of that road and near
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: that farm, and they wanted to like literally take pieces
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: of that tree and dig up dirt around there as
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: a keepsake.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Apparently, they said.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: You know, they were showing up at a rate of
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: a thousand cars a day. Sounds a little overblown, maybe,
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: mm hmm. But there were like vendors selling popcorn and
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: balloons and you know, the dirt they were selling for
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: twenty five cents a bag. It was really out of
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: hand very quickly.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: You don't. It reminded me of was like the circus
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: atmosphere that grew up when Floyd Collins was trapped in
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: sand Cave. Yeah, around it was around the same time,
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: so people were.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Just looking for something.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty bored apparently. Yeah, so yeah, it was a
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: big deal. There was a huge problem with all of
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: those people showing up combined with incompetent an incompetent police investigation,
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: and that was that these people trod all over the
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: crime scene. They apparently messed with the scarf, they took
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: samples from the tree. Apparently the tree was stripped of
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: everything except its trunk. After everyone was done with it.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: There's the guy selling the dirt. This stuff was really important, Like,
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: for example, the dirt was important because that's how they
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: would establish whether those two had been murdered in the
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: spot they were found in or somewhere else and transport
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: it because the blood they found trickled into the dirt,
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: which is a sure sign that they had had been
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: killed there on the on the spot. But with people
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: stealing dirt from that there goes all of that evidence too,
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: So the crime scene was completely useless. And this is
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: at a time when people knew, like, no, you really
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: need to preserve crime scenes.
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, I think that's a good spot for
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: a break a A. All right, Well, since Josh said, ah,
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: we're gonna take a little break and come back with
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: more of this grizzly murder right after this.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: All right, so we're back.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: When we last left you, Josh was sort of detailing
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: the problems with the crime scene and people trotting about
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: and messing that up, and you mentioned something about the
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: police work wasn't so good. One of the issues was
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: and this is something it seems like it happens a lot,
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: if you believe TV and movies at least, is that
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: there were various jurisdictions kind of battling for this case.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: They lived in Middlesex County, the old Phillips farm was
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: in Somerset County, like you mentioned, and initially, like you said,
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: they didn't even know where their murders took place. They
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: later found out that they were alive when they got
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: to the farm, so they finally found that out. But
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: at the beginning, you had Middlesex County in Somerset County,
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: both saying like, no, this is my case.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: This is my case.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: And for a while, it seems like for a pretty
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: great while they had two sort of separate investigations going on,
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: which never, at least in the movies, seems to be
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: a good idea.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: No, not at all. Apparently the governor had to get
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: involved and be like, you guys need to join forces,
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: and they eventually did. But I mean, this is this
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: happened for I don't know exactly how long, but long
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: enough for it to be significant enough to mention, and
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: this is a really important time during an investigation, the
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: first several hours forty eight.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: You might even say, yeah, that's what they say.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: So there was a statement that was issued that Missus
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Hall issued essentially to back up a theory that had
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: been posed that this was a robbery. There was a
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: robbery gone wrong, and a woman named Sally Peters acted
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: as Missus Hall's spokeswoman apparently for most of this time
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: because Missus Hall didn't really want to be seen in public,
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: so a good friends stepped up and essentially they pointed
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: out that Missus Hall's husband, the Reverend Hall, he walked
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: around with the gold watch and in his wallet he
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: typically carried about fifty dollars, just like one thousand dollars today.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: That's what he walked around adjusts.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: One thousand dollars of cash in their wallet.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: A guy who marries a woman for her money and
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: then runs around on her almost publicly. Yeah, probably so,
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: And that those things were missing when they were found,
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: So they had been robbed, right, But the question was
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: was that really the motive behind this murder where Eleanor
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: Mills's throat had been cut to the backbone and they've
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: been staged in some really weird ways.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, for sure.
