Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 2: I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty five years
Speaker 2: writing about true crime.
Speaker 3: And I'm Paul Holles, a retired cold case investigator who's
Speaker 3: worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 2: Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
Speaker 2: compelling true crimes, and.
Speaker 3: I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new
Speaker 3: insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 2: Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
Speaker 2: cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 3: Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1: This is buried bones.
Speaker 3: Ay, Kate, how are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing well? How are you?
Speaker 2: Because I hear there's a rumor floating around that there's
Speaker 2: some new hip stuff happening.
Speaker 1: What's the update?
Speaker 3: Oh? Good god, you know I'm falling apart.
Speaker 2: It's you had a little grunt right before you even
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh at your misfortune. Okay,
Speaker 2: you're falling apart.
Speaker 3: I think I talked about, you know, I had gone
Speaker 3: in to see the the orthopedic surgeon, and at least
Speaker 3: through X ray, it's obvious I have arthritis and my
Speaker 3: left hip, so ended up getting an MRI done to
Speaker 3: take a look at the soft tissue, and it's a mess.
Speaker 3: It's the labrum, which is sort of the cartilage like
Speaker 3: a cup that surrounds the head of the femur. Well,
Speaker 3: that's that's shredded. I have a kind of this impingement
Speaker 3: called a can defect, which the docs that I could
Speaker 3: have been born with it, but most likely it developed
Speaker 3: during all the athletics I did during my you know,
Speaker 3: adolescent years, and every time I move my leg a
Speaker 3: certain direction, this hump gets pushed into the joint itself
Speaker 3: and that's probably what has just shredded my my laborum,
Speaker 3: and then I have other torn muscles. You know, it's
Speaker 3: just a disaster. So I'm what I'm I have to
Speaker 3: be mobile. The writing's on the wall. I'm gonna need
Speaker 3: my hip replaced at some point. But I'm going to
Speaker 3: try this PRP injection just to see if I can
Speaker 3: slow down the arthritis, the progression of the arthritis as
Speaker 3: well as My hope is is that it would help,
Speaker 3: you know, the labrum a little bit, but you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's a long shot. But I'm just I have
Speaker 3: too many things going on, case wise, project wise. I
Speaker 3: have to I have to remain mobile. I can't have
Speaker 3: my leg cut off just yet.
Speaker 2: Just yeah, what is the doctor saying that you need
Speaker 2: to stop doing because you're super active? Is are like
Speaker 2: hiking or mountain biking that you need to lay off of?
Speaker 3: Well? I have reduced my activities just because every time
Speaker 3: I do any of those, especially just walking, you know,
Speaker 3: with all the travel, like you know, skurrying around the
Speaker 3: Denver airport, my hip will just start to ache. And
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure that most of the pain is coming
Speaker 3: from the laborum because I can feel it like will
Speaker 3: catch and then if I push it past that catching point,
Speaker 3: it aches the rest of the day. So this is
Speaker 3: where the PRP. My hope is is I can resume
Speaker 3: normal activities and I need to, you know, It's it's
Speaker 3: not like you just want to stop moving. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: so I'll see what he says after, you know, he
Speaker 3: sticks the needle and my my groin basically and pumps
Speaker 3: me full of plasma.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm so sorry, I was just you know, between
Speaker 2: I'm sure all the listeners realize this, but between the
Speaker 2: two of us, I review our episodes because Paul does
Speaker 2: not want to listen to himself anything at all, so
Speaker 2: I hear myself way too often. And we in the
Speaker 2: episode that I was reviewing, we were talking about your
Speaker 2: hip before and talking about the tendency of men, not
Speaker 2: just men, but a lot of people to not want
Speaker 2: to go that step into you know, go to the
Speaker 2: doctor and certainly not pursue something like surgery. But I'm
Speaker 2: proud of you for doing that, because nobody should live
Speaker 2: in pain and then it gets worse and worse until
Speaker 2: it's intolerable.
Speaker 3: You know. I do not want to get to a
Speaker 3: point to where I am not physically capable. And I
Speaker 3: remember going into my shoulder surgery, my shoulder replacement. I
Speaker 3: was so nervous, you know, because it's a pretty serious
Speaker 3: surgery and I had never been under general anesthesia for
Speaker 3: that length of time. Now, having gone through the shoulder,
Speaker 3: I'm less resistant to the hip, you know, if and
Speaker 3: when I ultimately do it, because I'm pretty confident that
Speaker 3: the surgery will go fine now that I've been through
Speaker 3: it once before. But now that my shoulder is fully
Speaker 3: healed and I see all the functionality come back so
Speaker 3: much better than what it was pre operation, that I'll
Speaker 3: do the surgeries. I'll have all the joints replaced at
Speaker 3: some point, just so I have the functionality now.
Speaker 1: I think I've talked to some of my friends about this.
Speaker 2: When there's something clearly from your past that you've done that,
Speaker 2: maybe you know a parent or a girlfriend or somebody said, Paul,
Speaker 2: I don't know. Like my stepfather did construction for forever
Speaker 2: and now he really really feels it. You know, he's
Speaker 2: in his late seventies. Do you think back, Oh, I
Speaker 2: wish I had. I wish somebody had been a little
Speaker 2: more forceful about that. Or were your glory day memories
Speaker 2: totally worth what's happening now?
Speaker 3: No, you know, the sports side, I just participated in
Speaker 3: the sports, you know, I never was on any type
Speaker 3: of time, you know, to pursue it. At post high school,
Speaker 3: I would say, probably what my biggest regret is that's
Speaker 3: causing me the issues is the the heavy weightlifting with
Speaker 3: poor technique and I'm just not I'm not this really
Speaker 3: robust guy, you know, with the big bones and everything.
Speaker 3: And I remember when I was I think it was
Speaker 3: a teenage years, I was lifting on base and I
Speaker 3: had done a kind of an internship with the orthopedic
Speaker 3: unit at the Dava Grant Medical Center at Travis Air
Speaker 3: Force Base, and one of those surgeons was was working
Speaker 3: out at the gym and he saw me bench pressing
Speaker 3: and it was horrible for him. It was heavy, heavy weight.
Speaker 3: I'm bouncing it off my chest. And he came up
Speaker 3: and he said, stop that, thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, somebody has been reasonable.
Speaker 3: I didn't stop it, you know, And that's just that's
Speaker 3: where Now that I'm older, a little bit wiser on
Speaker 3: that front, I've really modified what I do in the
Speaker 3: gym and I feel it it's easier on my joints,
Speaker 3: using a little lighter weight, you know, doing more repetitions,
Speaker 3: more sets. So you know that, I think it really
Speaker 3: is my regret. It's that ego lifting that guys do.
Speaker 3: You're in the gym and you want to press as
Speaker 3: much weight and wow, everybody around you, Well, that's wear
Speaker 3: and tear on your body.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you something I haven't. I don't really
Speaker 2: don't talk about very much.
Speaker 1: You know. I have a personal trainer who I love.
Speaker 2: Shout out to Nate, and Nate specializes in people older
Speaker 2: than fifty.
Speaker 1: It was forty eight.
Speaker 2: I think maybe forty seven when I first went to
Speaker 2: him and I had to say, listen, you know, can
Speaker 2: you take me? And he said yes. And I've never
Speaker 2: gotten hurt with him. I've gotten to a point where
Speaker 2: I could deadlift my own weight, which is a huge
Speaker 2: deal for me, and I haven't gotten hurt, and he
Speaker 2: always knows how to step back when I feel. You know,
Speaker 2: I have eights that everybody else has. Weightlifting, know for men,
Speaker 2: but especially for women as we get older, is so important,
Speaker 2: you know, building muscle and not losing your muscle and
Speaker 2: with bone density and everything. So so I'm proud of
Speaker 2: myself for being able to do that, but it definitely
Speaker 2: is I've been hurt enough times with people who I
Speaker 2: don't think know what they're doing that I'm really happy
Speaker 2: to be with Nate because I feel protected.
Speaker 1: He's not going to ask me to do anything that
Speaker 1: I don't want to do.
Speaker 3: You know. Sure, yeah, I know. That's that's good. I see,
Speaker 3: I've never used a personal trainer. I've just done things myself,
Speaker 3: you know, and I'm better now than I was back
Speaker 3: in the day.
Speaker 1: Well, that's good.
