Speaker 1: In February of sixteen seventy three, Thomas Cornell Junior was
Speaker 1: in loads of trouble. His mother, Rebecca Cornell, was dead,
Speaker 1: her body charred terribly in a tragic house fire. It
Speaker 1: was initially ruled an accident by a coroner's jury in Portsmouth,
Speaker 1: Rhode Island, but then after Thomas's uncle was visited by
Speaker 1: Rebecca's ghost, he sounded the alarm about her death. Her
Speaker 1: body was reexamined and a new coroner's jury claimed to
Speaker 1: find a small fatal wound on her stomach, mostly hidden
Speaker 1: by the burned flesh around it. The matrons who dressed
Speaker 1: the corpse for burial hadn't noticed it before. Thomas and
Speaker 1: his mother did seem to have a strained relationship. She
Speaker 1: couldn't stand his wife, Sarah, and she was Rebecca might
Speaker 1: have also been in poor health, But on February sixteenth,
Speaker 1: that second coroner's jury ruled that Rebecca's death was a
Speaker 1: suspicious one, and a surprise witness would soon solidify the
Speaker 1: Colony of Rhode Island's case against Thomas Cornell. Thomas first
Speaker 1: faced a murder indictment, and he would then go to trial.
Speaker 1: That trial would take place at a tavern called the
Speaker 1: White Horse in Newport, Rhode Island.
Speaker 2: So usually they would do two stories for a tavern
Speaker 2: because there would be some rooms that they would rent
Speaker 2: out to travelers. And you can see from the beams
Speaker 2: going across the ceiling they're quite thick, quite in their
Speaker 2: original I'm actually surprised that the height, but that might
Speaker 2: have been lifted over time because normally you would get
Speaker 2: a second story that would be very low. Hard to
Speaker 2: say whether or not that built in is original. Certainly
Speaker 2: the woodwork is not, but that could be dating from
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century, but the size of the fireplace is
Speaker 2: very indicative of a seventeenth century building.
Speaker 1: The White Horse actually still exists. It's now a wonderful restaurant.
Speaker 1: Carrie Nolty and I went there on a November night.
Speaker 3: This is a narrow circace.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, Well, so this would have been what the
Speaker 4: fireplace was like.
Speaker 3: Actually probably smaller the central chimney stack, so.
Speaker 2: They built around it, which is what I think that
Speaker 2: they did with the Cornell House. I think they had
Speaker 2: the one room originally because they had to have something
Speaker 2: for all the elements that they were exposed to on
Speaker 2: this island. I think it was really two rooms at
Speaker 2: the time when we came back for then on community
Speaker 2: to take pots.
Speaker 1: Yeah, back in late February of sixteen seventy three, one
Speaker 1: of Rebecca Cornell's friends, a man named John Russell, talked
Speaker 1: with investigators. Portsmouth historian Gloria Schmidt says that John recounted
Speaker 1: a story that really helped clarify the relationship between mother
Speaker 1: and son, and it was really bad news for Thomas
Speaker 1: Cornell Junior.
Speaker 5: I think, you know, at that particular point, they start
Speaker 5: getting testimony from other people. So on February the twentieth,
Speaker 5: John Russell, who was from Dartmouth, toms to say, you
Speaker 5: know what, she told me that she would be made
Speaker 5: away with.
Speaker 1: That's seventeenth century speak for I'm afraid that I'll be murdered.
Speaker 5: And so that's the second thing that makes things suspicious.
Speaker 5: So the you know, the first was the ghostly witness,
Speaker 5: and the second was the John Russell saying, look, she
Speaker 5: told me that she didn't want to be in this
Speaker 5: household and that she feared that she would be done
Speaker 5: away with. But she she's constantly complaining to people, so
Speaker 5: this is not unusual. But he says, look, you know,
Speaker 5: I just want to share this with you, and there's
Speaker 5: a deposition from him.
Speaker 1: So Rebecca really thought that someone in her family might
Speaker 1: kill her if she stayed there much longer? Was there
Speaker 1: that much acrimony between Thomas and Rebecca? Historia Nel Darby
Speaker 1: says that violence between mother and son isn't all that unusual.
Speaker 1: It can be the warped reaction of a frustrated violent person.
Speaker 6: Well, then, obviously, if you're going to hit someone or
Speaker 6: and plet violence on someone, you're more likely to do
Speaker 6: it on your mother because she's going to.
Speaker 4: Be weaker than you, or weaker than your other parents.
Speaker 5: So there's that kind of reasoning behind it that this
Speaker 5: violence from a young man.
Speaker 3: You kind of understand.
Speaker 6: Why relationships might become so fractured living in a very
Speaker 6: kind of close.
