Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
Speaker 1: last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2: And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
Speaker 2: worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1: Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
Speaker 1: compelling true crimes.
Speaker 2: And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
Speaker 2: new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1: Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
Speaker 1: cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2: Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1: This is buried Bones.
Speaker 2: Hey Paul, Hey Kate, how's it going.
Speaker 1: It's going well. Normally we have lots of fun shit chat,
Speaker 1: but I think we're just going to jump right into
Speaker 1: this story. What do you think?
Speaker 2: Okay, let's do it.
Speaker 1: We are in late eighteen hundreds and we're going to
Speaker 1: be in Iowa and I have never been to Iowa,
Speaker 1: but I would love to go to Iowa. Have you
Speaker 1: been to Iowa? Are their murderers in Iowa?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I actually did a case in Iowa. Was Williamsburg
Speaker 2: double homicide of a couple at a holiday inn. They
Speaker 2: were hatcheted to death in their bed. Oh my gosh, horrible,
Speaker 2: horrible case. And this was the very first episode of
Speaker 2: my TV show, The DNA of Murder. And I'm confident
Speaker 2: that two other cases, one in Illinois and one down
Speaker 2: in Mississippi, or I think it's Mississippi where there are
Speaker 2: two single men hatcheted to death in their hotel rooms.
Speaker 2: I'm confident it's the same offender and pretty confident I
Speaker 2: know who that offender is. Just haven't been able to
Speaker 2: get the evidence to prove the case.
Speaker 1: We talk about that all the time with you, where
Speaker 1: you end up feeling like you have such a strong
Speaker 1: feeling about it and then there's just not enough evidence.
Speaker 1: We talked about that with the Golden State killer case too,
Speaker 1: where you were, you know, you were leaning towards a suspect,
Speaker 1: and then when the DNA comes back, it doesn't match.
Speaker 1: So I know how frustrating that can be for you.
Speaker 2: It is, but I better pull out a notepad here
Speaker 2: and start taking notes as you as you tell me
Speaker 2: about this eighteen hundreds case in Iowa.
Speaker 1: Time to head to Iowa. Okay, let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: set the scene. The center of this story is the
Speaker 1: Elkins family and they are in Elk Township, which is
Speaker 1: in northeast Iowa. And they are a farming family, very
Speaker 1: typical farming family. We're in eighteen eighty nine, summertime, eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine, very rural, and this is our stomping ground
Speaker 1: eighteen Yes, can you believe you're I've I've been saying
Speaker 1: this about you. Your stomping ground is eighteen hundreds, rural community.
Speaker 1: This is where these are our bread and butter stories.
Speaker 1: I feel like, don't you feel like we come to
Speaker 1: these stories sometimes.
Speaker 2: They do seem to come up quite a bit, you know.
Speaker 2: And I think part of it though, is kind of
Speaker 2: the lack of density with the residents. So, you know,
Speaker 2: offenders recognize that they have space in order to commit
Speaker 2: the crimes and relatively low risk for witnesses to see them.
Speaker 1: I think that's true. And you know, we end up
Speaker 1: with very few witnesses. We have some ear witnesses sometimes,
Speaker 1: but these cases can be pretty frustrating. Okay, well let's
Speaker 1: get into this one. So this is a very quiet
Speaker 1: part of the Midwest, as we said before, and this
Speaker 1: is the morning of Wednesday, July seventeenth, and something really
Speaker 1: unsettling happens to a farmer who knows the Elkins family.
Speaker 1: So that morning he sees it's a guy named John Porter,
Speaker 1: and he sees an eleven year old local boy who
Speaker 1: is one of the members of the Elkins family. His
Speaker 1: name is John Wesley Elkins. His dad's name is John,
Speaker 1: and he goes by Wesley. So he is driving his
Speaker 1: family's horse drawn buggy and he's heading down a nearby
Speaker 1: dirt road totally covered in blood. The driving the buggy
Speaker 1: part is an alarming at first, I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: knee jerky action is an eleven year old out there
Speaker 1: driving on a country road. They absolutely would have known how,
Speaker 1: of course, how to drive a horse and buggy. He's
Speaker 1: down there driving this horse and buggy. He's covered in blood.
Speaker 1: As Wesley gets closer to John Porter, the neighbor, John
Speaker 1: can also see that Wesley has a companion. It's his
Speaker 1: one year old half sister whose name is Nelly, and
Speaker 1: she's lying on the seat beside him, so she seems
Speaker 1: to be fine. He is covered in blood and really
Speaker 1: having a difficult time. He slows down the horse and
Speaker 1: buggy and John Porter says what's happening, and Wesley says
Speaker 1: that somebody broke into the family's house and shot his
Speaker 1: father John and pounded to death his stepmother Hattie. Okay,
Speaker 1: so Wesley was on his way with his little sister
Speaker 1: to his grandfather's house to get help. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot to unpack here already. You don't have very much information,
Speaker 1: I know, but just this scene must have been terrifying.
Speaker 1: Of this little boy covered in blood. He's a small kid.
Speaker 1: I'll show you a picture of him later. He survives
Speaker 1: this attack along with his one year old, and he
Speaker 1: has the presence of mind to take her, put her
Speaker 1: in this horse and buggy and get to safety. So
Speaker 1: that's where we are at this point.
Speaker 2: And no other siblings inside the house. This is the
Speaker 2: entirety of the family, the two kids and the parents. Okay, yep.
Speaker 1: Eleven year old, a one year old, and then the parents.
Speaker 1: So you know this is alarming of course, to John
Speaker 1: Porter and an intruder. He's very specific, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's saying he shot his dad and then he said
Speaker 1: that the intruder pounded his stepmother to death. So this
Speaker 1: is very upsetting, of course, and I think would have
Speaker 1: been even more unusual than you would think in this
Speaker 1: area of the Midwest. So you know, do you want
Speaker 1: to continue or do you have any other thoughts on that?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, this description of Wesley being covered in blood,
Speaker 2: you know, that's the term that's often used. And of course,
Speaker 2: from my vantage point is I want to see, you know,
Speaker 2: how much blood, what kinds of patterns are present, you know,
Speaker 2: under the circumstances as you've told him up to now
Speaker 2: I'm wondering, well, why does Wesley have any blood on him?
Speaker 2: It was he close to his step mom when she's
Speaker 2: being bludgeoned. Absolutely, you know you can get blood spatter
Speaker 2: coming up onto the kid. Can you imagine how traumatic
Speaker 2: this would be for an eleven year old boy? You know,
Speaker 2: of course you indicate that the dad, John Senior, is shot.
Speaker 2: You know what is he shot with? If he's just shot,
Speaker 2: let's say, with a handgun in the chest, that's really
Speaker 2: not a very bloody scene at all, Versus was he
Speaker 2: shot in the head with a shotgun? And then now
Speaker 2: you can see where could have a lot of his
Speaker 2: father's blood on him? Or after his parents are killed,
Speaker 2: does Wesley go up and interact with their bodies? Mom?
Speaker 2: Are you okay? Something like that? And now he's getting
Speaker 2: blood on himself, and at this point in time, we
Speaker 2: don't know if Wesley himself has any bleeding injuries. Obviously
Speaker 2: I need more information, but right now I'm starting to
Speaker 2: just kind of figure out the dynamic space on what
Speaker 2: you've told me.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more information to come. So John Porter,
Speaker 1: the neighbor the farmer, gets his adult son and they
Speaker 1: go to the Elkins home. So they make sure that
Speaker 1: Wesley and his one year old sister are secured, and
Speaker 1: they decide they're going to go to the house, which
Speaker 1: seems like a scary idea to me, but you know what,
Speaker 1: they need to go investigate. I guess they find Wesley's parents,
Speaker 1: just as he said, they're dead in the bedroom. John
Speaker 1: sends his son to go to the police, and this
Speaker 1: is what the police eventually find and what John Porter finds.