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: So this is the Middlesex assistant prosecutor at first, because
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: again they were conducting separate investigations. This guy's name was
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: John Chulan, and he came out and said, hey, wait
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: a minute. Basically, I mean he couldn't come right out
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: and accused her, but he was basically like, hey, there's
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: no information to back this up. Kind of listen to
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: our statements and maybe not the ones from the deceased family.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: I'm sure he had to couch that because she was
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: from a wealthy family, but he basically said, hey, there's
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: no evidence to back this up, and we think that
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: and this to me is a little hinky, but he said,
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: if it was a robber, he wouldn't have been using
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: a thirty two. He would have been using a larger caliber,
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: which to me doesn't really make much sense.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: He would have been using a forty four magnum, the
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: most powerful handgun in the world. Do you feel lucky.
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: So there was another theory too that I hadn't heard of,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: but kind of makes sense. Apparently the Klan had recently
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: become highly active in the area around that time, and
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: they were known for severely punishing moral transgressions like affairs.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but not their own, no.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Of course, not so if they had come upon or
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: had targeted these two, because I mean, if this was
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: an open secret and this guy's a prominent member of
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: the community, they could have been a target for the
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: Klan to punish somebody like that. So that was a
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: decent theory, but it didn't really go too far, at
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: least at first.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, And we mentioned this next one just
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: because it was has been mentioned, but it really also
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: went nowhere. But very briefly, there were apparently there were
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: two Italians who had showed up in New Brunswick and.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: They had revolvers.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: Like that was known that there were these two Italian
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: guys who no one knew and they had guns. But
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: that was just a very quick sort of They had
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: nothing to do with the kind of deal.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: For sure. That's just what you did in nineteen twenty
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: two when somebody turned up murdered. How many Italians came
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: into town?
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: So the cops were like, okay, like we can't possibly
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: like train our sights on on the wealthy widow and
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: her family. Let's see who else we can blame to
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: just basically make the public, let us make this go away, right. Yeah,
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: they were just looking for somebody to pin it on,
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: and they turned their attention to the two people, Pearl
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Balmber and ra Schneider, who had run over to a
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: farmhouse and told a woman we just found some bodies.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: Called the police. Right when they found the bodies. They
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: were like, that seems a little fishy. We're going to
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: start looking at you guys, because you're probably just providing
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: grown alibis who would possibly call in finding the bodies
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: of a murder they just committed.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: So they discovered like hey, they were also on the
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: farm that night, because this was remember two days later
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: in the morning when they called it in, but they said, hey,
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: they were also there that night. A couple of weeks
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: after that, those two and then a couple of other
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: friends of theirs that were also with them that night,
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: a guy named Clifford Hayes and a fifteen year old
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: kid named Leon Kaufman. They were all four brought in
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: for what sounds like a straight twenty four hours of questioning,
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: which is always very suspicious, you know, when you try
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: and get someone to their weakest point. So they signed
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: some weird false confession. So they wore them out questioning
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: for a full.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Day and night.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: And at the end of this Ray Schneider, the original
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: guy who reported it with his young girlfriend, signed a
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: statement that said, hey, around midnight that night, me and
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: Clifford Hayes, my buddy, came across a couple of people.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Sitting on the ground near that farmhouse.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: I thought it was my girlfriend and her father, and
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: I had been looking for her. I was pretty jealous,
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: and so Hayes shot both of them, and it sounds
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: like it might have been like a favor to him.
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: None of this really adds up, because it wasn't like
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: he had found her with some other guy and he
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: was angry and his friends like, I'll get even for you.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: None of this really makes much sense to me at least.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Well though only thing I saw was that I saw
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: somewhere somebody said that they believed that Pearl was being
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: molested by her father. That still doesn't make sense why
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: she would be shot as well.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's all very hinky, but Raych Schneider
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: basically in the statement at least said we realized it
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: was not them. We ran away, and so my girlfriend
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: and this other kid, Leon Kaufman also said, yeah, you know,
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: parts of this are true. And Schneider did have a gun.
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: He also had a pocket knife, and so in the
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: end they arrested Clifford Hayes and charged him with the murderers.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: They did, and immediately the press, who was really paying
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: attention to this and the public who were reading these
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: stories were like, are you guys dumb? Like are you kidding?