Speaker 2: I think you would like a personal trainer if you're
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it's a very privileged thing to
Speaker 2: be able to have that, but man, it really I
Speaker 2: just get scared of hurting myself permanently somehow because I
Speaker 2: you know, in TV news, I worked with a lot
Speaker 2: of camera guys who in my favorite was this guy
Speaker 2: named Lance. He would use those huge beta cam cameras,
Speaker 2: the big ones, and I don't remember what, but he
Speaker 2: had a couple of discs that got crushed and he
Speaker 2: was going to have to have surgery. Did have surgery,
Speaker 2: I think, And so that kind of growing up around
Speaker 2: these people getting hurt from all of this equipment that
Speaker 2: justared the frankly scared the shit out of me. So
Speaker 2: I'm very chicken, but I'm trying to move forward in
Speaker 2: a way that's responsible for me.
Speaker 3: So well, that's just said it. And it takes so
Speaker 3: long to heal from injuries anymore, so I agree.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, enough about our our aches and pains, which
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure the majority of.
Speaker 1: Our listeners probably share with us.
Speaker 2: We are going to talk about a story and it's
Speaker 2: a setting that we've really never talked about before. So
Speaker 2: I'm pretty excited, you know, about what we're going to
Speaker 2: be dealing with today, just because Number one it's in
Speaker 2: the eighteen hundred.
Speaker 1: Number two, it's in upstate, New York.
Speaker 2: Love Love, and then you know, number three, we've got
Speaker 2: a murder scene that's going to be interesting. So let's
Speaker 2: go ahead and set the scene. So we are, as
Speaker 2: I said, in New York State. This is summertime, eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine. We're right at the turn of the century,
Speaker 2: so this is an interesting time to deal with. And
Speaker 2: sometimes I think these stories are more interesting than the ones,
Speaker 2: you know, moving forward, because I feel like with these stories,
Speaker 2: because we don't have the photos, and you know that
Speaker 2: kind of the visual part of it. Even though I
Speaker 2: know it's more difficult for you, I think we have
Speaker 2: to start leaning on a little bit more profiling and
Speaker 2: kind of being creative about the way that we approach
Speaker 2: these stories versus other stories that we do in the
Speaker 2: fifties of the sixties that have photos. And of course
Speaker 2: you're going to say, screw all that, I want the photos.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be creative, Kate.
Speaker 3: No, you know, I work with what you can provide me.
Speaker 2: I know, Okay, Well, we are in New York State.
Speaker 2: It is Thursday, June eighth, as I said, eighteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: and we are on dund A train and we've never
Speaker 2: dealt with a train before. I don't think we've dealt
Speaker 2: with a train before. Somebody will probably email me and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: you have. I don't remember, So this is kind of
Speaker 2: cool in Texas, I don't ride trains. When I lived
Speaker 2: in New York, I took trains all the time between
Speaker 2: the states, and when I went to school in Boston,
Speaker 2: you know, I was all over trains. Are there quite
Speaker 2: a few trains right in Colorado? Are there passenger trains
Speaker 2: that you can do fun stuff on?
Speaker 3: Or well? The one that I can that comes to
Speaker 3: mind that I've been on is what's called the cog Railway,
Speaker 3: and it's a special type. I'd call it a train
Speaker 3: that goes up the side of Pike's Peak. I've done that, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: So you go from Manitou Springs up the Pike's Peak.
Speaker 3: And it had shut down when we first moved here.
Speaker 3: It was it was done, and then they put in
Speaker 3: a brand new train, I believe, and new tracks or
Speaker 3: fixed up the tracks. And so about three years ago,
Speaker 3: when my oldest son was out visiting, we took them
Speaker 3: up that train and it was very it was fascinating,
Speaker 3: very comfortable. It's environmentally controlled, so if you're you know,
Speaker 3: in the winter time here, that's pro problem if you're
Speaker 3: just out exposed to the elements. So that's the one
Speaker 3: that I can think of. And you know, my train
Speaker 3: writing experience is very limited. I took an Amtrak from
Speaker 3: Santa Barbara down to LA. Actually it was after oh
Speaker 3: it's my favorite murder event in Santa Barbara and then
Speaker 3: go I had to go down to LA to do more.
Speaker 3: I think it was TV stuff and that was That
Speaker 3: was a comfortable ride. You know, it's just it's easy
Speaker 3: just to relax on a train.
Speaker 1: I love trains.
Speaker 2: When I lived in New York, I worked at Fordham University.
Speaker 1: I was teaching.
Speaker 2: I was full time faculty, and I was going I
Speaker 2: don't know if it's still there, but I was going
Speaker 2: to what was known as their Marymount Campus, which is
Speaker 2: in North Terrytown aka Sleepy Hollow. So this was my dream.
Speaker 2: You can imagine this is my dream. I really, I
Speaker 2: really wanted to be there, and I loved it. I mean,
Speaker 2: I got so much work done. I found it relaxed,
Speaker 2: way more relaxing than be on a subway. So this
Speaker 2: is not that kind of story. We are not relaxing
Speaker 2: one little bit, and I don't think passengers are going
Speaker 2: to relax on this either. Okay, So we are on
Speaker 2: a train that sounds like a load of fun. Frankly,
Speaker 2: it's a theater run train, so it's really popular you.
Speaker 1: Go with your spouse on date night.
Speaker 2: And it's a forty five minute route between Lockport, New York,
Speaker 2: and it goes to Buffalo. So people hop on and
Speaker 2: off the train and it takes you right to the
Speaker 2: theater in Buffalo and then you know, you see the
Speaker 2: show and you hop back on. And so this train
Speaker 2: is running a lot, and I think there are several
Speaker 2: of them. So with this train, So, like I said,
Speaker 2: June eighth, it's around midnight and people are coming back
Speaker 2: from the show in Buffalo, and it's heading towards Lockport.
Speaker 2: About a quarter of a mile after it goes through
Speaker 2: a town called Shawnee, the engineer realizes that something's wrong.
Speaker 2: The breaks aren't working properly. Yikes, I mean petrifying. He
Speaker 2: slows down the train to a halt and then he
Speaker 2: hops off and he inspects it and he sees that
Speaker 2: there's a small cap that has popped off one of
Speaker 2: the break pipes underneath the train, and it looks like
Speaker 2: it had hit something and been knocked loose. It's a
Speaker 2: little terrifying that one little cap being popped off will
Speaker 2: make the brakes.
Speaker 1: Feel like they're not working.
Speaker 2: But welcome to eighteen ninety nine, you know, train, So
Speaker 2: it's not a big deal. The guy, Roger Metcath, the engineer,
Speaker 2: he grabs an extra cap, he puts it on, and
Speaker 2: then they continue on the way. The next day, so
Speaker 2: this would be Friday, June ninth, he inspects his train
Speaker 2: and Roger Metcathy, engineer says, he hops down and he looks,
Speaker 2: and he says that he thinks there is a small
Speaker 2: piece of human flesh on the front of the train. Now,
Speaker 2: let me just tell you real quick. There is an
Speaker 2: author who is fantastic. Her name's Michelle Graff. She wrote
Speaker 2: a book about it, which is what I looked at
Speaker 2: and the researchers looked at. She described it as about
Speaker 2: the size of a hen's egg yolk. And I don't
Speaker 2: know how you would identify human flesh.
Speaker 1: Is it obvious? I guess I've never really thought about
Speaker 1: it before.
Speaker 3: Let's say it's something that has some skin remnant on it,
Speaker 3: and you can see let's let's say, skin off of
Speaker 3: a man's arm right where you You know, how the
Speaker 3: hair on a man's arm would be pretty obvious, going, Okay,
Speaker 3: that looks like it could be human tissue. If it's
Speaker 3: just tissue, you know, from the internal aspects of the body,
Speaker 3: I think it would be pretty tough to come to a
Speaker 3: conclusion it's human. You may say it looks like, you know,
Speaker 3: the train hit an animal, you know, during its route.
Speaker 2: Well, Roger is alarmed, and he says, I might have
Speaker 2: hit somebody last night on my last run. I have
Speaker 2: no idea, and if I hit someone, that's why the
Speaker 2: cap came off.
Speaker 1: Even though it's not that unusual.
Speaker 2: He didn't see anything on the tracks anywhere, so this
Speaker 2: was a big mystery. So he files a report with
Speaker 2: the railroad agent, and there is an investigator who comes
Speaker 2: on the case, and his name is John Perhamis. And
Speaker 2: I will say upfront, I'm fairly impressed with the investigators
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety nine. Sometimes they are better than our
Speaker 2: nineteen hundreds people. He files a report. We've got somebody
Speaker 2: who says, okay, I'm you know, an investigator who is
Speaker 2: going to go look for somebody or something on the
Speaker 2: track around where this cap fell off. The next day,
Speaker 2: there's a farm hand named Charles Bliss, and he makes
Speaker 2: a terrible discovery. He wakes up early in the morning
Speaker 2: that morning, probably around the same time that Roger is
Speaker 2: making this discovery of the flesh on the front of
Speaker 2: his train.