Speaker 5: Confines where that violence does belover and sometimes become fatal.
Speaker 1: So was this over the money Thomas owed his mother,
Speaker 1: or specifically their family property. Portsmouth historian Ann Burns says
Speaker 1: she doesn't think so.
Speaker 7: Well, then property had already been transferred into his knee.
Speaker 1: Anne believes that if Thomas and Sarah didn't properly take
Speaker 1: care of the aging Rebecca, then Rebecca might have been
Speaker 1: willing to reneg on the agreement and take the property back.
Speaker 7: Was it the fear that she could leave because part
Speaker 7: of the agreement for the property being transferred into his
Speaker 7: name was that Thomas moved in onto the property and
Speaker 7: took care of it and took care of his mother.
Speaker 1: Anne wonders if Rebecca's relatives might have brought that up
Speaker 1: if Rebecca had tried to leave the home, maybe they'd
Speaker 1: insisted that she refused to leave Thomas the property because
Speaker 1: elder abuse certainly shouldn't be rewarded.
Speaker 7: I'm kind of thinking like her brother would have been
Speaker 7: the one that said, you know, the deal was, you
Speaker 7: took care of your mom. She's not here anymore. Did
Speaker 7: that give him a reason to contest the property transfer
Speaker 7: into his name?
Speaker 1: And Anne has another interesting theory, one that hasn't shown
Speaker 1: up in historical records, so there's no way to actually
Speaker 1: verify it, and it centers on John Briggs, Rebecca's younger brother.
Speaker 7: Did John Briggs or what of the siblings have something
Speaker 7: to gain by Rebecca passing away?
Speaker 1: We don't know. What we do know is that Rebecca
Speaker 1: Cornell sounded miserable before she died. Friends and neighbors began
Speaker 1: offering their recollections in depositions for the colony, as prosecutors
Speaker 1: began to put together an indictment against Thomas.
Speaker 5: And when you look at the deposition and there are
Speaker 5: things like I'm too cold, I don't have enough covers,
Speaker 5: I have to do all these chores on my own.
Speaker 5: He promised, you know, to take care of some of these,
Speaker 5: and I have to take care of the pigs myself.
Speaker 5: I don't have enough food to eat.
Speaker 1: Witnesses repeated Rebecca's complaints against Sarah Earl, her daughter in law.
Speaker 5: You know, my daughter in law is a maniac, you know,
Speaker 5: all of these types of things.
Speaker 1: Remember that Rebecca had claimed that Sarah had once threatened
Speaker 1: one of her own step sons with an axe. But
Speaker 1: Gloria points out that no one else testified to seeing
Speaker 1: Sarah act violently to anyone, including Rebecca or her own children.
Speaker 5: Well, the testimony for that is from Rebecca, So you
Speaker 5: don't have anybody else, you know, saying that Sarah was
Speaker 5: doing that. So I don't know whether we rebelieve Rebecca,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 1: But also Rebecca seemed very sad much of the time.
Speaker 1: Anne Burns and Gloria Schmidt say it might not have
Speaker 1: been because of Thomas and Sarah.
Speaker 8: And the only person who provided any possible support that
Speaker 8: her brother was innocent was his sister, who said, a
Speaker 8: couple of years ago, you know, basically I came to
Speaker 8: visit her mother.
Speaker 7: The daughter had been going through a really hard time
Speaker 7: and had some dark thoughts about ending her life, and
Speaker 7: Rebecca Cornell did, well, so have I had those dark thoughts?
Speaker 5: You know, she would complain, but that she would also
Speaker 5: tell people that there were times in which she was depressed,
Speaker 5: Like she told her daughter. Her daughter had shared with
Speaker 5: her that she had had been, you know, ill and
Speaker 5: had been despondent, and Rebecca says, well, you know, I've
Speaker 5: been through periods like that too, and you just you know,
Speaker 5: have to, you know, flee from the devil, and the
Speaker 5: devil will flee from you type thing. You know.
Speaker 7: She talked about a pen night you're using to stab herself,
Speaker 7: and then she said, but I pray to God and
Speaker 7: he makes me come back and everything's going to be okay,
Speaker 7: and I'm going to be okay, and you're going to
Speaker 7: be okay. So the daughter provided the testimony that maybe
Speaker 7: her mother actually committed suicide.
Speaker 5: She spoke of it before so she does admit that
Speaker 5: she's gone through periods where she's been depressed. So there's
Speaker 5: some that question, well, was there something that triggered at
Speaker 5: a suicide attempt? So there's so many different angles from
Speaker 5: what these different depositions add to it. To me, it's
Speaker 5: really very unclear.