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: This is who you've come up with? There was it
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: didn't take into account again, so does that mean that
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: Clifford Hayes, after his friend Rach Schneider ran off his
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: friend who he'd taken it upon himself to execute the
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: man's girlfriend and her father. Yeah, that he went over
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: and was like, well, I better almost cut this woman's
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: head off and see these bodies like this. But every
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: single theory is just dumb because they can't take into
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: account the most important clue in this whole, this whole
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: murder letters case, the love letters.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: How would this guy, Clifford Hayes have any access to
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: the love letters between those two from Mills to Hall?
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: How would they have had access to that? How would
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: the clan have had access to that? How would somebody
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: who was robbing them and the robbery went wrong, how
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: would they have access to that? Those are the clues
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: so much so that I'm quite certain that the people
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: who killed this this couple were like, oh that was
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: so stupid afterward, like why did they put the letters down?
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: They luckily got away with it, But that was to me,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: that's just that's there you go, there's your answer right there.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, totally.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's all just so fishy and ludicrous that
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: they arrested this kid. So the you know, those real
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: backlash back then, even like you said, everybody like no,
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: one really believed what was going on, and the story
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: had all these holes in it. There were a couple
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: of other like sort of weird details that came out
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: of the subplot that didn't really lend itself to solving it.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: But the press basically uncovered some stuff that Schneider who
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: was dating, you know, the fifteen year old Pearl, he
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: was actually married Clifford Hayes, who they arrested for the murder.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: Supposedly he had dated Pearl at one point. But you know, again,
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: none of this made any kind of sense at all.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: Within a few days, Ray Schneider was like, oh, yeah,
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: you know what, that's not true. So they sentenced him
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: to a term in a reformatory for making false statements.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: And then young Pearl was sent to the House of
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: the Good Shepherd for Wayward Girls in Newark, which I'm
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: sure was.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: Just a great place. I'm sure too sarcasm, Yeah, for sure.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: And then Ray Schneider being sentenced for his false statement.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: So he had a coerced state beaten out of him,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: and then he gets sentenced for giving it.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh was he beaten.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: I'm sure he was. We're talking nineteen twenty two, and
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: the police are trying to get a confession over a
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: twenty four hour period of questioning out of this guy
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: who signs a false confession.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: I would say, I just want to make sure no
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: family members of those cops comes forward and soues you
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: for sure.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: But you saw as well as I did in People
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: magazine that they said it too.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: All right, shall we go on or shall we take
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: another break? Maybe go on a little more.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's go on a little more.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: All right, take it away, Okay.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: So finally, the public it's just the police who are
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: studiously avoiding looking at Francis Hall, her two brothers, and
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: eventually her cousin, all of whom would be implicated in
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: this crime. It was just the cops and the prosecutors
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: who were trying not to look at them. The rest
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: of the public was like, I'm pretty sure we have
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: we know who did this. Why don't you start looking
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: at them? And eventually the public pressure about it. Couldn't
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: couldn't just be ignored. So the cops finally started looking
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: at missus Hall, and they brought it in for questioning once.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Apparently it was a very gentle line of questioning. They
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: were very deferential, very naturally people also started looking at
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: James Mills. He was the other jilted lover in this
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: In this case, he had a pretty good alibi. Apparently
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: either one of his hobbies or his side gig was woodworking.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: He was seen around the time of the murders at
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: home and then for the next couple hours during the
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: time when these this pair was definitely murdered, So he
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: he had a pretty good aliby. Multiple neighbors saying, yeah
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: he was. He was at home woodworking at the time.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's in the in the TV show when
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: they're at the end when they were accounting how it
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: was done.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: This is when you see the shot of like the
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: buzzsall going in an empty room.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Right, it's like a mannequin rigged.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Like pushing it so it actually sounds like it's cutting.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: That's right. That's like the nineteen twenty two version of
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: somebody pre recording the security camera footage so that you
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: can't see what they're doing when they commit the crime.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: That's right. The data is somehow scrambled.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'll tell you what, even that couldn't fool
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Jessica Fletcher. There's at least one episode where that was used,
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: he was that again, I murder? She wrote, that's right.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Oh you want to hear something awful? Sure, So I
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: was watching Murder, she wrote on over the air antenna
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: to be expected. There's a lot of ads, and they're
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: usually pretty crummy ads. Yeah, but remember I was complaining
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: about that stupid Burger King adh. Oh yeah, well I
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: finally moved away from the over the air antenna viewing
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: and just started watching I think on Amazon.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: I love that you you joined the twenty first century.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Exactly, but the uh the For a while, I was like, great,
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: I left the Burger King ad behind. Nope, it very
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: recently popped up again on Ama.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: I haven't heard it in a while.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: I'm not gonna I'm not going to recount it for you.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you what I'm not doing is watching murder,
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: she wrote. If that's the trigger, yeah, it's pretty bad.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: But that's how much I like murder, she wrote, I'm
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: willing to suck it up. You know, Jessica bet your
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: solving crimes. That's pretty catchy.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, all right, so where were we?
