1
00:00:15,396 --> 00:00:22,916
Speaker 1: Pushkin. There's a place in our world where the known

2
00:00:23,036 --> 00:00:29,356
Speaker 1: things go, A corridor of the mind. Along the walls,

3
00:00:29,396 --> 00:00:34,156
Speaker 1: shelves stucked with proof, and all around a clutter of clues.

4
00:00:36,716 --> 00:00:39,556
Speaker 1: Here's a photograph of a corpse. Paste it onto the

5
00:00:39,556 --> 00:00:44,756
Speaker 1: page of a moldering leather bound album. Here a teetering

6
00:00:44,796 --> 00:00:49,716
Speaker 1: stack of newspapers tied with twine. Oh, and this, this

7
00:00:49,836 --> 00:00:57,916
Speaker 1: is very good. A detective's notebook smells like tobacco. And

8
00:00:58,036 --> 00:01:00,956
Speaker 1: look over here on this oak stand a medieval manuscript

9
00:01:02,356 --> 00:01:05,156
Speaker 1: writing so tiny it looks like an army of ants.

10
00:01:06,756 --> 00:01:09,916
Speaker 1: And down hidden, Oh, as he roll under the shelf

11
00:01:10,996 --> 00:01:19,036
Speaker 1: a glass bottle blue as indigo. This place stores the

12
00:01:19,076 --> 00:01:22,556
Speaker 1: facts that matter, and matters of fact. It's all that

13
00:01:22,596 --> 00:01:27,196
Speaker 1: stands between reasonable doubt and the chaos of uncertainty. It

14
00:01:27,316 --> 00:01:32,956
Speaker 1: lies in a time between now and then. Welcome to

15
00:01:32,996 --> 00:01:35,556
Speaker 1: the Last Archive, A place I like to go to

16
00:01:35,596 --> 00:01:37,956
Speaker 1: figure out how we know what we know, how we

17
00:01:38,076 --> 00:01:40,876
Speaker 1: used to know things, and why it seems sometimes lately

18
00:01:41,156 --> 00:01:43,636
Speaker 1: as if we don't know anything at all. I'm the

19
00:01:43,676 --> 00:01:51,516
Speaker 1: historian Jilla Bore stepped through the door to an unfinished grave.

20
00:01:57,116 --> 00:02:00,716
Speaker 1: The body was found face down early in the morning

21
00:02:00,716 --> 00:02:06,916
Speaker 1: of May fourth, nineteen nineteen, A rainy morning, a Sunday

22
00:02:06,916 --> 00:02:12,276
Speaker 1: in springtime, a century ago, in a little park in

23
00:02:12,316 --> 00:02:16,476
Speaker 1: the center of Barry Vermont, a quarry town known as

24
00:02:16,516 --> 00:02:21,476
Speaker 1: the Granite City, Young Harold Jackson was out for a

25
00:02:21,516 --> 00:02:24,716
Speaker 1: walk before breakfast when he came across the body and

26
00:02:24,876 --> 00:02:29,436
Speaker 1: rushed off to find a policeman. Boficer. There's a naked

27
00:02:29,556 --> 00:02:32,356
Speaker 1: dead woman in a vaked lot near the Bustle Hotel.

28
00:02:32,796 --> 00:02:38,316
Speaker 1: Dead woman, you say. The body lay pale, an animal

29
00:02:38,956 --> 00:02:43,876
Speaker 1: against the dark, wet grass, a kill, like something hunted,

30
00:02:44,396 --> 00:02:49,236
Speaker 1: a fox in a trap, prey like something caught, a

31
00:02:49,356 --> 00:02:53,356
Speaker 1: fish on a hook, tied up like something about to

32
00:02:53,356 --> 00:02:57,476
Speaker 1: be roasted, a bird on a spit. Her hands were

33
00:02:57,476 --> 00:03:01,196
Speaker 1: tied behind her back. Her mouth was gagged, her neck