Speaker 1: And if this story seems unclear, now just wait. There
Speaker 1: was a tremendous amount of reasonable doubt. It should probably
Speaker 1: have been unclear for the coroner's jury and for the
Speaker 1: court's jury. But based on the depositions, Thomas was presented
Speaker 1: as an abusive, neglectful so yun who wanted to get
Speaker 1: rid of his mother to finally have some autonomy like
Speaker 1: other men in colonial America. But now Thomas Cornell had
Speaker 1: no autonomy. He sat in jail waiting for the wheels
Speaker 1: of justice to grind. Now, let's talk about a modern
Speaker 1: case filled with reasonable doubt, one that led not just
Speaker 1: to a wrongful conviction but also a wrongful execution. Cameron
Speaker 1: Todd Willingham. Author David Gran wrote an incredible piece in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine about Willingham for The New Yorker
Speaker 1: called Trial by Fire. That's in reference to the nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one house fire that killed Willingham's two year old
Speaker 1: daughter and one year old twins in northeast Texas.
Speaker 9: Willingham with somebody who had been arrested for allegedly setting
Speaker 9: of fire that had killed his three children in his house.
Speaker 1: Arson investigators came into the Willingham house and found evidence
Speaker 1: of what they believed were the telltale signs of arson.
Speaker 1: So during Willingham's trial, the experts presented this evidence, and
Speaker 1: there were also disclosures that Willingham had abused his wife. Eventually,
Speaker 1: even she came to believe he was guilty of killing
Speaker 1: their kids. Based on this evidence. Willingham was convicted and
Speaker 1: sentenced to execution.
Speaker 9: But before he went to the death chamber, a arson
Speaker 9: investigator looked at the case and reviewed the evidence, and
Speaker 9: he was one of the leading scientists of fire in
Speaker 9: the country, you know, really advanced scientists, and he looked
Speaker 9: at the evidence of the arson investigators had used and
Speaker 9: he's like, a lot of his stuff holds up the
Speaker 9: scientific scrutiny.
Speaker 1: Grant says that back then, arson investigators often had very
Speaker 1: little scientific training. They were trained, but not officially educated,
Speaker 1: like receiving folklore from mentors.
Speaker 9: And so for example, they had gone into the house
Speaker 9: and they had looked at spidery glass on the windows,
Speaker 9: and they believed if he saw the spidery glass on
Speaker 9: the window, it was an indication that a fire had
Speaker 9: accelerated because of an accelerant, that it clearly intensified in
Speaker 9: heat and it caused this fire.
Speaker 1: Arson. Investigators in Willingham's case believed that the spidery glass
Speaker 1: was a sign that someone had used some kind of accelerant,
Speaker 1: a clear sign of arson.
Speaker 9: But as this scientist who was later reviewing the case knew,
Speaker 9: there had been an instance where there had been a
Speaker 9: forest fire and when many investigators had gotten to these
Speaker 9: houses in this forest fire, they had seen this spidery
Speaker 9: glass kind of looked like, you know, almost like you
Speaker 9: fracture your wingshield. And so they went back to the
Speaker 9: laboratory and what they learned was, well, actually the spider
Speaker 9: glass isn't cause from intensifying heat, just the opposite. It
Speaker 9: was caused by when the firefighters arrived and they actually
Speaker 9: blasted cold water onto the houses to put out the fire.
Speaker 9: So it was actually the sudden cooling. So this is
Speaker 9: just one example of a theory that was completely bunked.
Speaker 1: There was nothing in Willingham's house that indicated that the
Speaker 1: fire had been started on purpose, and if it had,
Speaker 1: there was no proof that he was the one who
Speaker 1: did it. Graham says that the scientist was anxious to
Speaker 1: follow his report before Willingham's execution, which was set for
Speaker 1: two thousand and four.
Speaker 9: He is just terrified that an innocent man is going
Speaker 9: to be executed, because that was really the main evidence
Speaker 9: that had convicted this man of this crime. And you know,
Speaker 9: he puts out a report showing how this is bunk,
Speaker 9: but there's no scientific evidence to sustain this.
Speaker 1: All of that, and still the execution moved forward.
Speaker 9: And subsequently, you know, leading fire investigators and scientists from
Speaker 9: across the country have reviewed this case and found that
Speaker 9: there is no credible evidence of evidents at all indicate
Speaker 9: that this was an intentionally set fire. People have compared it.
Speaker 9: When leading scientists reviewed the case, you know, compared it
Speaker 9: to witchcraft and folklore.
Speaker 1: Witchcraft sounds familiar. Wrongful convictions are an epidemic around the world,
Speaker 1: but in America, our justice system is plagued by them.