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: They started looking at missus Hall. She didn't have an alibi.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: It turns out.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: That's right, So they brought her in, like you said,
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: for some pretty gentle questioning. She said that on Friday
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: morning she was worried because her husband wasn't home, so
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: she got together with her brother Willie, and they started
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: looking for him. They visited the church at first to
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: look for him, and then later they went to her house,
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: well not her house, but the victim's house. They went
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: to the Mills house. Nobody was there either, and they said, yeah.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: Initially they said, we went there because, you know, we
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: thought he might have been visiting with someone who was ill.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: And then later on that story changed to, oh, no,
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: we went by there because we knew that the church
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: keys were there as well. So her story is already
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: changing out of the gate.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And I mean, if an entire prosecutors offices office
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: times two, two different counties, prosecutors and police departments are
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: being deferential to you and not investigating you because you're wealthy,
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: at least have the decency to keep your story straight
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: to not make them look that ridiculous.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, agreed.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: The upshot is this, Missus Hall's alibi is her brother Willie,
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: who lived with Missus Hall and Reverend Hall, and he
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: was a suspect too, So if your alibi is another suspect,
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: that's not a very good alibi. And they were also
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: they were also prowling around about two thirty am, and
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: no one could corroborate that they were out looking for
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: Reverend Hall at two thirty am, about the time the
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: murders took place exactly.
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: So again she was still insistent that they had a
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: great marriage. These love letters are fake. The cops start
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: sniffing her other brother off the case, who doesn't live
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: with them.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: This guy's name was.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: Henry, and he was like, no, no, I got an alibi.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: I was fishing in Lavallette. It's about fifty miles away.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: There's no way I could have been there. And you
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: know what, I was even fishing with the mayor of Lavalette.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: And the mayor stepped forward and said, correct, So.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: He's holding a briefcase with money coming out of the seams.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: So he has an alibi, like a stated alibi. I'm
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: not sure if that's the legal term. But I didn't
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: see that there was any other other like proof that
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: he was out fishing. But he said I was fishing,
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: and there was a witness with me. There were a
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: few witnesses, and it seems like the key witness to
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: this all is the woman who actually witnessed the murder,
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: as it turns out.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a woman named Jane Gibson who would come to
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: be known as the pig woman. That's just what the
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: press called her across the board, because she was a
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: pig farmer in the area of the road where the
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: bodies were found. Yeah, and she had cause to be
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: awake at two thirty am. Apparently there have been some
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: thefts of her crops, probably cops who'd come and try
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: to snatch her crops, and so she was awake, waiting
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: essentially for the thieves to come back. She said that
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: while she was lying in wait, she heard a sound.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: She went to investigate, and that she saw Missus Hall,
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: her two brothers, and Missus Hall's cousin Henry another Henry
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: carrying out these murders.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like she said, I saw this happen. But the
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: prosecutors are like nah, her story keeps kind of changing too,
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: and they all have Alibis stated Alibis. So a grand
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: jury convenes in November of that year, Like, what should
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: we do here about indicting this family? And I say
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: we tackle that question or answer rather right after another
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: break eh satisfaction.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: So chuck where we left off. He had said that
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: a grand jury had been convened, right, that's right. And
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: it turned out that the grand jury, I think they
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: took five days before they said nope, we're not going
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: to hand on any indictments. So it seemed that the
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: probably the likeliest suspects, Francis Hall, her two brothers, and