Speaker 1: There is John Wesley, Sr. Who is forty three. He
Speaker 1: is lying on his bed with his head resting on
Speaker 1: his pillow, and he has been shot once through the
Speaker 1: left eye. It also looks right now that he's been
Speaker 1: beaten with some sort of blunt instrument on the left
Speaker 1: side of his head and on his forehead. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we have a good source book that Marin used. It
Speaker 1: was a woman named Patricia Bryan and her co author
Speaker 1: Thomas Wolfe, wrote a book called The Plea. In the book,
Speaker 1: they described his face as destroyed. So it sounds like
Speaker 1: badly beaten, but right, I mean, we need to know
Speaker 1: more about the gun to see gosh through his eye.
Speaker 1: I mean that is just always so gruesome to me.
Speaker 1: Is that someone who intentionally did that or missed or
Speaker 1: when you see that kind of an injury, what does
Speaker 1: that usually mean the person was the victim was moving around?
Speaker 2: No, you know, there's the evaluation of the distance that
Speaker 2: the gun was at the time of the shot. If
Speaker 2: it is a more distant shot, did the sh shooter
Speaker 2: truly intended to shoot through the eye or it's just
Speaker 2: generally shooting at the at the head and it just
Speaker 2: happed the bullet happened to pass through the eye. However,
Speaker 2: if you have let's say a very close range shot,
Speaker 2: now you've got let's say stippling from gunpowder, or you
Speaker 2: have sooting or or even depending on the caliber of
Speaker 2: the weapon, you can even get gases going into the
Speaker 2: skull space the orbital space, and now you can get
Speaker 2: rupture of the skin showing it's a contact wound. Now,
Speaker 2: if that is what's going on, then yes, I would
Speaker 2: say the offender, the shooter intentionally shot John through the eye.
Speaker 2: So right now, absent that type of information, it's at
Speaker 2: this point, it's just the shot went through his his
Speaker 2: left eye. Of course, I'm very interested in the bludgeting
Speaker 2: because you know what what weapon was used to bludgeon
Speaker 2: John as he laid there. It sounds like he's asleep
Speaker 2: and possibly never even realized that he was about to die.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you about the other body, which would
Speaker 1: be Hattie. So she was twenty three, twenty years younger
Speaker 1: than her husband, his second wife. John's body is partially
Speaker 1: covered by Hattie's body. So in this book the plea
Speaker 1: she's described as this is an interesting description, bent backward
Speaker 1: across the bed in an unnatural position with her face
Speaker 1: toward the ceiling and her feet on the floor. She
Speaker 1: had been beaten so violently with this blunt object that
Speaker 1: her skull and her jawbone were broken, and the backs
Speaker 1: of her legs are severely bruised. And then I have
Speaker 1: information about blood throughout the room. But those are the
Speaker 1: two things about the victims. So what do you think
Speaker 1: about that she's kind of laying on top of him.
Speaker 2: It sounds like well, the position of her body being
Speaker 2: on top of her husband, John could suggest a sequence
Speaker 2: in terms of who was attacked first. And of course,
Speaker 2: an offender recognizing that there's a male likely is going
Speaker 2: to go out after the biggest threat first. Patty's position
Speaker 2: is she also asleep and as her husband is, there's
Speaker 2: a gunshot. She wakes up. Her husband's getting beat by
Speaker 2: this guy, and now she's trying to get off the bed,
Speaker 2: and now the offender turns his attention onto her, and
Speaker 2: then ultimately she collapses backwards onto John. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think that's one possible scenario, but there's many possible scenarios.
Speaker 2: At this point. This is where now the blood patterns,
Speaker 2: her actual injuries. Taking a look at things within the
Speaker 2: bedroom itself can help inform sort of the sequence of
Speaker 2: how these victims were attacked. And I'm sure you're going
Speaker 2: to give me more information coming up.
Speaker 1: So this is the scene. The rest of the scene
Speaker 1: in this bedroom, there is blood spatter on the walls
Speaker 1: and the ceiling pool, blood in the bed sheets and
Speaker 1: nearby on the floor, and there are small footprints we
Speaker 1: find out later it's Wesley's footprints because he ran up
Speaker 1: to see what was going on. He had beer feet
Speaker 1: that led from the bodies to another bedroom in the house.
Speaker 1: So the bed in the second bedroom is unmade, and
Speaker 1: there are spots of blood in its sheets, and at
Speaker 1: the foot of the bed there is a single barrel
Speaker 1: rifle which is determined to be one of the murder weapons,
Speaker 1: and it belongs to the family and it's usually stored
Speaker 1: in a bedroom where it hangs on the wall. So
Speaker 1: anybody who's been in this house would have seen this
Speaker 1: gun there, or I suppose somebody there looking to rob
Speaker 1: the house could have seen this gun inexplicably on the wall.
Speaker 1: Using them as a weapon seems odd to me. But
Speaker 1: what do you think about that?
Speaker 2: I just I need to clarify. You have the second bedroom,
Speaker 2: which it doesn't appear that anybody had slept in that.
Speaker 1: Bed, right, I don't think so?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And what kind of blood staining was seen? That?
Speaker 2: Is it blood drips that was leading from the homicide
Speaker 2: room into the second bedroom.
Speaker 1: Yes, So there are the footprints that we are later
Speaker 1: determining our belong to Wesley, that go from the bodies
Speaker 1: to another bedroom in the house. Where we presume the
Speaker 1: little girl was, so he was probably checking on her.
Speaker 1: Then the bed in this second room is unmade, so
Speaker 1: nobody's slept in there, and there are spots of blood
Speaker 1: in its sheets, and at the foot of the bed
Speaker 1: is the rifle. Okay, so no action in that second bedroom.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a little bit of blood.
Speaker 2: So there's also sequence information. You said the rifle is
Speaker 2: the weapon used to shoot John. They confirmed this, probably
Speaker 2: through some sort of ballistic analysis, I imagine for the
Speaker 2: late eighteen hundreds. The blood drips, Now, this could be
Speaker 2: the offender. I don't know what kind of weapon was
Speaker 2: used to do the bludgeoning. Does the offender himself get
Speaker 2: injured as a result of bludgeoning, because sometimes you're holding
Speaker 2: on to a victim with your off hand and you're
Speaker 2: using your other hand to beat that victim, and now
Speaker 2: you're hitting your own hand, and now you have lacerations
Speaker 2: that could cause bleeding. So when the offender moves to
Speaker 2: the second bedroom and dumps the rifle there, you know,
Speaker 2: might be the offender's dripped blood. Could it be Wesley,
Speaker 2: You know, Wesley is at this point, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to say I have any suspicions of Wesley at this point.
Speaker 2: But you know, I just want to put that out there.
Speaker 2: He's an eleven year old boy. You know, he can
Speaker 2: shoot a rifle. But I have a hard time seeing
Speaker 2: him beating his mother, you know, being able to physically
Speaker 2: overpower her, unless he's a very robust eleven year old boy,
Speaker 2: right if she's trying to fight back. But Wesley's movements
Speaker 2: are a form of post offense crime scene contamination that
Speaker 2: we have to take into account. And so is Wesley
Speaker 2: bringing some blood into the second bedroom as he's moving
Speaker 2: through the house. So but right now, that's kind of
Speaker 2: it's interesting that the offenders going into the second bedroom
Speaker 2: and is using the family's own rifle in the shooting
Speaker 2: of the father.