Speaker 1: Maurice Shama is a reporter with the Marshall Project. He
Speaker 1: says that one of the issues with forensic arson experts
Speaker 1: is that they might not be experts at all.
Speaker 10: Sort in the absence of professionalized law enforcement, there's a
Speaker 10: lot of room for people to sort of lay claim
Speaker 10: to special access to knowledge and truth that can be
Speaker 10: very convincing if they're a convincing person. I should say
Speaker 10: that even in the late twentieth century, you had arson
Speaker 10: investigators with very little training saying the fire speaks to me,
Speaker 10: you know, and using this very like witchy cosmic language
Speaker 10: around their skills, and come to find out that this
Speaker 10: was often bullshit, and that innocent people went to prison
Speaker 10: for accidental fires because there was sort of a fraudulent
Speaker 10: claim that it was set intentionally.
Speaker 1: Investigators need to look for motives to solve crimes, and
Speaker 1: they need to consider clues that are left behind. But
Speaker 1: Marie says that solving a crime shouldn't risk actual justice
Speaker 1: for the survivors or the victims, and innocent people shouldn't suffer.
Speaker 10: But I also think that we need to be sort
Speaker 10: of careful and humble, because I mean, this case in
Speaker 10: sixteen hundreds just sounds like a lot of tragedies in
Speaker 10: the last fifty years where gossip about the relationship between
Speaker 10: family members leads to a motive, a sense of a motive,
Speaker 10: and then once you have that motive in your head,
Speaker 10: you can kind of find evidence to support it because
Speaker 10: human relationships are complex.
Speaker 1: They certainly are, and in the sixteen hundreds that was
Speaker 1: definitely true, especially in the frigid New England winters. Thomas
Speaker 1: Cornell had really struggled along with his wife, who had
Speaker 1: to raise their children, and Rebecca Cornell clearly struggled. Now
Speaker 1: that we've heard more evidence, I asked relative Caring Nolty
Speaker 1: what she thinks murder or accident or even suicide.
Speaker 3: Do you see any way that this could have been
Speaker 3: in an accident?
Speaker 2: She catches fire, she's got the needle, she accidentally hurts herself,
Speaker 2: The fire could have been an accident. There's absolutely a
Speaker 2: chance that that could have been an accident. You can
Speaker 2: get a piece of SAP that explodes and sparks out,
Speaker 2: and you know she's sleeping or she's already dead. Because
Speaker 2: one of the things that they do in the trial
Speaker 2: transcript is that they interview friends, neighbors, and her children,
Speaker 2: and they find out that she had at several times
Speaker 2: talked about potentially killing herself.
Speaker 1: I asked Carrie why Rebecca might have taken her own life.
Speaker 1: She says, maybe because of Thomas's treatment of her. It
Speaker 1: does sound like he said some very hurtful things to her.
Speaker 2: She's treated so horribly by her son. At one point,
Speaker 2: her son tells her, your name doth stink about the island.
Speaker 2: And she is commiserating with my direct ancestor, Rebecca Junior
Speaker 2: at one point, who had smallpox and had lost a
Speaker 2: child and had been expressing to her mother that she
Speaker 2: just sometimes felt like ending it all, and her mother
Speaker 2: was saying, I have also felt that sometimes, you know,
Speaker 2: when I thought of my lot in life and how
Speaker 2: difficult it's been, and then I just put my faith
Speaker 2: in the Lord, and he sustains me, and then I
Speaker 2: am satisfied.
Speaker 1: Carrie brings up Rebecca's complaints how heartbreaking they were.
Speaker 2: At one point, she's forced to chase her own pigs
Speaker 2: that have escaped their pen and she falls.
Speaker 3: This is a seventy year old.
Speaker 2: Woman, and she's just crying and she's upset, and she
Speaker 2: is saying, I want to end it all. And then
Speaker 2: again she turns to her faith in these transcripts, which
Speaker 2: is hearsay, of course, and says, the Lord comes to
Speaker 2: me and then I am satisfied and I'm able to
Speaker 2: move on and stuff. So it seems as though she
Speaker 2: has perhaps a flair for the dramatic, but also that
Speaker 2: she is trying to commiserate with other people when they
Speaker 2: are expressing doubts being a good n doing it in
Speaker 2: regards to her daughter, and also expressing frustration at her lot.
Speaker 1: Carrie thinks that Rebecca had finally realized that her life
Speaker 1: wasn't what it was supposed to be. She wasn't being
Speaker 1: cared for properly, and her son didn't respect her.