Speaker 1: He says that he sees mangled human remains at the
Speaker 1: railroad crossing near Shawnee. They went from Buffalo toward Lockport,
Speaker 1: and they went through Shawnee no problems.
Speaker 2: But then after Shawne that's where we have an issue.
Speaker 2: Keith thinks that it's a woman. So when I say mangled,
Speaker 2: that's what I mean mangled because she appears to be
Speaker 2: wearing a dress, and the author, Michelle Graff, says it
Speaker 2: looked as though the train had dragged her for some distance.
Speaker 2: The wheels had severed her legs, and one side of
Speaker 2: her face was badly crushed. One of her hands still
Speaker 2: stretched across the rail. So I mean, tough crime scene
Speaker 2: for whoever's going to be looking at this. Tell me,
Speaker 2: just at first glance, before we talked specifically about this case,
Speaker 2: what would be the obvious challenges of dealing with somebody
Speaker 2: who's dead on the tracks, but they're trying to figure
Speaker 2: out is this accident is a suicide or is this
Speaker 2: to cover up a murder?
Speaker 3: For sure. In fact, we've had, of course multiple call
Speaker 3: them pedestrians run over by trains, and my jurisdiction during
Speaker 3: my career, I never worked a death scene. None of
Speaker 3: them required, let's say, a homicide investigation to kick off.
Speaker 3: I have seen a body in the Morgue that had
Speaker 3: been run over by a train, and then I have
Speaker 3: a very similar scenario where a man was dumped out
Speaker 3: on the freeway in the middle of the night when
Speaker 3: it was real foggy, and got run over by many
Speaker 3: cars and his body was torn apart and smeared across
Speaker 3: a quarter mile of the freeway.
Speaker 1: But he was dead first, right.
Speaker 3: Well, actually no, he was. He had been rolled up
Speaker 3: in a carpet and then pushed off out of the
Speaker 3: bed of a pickup while he was still alive. Oh
Speaker 3: my gosh, that case. And that wasn't he wasn't hit
Speaker 3: by a train. He was hit by vehicles on a road.
Speaker 3: But it kind kind of the same type of scene
Speaker 3: because trains, when you say mangled human body, trains are
Speaker 3: not kind to the human body. Basically are diced up
Speaker 3: and smeared over the course of you know, fifty hundred
Speaker 3: two hundred feet. In that particular case that was interviews
Speaker 3: with the suspects got it in terms of trying to
Speaker 3: determine if the person was alive or not at the
Speaker 3: time they were struck with the train. Of course there's
Speaker 3: going to be witnesses, potential witnesses, you know that can
Speaker 3: say she jumped out in front of the train. Now,
Speaker 3: in terms of any physical diagnostic aspects, I think that
Speaker 3: would be tough. That's where I would be asking the pathologist,
Speaker 3: is there any way you can tell was this person
Speaker 3: alive or not? You know, were they dead, you know,
Speaker 3: laid on the tracks, you know, to cover up a
Speaker 3: crime or as a body disposal aspect, or you know,
Speaker 3: were they bound and left alive on the on the
Speaker 3: tracks like you see in the old movies.
Speaker 2: Right, well, let me give you some more information. We
Speaker 2: have this investigator, and then we also have a corner
Speaker 2: who to me is surprisingly involved. I did not think corners,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of went into the field.
Speaker 3: So he's the elected corner.
Speaker 1: Or yeah, it looks like it.
Speaker 2: He's a Niagara County corner, one corner for this whole area.
Speaker 3: Okay, just from a coroner's perspective is you know, today
Speaker 3: they often have death investigators that go out in the field,
Speaker 3: but back probably during this time, you saw more of
Speaker 3: the pathologists or the corners themselves that were actually responding out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, from American Sherlock.
Speaker 2: I had a train explosion, and this was before the FBI,
Speaker 2: and so the Southern Union Pacific I think is the train.
Speaker 2: They sent out their own investigators. And because it was
Speaker 2: a US Postal worker who was killed in this blast,
Speaker 2: US Postal sent out there investigators. So you've got all
Speaker 2: of this jurisdiction mess because you don't have this centralized agency.
Speaker 2: So we have the first investigator I mentioned, who was
Speaker 2: with the railroad I believe, and then you've got our corner,
Speaker 2: whose name is Henry Cleveland. He comes to the scene
Speaker 2: about the same time as Agent Paramus comes out. They
Speaker 2: both reached the you know, the not surprising conclusion here
Speaker 2: that the woman who they thought was actually just a
Speaker 2: teenager was killed after being struck by the train. And
Speaker 2: I do have more information on the body and the
Speaker 2: positioning and all of that. They are trying to figure
Speaker 2: out if this is accidental of course, or suicide. Murder
Speaker 2: does not seem to be on the table right now.
Speaker 2: So the coroner says, the last train to come through
Speaker 2: these tracks was that Lockport bound train on the Theater
Speaker 2: run around midnight, and it would have been moving, according
Speaker 2: to the engineer, about thirty miles an hour. And now
Speaker 2: doctor Cleveland is trying to figure out not only who
Speaker 2: this victim is, but the circumstances of her death.
Speaker 1: He has been to I know you asked this a lot.
Speaker 2: What is the experience of the investigators and the coroner
Speaker 2: and the pathologist. So Cleveland has been to quite a
Speaker 2: lot of these lots of accidental deaths involving trains. Actually,
Speaker 2: about a month before this incident, he worked a case
Speaker 2: where a sixteen year old was fatally struck while attempting
Speaker 2: to cross a set of tracks. She had been thrown
Speaker 2: nearly twenty five feet, and this is where doctor Cleveland
Speaker 2: starts to bring in his own experience to kind of
Speaker 2: figure out what's going on here. What Cleveland says is
Speaker 2: the key differences to him so far are that there's
Speaker 2: almost no blood at this scene, and apparently at the
Speaker 2: other scene that was not the case, there was blood everywhere.
Speaker 1: So that's what he says so far.
Speaker 2: So they're you know, trying to put together and murder
Speaker 2: is going to be on the table here pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: So what do you think about that she's on the
Speaker 2: tracks but no blood And Cleveland says, that's weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, that's significant. When somebody's run over by a
Speaker 3: train and you know, they all their blood is in
Speaker 3: their body and all these reservoirs, in the blood vessels
Speaker 3: and everywhere that's all opened up, you know, so you're
Speaker 3: going to have a significant amount of blood. It's not
Speaker 3: going to be pooled in one location unless you know
Speaker 3: the primary you know, parts of the body come to
Speaker 3: rest one location. But you will see that blood smeared
Speaker 3: all along the tracks, if you will, you know, along
Speaker 3: the part of the track that the body is being
Speaker 3: cut up on and smeared down. So this is where
Speaker 3: if there is no blood from this woman's body, then
Speaker 3: that would tell me that she bled out somewhere else.
Speaker 3: And now it's the autopsy is significant because it's a
Speaker 3: can the pathologist identify other bleeding injuries, let's say, stab
Speaker 3: wounds amongst this mangled mess that he's looking at.
Speaker 2: Well, let me tell you, they first start tackling before
Speaker 2: they get to an autopsy. They tackle the body positioning
Speaker 2: because they're still making notes about this. So this is
Speaker 2: the best we could do with the description based on,
Speaker 2: you know, all the notes that we have. The teenager's
Speaker 2: body was thought to be positioned before the train struck her.
Speaker 1: As what they think.
Speaker 2: Her upper body was off the tracks, on the planking,
Speaker 2: and her torso was laying across the easternmost rail, and
Speaker 2: her legs were actually on the track, which is why
Speaker 2: they were severed from the rest of her body. So
Speaker 2: it's kind of like she's across the tracks, laying over
Speaker 2: different parts of the tracks.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense to you?
Speaker 3: That does make sense?
Speaker 2: Okay, So now Agent Paramus is very alarmed. They're trying
Speaker 2: to work out this theory, even though the death took
Speaker 2: place at the railroad crossing. He says he's convinced that
Speaker 2: the girl hadn't been crossing the tracks, or even standing
Speaker 2: for that matter. He says, if she were standing up,
Speaker 2: she would have been thrown off the tracks, just like
Speaker 2: what happened a month ago. Is it really that, I mean,
Speaker 2: if this is a teenager who's five foot five, is
Speaker 2: that really the case.