Speaker 1: And I can identify the weapon that was used to
Speaker 1: bludgeon the parents to death. So I'm going to show
Speaker 1: it to you because I've never heard of this before.
Speaker 1: So the police are searching, they're trying to find this
Speaker 1: blunt object. They think they found it. It's a wooden
Speaker 1: German flail which is used to thresh grain and has
Speaker 1: hairs and dry blood on it, so they think this
Speaker 1: is the weapon. I have a photo of what it
Speaker 1: probably looked like but let me just tell you. It's
Speaker 1: about two feet long and about three inches wide. And
Speaker 1: they found it hidden under grass about twenty feet from
Speaker 1: the home's back entrance. So somebody hid it. So the
Speaker 1: killer or killers didn't hide the rifle, but did hide
Speaker 1: this object. And so I can I can you want
Speaker 1: to show you that photo or what do you think?
Speaker 2: Absolutely no, this is not a fool.
Speaker 1: If this isn't good enough for you, Paul Holes, then
Speaker 1: I will find a different photo, but it better be
Speaker 1: good enough. Okay, there it is. Now that's not a
Speaker 1: very it doesn't show the full thing, but I mean,
Speaker 1: is that clear enough for you?
Speaker 2: Okay, that's interesting. So in this photograph, yeah, this is
Speaker 2: very different than what I was expecting. It appears that
Speaker 2: there are two wooden I'm not sure i'd call them handles.
Speaker 1: Like rods, right, we're right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think rod is a good descriptor. So two wooden
Speaker 2: rods that are joined together at one end with what
Speaker 2: appears to be leather strapping that has been secured to
Speaker 2: each of these rods. Now, I'm not sure how this
Speaker 2: weapon is. I mean, in some ways, it's it almost
Speaker 2: approximates you know, your your numb chucks for martial arts,
Speaker 2: just like a very very old style. I don't know
Speaker 2: how that's actually used in the threshing operation, but the
Speaker 2: offender could use this a variety of ways. He could
Speaker 2: be holding on to both rods at the same time
Speaker 2: and it's now just a singular object in some ways
Speaker 2: being used to bludgeon the parents. Or he could be
Speaker 2: holding just one rod more like your numb chuck style,
Speaker 2: and now whipping that second rod, which of course would
Speaker 2: generate a tremendous amount of velocity. The injuries to the
Speaker 2: you know, the parents would possibly be able to demonstrate
Speaker 2: how the offender held this weapon, the fact that they're
Speaker 2: finding blood and hair adhering to this. I mean, from
Speaker 2: my perspective, there's no question that this was the bludgeting weapon.
Speaker 1: Why would you use two different weapons? You've got one shot.
Speaker 1: We're assuming whoever this is tried to take down John
Speaker 1: first because he's the male. He shoots him through the eye,
Speaker 1: so why then not shoot Hattie? Or is it this
Speaker 1: is improvising? I mean, what would have happened here?
Speaker 2: Well, first, right now we don't know based on the information.
Speaker 2: The exact sequence was John initially beat unconscious, and possibly killed,
Speaker 2: and then the offender found the rifle and decided I
Speaker 2: needed to shoot him in order to finish him off.
Speaker 2: But I think another possibility is the offender shoots John
Speaker 2: and starts to beat him, and now Patty is either
Speaker 2: trying to escape or is coming to her husband's rescue.
Speaker 2: Now the offender a rifle is horrible for close quarters combat.
Speaker 2: I mean you could see where Let's say the offender
Speaker 2: shoots John, Patty wakes up and now she's grabbing the
Speaker 2: rifle and she's now struggling with the offender over the rifle.
Speaker 2: And right now, I'm just going to assume single offender,
Speaker 2: this offender has this bludgeoning weapon, this flail, that he
Speaker 2: has to turn to to start beating Paddy off and
Speaker 2: then ultimately killing her with the flail. So I think
Speaker 2: that that's another possible scenario. Of course, now if we
Speaker 2: add a second offender into the mix, then we have
Speaker 2: different dynamics going on.
Speaker 1: Well, let me tell you how this investigation goes. There
Speaker 1: is a coroner's inquest, and Wesley's call up first because
Speaker 1: he's the only witness. So I'll tell you. I'll lay
Speaker 1: out what he says happened. He says that on Tuesday night,
Speaker 1: so the night before, hours before John and Hattie were killed,
Speaker 1: Wesley had eaten dinner and then his dad told him,
Speaker 1: don't sleep in the house tonight. You need to sleep
Speaker 1: in the barn. Wesley was actually happy to do it
Speaker 1: because it was, you know, late July.
Speaker 2: Was this a form of punishment or was this just
Speaker 2: getting him out of the house for one reason or another? Right?
Speaker 1: I think it was an eleven year old boy, you know,
Speaker 1: let's get out of the house because you know they
Speaker 1: have a one year old there who probably has trouble sleeping.
Speaker 1: It didn't seem like a form of punishment, no, And
Speaker 1: Wesley was happy to do it because he said the
Speaker 1: barn was a lot cooler at night than being in
Speaker 1: that house. This is not a massive house. So around
Speaker 1: eight o'clock that night he heads out to the barn,
Speaker 1: and the barn is about two hundred and fifty feet
Speaker 1: from the house. Should Wesley be able to hear things
Speaker 1: that are happening, like the sound of a rifle going
Speaker 1: off or he says later on, he heard a scream?
Speaker 1: But is this is this? Should can he be an
Speaker 1: ear witness in this case? Do you think?
Speaker 2: Well? I would say, you know, with the gunshot, you
Speaker 2: know most certainly within two hundred and fifty feet, if
Speaker 2: you know it's you don't have a storm going on,
Speaker 2: or it's successively windy. I mean that that type of
Speaker 2: sound carries a great distance. You know, I always having
Speaker 2: played sports growing up, you know, when you start talking
Speaker 2: about these these distances, I kind of relate these distances
Speaker 2: to the various sporting activities I've been in. And of course,
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty feet, you know, that's close to
Speaker 2: three hundred feet, which is the length of a football field. Okay,
Speaker 2: so you know two hundred fifty feet. I mean it
Speaker 2: is a good distance, but it's not you know, something
Speaker 2: in which you know, if if a woman were to scream,
Speaker 2: that scream would fall off before somebody that distance away
Speaker 2: would would hear it. So you know, then we have
Speaker 2: you know the structures, right, you have the house where
Speaker 2: the homicide occurred. You've got Wesley who is in a barn.
Speaker 2: You know that's going to impact the acoustics. So it's
Speaker 2: hard to say if he sure would be an ear witness,
Speaker 2: but yeah, you know, I mean he's I probably wouldn't
Speaker 2: let my eleven year old son be sleeping out in
Speaker 2: a barn, you know, two hundred fifty feet away from me,
Speaker 2: but different time, different era.
Speaker 1: So what Wesley says is that he went to sleep,
Speaker 1: it was nice and cool. He woke up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night after hearing what he described as
Speaker 1: a woman's scream, so this would be his stepmother Hattie.
Speaker 1: He was petrified, as any eleven year old would be,
Speaker 1: and he waited. He thought about thirty minutes before he
Speaker 1: decided to go ahead and check in on the family.
