Speaker 1: Throwing her off the bridge. I mean, that's just you'll
Speaker 1: do that because you're have an argument great depression. Not
Speaker 1: long after prohibition, they're worrying about bootlegging gangs. I don't
Speaker 1: want a single word written abide that date. Do you
Speaker 1: understand there's a possibility it could be solved one day.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Shattered Souls the car Barn Murders. I'm
Speaker 1: Karen Smith. This is episode four. This podcast may contain
Speaker 1: graphic language and it is not suitable for children. Previously
Speaker 1: on the Carborn murders, Montgomery County lead Detective Theodore Volton
Speaker 1: ran down lead after lead on the Carbarn case. Detective
Speaker 1: Bolton tracked down every car that had been stolen around
Speaker 1: the night of the murders, except for a green Buick
Speaker 1: that was taken from the area of fifteen and Irving
Speaker 1: Streets on Sunday night. I witness Ernest Carter recalled seeing
Speaker 1: a green Buick flee the Chevy Chase Lake Ticket office
Speaker 1: northbound on Connecticut Avenue with three white men inside. As
Speaker 1: the detective's tracked down suspects, they went back to an
Speaker 1: attempted robbery of the Brightwood ticket office that happened a
Speaker 1: few months before the Carborn case, and they used a
Speaker 1: description given by the overnight accountant to run down some potentials.
Speaker 1: Edwin O'Connell was arrested based on that vague description. Then
Speaker 1: he was released when O'Connell's father called in and said
Speaker 1: that his son had been a patient at St. Elizabeth's
Speaker 1: psychiatric Hospital. O'Connell's handcuffs were removed and he was placed
Speaker 1: back into St. Elizabeth's. The detectives found out that O'Connell
Speaker 1: had befriended Paul Berry and George Riddlehoover while he was
Speaker 1: being treated for an unknown mental health issue. Paul Berry
Speaker 1: had been committed in nineteen twenty after a successful insanity
Speaker 1: defense for killing a trolley conductor, and he escaped from St.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's In nineteen thirty four, Paul Berry was found in St.
Speaker 1: Louis after he freeloaded on a freight train, and he
Speaker 1: was arrested in Missouri. There wasn't any family money to
Speaker 1: have Paul Berry sent back to Washington, and as alibi
Speaker 1: was solid for the night of the murders, considering he
Speaker 1: was fifteen hundred miles away. George Riddle Hoover had been
Speaker 1: released from St. Elizabeth's on January twelfth, just nine days
Speaker 1: before Emery Smith and James Mitchell were killed, and the
Speaker 1: psychiatrists at St. Elizabeth's considered him to be a gangster type.
Speaker 1: Nobody knew where George riddle Hoover was. The information on
Speaker 1: Edwin O'Connell and George Riddle Hoover was passed along from
Speaker 1: Detective Volton to the others to run down, but that
Speaker 1: lead got dropped along the way and no further investigation
Speaker 1: was completed on either one of them. The attempted robbery
Speaker 1: of the Brightwood ticket office remained unsolved. In the days
Speaker 1: after the orders, people were dropping names, piecemeal information and
Speaker 1: saying that so and so was a no good guy
Speaker 1: and this other man would be the type to do it.
Speaker 1: It was a discordant orchestra of crap leads and what
Speaker 1: seemed to be old grievances getting new air. What better
Speaker 1: way to get rid of an enemy than to pin
Speaker 1: a double murder on him. Phones rang off the hook,
Speaker 1: random memos were tossed onto desks, miles were put on vehicles,
Speaker 1: and shoe leather eroded on the pavement. Twenty hour grinds
Speaker 1: were bolstered by burnt Dinon Dash coffee, and pack after
Speaker 1: pack of Chesterfield cigarettes. Some of the information did seem
Speaker 1: to have teeth, and Volton, Rogers, Deal and Brass did
Speaker 1: their very best to run all of it down, But
Speaker 1: there was a serious problem. Back in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: and certainly before that, the District of Columbia was a
Speaker 1: virtual den of duplicity. I did some unearthing of Washington's
Speaker 1: teeming rackets and found wormhole after wormhole of Wanton scandals,
Speaker 1: political malfeasance, official bribery, and corporate corruption. I realized that
Speaker 1: some underhanded deals took place. D C was a big city,
Speaker 1: and big cities did come with their fair share of turpitude.