Speaker 3: Well, this is where when you get into vehicular accidents
Speaker 3: with pedestrians, there is a way to reconstruct the position
Speaker 3: of the pedestrian based on let's say, the front of
Speaker 3: the car, you know. And so if you have a
Speaker 3: pedestrian that is standing up and is hit broadside by
Speaker 3: the front of a high, flat surface like the front
Speaker 3: of a pickup, that person is going to be thrown
Speaker 3: quite a distance depending on the speed of the pickup.
Speaker 3: The mass of that pickup is so much well the
Speaker 3: mass of a train. You know, a person is you're
Speaker 3: not even going to feel a bump in a train.
Speaker 3: And so a train traveling at thirty miles an hour
Speaker 3: if this woman is standing up and you know, it's
Speaker 3: also what is the front of this train? Is there
Speaker 3: one of those I guess you call it a cattle guard,
Speaker 3: you know, or is it a flat surface or you
Speaker 3: know what is that the front of the train. But
Speaker 3: that's where this investigator and the corner are taking a look, going, Yeah,
Speaker 3: she was just let's say, walking down the tracks and
Speaker 3: then gets hit by the front of this train going
Speaker 3: at thirty miles an hour. She would have been tossed,
Speaker 3: you know, you would see all that blunt force injury
Speaker 3: and she would have just been thrown. Oftentimes, you'll see,
Speaker 3: like with pedestrians that commit suicide on the freeway, they
Speaker 3: may have like tennis shoes on that are completely tied up.
Speaker 3: They are literally pulled out of the tennis shoes. The
Speaker 3: shoes end up almost staying on the freeway while the
Speaker 3: body is thrown, you know, fifty feet down down the freeway.
Speaker 3: So I imagine with a train traveling at a certain speed
Speaker 3: would have a similar type of force, and so they're going, uh,
Speaker 3: she was laying on the tracks. And this is where
Speaker 3: it's from a sequence standpoint. If she's laying on the
Speaker 3: tracks and the front of the train is designed in
Speaker 3: a certain way where it's low down, would she have
Speaker 3: been pushed away before kind of bawling up underneath it?
Speaker 3: Or when the train stopped, was she placed in between
Speaker 3: let's say two cars and then the train starts up again.
Speaker 1: That's awful, think about.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, agent Paramus feels like this is a suicide
Speaker 2: and he thinks that she came and laid on the tracks,
Speaker 2: and that's how you get it both ways. Now, the coroner,
Speaker 2: to his credit, says, I don't think that's what happened.
Speaker 2: And he's it's interesting because he's not thinking medically, he's
Speaker 2: thinking more common sense. He said, we know when this
Speaker 2: happened because the cap fell off. Trains were going back
Speaker 2: and forth here. You know, we know when this happened.
Speaker 2: And he said, what is a teenage girl doing out
Speaker 2: here by herself at midnight? He said, it just doesn't
Speaker 2: make any sense whatsoever. And you know that she's out
Speaker 2: walking alone, and maybe she snuck out and did this,
Speaker 2: but he he is really thinking there has to be
Speaker 2: a much bigger investigation.
Speaker 3: Well, sure, you know, the lack of blood is a
Speaker 3: red flag, and then you know, part of I think
Speaker 3: my thought is is that, Okay, one potential, let's say
Speaker 3: victim pool if you will, is like what you brought up.
Speaker 3: You know, teenage girl out walking in a relatively remote
Speaker 3: location along the train tracks. That does happen, you know,
Speaker 3: But you also have individuals on the train the train stopped.
Speaker 3: Was she a passenger on the train? Yep?
Speaker 1: Good question.
Speaker 2: So what the coroner does is he starts interviewing railroad workers.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming that Agent Paramus is with him through all
Speaker 2: of this, But I'm just hearing this from doctor Cleveland's
Speaker 2: see what I mean. I mean, I didn't think would
Speaker 2: he do that? Would a corner normally do that? He's
Speaker 2: investigating in the field.
Speaker 3: Well, this is this is a death investigation. That is
Speaker 3: his role. And then the paramus is that his name. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's looking at this as okay, is this falling into
Speaker 3: where now you have homicide? Because if it's if it's
Speaker 3: suicide or accidental, then basically it's all on the corner.
Speaker 3: So that's now the coroner has to come to a
Speaker 3: decision and find evidence to suggest what is the manner
Speaker 3: of death with this teenage girl.
Speaker 2: Well, let me tell you what the real workers say, Cleveland.
Speaker 2: Doctor Cleveland talks to one in particular, he asks the worker,
Speaker 2: you know, you know these tracks, it's midnight, it's dark.
Speaker 2: Would anybody have seen her? And he said, from where
Speaker 2: the engineer was coming from. And the engineer corroborates this
Speaker 2: from the way and the speed the engineer was coming from.
Speaker 1: In the speed that he was at.
Speaker 2: There's a huge poll that would have blocked the view.
Speaker 2: If she were on the track already, he wouldn't have
Speaker 2: seen her. And as you've already noted, nobody would have
Speaker 2: felt this, you know, a body on the tracks in
Speaker 2: that way, he said.
Speaker 1: The worker's very astute worker.
Speaker 2: He says, if anybody had wanted to put the body
Speaker 2: there to run it over, you couldn't have picked a
Speaker 2: better spot. It looks to me like it was placed
Speaker 2: on the track with great care and after a little
Speaker 2: bit of study on the situation. But he's not deducing
Speaker 2: that if this is murder and she was murdered somewhere else,
Speaker 2: that the killer is trying to ask her identity, because
Speaker 2: I think he thought to himself, why not put her
Speaker 2: face on the track, Why not put her head on
Speaker 2: the track, and then you'll it will be very difficult
Speaker 2: unless somebody's looking for her, it'll be very difficult to
Speaker 2: identify her. And you know, you can see her face,
Speaker 2: so she'll be able to be identified soon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, in eighteen ninety nine, I mean this
Speaker 3: is really probably before this jurisdiction would have been using
Speaker 3: any type of fingerprint for identification, so you know, the
Speaker 3: facial identification or just you know, like her dress, there's
Speaker 3: a missing person's report, can you match up what the
Speaker 3: victim's wearing her physical description to a missing person's report?
Speaker 3: But yeah, it would be difficult. These remains are a mess. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's further complicating identifying this victim.
Speaker 2: Well, what they're doing is canvassing the whole area, and
Speaker 2: they're starting with the towns, the areas, you know, the
Speaker 2: rural places that are closest to the tracks, and then
Speaker 2: trying to move outward. They find out while they're interviewing
Speaker 2: these folks that there is a family called the Trips.
Speaker 1: They are wealthy for.
Speaker 2: That area, well known, and they had just reported a
Speaker 2: teenage girl missing. Let me tell you about the family.
Speaker 2: It's a very very big family. But the patriarch who
Speaker 2: is you know, we've got a couple of key people
Speaker 2: who are important.
Speaker 1: The patriarch is Henry.
Speaker 2: His wife is Matilda, and they have an adult daughter
Speaker 2: whose name is Aya. Aya still lives on the homestead
Speaker 2: and along with her brother whose name is Lauren, and
Speaker 2: he has a wife named Carrie. There's a homestead and
Speaker 2: then Lauren and Carrie live across the street. So very
Speaker 2: tight knit family. They have a teenage daughter. Her name
Speaker 2: is Sarah Mumford. Sarah is the victim in this case.
Speaker 2: So they are four miles from the crossing and the
Speaker 2: Trips have been knocking on all of their neighbor's doors
Speaker 2: since ten pm the night before, So this bad thing
Speaker 2: happens at midnight on the eighth. They two hours before
Speaker 2: started looking for Sarah. They say that Sarah, who had
Speaker 2: been living with them for you know, four to six years,
Speaker 2: has vanished.
Speaker 1: She is sixteen.
Speaker 2: She had left the house around nine o'clock and she
Speaker 2: said that she was going to go visit members of
Speaker 2: the family. It could have been her adopted brother or
Speaker 2: her brother across the street and his wife.
Speaker 1: They don't know, but you know, it's unclear.
Speaker 2: They but she was supposed to leave and go visit
Speaker 2: some family members, and she didn't come home. What I
Speaker 2: think is interesting is she leaves at nine, and then
Speaker 2: at ten o'clock, they immediately become worried and they start
Speaker 2: knocking on doors. And the reason I say that's weird is,
Speaker 2: of course you've picked up by now about the lack
Speaker 2: of communication. In the eighteen hundreds, we have often and
Speaker 2: in the early nineteen hundreds, we've had stories where people
Speaker 2: don't report family members missing for several days because it's
Speaker 2: not abnormal. There's no phones, and people come home when
Speaker 2: they come home. And so I was a little alarmed
Speaker 2: by the one hour thing that seems a little early
Speaker 2: to panic, but maybe.