Speaker 1: He walks over to the house and that's when he
Speaker 1: sees his parents dead, and that's why his footprints are
Speaker 1: in the blood. He says that his little sister, Nelly
Speaker 1: was in the bed with his parents, and he said
Speaker 1: she was just wailing, crying as hard as she could,
Speaker 1: covered in their blood, but that she was not He
Speaker 1: checked and she was not physically harmed, and later on
Speaker 1: the doctor said she wasn't harmed. He said that he
Speaker 1: picked her up and he took her to the second
Speaker 1: bedroom and he lit the lamp on the nearby chest,
Speaker 1: and then he changed her into some clean clothes. I
Speaker 1: don't know what kind of like, you know, caretaking mode
Speaker 1: he locked into, but I think that's the explanation for
Speaker 1: the bits of blood. And that's his bedroom, and that's
Speaker 1: why the bed was unmade is because he was in
Speaker 1: the barn. He never slept in that bed. So I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to help you a little bit with the
Speaker 1: sequence of why things seemed to be kind of laying
Speaker 1: out the way they are. He said that he looked
Speaker 1: at the clock and it was about three thirty and
Speaker 1: that's when he decided to go ahead and take the
Speaker 1: horse and buggy and go find help. And he drove
Speaker 1: a long way and then he ran into John Porter,
Speaker 1: and then we know the rest of the story.
Speaker 2: Okay, So if Wesley is telling the truth, then what
Speaker 2: I mentioned before this post offense crime scene contamination, his movements.
Speaker 2: He's basically detailing movements that are accounting for this blood evidence.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that did he make a statement that he
Speaker 2: found the rifle in the homicide room and moved the
Speaker 2: rifle into his bedroom.
Speaker 1: He does not say anything about the rifle, and that
Speaker 1: could have been just sort of like it got lost
Speaker 1: in the notes, or he doesn't address it at all.
Speaker 1: I think he was just so much more maybe he
Speaker 1: didn't even notice it. He was so traumatized by seeing
Speaker 1: this bloody scene and trying to deal with his little
Speaker 1: sister who's screaming. You know, I don't know he didn't
Speaker 1: notice it.
Speaker 2: So him hearing Patty scream that at least tells me
Speaker 2: that Patty became aware that there was an attack underway,
Speaker 2: whether it was she screaming when she's being attacked or
Speaker 2: she's screaming when she's seeing her husband being killed in
Speaker 2: the bed. So there's a little bit of information there.
Speaker 2: It appears that John is killed right away, He's taken out,
Speaker 2: and then the offender and Patty are interacting. She screams.
Speaker 2: Wesley hears that scream. You know, I just have concerns
Speaker 2: about the location of the rifle in Wesley's bedroom. You
Speaker 2: know that one is that's bugging me a little bit.
Speaker 2: You know, why is the offender going in there. Let's
Speaker 2: say this is an outside intruder is checking to see
Speaker 2: is Wesley in his bed and then seeing where is
Speaker 2: Wesley and then runs off you Wesley at the same time,
Speaker 2: And again I'm struggling with Wesley's age to be capable
Speaker 2: of committing this crime. But what he's his movement patterns,
Speaker 2: he's putting himself inside the homicide room and he's going
Speaker 2: into his bedroom. He's going to wear the murder One
Speaker 2: of the murder weapons is left behind. And do we
Speaker 2: know the flail was that from the family property as well?
Speaker 1: It sounds like it was, Yeah, it was. It was
Speaker 1: not brought in, So yeah, these are found weapons. Having
Speaker 1: it all loaded on the wall I thought was interesting too.
Speaker 1: This gun, I mean unless the perpetrator found bullets somewhere.
Speaker 1: I mean that this was a loaded gun on the wall,
Speaker 1: which doesn't surprise me. For the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Well, no, that's why you do that. Of course you
Speaker 2: have display weapons, but also you want to have weapons
Speaker 2: that are readily available, and if you have an urgent need,
Speaker 2: you're not sitting there trying to get it loaded up.
Speaker 2: You can just grab and go. But the flail, this
Speaker 2: sounds like a tool that would be kept out in
Speaker 2: something like the barn.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 2: Again, I'm struggling with Wesley's age, but I've got some
Speaker 2: concerns about how the evidence is starting to stack.
Speaker 1: Up because you're thinking who else would this have been
Speaker 1: and the sequence of a where everything is available, you
Speaker 1: are a suspicious man.
Speaker 2: Well I have to be, you know, this is where
Speaker 2: it's like, Okay, Wesley most certainly would know about the rifle.
Speaker 2: You know, he's out in the barn where it seems
Speaker 2: like that would be the logical location where the flail
Speaker 2: would be found. He's putting himself into the homicide room,
Speaker 2: and he's going into his bedroom where the other murder weapon,
Speaker 2: the rifle, is found. You know, So there's just some
Speaker 2: things there that you know, I'm just going, Okay, his
Speaker 2: movements are interesting, These circumstances are interesting. Is he capable
Speaker 2: He most certainly is capable of shooting his dad, you know,
Speaker 2: with the rifle and once his dad has been shot
Speaker 2: in the head, and then being able to use the
Speaker 2: flail and do the bludgeoning. Now I'm very curious about,
Speaker 2: you know, like if there were crime scene photos and
Speaker 2: autopsy used to be able to evaluate the offender and
Speaker 2: Patty's interactions, and is Wesley capable of doing that? And
Speaker 2: then all the blood on Wesley, it sounds like it's
Speaker 2: possible he's scooping up his one year old sister. She's bloody. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's transferring parents' blood onto him. But if he's got
Speaker 2: spatter and he's got hair, you know, you know, this
Speaker 2: crushed hair that will happen in a bludgeoning on him.
Speaker 2: I would have to really evaluate that type of evidence
Speaker 2: very closely to see is there an innocent explanation for
Speaker 2: that or does it suggest that he is present at
Speaker 2: the time his parents are being bludgeoned.
Speaker 1: Well, before we get to, you know, any of that
Speaker 1: kind of evidence and suspicions over Wesley, because you know,
Speaker 1: I agree with you, you have to look at everybody.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about other people who have been of interest.
Speaker 1: If it is Wesley, we should at least figure out
Speaker 1: what ended up happening, like why would anyone take out
Speaker 1: this level of anger against someone? And by the way,
Speaker 1: nothing stolen from the house, which probably doesn't surprise you
Speaker 1: about guessing that the route you're going here.
Speaker 2: Well, I think right now this is just one of
Speaker 2: what would probably be many investigative paths to take down.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure you're about to throw me a curveball.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about the corners in quest a little
Speaker 1: bit more. Ten of the neighbors testified, and this is
Speaker 1: not you know, these aren't neighbors who witness the crime
Speaker 1: or any of the direct aftermath of it, but they
Speaker 1: do want to talk about the reputation of the Elkins
Speaker 1: family in the community and the relationship between John and Okay,
Speaker 1: so this is I think I was wrong here. John
Speaker 1: was on his third marriage, so Hattie, the woman who
Speaker 1: died next to him, was his third wife. So Wesley's
Speaker 1: mother was a woman named Matilda, and this was John's
Speaker 1: second wife. So the neighbors say that Matilda had an
Speaker 1: affair that continued even when she became pregnant with Wesley
Speaker 1: and hated her husband, hated hated John, and she plotted
Speaker 1: his murder on more than one occasion. And the authors
Speaker 1: of this book said that she wanted to poison him,
Speaker 1: she wanted to shoot him, but ultimately she ends up
Speaker 1: just divorcing him, and she runs off with her boyfriend
Speaker 1: to Waterloo, Iowa, which is about seventy miles away from
Speaker 1: the family farm, and she gives birth to Wesley. But
Speaker 1: John gets custody. We don't really know why, but he
Speaker 1: gets Wesley for the first four years of Wesley's life.