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: her cousin were now off the hook. And we should
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: say also one of the things about her brother that's
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: going to come into play. One of her brothers, Willie.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: He lived at home, like we said, with the Reverend
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: Hall and missus Hall. And the reason why it seems
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: is because he was at least understood at the time,
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: is kind of slow, as they would put it. Sometimes
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: you see in modern retellings of it that he's considered
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: developmentally disabled. That does not seem to be the case.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: It seems like he probably was neurodiverse in some way,
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: shape or form. But he was also quite sharp too.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: He was known to read books on metallurgy. He was
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: quite sociable. He would be high functioning you would say today,
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: but at the time he seemed to be if this
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: was a group of murderers, as family murderers, he would
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: be targeted as like the weak link that you would
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: go after. But regardless, it didn't matter because nineteen twenty
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: two went out with these four let off the hook
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: because the grand jury didn't indict. How about that?
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: That's right?
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: And right out after that happened, the good missus Hall
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: left for Italy. So nothing at all suspicious about that.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: I think you're not getting on a plane to Europe.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: I think you can make a case either way that
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: you know. I just wanted to get away from the
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: whole thing too.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: I said, plan would that have been a just a
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: notion liner at the time, Okay, wait to go, so
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: savory emails everybody.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: I'm speaking of the Martyn parlance. So in December.
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: They said, basically, you know, now that all the all
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: the Gulkers are out of here and all the attentions
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: dying down, we can get down some real investigating and
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: figure out who did this. A year later, the New
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: York Times followed up on the anniversary. We're like, yeah,
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: so you got down the business, what'd you find out?
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: And they're like, oh, what.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: No progress? Whatsoever?
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: It?
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, So that's how it went for four more years,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: and then out of nowhere, in a completely unrelated divorce case,
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: the husband of a woman named Louise Geist, who had
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: been a maid at the Hall's home during the time
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: of the murders. In the divorce proceedings he was assassinating
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: his ex wife seemed to be ex wife's character, saying
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: that she had been involved in the Hall Mills murder
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: and had been paid five thousand smackeroos to be to
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: keep quiet by Missus Hall and her brothers. Yeah, and
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: that she knew all about it. And somehow, I guess
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: that got out to the press, and William Randolph Hearst
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: Daily Mirror assigned a reporter to look back into the case,
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: and it just blew it right back onto the front
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: pages of papers across the country.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, such that the state of New Jersey could no
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: longer just keep ignoring this.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: So Governor A.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: Harry Moore said, oh God, all right, let's reopen this case.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Exactly at this.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: Point, the grand jury does come back and indict Francis Hall,
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: her brothers, William Henry, and her cousin Henry. They were
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: all four arrested. Missus Hall for her part, was released
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: on bail fifteen grand. A lot of dough at the time, Yeah,
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: still a lot of dough. I always say that the
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: men were held without bail, and at this point, this
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: is four years later, they don't take care of evidence
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: like they do now. A lot of the evidence was gone,
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: but they did find some new clues. There was another
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: adulterous couple in the church. There were probably dozens of them,
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: because that's just how that kind.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: Of thing goes. But this one other adulter couple.
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: There was a guy named Ralph Gorsline and a woman
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: named Katherine Rostell, and they were on Lover's Lane that night.
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: A private detective came forward and said, hey, Ralph admitted
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: that he heard these shots and saw I think cousin.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: Henry or was this brother Henry?
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: That was brother Henry?