Speaker 3: Not suspiciously quick. That's what I kind of going. Why
Speaker 3: so quick? You know she's leaving the house at nine
Speaker 3: o'clock to go visit family. Has she been told, hey,
Speaker 3: you have to be back by nine point thirty. Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm just going to tuck that little detail away and
Speaker 3: we'll see where this goes.
Speaker 2: The corner decides that he needs to talk to friends
Speaker 2: and family of the Trips and specifically of Sarah.
Speaker 1: In this inquesty.
Speaker 2: He has a lot of people come and testify, including
Speaker 2: several laborers and farm hands who work on or near
Speaker 2: the trip homestead, and they tell the coroner's jury that
Speaker 2: Sarah was grossly mistreated by her adopted family. In the
Speaker 2: form of a so a trigger warning for folks, just
Speaker 2: you know, we are going to be talking about abuse
Speaker 2: of different kinds coming up here on the story. So,
Speaker 2: the witnesses say within the last year, Sarah became more
Speaker 2: and more isolated. She stopped going to church in school,
Speaker 2: she was dressed in ripped up clothes all the.
Speaker 1: Time, worn down shoes.
Speaker 2: It felt to neighbors like she had been told to
Speaker 2: stop talking to them. A lot of the testimony suggested
Speaker 2: that she had endured a lot of physical abuse and
Speaker 2: torture at the hands of the Trips. The witnesses said
Speaker 2: that they had seen Sarah be tied up, whipped, hit,
Speaker 2: hung from a back shed by her wrists. One report
Speaker 2: says that Sarah was sometimes locked in the corn crib
Speaker 2: as punishment for falling behind on her housework. I forgot
Speaker 2: to look to see what a corn crib is.
Speaker 1: I know you've never heard of that.
Speaker 2: Well, I the reason I want to know is because
Speaker 2: I want to know how how small or big thiss is.
Speaker 1: I mean, it looks like a barn to me.
Speaker 3: So who's doing all of this abuse? Is it Henry
Speaker 3: or or other family members also participating?
Speaker 1: It sounds like several different kinds of people.
Speaker 2: They're vague right now, but I think the adoptive father
Speaker 2: is the head of it. Of course, none of this
Speaker 2: makes the trip family, who is a respectable family and
Speaker 2: they're you know, very well known and they're wealthy for
Speaker 2: the area. Doesn't make them look any good at all.
Speaker 2: But there's also no smoking gun in this case. So
Speaker 2: if anything, what people who are defending the Trips say
Speaker 2: is isn't this just more evidence of why Sarah was
Speaker 2: willing to go and lay down on the railroad tracks
Speaker 2: and take her own life because she was miserable and
Speaker 2: she was abused.
Speaker 1: Which you can go both ways on that, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, That's what I was thinking is on one hand,
Speaker 3: you know, victimology would suggest that potentially she was just
Speaker 3: done with life and decided, you know, I can't take
Speaker 3: this anymore. But on the other hand, you now have
Speaker 3: a family that's willing to commit a level of violence
Speaker 3: against her. I suspect with the types of violence that's
Speaker 3: occurring to Sarah, I wouldn't also think that there's possibly
Speaker 3: sexual abuse going on by Henry or maybe one of
Speaker 3: the other men in this family. But then, as you
Speaker 3: were talking, this isn't just the family that's on this property.
Speaker 3: You have a whole other, suspect pool of farm hands
Speaker 3: and whoever else is flowing in and out of this
Speaker 3: homestead slash farm. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other thing I was thinking about, Paul, if you
Speaker 2: put together this picture of this family, which seems controlling.
Speaker 2: They said she's being isolated. You know, I'm sure they're
Speaker 2: keeping an eye on her. Would they really let her
Speaker 2: leave the homestead at nine o'clock at night to maybe
Speaker 2: run away or maybe call for help.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It just seems a little weird that they're are like,
Speaker 2: go ahead, Sarah, go have a good time.
Speaker 1: We'll see you whenever, and then they freak out.
Speaker 3: I think that's a very good point that you are making.
Speaker 3: You know, they are showing a level of coursive control
Speaker 3: over Sarah. You know, and this is this is part
Speaker 3: of what you see in abuse situations, you know, whether
Speaker 3: it be domestic abuse or its abuse against children. You see,
Speaker 3: the offender gets more and more control over that victim
Speaker 3: to a point because that offender knows if the victim
Speaker 3: is able to get outside of my control, and that
Speaker 3: could be physically outside or electronically today or whatever else,
Speaker 3: that victim could divulge and the offender, of course now
Speaker 3: is at risk of being brought to the attention of authorities.
Speaker 3: But also for an offender that wants to continuously abuse,
Speaker 3: they lose that access to the victim if the victim leaves.
Speaker 3: And so in this particular case, the fact that she's
Speaker 3: only gone for an hour and now they're frantically looking
Speaker 3: for her, that that's like, oh, we lost control.
Speaker 2: Uh oh, And doctor Cleveland is more and more suspicious.
Speaker 2: I don't know about Agent Paramus at this point, but
Speaker 2: I'm impressed with the coroner here. He is more and
Speaker 2: more suspicious. This inquest goes on for weeks. He it
Speaker 2: sounds like, calls everybody in the area to get their opinion.
Speaker 2: So in the coming weeks there are more people who testify,
Speaker 2: and none of this helps the trips.
Speaker 1: So here's what's interesting.
Speaker 2: And while I'm going to have you look at the
Speaker 2: one photo slash drawing that you know I sent you
Speaker 2: because eighteen ninety nine, several witnesses say that around ten
Speaker 2: o'clock that night on June eighth, we know that people
Speaker 2: were answering their doors and the parents, Henry and his
Speaker 2: wife Matilda, are asking where our daughter is?
Speaker 1: Have you seen her? Where Sarah?
Speaker 2: But there's several witnesses who say that same time, the
Speaker 2: brother who lives across the street with his wife Lauren,
Speaker 2: so this is an adult son, was driving the Fan
Speaker 2: family's distinctive canopy topped horse drawn wagon. Is it rich
Speaker 2: It sounds like, and he was going, you know, door
Speaker 2: to door, telling neighbors that Sarah was missing.
Speaker 1: But they started to see some weird things. And remember
Speaker 1: this is very distinctive.
Speaker 2: They said that Lauren's sister so a Yah, so this
Speaker 2: would be Sarah's half or Sarah's adoptive sister, was also
Speaker 2: with him in the carriage. They said that the trips
Speaker 2: wagon passed by them with curtains drawn later that same night,
Speaker 2: which they thought was really unusual.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, you would do that for privacy.
Speaker 2: But it is pitch black outside and you could see
Speaker 2: enough to see that they had drawn the curtains, and
Speaker 2: it was a you know, when we talk about that
Speaker 2: historical context, what alarms people? The laundry hanging out in
Speaker 2: the middle of the rain, what is alarming? This was
Speaker 2: alarming to people who saw the fancy carriage with the
Speaker 2: curtain drawn.
Speaker 3: Well, and that's interesting from a just you know, a
Speaker 3: witness perspective. You know, if we were thinking about this today,
Speaker 3: you know, if we saw a cargo by at night
Speaker 3: and towels hung up and you know, across all the windows,
Speaker 3: we'd go, that's weird. So I'm putting a fair amount
Speaker 3: of stock into that detail, you know. And this is
Speaker 3: where you know, I'm starting to forge ahead mentally on
Speaker 3: this going Okay, if I'm investigator, promise and I'm now
Speaker 3: putting two and two together. I have no blood at
Speaker 3: at the death scene where the train ran over Sarah,
Speaker 3: and I now have an abusive family with a witness
Speaker 3: saying that they're doing something weird transporting this horse drawn
Speaker 3: wagon with the curtains drawn going. Well, that sounds like
Speaker 3: they're moving a body. So if Sarah killed on the property,
Speaker 3: now I want to get a warrant. I want to
Speaker 3: take a look and see if I can find a
Speaker 3: major deposition of blood that would suggest, yes, this is
Speaker 3: a homicide scene.