Speaker 2: At one point, she says that she never would have
Speaker 2: set up the inheritance agreement the way that it's set
Speaker 2: up now if she knew that Thomas Junior's first wife
Speaker 2: was going to die. So it seems like the first
Speaker 2: wife was some kind of a buffer between them, that
Speaker 2: there might have been some long standing friction there. It
Speaker 2: just seems so shocking that that would be considered evidence,
Speaker 2: that that would somehow like this person got indicted.
Speaker 6: Also, you know it was at one time, you know
Speaker 6: it was an accident, and no that changes after the
Speaker 6: ghost thing.
Speaker 5: Like there's so many any components just from like an
Speaker 5: administrative decision making thing.
Speaker 3: That I'm like, what, and of course I'm looking at it.
Speaker 3: From twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: It sounds like Thomas Cornell might have been an abuser
Speaker 1: and neglectful, even cruel, but none of that necessarily made
Speaker 1: him a killer. But then his wife offered some evidence
Speaker 1: that seemed to cast even more suspicion on her husband,
Speaker 1: and it had to do with the fact that Rebecca
Speaker 1: Cornell was a proficient weaver.
Speaker 2: One of the things that we get from the reports
Speaker 2: is that Thomas is seen and this is actually, I
Speaker 2: want to say, this is his wife who says this,
Speaker 2: Sarah Earle, that he comes out of her room and
Speaker 2: he's actually winding yarn on a spindle as he comes
Speaker 2: out of her room.
Speaker 1: We don't know much about this story. If it's true,
Speaker 1: then that's incriminating. Remember we've said that an iron spindle
Speaker 1: could be very sharp, and if this were murder, then
Speaker 1: it could have been the murder weapon. It also could
Speaker 1: have been nothing. Maybe he was just helping his mother
Speaker 1: wind yarn. Regardless, in this circumstance, it was suspicious. The
Speaker 1: prosecutors for the Colony of Rhode Island finished interviewing witnesses
Speaker 1: for depositions. Then they convened a grand jury.
Speaker 2: And part of what gets them to convene a grand
Speaker 2: jury to indict Thomas is the spectral evidence that John
Speaker 2: Briggs has where his sister comes to him and says, look,
Speaker 2: how I am burned with fire. The other thing is
Speaker 2: that she had spoken to someone in months prior. We
Speaker 2: don't know exactly when, but she had said, I am
Speaker 2: afraid that I will be made off with before the year,
Speaker 2: and I'm planning on moving in with one of my
Speaker 2: other sons.
Speaker 3: But she didn't point to Toma's directly in that statement. No, Wow,
Speaker 3: who else would it be?
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: Okay, So he's indicted for what first degree murder?
Speaker 2: First degree murder for murdering his mother.
Speaker 3: And I'm assuming Sarah Earl is flipping out at this point.
Speaker 2: She's kids, sure, she's pregnant. She is, She's a few
Speaker 2: months after all of this is concluded, she gives birth.
Speaker 1: In the spring of sixteen seventy three, Thomas Cornell Junior
Speaker 1: went on trial at the White Horse Inn in Newport
Speaker 1: for murdering his mother. The plethora of witnesses who testified
Speaker 1: virtually all leaned toward the prosecution. As you can imagine
Speaker 1: from what we've been hearing, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: hearsay in the trial. There was even one instance that
Speaker 1: was particularly egregious hearsay of hearsay, but oh boy, was
Speaker 1: a damaging Carrie Nulty and Gloria Schmidt say it sounded
Speaker 1: like to someone that Sarah and Thomas were colluding.
Speaker 2: One of their neighbors reported that another neighbor told her
Speaker 2: that she had been at the prison and heard Thomas
Speaker 2: and Sarah go into a separate room, but she could
Speaker 2: overhear them and they said to each other, if you
Speaker 2: keep my counsel, I will keep yours.
Speaker 5: It sounded like a conspiracy. Someone said, well, you know,
Speaker 5: I won't talk about you and you don't talk about
Speaker 5: me type thing. But we don't know you know much
Speaker 5: about it other than.
Speaker 2: That, now small town gossip. You already think somebody is guilty,
Speaker 2: and you could be the kind of person that just
Speaker 2: makes something up but could also be true.
Speaker 1: What do we think about that? Sarah Earle did seem
Speaker 1: very sneaky, But what if they weren't even talking about
Speaker 1: covering up a murder? Who knows what they were discussing
Speaker 1: exactly Regardless Thomas Cornell was in a bad position before
Speaker 1: the trial and during the trial because he had no
Speaker 1: real representation, no one was really defending him.