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: Okay, brother Henry, who apparently swore him to secrecy. Ralph
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: Gorsline later came out and denied having accused brother Henry,
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: but he did confirm that he and his mistress, Catherine Rastell,
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: had heard these four gunshots, heard some low voices and
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: a woman screaming. And the reason that I didn't come
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: out before was because obviously I didn't want to like
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: have my affair busted. But in nineteen twenty six, four
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: years later, she had talked, his mistress had talked, so
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: he was like, well, I guess the cat's out of
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: the bag, so I'm gonna say what happened too. And
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: his wife said, great, let's get a divorce.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And again he had gone to this private detective
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty two because his conscience had gotten to him.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: But I think he was basically saying he was saying
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: all the stuff that he eventually said in nineteen twenty
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: six to get the detective to go to the cops
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: and say, hey, this anonymous source did this, But it
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: didn't pan out like that. But nineteen twenty six, they
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: were just uncovering stuff left and right. Remember I said
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: that they exhumed Missus Mills and did another autopsy and
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: that's when they found that her tongue in vocal cords
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: had been caught out. So like, this was a serious
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: investigation that was launched again in nineteen twenty six, probably
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: a lot more serious than the one that was carried
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: out in nineteen twenty two. And another clue that turned
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: up or another source that turned up was a guy
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: named Paul Hamborskey. He was a minister also in New Brunswick,
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: and he was friendly with Reverend Hall. And Paul Amborski
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: came forward and said, hey, I actually had a conversation
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: with Reverend Hall basically a month before he was murdered,
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: and in it he said that my wife has gotten
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: really cool lately and has turned into a different woman,
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: and quote, I am very much afraid that she will
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: do me bodily harm. And he explained it was because
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: of this affair, and that he had no intention of
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: giving up Eleanor Mills and that they would probably run
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: off together pretty soon. This was a month before Edward
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: Hall was murdered that a minister came forward and said
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: this is what he said to me.
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and he also said that her brother Henry threatened
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: me because everyone knew about this affair. And so he
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: comes out with this very you know, sort of key evidence.
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: And right before the nineteen twenty six trial started, this
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: Paul Hamborski guy just sort of disappeared.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: He left town.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: He didn't disappear like disappeared disappear, but he left town
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: pretty quickly. And there was a state senator named Alexander Simpson,
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: who was acting as special prosecutor for the case, and
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: he said, this Amborski guy's loans dried up at the bank,
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: and the banker said, you've been a fool to get
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: mixed up in this hall's mill case.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: The banker was Charles Bronson.
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: No, that would have been You've been the fool to
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: get mixed up in this hole's middle case.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Very nice. I just said that because I really want
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: to hear you redo it as Charles Bronson.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: It's just all dirty dealing basically, Like it's really clear.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this family was more than wealthy and
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: powerful enough to ruin a person, make sure that they
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: didn't have any line of income, or just make life
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: miserable for them to where they did want to just
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: get out of town before they could testify. So this
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: trial happens like they finally have enough evidence that a
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: grand jury this time pretty quickly handed off indictments and
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: so Francis and her two brothers and cousin are indicted
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: for murder. And right when word got out that they
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: were about to be tried again, all the journalists came back.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: I saw an estimate that they filed twelve million plus
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: words cumulatively. It wasn't just one guy during the twenty
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: three day trial, that's how many words were written on this.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: It was everywhere.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean just just hundreds and hundreds of people
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden in town. And the public of
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: course is like, hey, you know what we care the
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: most about is like reading these love letters, like Josh
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: Clark will when they say that's the key piece of evidence,
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: and like what was in these things? And in one
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: of them? And this is great? Who helped us Livia
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: with this? Yeah, she dug up some of these letters,
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: Darling Wonderheart. I just want to crush you for two hours.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: I want to see Friday night alone by our road
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: where we can let out unrestrained, that universe of joy
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: and happiness we call ours. And he signed it DTL
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: for Dinah troyer Liepaba, which is German for thy true lover,
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: and Mills called him Babykins. So this is my only
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: joke about this is I want to see the sitcom
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: Wonderheart and Babykins like very soon on my television.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: Do me a favorite? Will you read that quote as
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: Charles Bronson?