Speaker 2: Well let me tell you, but I think seems like
Speaker 2: in some ways the most definitive evidence they might have
Speaker 2: because they have this unusual Richie Rich wagon. Someone spots
Speaker 2: it heading toward the railroad crossing at Shawnee at eleven thirty,
Speaker 2: thirty minutes before Sarah's body would be hit by that train,
Speaker 2: and that's where the map is. If you want to
Speaker 2: look at that map that I sent you, it actually
Speaker 2: helps me to see this map, even though I realize
Speaker 2: it's a little pedestrian, but to see the distance.
Speaker 3: Between what you're alluding to and what's the significance of
Speaker 3: this map is it? It really is showing you know Sarah.
Speaker 3: Of course, is a distance away from her home, which
Speaker 3: I believe you said was about four miles, and the
Speaker 3: witnesses are seeing the trip's wagon at eleven thirty at night,
Speaker 3: all the way out there by where Sarah's body was
Speaker 3: ultimately found. So, yeah, that's suspicious.
Speaker 2: But it's at night, So how much do we trust
Speaker 2: it if it's at night?
Speaker 3: Trying to evaluate this witness is the details being provided
Speaker 3: related to this very distinctive canopy covered horse drawn wagon
Speaker 3: that sounds like it is going to be very rare.
Speaker 3: Only very wealthy people would have this, and it just
Speaker 3: so happens that the Trips have that type of wagon.
Speaker 3: I think that that's a pretty significant detail that they
Speaker 3: are providing, and so I put some weight on it. Sure,
Speaker 3: it could be coincidental. Maybe you have another wealthy family
Speaker 3: that just happened to be driving near where Sarah was
Speaker 3: hit by the train at that time of night. But
Speaker 3: there's other circumstances that start to snowball, if you will,
Speaker 3: when you start thinking about everything that's now kind of
Speaker 3: coalescing and drawing suspicion to the family itself.
Speaker 2: Speaking of the family, they are called to the Corners
Speaker 2: in quest.
Speaker 1: They do a couple of things. Number One, they all.
Speaker 2: Sort of downplay any of the abuse, probably saying it's
Speaker 2: what everybody does around here. You have to be tough
Speaker 2: on these girls, and blah blah blah. They were saying
Speaker 2: that she's actually pretty happy. And there are some witnesses
Speaker 2: who inexplicably get on the stand and say the same thing.
Speaker 2: What would the corner do or the corner's jury do.
Speaker 2: How are they supposed to tell the difference between the
Speaker 2: people who get on the stand and say she was
Speaker 2: abused and then the people who are countering that.
Speaker 1: How do you know who to believe?
Speaker 3: Well, it's taking a look at you know, what are
Speaker 3: the loyalties that the various witnesses have, their relationship to
Speaker 3: the family, How they would be impacted if they are
Speaker 3: providing statements. So you think about the farm hands. You know,
Speaker 3: they're coming forward and saying, well, she's being abused by
Speaker 3: the family. They could lose their job, if you will,
Speaker 3: where the trip family could cut them loose by saying
Speaker 3: something like that. But their willingness to say that suggests
Speaker 3: to me, Okay, this is something that they're they're they're
Speaker 3: putting their livelihood at risk to to tell this detail.
Speaker 3: Why would they lie about that when they could lose
Speaker 3: their job from the trip family versus maybe family friends
Speaker 3: you know, who have relationships with the trips, maybe benefit
Speaker 3: from the trip's wealth, And they go, well, yeah, if
Speaker 3: they're found to be abusive to Sarah and come under
Speaker 3: suspicion and her death, we lose you know, sort of
Speaker 3: the if you want to use the term sugar daddy,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if that's politically correct, but you know.
Speaker 1: I think it makes us sound old, but that's.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, you know, but that's so that's I think
Speaker 3: that's part of how And that's just even just interviewing witnesses.
Speaker 3: You know, you have to understand and their perspective, where
Speaker 3: their loyalties lie, as well as you know, the specificity
Speaker 3: of the details, you know, and this is where're trying to,
Speaker 3: you know, tease out, you know, truth from lies.
Speaker 2: If you still have the map up that page that
Speaker 2: I sent you scroll down. You can see Sarah, and
Speaker 2: you know, you can see Lauren the man and his wife.
Speaker 2: But look at Henry. He's a lot older than I
Speaker 2: thought he was, and he's maybe On the third page there's.
Speaker 3: Two images of Henry. One appears to be an old
Speaker 3: style photo and I forget if that's what they call
Speaker 3: a lithograph or something like that, and then the others
Speaker 3: like a sketch. But when I look at him, I'm
Speaker 3: now evaluating, you know, his his hairline. I'm looking at
Speaker 3: his beard. The beard looks light colored, like it's gray.
Speaker 3: But he doesn't look like seventy. He looks more my age.
Speaker 3: He's got the you know, the gray beard growing out.
Speaker 1: He's sixty nine.
Speaker 3: Oh good god, really he looks he looks great.
Speaker 2: Because he has all of these kids out there doing
Speaker 2: the work for it.
Speaker 1: Probably, yeah, he said he's born. I just found his
Speaker 1: find a grave.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh wow, okay, okay.
Speaker 2: Henry gets on the stand and he has his own theory.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting I think about all of this is
Speaker 2: if they leaned into just enough to say, listen, Sarah
Speaker 2: is a sensitive girl. We probably come down on her
Speaker 2: a lot harder than we should, but we love her.
Speaker 1: She knows that. But she's not able to handle the
Speaker 1: pressure of working on our farm. And I think she
Speaker 1: just snapped.
Speaker 2: Then to me, if they admitted not the hard abuse,
Speaker 2: but then maybe they could say that this was you
Speaker 2: could see how this could be a suicide but he's saying,
Speaker 2: she's as happy as a clam, No big deal.
Speaker 3: You know. This is where, in essence, you have competing witnesses,
Speaker 3: you know, in terms of stances that they're taking as
Speaker 3: to you know, how is the inquest going to come
Speaker 3: to a conclusion about accident, suicide or death at the
Speaker 3: hands of another. And this is where well what is
Speaker 3: the physical evidence?
Speaker 1: Well here we go some more information.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you more information first, So Henry says, hey,
Speaker 2: I have a theory of my own. My theory is
Speaker 2: that she was kidnapped and then disposed of, is what
Speaker 2: he thinks. He says that there are three young men
Speaker 2: living in the area, two brothers and another kid, and
Speaker 2: they're sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and you know that he suggests
Speaker 2: that that they had been cat calling Sarah and maybe
Speaker 2: they kidnapped her and sexually assaulted her and killed or
Speaker 2: put her on the tracks. But these kids all have alibis,
Speaker 2: So he's just throwing these out there, so deflecting, I assume,
Speaker 2: is that what that would be?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, that's that's a reasonable theory as to
Speaker 3: possible what could have happened, just like it could be
Speaker 3: one of the farm hands. You know, Sarah's leaving the house.
Speaker 3: I don't know where the farm hands would normally be
Speaker 3: at that time of night, but you know, maybe one
Speaker 3: of them took a fancy to Sarah and followed her
Speaker 3: and grabbed her, and you know it, sexually assaulted, killed her,
Speaker 3: and dumped her body on the tracks. You know this
Speaker 3: is where it's now. Okay, what's the most likely in
Speaker 3: terms of as you start investigating these various investigative pathways?
Speaker 3: What pathway can you go down? The furthest on m.
Speaker 2: Well, let me tell you what we're going to do
Speaker 2: with an autopsy. So doctor Cleveland, you know she's been
Speaker 2: buried and it's now been about five weeks.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: Doctor Cleveland says, let's dig her back up and let's
Speaker 2: see what we can find. He really is convinced this
Speaker 2: is murder. So this is into the month, which is incredible.
Speaker 2: This has been going on for a month. So he
Speaker 2: has her exhumed for a full autopsy by a physician
Speaker 2: named doctor Loomis. I guess Cleveland didn't do a full
Speaker 2: autopsy at the time, which surprises me. In June, there
Speaker 2: was a doctor named Willis Petite who had done a
Speaker 2: cursory examination, though not a thorough one. And at this
Speaker 2: point now Sarah had been done for five weeks. Do
Speaker 2: you think that Cleveland didn't wasn't qualified to do the
Speaker 2: autopsy and that's why he had these other physicians around.
Speaker 2: Why would he not do it himself.
Speaker 3: Well, he may not be a pathologist, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: because the elected corners, you know, you don't have to
Speaker 3: have any type of medical qualification to become an elected corner.