Speaker 5: They were taking depositions from either people that heard something
Speaker 5: from Rebecca or they had been there that night and
Speaker 5: had seen something. So they had depositions from Sarah and
Speaker 5: from the boys, not all of the boys, I think
Speaker 5: you know, one or two of the boys, and from
Speaker 5: this Henry Strait that was the border that had gone
Speaker 5: into the room. And so those the people that they
Speaker 5: were taking the depositions from.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors even traveled to New York to take a deposition
Speaker 1: from one of Rebecca's daughters who still lived in the
Speaker 1: Bronx area. And during all this time there was infighting
Speaker 1: between Cornell family members. Thomas's brother, William Cornell, had never
Speaker 1: liked his second sister in law, Sarah, and now before
Speaker 1: the trial was even over, everyone was anticipating a guilty verdict.
Speaker 5: They know there are problems between William and the rest
Speaker 5: of the family if he's trying to get Sarah tried.
Speaker 5: There's also the whole matter of the fact that because
Speaker 5: Thomas was considered a murderer, he could not inherit the
Speaker 5: property and so there were all kinds of fights with
Speaker 5: people who would be custodians of the sons, or Sarah's
Speaker 5: part of her for her dowry, for her husband, and
Speaker 5: all those kinds of things. Normally, the town would come
Speaker 5: in and the town would take that property from someone
Speaker 5: who was a murderer, so that a murderer could not
Speaker 5: benefit from their crime.
Speaker 1: A big question that needed to be settled quickly was
Speaker 1: who would get the property if Thomas Cornell were found guilty.
Speaker 1: Maybe not Sarah and the kids.
Speaker 5: Who does it go to do the Thomas's children who
Speaker 5: are innocent and get any part of it. You know,
Speaker 5: they have uncles that are guardians for them, and so
Speaker 5: who is protecting them. There was always a problem when
Speaker 5: you had a household. The eldest son would gain the
Speaker 5: property and the others would have to try and find
Speaker 5: their own way. So it was messy anyway with any death,
Speaker 5: But in this situation, they couldn't go from Rebecca to
Speaker 5: Tom and then from Thomas to his children if he
Speaker 5: was considered a murderer.
Speaker 1: We're lucky to have these depositions from the late sixteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Besides offering specific details about the case, their existence alone
Speaker 1: tells us a lot about the case's importance at the time,
Speaker 1: and of course this was the first and maybe last
Speaker 1: trial in which a ghost was an important witness. But
Speaker 1: in addition to specifics of this case, the depositions also
Speaker 1: show us how murder trials in the seventeenth century worked.
Speaker 5: It's not like we have today, where you have a
Speaker 5: trial and the witnesses come and you have cross examination
Speaker 5: or something like that. It wasn't like that. They would
Speaker 5: go to different people and get a deposition, and then
Speaker 5: they would add all that up and the jury would
Speaker 5: look at the depositions or here the depositions. Some of
Speaker 5: them may not have been able to read, so they
Speaker 5: would be presented the testimony any of these people. Nobody
Speaker 5: was ever cross examined. And Thomas never had a lawyer.
Speaker 5: He never had anybody. He couldn't say that's not true,
Speaker 5: or that's a lie, or he didn't have that choice.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a sham. Frankly, I asked carry noulty to
Speaker 1: shorthand this for us.
Speaker 3: So how does this go? This trial? Essentially, so it.
Speaker 2: Doesn't go well for Thomas. So it seems from the
Speaker 2: record that he has the right and he does take
Speaker 2: the right to challenge a lot of the potential jurors
Speaker 2: on the jury because you know, he's too close to me,
Speaker 2: he's part of my family, he's you know, he's always
Speaker 2: hated me, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Everybody knows.
Speaker 2: But finally they come to a group of people who
Speaker 2: are going to be the jury that he can no
Speaker 2: longer argue against that there's not really any problem with.
Speaker 1: Then the depositions from loads of people are read for
Speaker 1: the jury, loads of hearsay.
Speaker 2: Lots of interview, use of friends' neighbors, them talking about
Speaker 2: what they've heard Rebecca say that she was afraid and
Speaker 2: that her son was always cross with her and using
Speaker 2: terrible words.
Speaker 1: Witnesses claimed that Sarah and Thomas treated Rebecca so poorly
Speaker 1: that the children started treating her poorly too.
Speaker 2: His wife was treating her terribly, and what grief she
Speaker 2: had over it, that she was going to move the
Speaker 2: report about that she was afraid that she was going
Speaker 2: to be made off with.
Speaker 5: Mostly hearsay, so a lot of the testimony that works
Speaker 5: against him are her comments about how he mistreats her,
Speaker 5: and she tells lots of people about things that she
Speaker 5: wants to complain about. You know, when I look at
Speaker 5: the transcript of their deposition type things, most of them
Speaker 5: are talking about his not treating her as well as
Speaker 5: he could good.