Speaker 1: But the grit and grime of the district underworld extended
Speaker 1: its tentacles further and wider than I ever imagined. Racketeers
Speaker 1: ran rough shod all over the place, with gambling halls,
Speaker 1: horse racing, wire rooms, storefronts of seemingly legitimate businesses with
Speaker 1: secret doors to hidden back rooms, and those rooms served
Speaker 1: as speakeasies and meet up joints. And there were also
Speaker 1: rooming houses read prostitution, all running rampant. Seven Those rooming
Speaker 1: houses were filled with young women who traveled to d
Speaker 1: C looking for a better life from the poverty stricken
Speaker 1: towns across the country, and those women fed an insatiable
Speaker 1: appetite for cheap sex. Downtown hotels doubled as pay as
Speaker 1: you stayed, dens of inequity, and brothels operated in every
Speaker 1: corner of the district. Some of them were out in
Speaker 1: the open in the red light neighborhoods, and others operated
Speaker 1: in secret for the elites who had to be a
Speaker 1: little more discreet with their extramarital transgressions. These young girls
Speaker 1: were sometimes entrapped into a life of flesh trading and
Speaker 1: the pimps, the rooming house owners and these vile grannies,
Speaker 1: posing as motherly figures to bait the hook, would increase
Speaker 1: the cost of keeping a roof over their head exactly
Speaker 1: commensurate with the amounts the girls brought home by design,
Speaker 1: they could never get their heads above water, and many
Speaker 1: of those girls fell into the drug trade, They overdosed,
Speaker 1: or they evolved into the next generation of vile grannies
Speaker 1: who lured more young girls into the net, completing the
Speaker 1: endless circuit. Even though prohibition had been repealed in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three, Bootlegging was still alive and well in d C.
Speaker 1: Because black market liquor was much cheaper to buy than
Speaker 1: the good stuff legally imported from Canada and from across
Speaker 1: the Pond, so people continued to frequent the bathtub gin
Speaker 1: joints instead of paying out the nose for a buzz.
Speaker 1: Then they nursed monstrous hangovers the next morning. People also
Speaker 1: chanced being poisoned by ingesting methanol or would alcohol that
Speaker 1: was sometimes used in the illegal distillation process rather than
Speaker 1: the four human consumption ethanol that legitimate manufacturers sold. Bootleg
Speaker 1: moonshine or firewater burned like gasoline, and it tasted even worse,
Speaker 1: and it was often masked with juniper oil or other
Speaker 1: flavors to make it scarcely palatable, but it did the job.
Speaker 1: There were thousands of arrests for bootlegging, and the majority
Speaker 1: of violators were let off with a small fine do
Speaker 1: to the overflowing justice system, only to go right back
Speaker 1: to their business the next day. Gin and whiskey stills
Speaker 1: were found everywhere under trapdoors in the woods, tunnels and
Speaker 1: saloon basements, behind secret bookcases, on barn rafters, underneath chicken
Speaker 1: coops under tarps and work trucks shoved into hedgerows. Maryland
Speaker 1: farmers stopped selling their crops on the side of the road,
Speaker 1: and instead they mashed their corn to manufacture mule kick,
Speaker 1: a fitting nickname. Wealthy families turned their basements into speakeasies,
Speaker 1: and they entertained high society in those low down cellars.
Speaker 1: People from all walks of life were in on it,
Speaker 1: including the people inside of the United States Capitol Building.
Speaker 1: That's right, Senators and congressmen were dealing in bootleg liquor
Speaker 1: inside of the people's house. If you don't believe me,
Speaker 1: here's proof. A man named George Cassidy, also known as
Speaker 1: the Man in the Green Hat. He was the personal
Speaker 1: bootlegger to the folks in the US Capital. He had
Speaker 1: his own office in the basement of the Capitol Building,
Speaker 1: and he would deal to those in power directly from
Speaker 1: his office, or he would pay a personal visit with
Speaker 1: his briefcase filled with bottles of liquor. Even the staunch
Speaker 1: supporters of prohibition, the representatives who shouted from the rafters
Speaker 1: about the insidiousness of alcohol, the sin of the drink,
Speaker 1: the scourge of the public, would pay George Cassidy's office
Speaker 1: a visit and purchase a fifth of whiskey for personal use.