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Really sure, Darling Wonderhart, I just want to crush you
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: for two hours. I want to see you Friday night
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: alone by our road where we can let out unrestrained
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: that the universe of joy and happiness that we call
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: ours beautiful Chuck, bravo, man, little more sinisters on that.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: If it wouldn't make the levels going to the red,
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: I would clap loudly for you right now. So, yes,
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: this is the kind of humiliation that Francis Hall is enduring.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: She's sitting in court because again she's on trial. People
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: are reading that was just one. They were reading a
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: bunch of different love letters in open court. And there
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: were more witnesses that came forward. There were like they
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: were poking holes in people's alibis from the year back.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: So they brought a new witnesses to undermine the truthfulness
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: of their original witnesses, and so and so on and
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: so forth. And the maid Louise Geist, she was brought
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: to the stand and she said, no, my ex husband's
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: a big fat liar. But I'll tell you what. Willie,
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: who lived with the Halls and whose servant I was
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: as well, he told me the day after the murder,
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: but the day before the bodies were discovered that something
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: terrible happened last night. So Willy shouldn't have known anything
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: about something terrible happening last night, unless it was that
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: his sister had lost it solitaire, which was the one
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: alibi that Louise Geist could give Francis Hall for that night. Solitaire. Yeah,
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: it was her alibi.
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: So was this Louise Geist was involved and probably got
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: paid off, and she was trying to just pin it
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: on Willie. This possibly neurodivergent, you know, younger brother.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: That certainly seems the case to me.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: Yes, okay, I mean that's how I took it.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: That's pretty that's pretty whole scratch that her ex husband
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: comes up with in divorce court, you know. Yeah. So
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: again though, the star witness was Jane Gibson, the pig woman, right.
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, she and this is super dramatic. She came forward,
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: she was in late stages of cancer and they brought
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: her in on a stretcher into court. She's speaking in
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: a whisper basically like just hanging in there to get
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: this testimony out. So her story was after nine o'clock
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: on that day, her dog started barking again.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: She was worried about thieves stealing her crops.
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: So she gets on her old ginny, rides out to
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: the field, sees people fighting under that crab apple tree.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: Here's a woman yell, don't don't, don't Henry. She hears
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: a shot, a gunshot, saw one of the men fall.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: She flees.
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: She gets the heck out of there, of course, and
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: then on her way out of there, like running, she
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: hears a woman screaming again.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Three more gunshots.
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: And they were like, can you point out are those
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: people in the courtroom today basically, and she said yes,
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: and she pointed at missus Hall, her two brothers and
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: her cousin, and they said, oh, well, you know what,
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: she's the big lady, like, don't believe what she says.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: Basically, well, supposedly her own mother. Jing Gibson's own mother
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: was in the in the courtroom, apparently wringing her handkerchief,
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: watching her daughter give testimony, saying she's lying, she's lying,
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: so she people didn't put much stock into Jene Gibson's testimony.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: Maybe she said she's dying.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: May maybe so well, this is essentially the prosecution's case.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: They presented Jane Gibson again. She basically said, I saw
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: those four murder these two people, at least in silhouette,
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: and then I saw the four clearly. Then it was
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: time for the accused to start taking the stand. And
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: apparently Missus Hall was so composed during her time on
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: the stand giving testimony that the papers dubbed her the
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: iron widow. Yeah, and she still said, I never suspected
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: my husband of infidelity, and I was really nervous when
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: he disappeared. That's why my brother and I went out
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: that very night to look for him. And again, she's
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: in part probably saving face, but now at this point
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: she's trying to not give anyone a motive that she
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: might have had for killing him, which would clearly be
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: in such a passionate murder something like infidelity, right.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: But despite her, I think everybody kind of expected her
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: to be good on the stand. You remember I said
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: that they had kind of suppose that Willy was going
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: to be the weak link. The prosecutors were just chomping
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: at the bit to get to him. They were just
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: gonna work him over on the stand. And apparently Willy
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: held his own like nobody's business and did so well
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: on the stand that essentially he got himself and his
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: siblings and cousin Off. That's how well he did on
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: the stand. He was the one who basically got him acquitted.