Speaker 1: I asked Carrie Nolty again about the physical evidence. How
Speaker 1: could the matrons have missed the wound the first time around,
Speaker 1: even if there was a wound, What if it was
Speaker 1: simply decomposition.
Speaker 2: It seems like it was. So it was two women
Speaker 2: that laid out the body at first, and one of
Speaker 2: them was I believe Sarah Earl's mother.
Speaker 1: So Sarah's mother was one of those matrons. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that means anything, but it could mean something, and
Speaker 1: it does speak to how close knit the community was.
Speaker 1: Thomas did try to defend himself by using the depositions.
Speaker 1: There was so much there to choose from that perhaps
Speaker 1: he could connect the dots differently.
Speaker 2: They hear all of this testimony that Rebecca had been suicidal,
Speaker 2: that there was a black dog that leapt out of
Speaker 2: the room, that it was the implication that it was
Speaker 2: God himself, you know, passing judgment on Rebecca for being
Speaker 2: a bad mother, but therefore not burning down the house
Speaker 2: because she caught fire, and not burning the clothes etc.
Speaker 1: But the negative certainly outweighed the positive.
Speaker 2: Rebecca was in distress that Thomas owed her money, that
Speaker 2: he was withholding her rent, that he was saying things
Speaker 2: like your name stink about the island.
Speaker 1: And then one witness reported something awful that Thomas supposedly said.
Speaker 2: After she died. He remarked to a neighbor that in life,
Speaker 2: my mother wanted a good fire, and I guess the
Speaker 2: Lord hath provided for now she has it. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: I mean, my goodness, wow.
Speaker 1: If that's true, then Thomas really disliked his mother, regardless
Speaker 1: of his guilt. It all framed Thomas Cornell very poorly,
Speaker 1: and soon the jury reached a verdict.
Speaker 2: So he is found guilty. And a lot of people
Speaker 2: like to make the point that this was spectral evidence
Speaker 2: and that that's why he was convicted, and it was
Speaker 2: a precursor to the Salem witch trials, and it was
Speaker 2: used as a reference in the Salem witch trials. The
Speaker 2: spectral evidence, yes, this particular case was, However, which part.
Speaker 3: John Riggs and his sister's ghost or Sarah Earle and
Speaker 3: the dog the ghost.
Speaker 2: The spectral evidence of the ghost is the one because
Speaker 2: Sarah Earl Cornell's testimony was not under oath. Everybody else's was,
Speaker 2: so people like to say that that's you know, it
Speaker 2: was completely unjust because of that. But it's very clear
Speaker 2: from the record to me that they used the spectral
Speaker 2: evidence as a way of convening a grand jury to
Speaker 2: find the initial charges, and then that in conjunction with
Speaker 2: the rest of what was reported, that she was afraid
Speaker 2: that some harm would come to her, that there was
Speaker 2: tension about find Nancy's.
Speaker 1: Okay, now let's talk about ghosts. I do believe in them,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure I believe in them in this case,
Speaker 1: and neither does Carrie.
Speaker 2: To me, the spectral I mean, whether or not you
Speaker 2: believe in ghosts. I think we can all agree that people,
Speaker 2: especially families, you know, things weigh heavily on you. And
Speaker 2: you can wake up and have a dream about something
Speaker 2: that tells you something that you may have known internally
Speaker 2: but you hadn't really verbalized it or really had it
Speaker 2: come to the front of your mind. That to me
Speaker 2: seems like what happened with John Briggs. If I was
Speaker 2: going to be very rational about it.
Speaker 1: It actually doesn't matter if Rebecca Cornell visited her brother
Speaker 1: in spectral form. The ghost didn't even accuse her own
Speaker 1: son of doing anything. Anne Burne says, all that matters
Speaker 1: is that the jury believed the evidence.
Speaker 7: He got convicted on gossip and people taking sides like,
Speaker 7: you know, it's like elder abuse. So they they're taking
Speaker 7: the side of the you know, poor elderly mom who
Speaker 7: isn't being taken care of the way she should be,
Speaker 7: Like she's not being fed well, and she could he
Speaker 7: wouldn't hire and made for her, and you know, he
Speaker 7: wouldn't warm her bed before she got in, and then
Speaker 7: she would complain to anybody who would listen. And they
Speaker 7: came forward and said, yes, he's a terrible hun he's
Speaker 7: a terrible fun But did that account.