Speaker 1: Then John married Hattie. You know, ultimately, I won't kind
Speaker 1: of drag you through this. Matilda ends up dying before
Speaker 1: John does. So Matilda is not a suspect in this.
Speaker 1: His second wife. But I do want to explain a
Speaker 1: little bit about Wesley and how he I think is
Speaker 1: going to feel like he's been shifted around quite a bit.
Speaker 1: But John sounds like this is you know, he's got
Speaker 1: some enemies. He seems capable of having more enemies than
Speaker 1: whoever just broke into this house and killed him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the second relationship with Matilda, I mean, the fact
Speaker 2: that she hated John so much that she was plotting
Speaker 2: to kill him on multiple occasions. This may provide some
Speaker 2: victimology about John, you know, in terms of his personality.
Speaker 2: You know, is there anything about Matilda's second husband because
Speaker 2: she ended up this boyfriend, she ends up marrying him, yep?
Speaker 2: Could Matilda's husband have had any type of motive to
Speaker 2: go in and kill John and Hattie? You know? So
Speaker 2: this is just a a little bit more about you know,
Speaker 2: John's past and did it come back and haunt him.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I have any more. You know,
Speaker 2: it's really because it when when you start taking a
Speaker 2: look at this double homicide. You know, of course you've
Speaker 2: got John's past, You've got his work environment, Who are
Speaker 2: in his social circles, what kinds of activities is he involved?
Speaker 2: With that could potentially cause somebody to get upset with him.
Speaker 2: Of course you have to take a look at Hattie
Speaker 2: and you know, is there any reason for somebody to
Speaker 2: have motive to kill her? You know, and John just
Speaker 2: happens to be eliminated as in that process. So those
Speaker 2: are all parts of the early part of the investigation
Speaker 2: is fleshing out the victimology. So you could figure out, well,
Speaker 2: where is this investigation going to go, and then there's
Speaker 2: still Wesley.
Speaker 1: Well there is still Wesley, and that is eventually where
Speaker 1: we're going to head because you know, if we're looking
Speaker 1: at suspects. So all this seems like a great one,
Speaker 1: except she ended up dying. Wesley was about seven when
Speaker 1: she died, so Wesley went from being born to being
Speaker 1: sent to his dad for four years back to Matilda.
Speaker 1: So Matilda and her husband had him for three years.
Speaker 1: When Matilda died, not surprisingly, the stepfather ships Wesley back
Speaker 1: over to John and now his new wife Hattie. So
Speaker 1: they didn't want him. They did not want Wesley. He
Speaker 1: was sent to live with John's parents. So Wesley was
Speaker 1: sent with his grandparents. Two years later, when Wesley is nine,
Speaker 1: the grandparents said, you guys, need to take him back.
Speaker 1: So John and Hattie get him back. And at this point,
Speaker 1: you know, he had been enrolled in school. His teachers
Speaker 1: said he was incredibly intelligent. But when John and Hattie
Speaker 1: took him back, he had to stop his education and
Speaker 1: he was put to work at us sawmill, a nine
Speaker 1: year old at a sawmill that his dad owned. So
Speaker 1: this sounds like a bad household, to be honest, It
Speaker 1: sounds abusive. It sounds like John and Hattie, our victims,
Speaker 1: were not very nice to this kid, and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to sugarcoat that. They sound like they were pretty cruel.
Speaker 1: And so that's what we're setting up here, is investigators
Speaker 1: start to think that, based on everything and the evidence
Speaker 1: that you're talking about, that they have on their hands
Speaker 1: an eleven year old who is capable of shooting his
Speaker 1: father and beating both his father and his stepmother to death,
Speaker 1: which is incredible. I can't even believe I'm saying that
Speaker 1: an eleven year old.
Speaker 2: You know the details of Wesley's upbringing, you could see
Speaker 2: where Wesley is constantly being rejected.
Speaker 1: By everybody, his grandparents, everybody, sure.
Speaker 2: And the night that Tuesday night, Wesley is told to
Speaker 2: go sleep in the barn. Does he perceive that as
Speaker 2: just another reject the one year old you know, who's
Speaker 2: his half sister, I guess, you know, she comes into
Speaker 2: his life and he sees John and Hattie care for
Speaker 2: this one year old, and he's having to labor at
Speaker 2: a sawmill. So now I can see where there could
Speaker 2: be some hostility within Wesley. He goes out to the barn,
Speaker 2: the flail is out there. He is mad, and he
Speaker 2: goes into the house in the middle of the night,
Speaker 2: grabs the rifle, has the flail, shoots Dad, and then
Speaker 2: ends up beating Dad and Mom. You know, this is
Speaker 2: where it's you know, what is Wesley's physical capabilities relative
Speaker 2: to Mom? Because Mom's positioning the way I'm envisioning it,
Speaker 2: she at least gets up out of the bed. Maybe,
Speaker 2: you know, i'd have to, I'd really want to be
Speaker 2: able to evaluate that is Wesley capable with the flail
Speaker 2: of overpowering and ultimately killing Hattie. You know, I think
Speaker 2: it's an eleven year old boy. I mean, he's doing
Speaker 2: hard labor. In essence, he's probably very physically fit and
Speaker 2: strong for his age. So right now, you know, I
Speaker 2: think things are pointing pretty dramatically at Wesley.
Speaker 1: So listen, I'm going to show you some photos and
Speaker 1: I normally would not do this this early. I want
Speaker 1: to show you photo of Wesley. It's undated Wesley as
Speaker 1: a young boy, and then there is a photo of
Speaker 1: him when he's a little bit older. I will say
Speaker 1: that this does not look like a big kid to me.
Speaker 1: I know he has functional strength, but this is him
Speaker 1: as a boy. Photo of Wesley Elkins as a young boy,
Speaker 1: published in the newspapers at the time of the crime.
Speaker 1: I don't know how old he is here. Maybe what
Speaker 1: do you think, like six or seven? It's hard to tell.
Speaker 1: Maybe older. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know this is a I mean I can't
Speaker 2: really because all I'm seeing really is his face, and
Speaker 2: he does look like a young boy here, right. I
Speaker 2: don't you know whether he's six or he's ten in
Speaker 2: this photograph. Can't tell. I mean, he's got some sort
Speaker 2: of coat on, and it's hard to get to really assess,
Speaker 2: you know, what his physique is. You know how mature
Speaker 2: his physique is at this point in time, because I'm
Speaker 2: imagining the eleven year old boy who is doing some
Speaker 2: hard labor. You can see some of these kids, you know,
Speaker 2: with the boys, you can see them at that age
Speaker 2: developing some upper body muscles and they're starting to you know, grow,
Speaker 2: whereas other boys at age still look like they're you know,
Speaker 2: five or six years old from a physical physique standpoint.
Speaker 2: So that's where you know, I keep going back and
Speaker 2: forth about Wesley's age and his physical capability. It's just
Speaker 2: everything right now, you know, seems to point that he
Speaker 2: possibly is responsible. And if he is, and he obviously
Speaker 2: was physically capable of being able to kill his parents.
Speaker 1: Let me show you this. This is when he is
Speaker 1: probably about thirty, could be in his twenties. I know
Speaker 1: this is not a good representation. This is a chair
Speaker 1: he's sitting. I mean, you know, he does not look
Speaker 1: like a big person.
