Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Chances are that you've heard of someone being visited by
Speaker 1: a loved one after they've passed away. Maybe your friend
Speaker 1: thought that he smelled the distinctive scent of his grandpa's pipe,
Speaker 1: or your sister swore that she could hear Grandma calling
Speaker 1: her inside. Maybe you yourself felt your childhood dog cuddling
Speaker 1: up next to you in bed years after they went
Speaker 1: to that great dog park in the sky. But whether
Speaker 1: you think it's your imagination or not, these visitations often
Speaker 1: feel like someone you love just wants to see you
Speaker 1: one more time. For Mary, seeing her dead daughter Zona
Speaker 1: at the foot of her bed was far from heartwarming,
Speaker 1: especially when Zona's ghost told her mother exactly who had
Speaker 1: killed her. On January twenty third of eighteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: Erasmus Shoe was working in his blacksmith shop in Greenbrier, County,
Speaker 1: West Virginia. He asked a local boy to check in
Speaker 1: on his wife of three months, Zona Heaster's shoe, and
Speaker 1: asked if she needed anything from the market. To the
Speaker 1: boy's horror, when he opened the door of the shoe's house,
Speaker 1: he found Zona lying dead on the floor. The next
Speaker 1: few hours went by quickly. Erasmus rushed to the house
Speaker 1: as soon as he heard the news. By the time
Speaker 1: the doctor arrived to examine the body, he had already
Speaker 1: laid her out for a funeral. He dressed Zona in
Speaker 1: a long dress with a high, stiff collar and a
Speaker 1: long veil tied under her chin. When the doctor tried
Speaker 1: to unbutton the collar to examine Zona's neck, Arrasmus demanded
Speaker 1: that he and the examination. He rushed the doctor out
Speaker 1: before he could even determine the cause of death. By
Speaker 1: the next day, Zona was in the ground, and according
Speaker 1: to Erasmus, that was the end of it all. At
Speaker 1: least it should have been, but Zona had other ideas.
Speaker 1: A few weeks after her death, her mother, Mary Jane Heaster,
Speaker 1: was just getting ready for sleep when something appeared next
Speaker 1: to her on her bed. Standing in front of her,
Speaker 1: looking as solid and healthy as ever, was her dead
Speaker 1: daughter Zona. Over the next few nights, Zona continued to
Speaker 1: appear to Mary Jane four separate times. Although at first
Speaker 1: she seemed reluctant to answer questions about her death, she
Speaker 1: finally relented and spoke about it. She told her mother
Speaker 1: that Erasmus had been mad at her over the meal
Speaker 1: she had cooked, and that her neck had been and
Speaker 1: I quote squeezed off at the first joint. For weeks,
Speaker 1: Mary Jane begged county officials to reopen her daughter's case.
Speaker 1: Not only had Zona allegedly appeared to her mother, other
Speaker 1: townsfolk had been whispering about murder. After it came to
Speaker 1: light that Erasmus didn't let the doctor find a cause
Speaker 1: of death. To quiet down the rumors, the local prosecutor
Speaker 1: ordered that Zona's body should be exhumed. On February twenty second,
Speaker 1: nearly a month after Zona's death, she was exhumed for
Speaker 1: an autopsy. The doctor quickly found that Mary Jane was right.
Speaker 1: Zona's neck had been broken right between the first and
Speaker 1: second vertebrae, her windpipe had been crushed, and there were
Speaker 1: finger marks on her skin. Zona had been strangled to death.
Speaker 1: Erasmus was immediately arrested and four months later he was
Speaker 1: put on trial. The star witness was Mary Jane Heaster,
Speaker 1: who told the story on the stand of her daughter's
Speaker 1: ghost solving her own murder. While the defense attorney questioned
Speaker 1: her fiercely, hoping to make the ghost story and the
Speaker 1: prosecution sound a bit ridiculous, his tactic backfired. Mary Jane
Speaker 1: simply refused to admit any doubt that her dead daughter
Speaker 1: had appeared to her. In her opinion, it wasn't a
Speaker 1: dream or a vision or an overactive imagination. It was
Speaker 1: her daughter's ghost. Her unwavering account convinced many townspeople to
Speaker 1: believe her and likely helps way the jury to the
Speaker 1: prosecution side. During the trial, it also came out that
Speaker 1: Erasmus had a checkered past. He'd been divorced by one
Speaker 1: wife who accused him of being cruel. His second wife
Speaker 1: died mysteriously, just like Zona. In between Mary Jane's ghost story,
Speaker 1: Erasmus's history, and the circumstantial evidence, it only took the
Speaker 1: jury an hour to find him guilty. Erasmus Shu was
Speaker 1: sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his wife,
Speaker 1: but only lived three more years before dying from the
Speaker 1: flu in nineteen hundred. Ane Zona's case went down in
Speaker 1: American history as one of the only known instances in
Speaker 1: which a ghost helped convict a murderer, giving a curious
Speaker 1: new meaning to the phrase the spirit of the law.