Speaker 1: From her her? So Thomas Cornell was convicted. Now what
Speaker 1: murder convictions in the sixteen hundreds were rare, and when
Speaker 1: there were convictions, they weren't typically involving people like Thomas,
Speaker 1: someone with no criminal record. He and Sarah Earle were
Speaker 1: both from good families in New England and now he
Speaker 1: faced a hanging. But Thomas seemed more worried about what
Speaker 1: would happen after his execution, How would his family be
Speaker 1: taken care of?
Speaker 2: So one of the interesting things about probate at this
Speaker 2: time period in this place is that if you die
Speaker 2: by suicide or if you commit a crime and are hanged,
Speaker 2: then you forfeit your property and then they can parcel
Speaker 2: it out or.
Speaker 1: The Colony of Rhode Island could take it over. None
Speaker 1: of that would have been good news for the Cornells.
Speaker 1: A murder conviction was terrible, but if Rebecca had taken
Speaker 1: her own life, that would have also been bad for them.
Speaker 1: So maybe that was the cover up.
Speaker 2: The question is, did Rebecca die by suicide and her
Speaker 2: son burned her body to cover it up so that
Speaker 2: he wouldn't lose any of his inheritance that he had
Speaker 2: been waiting so long for, or did either Thomas or
Speaker 2: Sarah kill Rebecca and then cover it up so that
Speaker 2: again they wouldn't have to pay for it, either by
Speaker 2: being hanged or by losing the property.
Speaker 1: Burns and I can't shake the idea that John Briggs
Speaker 1: started all of this. Was it really just based on
Speaker 1: a ghost and was he really telling the truth?
Speaker 7: What did John Briggs have to gain from creating this drama?
Speaker 7: He could have just let it go. Like the whole
Speaker 7: thing is that John Briggs.
Speaker 6: Brought this to the authorities. He is to me the
Speaker 6: most curious person of all of this. Why did he
Speaker 6: feel the need to go to the authorities and have
Speaker 6: them reexamine her body? What did he have to gain?
Speaker 7: Who was he mad at?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: You know, did you think remember that John Briggs was
Speaker 1: a founder of Portsmouth, one of the most esteemed people
Speaker 1: in New England. Ultimately, Anne Burns and Gloria Schmidt believe
Speaker 1: that Thomas Cornell was railroaded.
Speaker 7: Was Thomas Cornell Junior just a scapegoat of the time,
Speaker 7: Let's hold somebody accountable, Let's, you know, show that you
Speaker 7: can't commit murder and get away with it.
Speaker 5: I almost think that he was convicted of being a
Speaker 5: poor son rather than an eyewitness saying, you know, he
Speaker 5: committed this crime. It was more while he didn't do
Speaker 5: her right, those kinds of comments are I think, what
Speaker 5: has the jury thinking? You know, there's something wrong here.
Speaker 1: So Thomas Cornell Junior was set to die by the news.
Speaker 1: But remember he allegedly had that conversation with his wife
Speaker 1: in jail, that one about keeping secrets, And soon Sarah
Speaker 1: Earle would face accusations of her own. This story isn't
Speaker 1: over yet. On the final episode of this season of
Speaker 1: tenfold More Wicked on exactly right.
Speaker 7: I think her exact words were, a great black dog
Speaker 7: leaped out of the doorway at them.
Speaker 8: I interpreted that as her trying to claim in court
Speaker 8: that our mother in law was a witch.
Speaker 5: Thomas Junior's brother sought to have Sarah pride for the murder.
Speaker 2: And that's not her mother. It's an old woman that
Speaker 2: just won't die.
Speaker 3: We don't think there's anything that's been missing in.
Speaker 2: This case, right, No, But in the sense that both Wikipash,
Speaker 2: the former servant, and Sarah were arrested, was there conspiracy?
Speaker 7: It was like a gossip mongering festival against this guy.
Speaker 7: You know, they wanted to find somebody guilty.
Speaker 10: In the conversations I have with people, we've reached a
Speaker 10: tipping point where there is an awareness of innocent people
Speaker 10: being in prison and that this is a tragedy and
Speaker 10: that this is not something we as a society want.
Speaker 10: But then the second question that immediately follows is well,
Speaker 10: what are we going to do about it?
Speaker 1: If you love true crime, check out my books American
Speaker 1: Sherlock and All That Is Wicked. I also have an
Speaker 1: audio book called The Ghost Club. I can't wait to
Speaker 1: tell you the real story about the world's most famous
Speaker 1: ghost hunter, who was the head of the world's most
Speaker 1: famous ghost club, and how he investigated England's most famous
Speaker 1: haunted house. This has been an exactly right tenfold more
Speaker 1: media production producer Jason Whaling, Senior producer Alexis and Morosi,
Speaker 1: Consulting producer Kyle Ryan, researcher Nicole Brown, sound designer Eric Friend,
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