Speaker 3: And oftentimes and still to this day, in many parts
Speaker 3: of the country, you know, you see people that are
Speaker 3: funeral home directors become the elected corner and they have
Speaker 3: to have a staff of your medical examiners or your
Speaker 3: pathologists underneath, you know, to do the autopsies. With Cleveland,
Speaker 3: I don't know what his medical qualifications are, but it
Speaker 3: is a big miss not to do a thorough autopsy
Speaker 3: right away.
Speaker 2: Well, and then I will just do a you know,
Speaker 2: going a mea culpla here, because I have been calling
Speaker 2: him doctor Cleveland, and I think he's a corner. I
Speaker 2: don't think he's a doctor, going back and looking and
Speaker 2: so dismiss every time I call him doctor Cleveland. Sorry,
Speaker 2: but so anyway, it sounds like in June, he had
Speaker 2: one doctor do a cursory examination of her. The sexual
Speaker 2: assault accusation against these three teenagers has sparked the rumor
Speaker 2: that maybe Sarah was pregnant. Not by one of these guys,
Speaker 2: because they have alibis, but now everybody's got that churning
Speaker 2: in her in their heads that maybe she was pregnant.
Speaker 2: So that's another reason why Cleveland says, okay, let's bring
Speaker 2: in a doctor. Let's do a full autopsy and find
Speaker 2: out some things. Loomis, who is the guy who looks
Speaker 2: at her body. Five weeks after she's been in the ground.
Speaker 2: He and doctor Petite do an autopsy and they testify
Speaker 2: that she had several injuries, including a skull fracture that
Speaker 2: we're serious enough to cause her death. But you know,
Speaker 2: Louis says, I don't know if one of them was
Speaker 2: the fatal wound, which one it was. He said, I
Speaker 2: don't know if these injuries happened before Sarah was hit
Speaker 2: by the train or as she was being hit by
Speaker 2: the train. But most importantly, and tell me what you
Speaker 2: think about this, I think we've kind of gone over
Speaker 2: this a little bit. Doctor Loomis said that many of
Speaker 2: the injuries would have caused major external bleeding, and we
Speaker 2: talked about this before. So because there was no blood
Speaker 2: on the tracks, he said, I think she was already
Speaker 2: dead beforehand. And obviously it's foul play because there's so
Speaker 2: many injuries.
Speaker 3: Kind of going back to, you know, my thought about
Speaker 3: trying to determine, you know, what injuries occurred prior to
Speaker 3: being run over by a train. That's that would be
Speaker 3: so hard unless there's obvious you know, like stab wounds.
Speaker 3: Even I was thinking about, you know, if her throat
Speaker 3: had been cut, but then you could see where, you know,
Speaker 3: something on the train possibly mimic that type of injury.
Speaker 3: The most significant thing to me is that, you know,
Speaker 3: her body is all flayed open in essence, and he's
Speaker 3: drawing the conclusion she would be bleeding all over the
Speaker 3: place if she had blood in her body at the
Speaker 3: time the train ran over her. So she was dead
Speaker 3: and had a bleeding injury where she basically bled out
Speaker 3: at some other location.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's a great theory.
Speaker 2: And to add to that, just to dispel rumors, doctor
Speaker 2: Loomis says she wasn't pregnant. He says that there are
Speaker 2: no I'll put in the word obvious signs of sexual assault,
Speaker 2: and he said that I don't know which came first,
Speaker 2: you know how the death happened, but it's clear that
Speaker 2: she was dead before she was on the tracks. So
Speaker 2: now this is a weird kind of dovetail of a
Speaker 2: story that we have to get into. Also, all of
Speaker 2: these statements end up colliding with a story from the
Speaker 2: family that doesn't seem to involve Sarah, but it might.
Speaker 2: So Lauren, the son and his wife had a baby.
Speaker 2: Her name was Susan, and she died when she was
Speaker 2: two months old, two years earlier, and they said shadowy circumstances.
Speaker 1: At first, blush.
Speaker 2: I thought shadowy circumstances for a two month old baby
Speaker 2: in the eighteen hundreds when there was all sorts of
Speaker 2: viral and bacteria and everything else you can think of.
Speaker 2: But what happened was that Lauren said his daughter had
Speaker 2: died of an accidental smothering with blankets. I'm assuming you know,
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff that we're told not to
Speaker 2: do anymore. But for some unknown reason, her birth and
Speaker 2: her death were both registered in a neighboring county, not
Speaker 2: the ones that the Trips lived in, and the coroner
Speaker 2: was never notified when she died, so Cleveland know about this.
Speaker 2: Registering a child's death with a local clerk is required
Speaker 2: by law in eighteen ninety nine, as well as letting
Speaker 2: Cleveland know that this happened. So with that information, the
Speaker 2: coroner says that he's in his head. He's trying to
Speaker 2: show the jury that the Trip family had a habit
Speaker 2: of not following protocol when it comes to reporting deaths,
Speaker 2: which could be the same thing in Sarah's case. So
Speaker 2: if the doctor's correct and Sarah was dead before you
Speaker 2: know she was on the railroad tracks, then it's because
Speaker 2: maybe the Trip family, for some unknown reason, wanted to
Speaker 2: avoid alerting the local authorities, to which I said, come on,
Speaker 2: you mean that they abused her and ended up murdering
Speaker 2: her and they don't want to alert the authorities. I
Speaker 2: think he's just saying they're sketchy to begin with, and
Speaker 2: now we have another death we're dealing with.
Speaker 3: I think one of the perplexing actions to say a
Speaker 3: member of the Trip family or multiple members of the
Speaker 3: Trip family are responsible for Sarah dying. Let's say I'm
Speaker 3: the proper whether it be accidental, you know, through the
Speaker 3: abuse and they took it too far or you know,
Speaker 3: intentional homicide. How the body is disposed is poor, because
Speaker 3: it's like, well, she's going to be found. You have
Speaker 3: trains on the tracks all the time, so it's not
Speaker 3: like they're hiding her body to try to and then
Speaker 3: reporting her missing and she's just never found. The only
Speaker 3: thing I can think of is the thought that the
Speaker 3: train would do so much damage to her body that
Speaker 3: any evidence of homicide would be covered up and they
Speaker 3: would hope that this would just quickly be ruled an accident.
Speaker 3: Hopefully they get into the trip's homestead and they look
Speaker 3: for a homicide scene.
Speaker 1: Well no, oh, doesn't sound like it. Sorry.
Speaker 2: I mean, we can count on the corner for a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff, and apparently Agent Paramus for nothing. But
Speaker 2: he does not do that that I know of. There
Speaker 2: are five weeks of testimony's forty witnesses, and finally they
Speaker 2: wrap up the jurorsay murder and there are four indictments
Speaker 2: for Henry the father, Matilda the mother, Lauren the son,
Speaker 2: and Iva, who is the sister, so it's the four
Speaker 2: family members. This seems like the end of the case,
Speaker 2: and it technically is. It's an unsolved case. But Michelle Graff,
Speaker 2: who is the author who wrote this book, has a theory,
Speaker 2: and I want you to tell me what you think
Speaker 2: about this theory.
Speaker 1: She did so much digging. I have to give her
Speaker 1: a lot of credit for this.
Speaker 2: The motive is what lingers for people, I think, and
Speaker 2: it did for Michelle.
Speaker 1: So she is researching the case.
Speaker 2: She's looking into upstate newspaper archives from upstate New York.
Speaker 2: She finds a piece of reporting from nineteen hundred that
Speaker 2: jumps out. It's not very detailed, but it notes that
Speaker 2: Lauren and his wife Carrie Tripp had lost an eleven
Speaker 2: month old baby named Clarence on March second of that
Speaker 2: year of nineteen hundred. His cause of death is documented
Speaker 2: as measles and meningitis. So, based on his age, Clarence
Speaker 2: would have been born in early April eighteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2: And you remember Sarah died June. So what, Michelle wonders.
Speaker 2: She confirms this with the child Clarence's birth certificate, which
Speaker 2: she manages to track down, which lists the baby as
Speaker 2: named Raymond, not Clarence, which is odd already to begin with.
Speaker 2: But Clarence's existence never seems to come up in any
Speaker 2: of the reporting on Sarah's case. So what Michelle Graff
Speaker 2: is wondering is this is something that probably should have
Speaker 2: been investigated. What if Clarence was Sarah's baby and the
Speaker 2: Trips didn't want the scandal. They were hoping to cover
Speaker 2: up a sexual assault within the family, which would be
Speaker 2: Lauren the son, so they lied on the birth certificate
Speaker 2: and they claim that Carrie, who was the.
Speaker 1: Wife, was actually this little boy's mother.