Speaker 1: Sister Francesca plunged the blade into the corpse, piercing flesh
Speaker 1: and then bone. It was difficult work. Her tools were
Speaker 1: poor and her training inadequate. This was, after all, her
Speaker 1: first autopsy. To make things even more complicated, the stakes
Speaker 1: were personal. The body on the table didn't belong to
Speaker 1: just any forty year old woman. She had been Claire
Speaker 1: of Montefalco, a prominent abbess renowned throughout the thirteenth century
Speaker 1: in Italy for her wisdom and her holiness. Before her death,
Speaker 1: she was the matriarch of the local Augustinian monastery, making
Speaker 1: her sister Francesca's direct superior. The nun worked methodically, taking
Speaker 1: great care not to damage the body more than absolutely necessary,
Speaker 1: and finally she managed to cut through Claire's ribs, exposing
Speaker 1: the chest cavity. With a mixture of apprehension and reverence,
Speaker 1: she reached into the cadaver and drew out the heart,
Speaker 1: placing it beside the Abbess Sister Francesca carefully sliced into
Speaker 1: the organ and then began searching through the folds of
Speaker 1: flesh for any abnormalities. She wasn't looking for evidence of murder.
Speaker 1: Claire had died after a prolonged illness, so there was
Speaker 1: no suspicion of foul play. In fact, the procedure was
Speaker 1: not intended to reveal a cause of death at all. Instead,
Speaker 1: Sister Francesca was looking for something even more important, physical
Speaker 1: proof that Claire had been touched by the divine. Her
Speaker 1: search was inspired by an event from fourteen years earlier.
Speaker 1: In twelve ninety four, while celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany,
Speaker 1: the Abbess abruptly fell into a state of spiritual ecstasy,
Speaker 1: a prolonged religious trance in which she lost awareness of
Speaker 1: the physical world. For several weeks. Claire was incapable of
Speaker 1: taking care of herself and would not to even eat.
Speaker 1: The nuns kept her alive by ladling spoonfuls of sugar
Speaker 1: water into her mouth. When she finally snapped out of it,
Speaker 1: she seemed changed. She told everyone that she'd had a
Speaker 1: strange vision in which Christ himself had asked her to
Speaker 1: carry his cross in her heart. Evidently he meant this literally.
Speaker 1: When Claire agreed, he plunged the cross directly into her chest,
Speaker 1: impaling her with it. Now it sounds a little intense,
Speaker 1: but the nun took the visions as per roof of
Speaker 1: Claire's great holiness, and this was seemingly confirmed in the
Speaker 1: years to come. After her vision, Claire experienced near constant pain,
Speaker 1: yet she continued to serve as abbess and eventually became
Speaker 1: famous for her wisdom and her charity. When she died
Speaker 1: in thirteen oh four, the nuns in her order hoped
Speaker 1: to see her officially recognized as a saint, but that
Speaker 1: wouldn't be easy. In the Catholic Church, canonizing typically requires
Speaker 1: evidence that the deceased has performed two verifiable miracles. Sister
Speaker 1: Francesca wasn't in the mood to sit around and wait
Speaker 1: for the abbess to bless her from beyond the grave.
Speaker 1: She believed that Claire's vision from years earlier would constitute
Speaker 1: a miracle if she could prove that it happened, So
Speaker 1: she took matters into her own hands and cut Claire open.
Speaker 1: She had only been examining the heart for a few
Speaker 1: minutes when she suddenly dropped her scalpel. She stepped back
Speaker 1: from the table in wonder, making the sign of the Cross.
Speaker 1: Within the heart, she had discovered the image of a crucifix,
Speaker 1: and as the autopsy continued, the nun uncovered more religious symbols,
Speaker 1: including a whip and a crown of thorns. Whether or
Speaker 1: not you buy that largely depends on your personal beliefs.
Speaker 1: At the time, a lot of religious people accused them
Speaker 1: of tampering with the heart and creating the symbols themselves.
Speaker 1: It's also possible that they were simply seeing what they
Speaker 1: wanted to see. The good news is you don't have
Speaker 1: to take Sister Francesca's word for it. You can decide
Speaker 1: for yourself. You see. It took a little longer than
Speaker 1: she expected, but Claire was eventually canonized as a saint,
Speaker 1: and because of that, her heart is still on display
Speaker 1: at the Augustinian Convent in Montefalco, which means that you
Speaker 1: can see it for yourself and determine whether you think
Speaker 1: the images are real, and by doing so, you'll be
Speaker 1: searching for the truth in Claire's remains. Continuing, the autopsy
Speaker 1: that Sister Francesca started seven hundred years Ago. I hope
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore
Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.