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so there it is. They got acquitted on December third,
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: nineteen twenty six. After that, the defendants minus brother Henry, sued.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: The Mirror for libel.
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: It was settled out of court, and we don't know
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: how much money was exchange hands, if any. Seems like
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: there probably was some, and it was never brought to
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: trial again. It never came before a criminal court again.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: Missus Hall went, you know, back to doing her things.
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: She's doing charity work at the church, did not you know,
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: aside from that, didn't really socialize. A lot died in
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: nineteen forty two, and you know, we look back now,
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: is like it seems fairly obvious to us what happened,
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: even though famous civil rights attorney William Kunstler wrote a
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: book in nineteen sixty four called The Minister in the
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: Choir Singer, where he supposes that it was the KKK,
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: but there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: about that at all.
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: No, he even says this is all circumstantial, and apparently
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: there's no account of anyone actually being murdered when they
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: were punished by the KKK for something like having an affair.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: So it's pretty pretty spankings.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, So what about The Great Gatsby, Chuck, We all
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: know that you read that article as well as I did, and.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: Right people people wonder if this was, you know, one
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: of the stories that inspired The Great Gatsby.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: It was in nineteen twenty two.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: I think Gatsby came out in twenty five, so before
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: the actual trial. But f Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda we
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: do know that they followed that case. They were pretty
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: interested in it, and there's a lot of differences, So
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think it may have just been one
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: of those sort of launching off points where yeah, it's like, oh,
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: this is a cool idea, and then just you know,
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: really just went with it in a fictional sense.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, People magazine pointed out something that I thought
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: was a good connection between the two in the story,
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: the working class woman who's having an affair with I
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: can't remember his name, Gatsby's rival. Her death is essentially
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: like ignored because she's not upper class, she's working class. Yea,
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: the same thing happened to Eleanor Mills, Like her death
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: does not. Aside from the grizzly state of her body,
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: people did not pay much attention to that. It was
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: all about this wealthy woman and her wealthy husband. And
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: in the end, the wealthy people got to go on
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: with their lives while the dead working class victim is
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: just largely forgotten.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah for sure.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: Well that's it for the Hall Mills murder Chuck good pick,
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: however we got it. Also, just want to shout out
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: the Yale Review, Howard Harold Scheckter's article mister local History project,
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: Mary S. Hartman wrote a paper, and then also our
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: Ownlivia who helped us with this too. And since I
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: just rattled lot some sources, as everyone knows, I just
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: triggered listener mail.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: This is about smoking.
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: We did one on the cigarette and this is from
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: Sue and Melbourne, Australia. Hey guys, I really just like
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: smoking here in Melbourne, Australia. A pack of twenty cigarettes
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: and that is individual second cigarettes, not twenty packs like
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: a pack of cigarette.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, twenty Lucy's costs fifty eight ninety nine.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: I know I saw that, and it's just I'm still
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: astounded by it.
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: A pack of twenty five calls sixty two ninety nine
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: and a carton of ten packs is four hundred and
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: sixty nine dollars. If a smoker smokes a pack of
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: twenty per day, the cost per week is three hundred
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: and seventy one dollars per week, or per annum close
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: to twenty grand. At a cup of coffee from a
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: shop Monday to Friday at five or day per anim
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: thirteen hundred bucks. Victoria has the most expensive cigarettes in
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: the world. Guys, yet there there's always a crowd of
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: puffing smokers outside every building. Instead of sucking filth into
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: the lungs, a person saves the money and overseas holiday
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: every year would be possible. Yes, I was a bookkeeper.
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: Love the show that is from Sue.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you might be all there saying, well, the
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: Australian dollar is less than the US dollar. I just
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: calculated it. A four hundred and sixty nine dollars carton
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: of cigarettes in Australia is still a three hundred dollars
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: carton of cigarettes in the US. So that's amazing.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a lot of dough to actively die earlier.
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks a lot. Who was that again, Sue? Thanks
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: a lot Sue, and if you want to be like Sue,
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: you can send us an email. Send it off to
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.