Speaker 1: George Cassidy made a good living for ten years until
Speaker 1: he was eventually busted, and he told the whole sordid
Speaker 1: story in a series of six front page articles in
Speaker 1: the Washington Post. So before you believe that the illegal
Speaker 1: rackets involved only underworld criminals, think again. Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Was a haven for gambling, prostitution, the numbers racket, which
Speaker 1: was a forerunner of the legal lottery we play today,
Speaker 1: horse racing wires, and tons of other scams that ran
Speaker 1: a muck during the depression. Desperate people will do desperate things.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the easiest thing to do is to just take
Speaker 1: that left turn at the Primrose Path. For some quick statistics,
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty five, Washington, d C's crime rate was
Speaker 1: worse than every other city of comparable size in the
Speaker 1: entire nation. Murder was three times worse, grand larceny was
Speaker 1: four times worse, and robberies in d C. Well, They
Speaker 1: outranked Pittsburgh, Newark, and Cincinnati three to one. The District
Speaker 1: of Columbia had a serious problem. The car Barn case
Speaker 1: left the headlines and got shoved into the interior pages
Speaker 1: of the papers because another notorious crime took over the
Speaker 1: lead and captured the nation's attention, the sensational trial of
Speaker 1: Bruno Richard Hofftmann, who was in court for the kidnapping
Speaker 1: and murder of the Lindbergh baby. But Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Had no shortage of sensational cases during that time either.
Speaker 1: There was a series of lone woman murders that got
Speaker 1: front page attention for weeks or even months at a time.
Speaker 1: All of these cases remain unsolved today. Virginia McPherson was
Speaker 1: found dead inside of her apartment with the cord of
Speaker 1: her pajamas wrapped around her neck and blood stains were
Speaker 1: all over the bathroom. The detectives immediately ruled her death
Speaker 1: a suicide, despite ample evidence to the contrary. Even the
Speaker 1: public was convinced that her murder was swept under the
Speaker 1: rug to prevent another black eye to the d C
Speaker 1: police force and their abysmal solver rate. Bullah Limerick was
Speaker 1: also found dead in her house in her bed. The
Speaker 1: blanket was pulled up to her chin and her hands
Speaker 1: were neatly folded across her abdomen. She had blood in
Speaker 1: her mouth and the coroner ruled that she suffered a
Speaker 1: cerebral hemorrhage and he would just bypass an autopsy. When
Speaker 1: the embalmer otised blood coming out of the side of
Speaker 1: her head, he called the coroner back, and the coroner
Speaker 1: found a bullet hole just behind her ear and a
Speaker 1: caliber slug in her head. Her murder is still unsolved.
Speaker 1: Corinna Loring disappeared two days before her wedding and her
Speaker 1: body was found on Saddleback Ridge on the outskirts of
Speaker 1: Mountain near Maryland. There were triangular shape stab wounds in
Speaker 1: each of her temples. Twine had been wrapped around her
Speaker 1: neck to strangler after the perpetrator tried to kill her
Speaker 1: with his own bare hands. Her future husband was suspected,
Speaker 1: but nobody was ever indicted, and finally Mary Baker, Her
Speaker 1: case was dubbed the Mystery of One One Clues. Her
Speaker 1: body was found in a ditch at Arlington National Cemetery.
Speaker 1: She had been beaten, strangled, sexually assaulted, and shot with
Speaker 1: a thirty two caliber handgun. Several men were arrested, but
Speaker 1: nobody was ever indicted or to into trial. The district
Speaker 1: did have a serious problem. Rumors circulated that the reason
Speaker 1: that all of these murders were going unsolved was because
Speaker 1: somebody didn't want them solved. But the DC Police Department
Speaker 1: was painfully underfunded and understaffed. How much could the police
Speaker 1: do in the face of the worst crime rate in
Speaker 1: the nation and rampant corruption that undermined every effort. Going
Speaker 1: back to the scene of the Carborn murders, a detailed
Speaker 1: diagram of the shoeprints in the snow around the ticket office,
Speaker 1: the carbarn, and the areas to the north was provided
Speaker 1: in the case file. The snow was fresh that morning,
Speaker 1: which made the shoeprints easy to track on the grassy areas.