Speaker 2: To me.
Speaker 1: He looks like and I know what you're gonna say,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, especially when you've got a drilline and you're
Speaker 1: you know, a farm boy throwing hal over the place.
Speaker 1: But this looks to me like a slight guy, a
Speaker 1: guy who is not particularly big. He's no Paul Holes.
Speaker 2: Let's say that I am not a big guy.
Speaker 1: Through a compliment in the middle of a murder case
Speaker 1: for eighteen hundredth.
Speaker 2: Oh good guy. No, you know, he he looks like
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, he's relatively kind of slight to frame.
Speaker 2: He's not a huge man at all, you know, but
Speaker 2: it's so hard to say from a photo of him
Speaker 2: and as an adult, you know, backtracking to him as
Speaker 2: an eleven year old boy, you know, what is his
Speaker 2: physical capabilities? And you know part of this is you've
Speaker 2: got the flail as a as a bludgeoning weapon that
Speaker 2: an eleven year old boy can inflict fatal injuries with
Speaker 2: that type of weapon. It's just now, what are the dynamics?
Speaker 2: How does he do that to Hattie, who appears to
Speaker 2: at least start to engage with him. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 2: it could just be a lucky blow. You know, she
Speaker 2: pulls the rifle away and gets into you know, maybe
Speaker 2: hand to hand combat with her her son, and Wesley
Speaker 2: is able to just hit her on the head with
Speaker 2: the flail and she ends up falling backwards and now
Speaker 2: he's on top of her beating her. You know, it's possible.
Speaker 1: Well, let me tell you a little bit more, just
Speaker 1: sort of a general overtone about the family. You know,
Speaker 1: all the neighbors basically said Hattie can be incredibly overbearing
Speaker 1: when she wanted him around. Of course, we know that
Speaker 1: they yanked him out of school and put him in
Speaker 1: a sawmill, which is I'm sure, I mean, such a
Speaker 1: disappointment for him. And they also said that John is
Speaker 1: very strict, very quick tempered, that Wesley was treated harshly.
Speaker 1: So there was a twenty one year old that John had.
Speaker 1: A guy named Mark was his son. He moved out
Speaker 1: of the house and this was I think earlier in
Speaker 1: the year because he didn't like his parents either. He
Speaker 1: had had enough. They were really working him too hard.
Speaker 1: They weren't pleasant to be around. Mark is investigated. He
Speaker 1: has a solid alibi, Okay, so it's clear that Wesley
Speaker 1: has been incredibly unhappy. He ran away a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks before the murders. He went to a neighbor's house
Speaker 1: and he said, please take me to Waterloo, Iowa, which
Speaker 1: is where the stepfather had been. Please just let me go.
Speaker 1: I've got to get out of here. And his dad
Speaker 1: shows up and was incredibly angry and dragged him back
Speaker 1: to the farm. So this is a very bleak picture,
Speaker 1: Paul of this kid's home life. But the result was
Speaker 1: that the Corners in quest still couldn't come up with
Speaker 1: a suspect, even though we are talking about Wesley. You know,
Speaker 1: the sheriff hires a Pinkerton detective. They put up a
Speaker 1: huge reward five hundred dollars, which was massive. In this
Speaker 1: time period, things are not becoming more clear to anyone.
Speaker 1: And certainly no one thinks an eleven year old is
Speaker 1: capable of this. Nobody in this community thinks he's capable
Speaker 1: of this. This is like a beaten dog, essentially, is
Speaker 1: the way people look at this kid.
Speaker 2: Sure, you know, at this point in the case, I
Speaker 2: would say Wesley is a suspect. And I bet if
Speaker 2: you know, we had all the you know, the evidence,
Speaker 2: all the photographs that possibly could illuminate whether Wesley is
Speaker 2: the actual killer or not. But I do think it's
Speaker 2: it's it's responsible of those original investigators to continue to
Speaker 2: pursue other potential suspects, you know. And and part of
Speaker 2: this is, you know, interviewing an eleven year old boy
Speaker 2: in this day and age, we know that that has
Speaker 2: to be done in a certain way in order to
Speaker 2: not influence Wesley, because you know, younger children are very
Speaker 2: susceptible to being swayed with their statements, and so there's people,
Speaker 2: you know, professionals that are trained to actually interview children.
Speaker 2: Wesley's right in that range where, yeah, maybe the primary
Speaker 2: homicide investigator you know, could sit down with him and
Speaker 2: get truthful statements. But also it's possible that a proper
Speaker 2: forensic interview of an eleven year old may have elicited
Speaker 2: more information, such as let's say Wesley's inner hostility towards
Speaker 2: his parents, potentially providing well, here's a motive.
Speaker 1: Well, people start to really become suspicious of Wesley, they
Speaker 1: say after the funerals, because a neighbor said that he
Speaker 1: seemed to be strange. He was unaffected, indifferent, he had
Speaker 1: no sorrow, no emotion. I mean, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: treated like total shit by your parents, and you know,
Speaker 1: then they're taken out of the picture, don't I don't
Speaker 1: know if I would be crying. It sounded like they
Speaker 1: were not great parents. And you and I have talked
Speaker 1: about you cannot look at somebody's you know, assume somebody's
Speaker 1: guilty just based on the reaction they're having. That might
Speaker 1: not have been the reaction you would have.
Speaker 2: You know, no, for sure, you know, and I think
Speaker 2: you know Wesley's upbringing, as horrible as it sounds, you know,
Speaker 2: of course this from an investigative assessment. You know, this
Speaker 2: is where okay, here's here's a kid that potentially has
Speaker 2: animosity towards his parents. But it's not something where you
Speaker 2: can make a case on that, right, you still have
Speaker 2: to prove the crime occurred. I would say something like
Speaker 2: Wesley's upbringing, I mean his age. Of course, in the
Speaker 2: justice system, he's going to be treated so differently if
Speaker 2: he were an adult, his upbringing would be something that
Speaker 2: would be put into you know, the court during sentencing, right,
Speaker 2: try to get leniency for people feel sorry for that
Speaker 2: as an eleven year old boy. If he ends up
Speaker 2: being the killer. I don't know what they were doing
Speaker 2: back in the eighteen hundreds with what juveniles, but you know, fundamentally,
Speaker 2: you know he would in this day and age, he
Speaker 2: would be in custody at juvenile hall, but probably released
Speaker 2: at age twenty five, you know, for a double homicide.
Speaker 2: But that's just the way it goes.
Speaker 1: So let me go through a little bit. Essentially, he's
Speaker 1: acting strange after these funerals, which I don't think is
Speaker 1: actually strange considering what's happening number one and number two.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that he's grown up to be stoic about everything.
Speaker 1: I mean, that would be the kind of farm wife
Speaker 1: in this time period. And also he is described as
Speaker 1: really small, just as small kid. People said, Okay, if
Speaker 1: this was Wesley, then an adult helped him. There's just
Speaker 1: no way, you know that physically he would be able
Speaker 1: to unleash this sort of rage on his parents. We
Speaker 1: know differently there, but he had been staying with a
Speaker 1: relative for a while, but the relative didn't want to
Speaker 1: either have him any longer, or you know, he wanted
Speaker 1: to leave something. So the sheriff takes him. And that's
Speaker 1: a guy named JJ Kahn, and the sheriff says, come
Speaker 1: and stay with my family. Sheriff seems nice, and he
Speaker 1: spends time with Wesley and probably shows quite a bit
Speaker 1: of care. And Wesley confesses. Oh, Wesley confesses, And the
Speaker 1: sheriff says, who worked with you on this? What adult
Speaker 1: was it? And he said it wasn't anybody. I've been
Speaker 1: planning this. I did it myself. I'll tell you all
Speaker 1: the details. Tired of hiding it. No adult, I did
Speaker 1: it all by myself.