Speaker 2: What she says is when residents insisted that Sarah had
Speaker 2: been pregnant, you know, did the corner seem like everybody else,
Speaker 2: that she had been pregnant when she died, so that
Speaker 2: rumor that went around when the autopsy proved otherwise, did
Speaker 2: he wrongly assume that this story had no merit? So
Speaker 2: what Michelle is saying is that rumor that went around
Speaker 2: that was kind of connected to the sexual assault potential
Speaker 2: sexual assault from the teenagers. Maybe that rumor was older
Speaker 2: than we think and that Sarah had been pregnant. And
Speaker 2: she's actually it sounds like pretty convinced that both of
Speaker 2: these babies might have been Sarah's because they had little tombstones,
Speaker 2: and the tombstones are very very vague about who the
Speaker 2: child belongs to. And so I think it's just a
Speaker 2: theory that she pops out if you're looking for motive.
Speaker 3: It would not shock me at all that this is
Speaker 3: what is going on now. Yeah, from trying to figure
Speaker 3: that out. You know, for Clarence, you mean Sarah would
Speaker 3: have taken Clarence full term. You know, do we have
Speaker 3: witness statements saying, you know, they saw Sarah during this
Speaker 3: nine month pregnancy to say, yeah, she looked like she
Speaker 3: was pregnant and with the other baby too. Now you
Speaker 3: have two adult males on this homestead. You have Henry
Speaker 3: and you have Lauren. Either one of them could be
Speaker 3: in play as having fathered the babies. And you think,
Speaker 3: if Henry is abusing Sarah, and let's say he's sexually
Speaker 3: abusing her, and she gets pregnant by Henry, who's sixty
Speaker 3: nine years old, it almost makes more sense for that
Speaker 3: baby to be passed off as Laurence because he is
Speaker 3: of the age in which him and his wife are
Speaker 3: going to be having kids. Yeah, you know, and it's
Speaker 3: sort of like dirty family secret. You know, Henry is
Speaker 3: impregnating the six toad on how old this teenage girl?
Speaker 3: And we got to cover this up. Well, we have
Speaker 3: Lauren and his wife and there of child bearing normal
Speaker 3: child bearing age for that time frame.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting one of the little stones that they
Speaker 2: put down, they put one down for Clarence the boy,
Speaker 2: and it says infant son of Lauren Tripp, who's the father.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it.
Speaker 2: Doesn't mention Carrie, the supposed biological mother, And of course
Speaker 2: it certainly doesn't mention Sarah. Two points that I wanted
Speaker 2: to remind you of. Number one, all of these workers
Speaker 2: who took the stand pretty much unanimously said that for
Speaker 2: the past year Sarah had been very isolated, which.
Speaker 1: To me means we didn't see much of her.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and that may have been to prevent people
Speaker 3: seeing that she was pregnant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it could have been the case before. I
Speaker 2: don't know, you know, with the other baby with Susan.
Speaker 3: Well, this is where you know, I go back to
Speaker 3: doctor Loomis, who did the formal autopsy, if Sarah had
Speaker 3: given birth two months prior to Clarence. I wonder if,
Speaker 3: because pathologists are able to determine if a woman has
Speaker 3: had been pregnant or has given birth in the past.
Speaker 3: And I don't know what diagnostic features they use to
Speaker 3: do that. So I'm wondering if doctor Loomis would have
Speaker 3: been able to determine that if that had been a question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's what I think Michelle's point is is
Speaker 2: she wished doctor Cleveland had followed that train a little
Speaker 2: bit what the point was, and maybe he was thinking
Speaker 2: it but didn't want to go there, because he really
Speaker 2: did question Lauren the father a lot about the death
Speaker 2: of that little girl, the two month old Susan from
Speaker 2: two years earlier. And you know, the point was the
Speaker 2: Trips obviously are willing to break the law cover up
Speaker 2: a death, and we don't know how Susan died. But
Speaker 2: Michelle says, I think this might have gone even further
Speaker 2: than that, and they're covering up some other pretty terrible things. Sure,
Speaker 2: So you know, Michelle gets a lot of Michelle Graff
Speaker 2: gets a lot of credit for this, because really that
Speaker 2: is quite a story and to me makes the most
Speaker 2: sense out of everything, out of all of it, that
Speaker 2: makes the most.
Speaker 3: Sense depending on the state of the remains, we could
Speaker 3: answer that question today.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about that too.
Speaker 2: I also think, Paul, tell me if you agree with this,
Speaker 2: I also think this could be a case of people
Speaker 2: know what happened, and it's passed through the family somehow.
Speaker 2: It's like the dirty secret that whoever the relatives of
Speaker 2: the Trips are now might have known, or there were
Speaker 2: notes and they're in an attic somewhere. Let me tell
Speaker 2: you a couple of other little tidbits. So you know,
Speaker 2: after this, the Trips were kind of driven out of town.
Speaker 2: They eventually had to leave. They set up somewhere else,
Speaker 2: and later Carrie, the wife, divorces Lauren. He was very abusive,
Speaker 2: is what she says. She goes back to Michigan. Now
Speaker 2: tell me if this means anything to you, So she
Speaker 2: goes back to Michigan. She dies in eighteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: so that is boy, she must have been really old.
Speaker 2: It's eighty years past all of this happening. The obituary
Speaker 2: that's printed for Carrie doesn't mention either of those two kids,
Speaker 2: but it does mention the other kids that she had
Speaker 2: with Lauren, but not Clarence and not Susan.
Speaker 3: You know, there may be something to that. I think
Speaker 3: talking to children of Carrie, they may have divulged some
Speaker 3: of these family secrets in family stories over the years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, family secrets it's a big one, and we've had
Speaker 2: a decent amount of those cases.
Speaker 1: But this is what I mean.
Speaker 2: I find this so fascinating in the eighteen hundreds. Why
Speaker 2: I love this century so much, because sometimes we have
Speaker 2: enough information to be able to tell what happened with
Speaker 2: cause of death. Sometimes we have really smart investigators. Sometimes
Speaker 2: we're both really surprised about what they were able to do.
Speaker 2: And I think that coroner Cleveland did a really good
Speaker 2: job here, and maybe this would have been too much
Speaker 2: to wrap his head around, but he clearly had suspicions
Speaker 2: about Lauren to begin with. It's a hard story for
Speaker 2: me because when we go back to the victim, like
Speaker 2: we always try to do, and you think about this
Speaker 2: young woman's life, which is a young woman that is
Speaker 2: alive today somewhere around where things are terrible, things are happening,
Speaker 2: you know, and she lives this really difficult life. She
Speaker 2: works NonStop, she I'm sure feels like an outcast, she's abused,
Speaker 2: and then she dies in some way so tragically. Just
Speaker 2: a bad, bad ending for someone who is a teenager
Speaker 2: who we have no idea what she could have done
Speaker 2: had she not been taken in by the wrong family.
Speaker 3: No absolutely, you know, and and you know, from my perspective,
Speaker 3: I think it's it's pretty obvious she was killed by
Speaker 3: somebody within the Trip family, and she was killed in
Speaker 3: a way in which she bled out, and that could
Speaker 3: be a cutthroat that could be massive, you know, head injury.
Speaker 3: This is where, yes, the coroner, you know, he really
Speaker 3: pursued things to determine the manner of death. But he
Speaker 3: wasn't a homicide investigator, and there's probably some things that
Speaker 3: a bona fide homicide investigator would have been able to
Speaker 3: key in on very quickly in this case if they
Speaker 3: had done things sort of in the right time frame,
Speaker 3: do the proper autopsy right away, you know, get onto
Speaker 3: that homestead and do a search.
Speaker 1: So I agree.
Speaker 2: So for the next episode, I'm hoping for two things.
Speaker 2: Photos for your sake, that'd be great us for your sake,
Speaker 2: and for both of us, good investigators who have some
Speaker 2: experience working whatever kind of case we're going to come
Speaker 2: across next awesome.
Speaker 3: Well, once again, thank you, and I'm looking forward to
Speaker 3: the next one.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next week.
Speaker 3: Sounds good.
Speaker 1: This has been an exactly right production for.
Speaker 3: Our sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot com
Speaker 3: slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Alexis Emosi.
Speaker 3: Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1: Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 3: Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1: Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 3: Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 2: You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Speaker 2: buried Bones pod.
Speaker 3: Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Speaker 3: Age story of murder and the race to decode the
Speaker 3: criminal mind, is available now
Speaker 2: And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked My Life Solving a
Speaker 2: Marya Because Cold Cases is also available now