Speaker 1: Connecticut Avenue had been cleared by the time the detectives
Speaker 1: got there, and it was just wet and muddy. A
Speaker 1: set of vehicle tire tracks showed that a car had
Speaker 1: turned left into a series of vacant lots to the
Speaker 1: north of the ticket office. The tracks turned left and stopped.
Speaker 1: Shoe prints exited that car and went south, passed a
Speaker 1: miniature golf course, and turned left again, following the B
Speaker 1: and O railroad tracks out to Connecticut Avenue. Another set
Speaker 1: of shoe prints went north from the ticket office back
Speaker 1: past that miniature golf course and to the waiting car
Speaker 1: at the vacant lots. The tire tracks then continued south,
Speaker 1: turned left again, and then left one more time. The
Speaker 1: car did a big loop through the lots and came
Speaker 1: out on the same street it came in on. Detective
Speaker 1: Volton made a note in the margin. After following those
Speaker 1: shoe prints to the empty lots and then back to
Speaker 1: the ticket office. At one place where there's a small ravine,
Speaker 1: one party had stopped and sat down. This was determined
Speaker 1: by the fact that the thumb prints of each hand
Speaker 1: were on the outside. Somebody sat down on a rock
Speaker 1: and waited, leaving impressions of his hands and his thumbs
Speaker 1: in the snow. It sounded to me like somebody got ditched.
Speaker 1: Following some of the leads that were phone in, Montgomery County,
Speaker 1: Officer James mccauliffe received an anonymous call about a man
Speaker 1: named Kenneth Conlin. Official records for Capital Transit showed that
Speaker 1: Kenneth Conlin had applied for a job. His description fit
Speaker 1: the bill of the Brightwood ticket office robbery, so the
Speaker 1: detectives went to the listed address. The apartment manager said
Speaker 1: he'd never heard the name Kenneth Conlin. After a little
Speaker 1: more digging, they found out that Conlin had a bum
Speaker 1: leg from jumping out of a window during a sting
Speaker 1: in Baltimore, where he ran a house of prostitution. He
Speaker 1: hardly had the physique needed for a quick getaway or
Speaker 1: for carrying twenty two pound money bags. A few people
Speaker 1: were questioned about Kenneth Conlin's current location, which went nowhere.
Speaker 1: Another tip was phoned in that seemed a little more promising.
Speaker 1: A trolley car conductor was held up at gunpoint by
Speaker 1: three men in February of nineteen thirty. The conductor's name
Speaker 1: was Percy Mangum, and he was now an officer on
Speaker 1: the District Police. Sure he might have valid information about
Speaker 1: his own robbery, Mangam said that he was working the
Speaker 1: Connecticut Avenue trolley line when he was robbed of the
Speaker 1: day's cash intake. As he made his way to the
Speaker 1: main office in Georgetown, Mangam named Emery Lynwood Letterton as
Speaker 1: a likely suspect. Letterton had worked for Capital Transit and
Speaker 1: his criminal history showed an arrest in North Carolina for bootlegging.
Speaker 1: He actually did a stint in an Ohio prison, so
Speaker 1: it must have been one hell of a bust. Percy
Speaker 1: Mangam was called into the Captain's office to recount what
Speaker 1: happened during that robbery in nineteen thirty. Mangam told the
Speaker 1: captain that Letterton was good for it and resembled one
Speaker 1: of the suspects. Another tip from a cab driver whose
Speaker 1: taxi was stolen and then used in Percy Mangam's robbery
Speaker 1: gave the name John Cross. John Cross quit working for
Speaker 1: Capital Transit just three days before Percy Mangam was robbed.