Speaker 2: Wow. Okay, so now I want to hear what Wesley
Speaker 2: said happened.
Speaker 1: Okay, so he said, like I said, he planned everything.
Speaker 1: He even knew where he was going to put the weapon,
Speaker 1: the bludgeting weapon that you know he hit it so
Speaker 1: that he knew he could have access to it, right,
Speaker 1: and then he hit it after he used it. He
Speaker 1: said that he had planned the murders a few days beforehand.
Speaker 1: On the night of the murders, he waited for his
Speaker 1: parents to fall asleep, and then he gets the family's rifle,
Speaker 1: which we know was hanging on the wall in the
Speaker 1: second bedroom. He shoots his dad at close range. We
Speaker 1: know that hits him in the eye. This wakes up Hattie,
Speaker 1: his stepmother, so he panics. This is a It sounds
Speaker 1: like a single shot rifle, which means what you have
Speaker 1: to put a bullet This is a stupid question, but
Speaker 1: one shot, single shot, one shot. So he has to
Speaker 1: put a bullet in, right, I mean, this doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like the smartest weapon. When you've got two victims, right,
Speaker 1: two intended victims, you have to reload.
Speaker 2: Yes, So it sounds like I mean, this could be
Speaker 2: like a bolt action rifle that doesn't have a you know,
Speaker 2: a built in magazine. So, yeah, you see this like
Speaker 2: with sniper rifles where you see them put one round in,
Speaker 2: lock the bolt, shoot, and then now they have to,
Speaker 2: you know, extract the cartridge case and put another round
Speaker 2: in because it's not intended to be a like a
Speaker 2: semi auto where you're just pulling the trigger and getting
Speaker 2: multiple shots. Now, there's so many different makes and models
Speaker 2: and designs of rifles out there, doesn't surprise me at
Speaker 2: all that they have some a rifle like this. Think
Speaker 2: for home defense on a farm, you probably would want
Speaker 2: to have something that you know has greater capacity without
Speaker 2: having to reload it. But it is what it is.
Speaker 2: And I want to hear more about about Wesley than
Speaker 2: what he's saying.
Speaker 1: So, like I said, the shot wakes up his stepmother.
Speaker 1: He runs to the second bedroom and tosses the gun
Speaker 1: on the bed, which we know. He picks up the
Speaker 1: wooden flail, which he had hidden there so he thought
Speaker 1: he might need a second weapon. I guess he assumed
Speaker 1: he was not going to be able to get in
Speaker 1: a second shot. He picks up this flail. He says,
Speaker 1: this is what he says, word for word. I struck
Speaker 1: her Hattie, I struck her several times more until I
Speaker 1: was sure she was dead, and then father kind of groaned,
Speaker 1: so I struck him once or twice to be sure
Speaker 1: that he was dead. Cold. I mean, that's cold the
Speaker 1: way he's saying this. He said, I had wanted to
Speaker 1: leave home and be at Liberty to do so for
Speaker 1: myself for a long time. Sheriff said, what about Nelly?
Speaker 1: Why didn't you take her out? And he said, I
Speaker 1: liked her? Okay, I didn't want to hurt her. Why
Speaker 1: would I hurt her? She didn't do anything wrong to me.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 2: So yet you know the debate, You know, could an
Speaker 2: eleven year old boy commit this homicide? Well that's settled.
Speaker 2: He did. He doesn't provide any details about maybe a
Speaker 2: struggle between him and Hattie at all, because I'm kind
Speaker 2: of curious to see how he overcame her and maybe
Speaker 2: what I speculated before. You know, he got in a
Speaker 2: pretty good shot on her with the flail, and now
Speaker 2: she's incapacitated to some extent.
Speaker 1: And also the theory was because I just kept thinking, well,
Speaker 1: how would he even have time to run into the
Speaker 1: second bedroom, drop the gun, pick up the flail, and
Speaker 1: come back if Hattie's already getting up. But there's the
Speaker 1: theory that she was trying to lie a light. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're in the middle of the night and there's no
Speaker 1: like flick a switch. You have to light the lantern.
Speaker 1: She was, I'm sure, completely discombobulated and stunned by all
Speaker 1: of this. So he definitely had the upper hand here.
Speaker 1: It's hard to believe that the little sister was laying
Speaker 1: in between the two of them when all of this
Speaker 1: is happening, and she didn't get hurt with all of
Speaker 1: the beating in the dark and everything, because I don't
Speaker 1: think she got the light turned on. But that's what
Speaker 1: he says, that she was there, you know, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. Everybody's covered in blood at this point.
Speaker 2: Well, John is shot and he's incapacitated. It sounds like
Speaker 2: you get shot through the left eye. That bullet's in
Speaker 2: all likelihood going through some pretty significant brain structures. He's gone,
Speaker 2: even though Wesley hears him. Grown father's incapacitated, laying still.
Speaker 2: The timing of Wesley having to go and get the
Speaker 2: flail out of the second bedroom. You imagine you're sleeping,
Speaker 2: you hear a gunshot, you wake up. The shooter possibly
Speaker 2: is already out of the room, and I can see
Speaker 2: where Hattie is, you know, shaking her husband, going hey,
Speaker 2: and he's not responding. And next thing, Hattie knows, now
Speaker 2: Wesley's in there with the flail, you know, and that
Speaker 2: would be happening. I mean we're talking on the order
Speaker 2: of ten seconds. I mean, unless this bedroom is all
Speaker 2: the way across a large house. Sounds like the bedroom
Speaker 2: is right next door. In essence, he could go in.
Speaker 2: He knows exactly where that flails in and he's going
Speaker 2: right into that bedroom. And now Hattie's up and he's
Speaker 2: just right on top of her, and she's like, what
Speaker 2: is going on? You know, she may not have even
Speaker 2: recognized that he had the flail, and you know, he
Speaker 2: runs into this dark room and just strikes Hattie and
Speaker 2: now she is incapacitated, falls backward on the bed, and
Speaker 2: he climbs on top and makes sure she's dead and
Speaker 2: then finishes john Off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's awful what he's describing. He says, Nobody
Speaker 1: helped me. I knew exactly what I was doing. I
Speaker 1: wanted to leave. I had had enough. The community, first
Speaker 1: of all, doesn't believe it. Nobody else is involved. But
Speaker 1: then eventually he says, okay, well he was abused. But
Speaker 1: they feel like this is a I mean, they would
Speaker 1: not say mental illness, but they said an unnatural disposition
Speaker 1: inherited from his depraved mother, who was who died, so
Speaker 1: basically she was crazy. The prosecutor says that Wesley is irredeemable,
Speaker 1: he's a threat, he must go away. And the criminal
Speaker 1: defense attorney that represented Wesley did not say, you're eleven,
Speaker 1: let's argue that your brain hasn't been developed enough. He instead,
Speaker 1: he said you need to plead guilty. So they picked
Speaker 1: the murder of John and in January of eighteen ninety, Wesley,
Speaker 1: you know, has plugged guilty and he sentenced to life
Speaker 1: in prison. At twelve, he enters the state penitentiary at Anamosa.