Speaker 1: John Cross had a criminal record in Richmond, Virginia, so
Speaker 1: detectives Brass and Bolton took a road trip. They met
Speaker 1: with John Cross, who was doing time in a prison
Speaker 1: camp in nineteen thirty five. Cross admitted to being in
Speaker 1: d C in nineteen thirty when Percy Mangum was robbed,
Speaker 1: and he gave the detectives little nuggets of information, but
Speaker 1: he stopped short of confessing. Cross refused to give any
Speaker 1: other names, saying he had way too much to lose
Speaker 1: since he already had twelve more years to serve at
Speaker 1: the prison. Volton and Brass struck out and without any
Speaker 1: further information on Letterton and with John Cross's obvious alibi
Speaker 1: of being imprisoned. During the carbarn robbery and murders, they
Speaker 1: moved on. Dozens of the usual suspects were arrested and
Speaker 1: hauled into various police precincts, given the third degree, then
Speaker 1: released when their alibis checked out. But oddly, one man
Speaker 1: didn't have to be hunted down. Instead, on the afternoon
Speaker 1: of the murders, he strolled into the d C Lee's
Speaker 1: headquarters and volunteered to be interviewed. His name was William
Speaker 1: Franklin Clark. He wasn't a stranger to the DC police,
Speaker 1: and he'd been arrested for armed robbery in the past.
Speaker 1: DC Detective Frank Brass interviewed William Clark and then released
Speaker 1: him after he provided a seemingly airtight alibi. Clark said
Speaker 1: that he was with his girlfriend and a buddy on
Speaker 1: the night of the murders. They were brought in and
Speaker 1: both separately substantiated William Clark's story. But my sixth sense
Speaker 1: was irked with this guy. People don't willingly throw themselves
Speaker 1: into the middle of a murder investigation unless they have
Speaker 1: an ulterior motive. Was Clark front running something he wanted
Speaker 1: to keep hidden or did he use that opportunity to
Speaker 1: try to find out what the cops knew so that
Speaker 1: he could pass that information along. William Clark's name was
Speaker 1: the first one on my person of interest list. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: forensic leads were coming in. Detective Brass gave Volton a
Speaker 1: five dollar bill that was covered in bloodstains. The bill
Speaker 1: had come from the driver of a bakery wagon who
Speaker 1: said that he got it from a garage in Rockville, Maryland,
Speaker 1: a garage the missing green buick hadn't been found, so
Speaker 1: that seemed like a good tip. Volton took the bill
Speaker 1: to the Department of Justice laboratory to have species testing done.
Speaker 1: Then he ran down the path of that money from
Speaker 1: business to business, person to person until he finally found
Speaker 1: the original owner, who bled all over it. That man
Speaker 1: said that he was target shooting in his yard and
Speaker 1: he cut his finger on the gun hammer. Detective Volton
Speaker 1: substantiated that claim and he moved on. Now, imagine trying
Speaker 1: to track down a single five dollar bill in today's world.
Speaker 1: Forget it. We would just run DNA on the blood,
Speaker 1: look for any ridge detail from a fingerprint, and call
Speaker 1: it a day. More forensic were being done by d
Speaker 1: C Metro Lieutenant John Fowler on the spent casings, bullet
Speaker 1: and projectiles from the ticket office. Lieutenant Fowler determined that
Speaker 1: the gun that was used was a nineteen o three
Speaker 1: Colt thirty two caliber semi automatic. He said that the
Speaker 1: gun was in pretty bad shape, but now that Fowler
Speaker 1: had that information, if the gun used in the Carborn
Speaker 1: murders was located, he could do microscopic ballistic comparisons to
Speaker 1: declare a match. The detectives now realized that the gun
Speaker 1: they were looking for was likely a street purchase since
Speaker 1: it was in pretty bad condition. That wasn't much, but
Speaker 1: it was better than all the dead end leads they'd
Speaker 1: followed so far. Nothing the detectives did seemed to be
Speaker 1: panning out with any solid information about who killed Uncle
Speaker 1: Emery and James Mitchell, and the clock was ticking. Nobody
Speaker 1: found the green buick that had been stolen the night
Speaker 1: before the murders, and nobody claimed to have seen it
Speaker 1: in a garage or parked in a back alley somewhere.
Speaker 1: No clear establishments had come forward to say that bloody
Speaker 1: clothes had been brought in, and the endless gossip on
Speaker 1: the street hadn't given them anyone solid to investigate. Then
Speaker 1: they got their first solid lead from an unlikely source.
Speaker 1: Detective Frank Brass was contacted by an ex con informant
Speaker 1: who Brass had used in the past. The informants name
Speaker 1: was Bill. Bill said that he'd been contacted by two
Speaker 1: men on January seventh, nineteen thirty five, two weeks before
Speaker 1: the murders, about a robbery of the main office in Georgetown.
Speaker 1: Bill said that he knew one of the men, his
Speaker 1: name was Lawrence Pettit, but he didn't know the second man.
Speaker 1: Bill told Detective Brass that both men had worked for
Speaker 1: the Capital Transit Company previously and they knew the inner
Speaker 1: workings of the main office, and told him that the
Speaker 1: job would be worth twenty to thirty grand if they
Speaker 1: timed it right. Bill, the informant, asked Lawrence Pettit for
Speaker 1: more details, and Pettit gave him a laundry list of facts,
Speaker 1: including the layout of the interior of the main office,
Speaker 1: that an armored truck came for the money every morning
Speaker 1: between ten thirty and eleven, and that only three men
Speaker 1: were with that truck. Two of the men would go
Speaker 1: inside to get the cash, which was brought down on
Speaker 1: an elevator and through the lobby while the third man
Speaker 1: stayed with the truck. Bill told Detective Brass that the
Speaker 1: two seemed to have all of the details ironed out,
Speaker 1: but Bill declined their offer to go in with them
Speaker 1: because he said a broad daylight robbery like that sounded
Speaker 1: like a suicide mission. A few days later, Lawrence Pettit
Speaker 1: approached Bill again and asked him to purchase some guns
Speaker 1: from his contacts on the street. Bill told Pettit he
Speaker 1: still wasn't interested. After my uncle Emory's case hit the newspapers,
Speaker 1: Bill contacted Detective Brass, thinking that Pettit and this other
Speaker 1: guy might be good for the car Barn murders. Detectives
Speaker 1: Brass and Volton decided to work with Bill and see
Speaker 1: what else he could find out. Voulton and Brass told
Speaker 1: Bill to make contact with Lawrence Petted again and tell
Speaker 1: him that he'd given it some thought and because things
Speaker 1: were getting tough on him financially, he'd changed his mind.
Speaker 1: Bill did that and reported back that the second man's
Speaker 1: name was George Bruffy and that he and Lawrence Pettitt
Speaker 1: were still hell bent on committing the robbery of the
Speaker 1: main office. Pettit and Bruffy bought Bill's change of hard
Speaker 1: hook line and sinker. Voulton and Brass coached informant Bill
Speaker 1: and told him to bring up the Carborn case during
Speaker 1: a point in the conversation where it wouldn't be obvious.
Speaker 1: On the third day, a lunch meeting was planned at
Speaker 1: a sandwich shop downtown at thirteen o six North Capitol
Speaker 1: Street to work out the particulars. Bill, Pettit, and Bruffy
Speaker 1: sat at a table by the window. Bill listened to
Speaker 1: their plans about timing, where to park the car, entry
Speaker 1: and exit points, and other logistics, taking mental notes to
Speaker 1: give to Volton and Brass. When there was a pause
Speaker 1: in the conversation, Bill asked the others if it would
Speaker 1: be ok to bring a friend of his from Baltimore
Speaker 1: to help out. Pettit and Bruffy told him that would
Speaker 1: be great since it would make the heist four on three.
Speaker 1: Bill interrupted and made his play about the Carbarn case.
Speaker 1: I'm willing to go along with you fellows on the
Speaker 1: thirty sixth and M Street job, but I won't be
Speaker 1: a party to any damned fools who blast a guy
Speaker 1: for no reason like that Chevy Chase affair. At that point,
Speaker 1: Pettit and Bruffy stopped chewing, went silent and stared at Bill.
Speaker 1: After a brief moment, Laurence Pettit spoke up and said
Speaker 1: that was all a mistake. Forget it. George Bruffy kicked
Speaker 1: Petted under the table and growled, shut up, you talk
Speaker 1: too much. If you have information about the car Barn murders,
Speaker 1: go to the Shattered Soul's Facebook page age and leave
Speaker 1: me a message. Opening music by Sam Johnson at Sam
Speaker 1: Johnson live dot com. Shattered Souls as produced by Karen
Speaker 1: Smith and Angel Hart Productions