Speaker 1: So there's a twelve year old in a state penitentiary
Speaker 1: at this point. Can you believe that? I mean, that's unreal,
Speaker 1: but better than an insane asylum. I can tell you.
Speaker 2: That relatively speaking. But you know, a twelve year old
Speaker 2: boy in a penitentiary, You've got all these men that
Speaker 2: are probably going to sectually abuse him. You know, it
Speaker 2: is an ugly, ugly situation and this is where it
Speaker 2: gets tough because obviously, I mean, this is a horrific crime.
Speaker 2: Two people are dead, and yet there's almost a level
Speaker 2: of sympathy for the killer under this this set of circumstances.
Speaker 2: And I can think of one case in which a
Speaker 2: son came up and shot his sleeping dad in the
Speaker 2: back of the head because he had been abusing his mom.
Speaker 2: You know, the entire relationship, the family dynamics are real.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a lot of emotions. And with Wesley, obviously,
Speaker 2: that lifetime of rejection sounds like possibly most early verbal
Speaker 2: abuse and possibly physical abuse by Hattie and John, you know,
Speaker 2: is also going to increase that level of animosity. And
Speaker 2: he just ultimately, you know, kind of said I'm done,
Speaker 2: I've had enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, he ends up in prison. He is there,
Speaker 1: and when he's eighteen, he starts really pushing to be released.
Speaker 1: He writes a letter to a local journalist and says,
Speaker 1: you've got to tell my story. And he does. And
Speaker 1: Wesley is ahead of his time. He says, I was abused.
Speaker 1: I act impulsively. My brain was still developing. I was
Speaker 1: eleven years old, and now you put me in a penitentiary.
Speaker 1: I mean I can be reformed. And these, of course
Speaker 1: are the arguments that we talk about today, the brain
Speaker 1: development as someone that age, and can they really understand
Speaker 1: the decisions that they're making. He wrote with this journalist
Speaker 1: and the journalist's publishing parts in the newspaper, and it
Speaker 1: really impresses the community. This is around nineteen oh one,
Speaker 1: nineteen oh two. He says, I'm not much given to
Speaker 1: heart outpourings. I see myself that as a boy who
Speaker 1: had not reached an age of reason. I feel like
Speaker 1: my crime, terrible as it was, has been punished as
Speaker 1: far as necessary for the benefit of good morals. My
Speaker 1: position here is a strange one. I'm practically alone in
Speaker 1: my sympathies and hopes. I've cultivated self reliance, and somebody
Speaker 1: might deem me cold, but my distant demeanor is the
Speaker 1: result of necessity, which I mean, I think essentially means
Speaker 1: he was in self preservation mode. He says this whole time, right,
Speaker 1: he has a great reputation in prison, and I think
Speaker 1: you can see where we're heading in nineteen oh two.
Speaker 1: Eventually he is paroled. So he hasn't been pardoned, but
Speaker 1: he's been paroled, and eventually he gets a full pardon.
Speaker 1: So he's out in his twenties or so, and by
Speaker 1: all accounts, he led a great life. He got his education,
Speaker 1: he left Iowa, never went back. He finds work at
Speaker 1: the railroad, He gets married, he ends up settling down.
Speaker 1: He has a small chicken farm until he dies. And
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, at the age of eighty three, we
Speaker 1: don't know. He doesn't sound like he's ever committed another murder.
Speaker 1: These are confusing stories for me. You know, this is
Speaker 1: someone who went on to do a lot of good.
Speaker 1: It sounds like he led a great life that we
Speaker 1: know of, but he did a terrible thing. And would
Speaker 1: the argument, Paul, for any prosecutor when you were killing
Speaker 1: two people who are in bed and asleep at the time,
Speaker 1: is this is not self defense. They are not doing
Speaker 1: anything to you right now. Isn't that what that argument
Speaker 1: would be.
Speaker 2: Well, that's part of it, that's all, you know, sort
Speaker 2: of the evaluation of, well, what crime has actually been committed, right,
Speaker 2: you know, And that's there's a reason why you have
Speaker 2: different degrees of murder. You also have manslaughter. That's the
Speaker 2: role of the you know, the prosecutor evaluating the crimes
Speaker 2: as to well what am I dealing with here? And
Speaker 2: one of the first things is is there a reason
Speaker 2: for the suspect or now the you know, the arrestee,
Speaker 2: to have have used lethal force for self preservation, your
Speaker 2: self defense thing, you know, And of course prosecutors do
Speaker 2: look for that, and that often is the defense. You know,
Speaker 2: if the prosecutor says, hey, I've got I've got murder,
Speaker 2: you know, whether it be second degree, first degree murder, oftentimes,
Speaker 2: you know, the defense attorneys will try to show that no,
Speaker 2: they acted, the defendant acted in self defense, try to
Speaker 2: mitigate that murder charge. With Wesley, part of the evaluation
Speaker 2: of what of the crime he committed, he admits to
Speaker 2: planning ahead of time. He's positioning the flail in his bedroom.
Speaker 2: He's waiting for his parents to fall asleep. You know.
Speaker 2: So now you've got this, you've got the pre planning,
Speaker 2: You've got this what's called malice, a forethought. It's not
Speaker 2: in a heat of the moment type of scenario, you know,
Speaker 2: where Dad is verbally lashing at him and things are
Speaker 2: getting heated, and now Wesley grabs a gun and shoots
Speaker 2: him in a spontaneous act. This was something that he
Speaker 2: planned and so that now elevates this to a first
Speaker 2: degree murder at least the way you know, I'm understanding
Speaker 2: things about this crime and how the murder is defined
Speaker 2: in California. You know, so this is a very serious offense.
Speaker 2: But he's eleven years old, Yeah, right, you know, and
Speaker 2: this is where you know, you start talking about, you know,
Speaker 2: the debate of you know, criminals that commit to this
Speaker 2: level of violent crime, can they be reformed or not?
Speaker 2: What depends on the type of crime. It depends on,
Speaker 2: you know, in Wessey's case, his age, you know, and
Speaker 2: what he was being subjected to. I think there's a
Speaker 2: lot of factors that go into play and assessing you know,
Speaker 2: this particular offender. Yeah, and you know there's a reason why,
Speaker 2: you know, typically nowadays, you know, juveniles, you know, from
Speaker 2: a criminal standpoint, are treated in a different justice process
Speaker 2: than adults, and usually that age is eighteen here in
Speaker 2: the United States.
Speaker 1: Well, what a story. When I read it, I couldn't
Speaker 1: believe in an eleven year old doing this. A more
Speaker 1: small kid too, But you know, as always, we learned
Speaker 1: something from these stories. Thank you, Paul, telling me an
Speaker 1: eleven year old is capable of doing this awful by gosh.
Speaker 2: Well even I was struggling with his age for this
Speaker 2: type of crime. Yeah, you know, but rage, that's a
Speaker 2: real thing.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: Well, next week we'll have a very different story, I promise. Okay, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I'll see you next week.
Speaker 2: All right, looking forward to it, Kate.
Speaker 1: This has been an exactly right production for.
Speaker 2: Our sources and show notes go to exactlyrightmedia dot com
Speaker 2: slash Buried Bones sources.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Alexis Emosi.
Speaker 2: Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1: Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2: Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1: Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2: Executive produced by Karen Kilgarriff, Georgia hard Stark and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 1: You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Speaker 1: Barry Bones Pod.
Speaker 2: Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Speaker 2: Age story of murder and the race to decode the
Speaker 2: criminal mind, is available now
Speaker 1: And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life Solving America's
Speaker 1: Cold Cases is also available now.