34
00:03:01,516 --> 00:03:05,596
Speaker 1: was garreted. She was naked, stripped of everything but her

35
00:03:05,596 --> 00:03:10,036
Speaker 1: gray blue silk stockings, her laced leather shoes, her yellow

36
00:03:10,116 --> 00:03:15,156
Speaker 1: kid gloves. Her clothes lay rumpled in a pile. Her

37
00:03:15,156 --> 00:03:21,516
Speaker 1: eyeglasses were caught in her hair. The policeman hurried toward

38
00:03:21,596 --> 00:03:25,516
Speaker 1: the body. A crowd began to gather. People on their

39
00:03:25,516 --> 00:03:29,156
Speaker 1: way to church wearing their Sunday hats and bonnets, stopped

40
00:03:29,636 --> 00:03:33,476
Speaker 1: and stared, as if they were a spur of the moment, mourners.

41
00:03:38,956 --> 00:03:47,676
Speaker 1: How could do such a Why do all murder mysteries

42
00:03:47,716 --> 00:03:55,436
Speaker 1: start this way? Fiction, non fiction, true crime, pulp fiction, magazines, movies, podcasts,

43
00:03:55,916 --> 00:03:58,916
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter where you come across them. A dead woman,

44
00:03:59,076 --> 00:04:04,556
Speaker 1: a beautiful woman, a young woman killed viciously, found naked, exposed,

45
00:04:05,516 --> 00:04:11,316
Speaker 1: dead and doubly silent, not just killed, but gagged, And

46
00:04:11,476 --> 00:04:17,516
Speaker 1: we stare and stare and stare. This murder really happened.

47
00:04:17,756 --> 00:04:21,156
Speaker 1: The recordings from the scene we reenacted ourselves, but everything

48
00:04:21,156 --> 00:04:25,836
Speaker 1: here really happened. Who was she? Who killed her? Good questions?

49
00:04:26,476 --> 00:04:29,196
Speaker 1: I want to answer those questions. But I've also got

50
00:04:29,276 --> 00:04:34,756
Speaker 1: bigger questions about the history of knowledge and evidence, questions

51
00:04:34,756 --> 00:04:37,796
Speaker 1: important to ask in our muddle headed, fake news, post

52
00:04:37,836 --> 00:04:41,636
Speaker 1: truth world. On this season of The Last Archive, I'm

53
00:04:41,676 --> 00:04:43,876
Speaker 1: going to try to solve a crazy big who done it?

54
00:04:44,476 --> 00:04:48,836
Speaker 1: Who killed truth? I love nothing more than an investigation,

55
00:04:49,596 --> 00:04:52,276
Speaker 1: but you have to have a plan. The place to

56
00:04:52,276 --> 00:04:55,116
Speaker 1: start looking for answers to really big questions is with

57
00:04:55,196 --> 00:04:58,876
Speaker 1: something small. If you want to understand biology, you start

58
00:04:58,916 --> 00:05:01,556
Speaker 1: with a cell, or not even a cell, A chromosome

59
00:05:01,716 --> 00:05:06,356
Speaker 1: or not even a chromosome, a nucleotide history works the

60
00:05:06,396 --> 00:05:10,436
Speaker 1: same way to answer question and about the history of evidence.

61
00:05:10,956 --> 00:05:13,796
Speaker 1: You don't start with philosophy. You start with a single

62
00:05:13,876 --> 00:05:17,956
Speaker 1: mystery on a particular day, and not even that, but

63
00:05:18,076 --> 00:05:23,036
Speaker 1: with one tiny clue, gray blue silk stocking, say, or

64
00:05:23,076 --> 00:05:26,836
Speaker 1: a white linen handkerchief, just the kind of things you

65
00:05:26,876 --> 00:05:41,076
Speaker 1: can find in the last archive. The dead body that

66
00:05:41,116 --> 00:05:43,316
Speaker 1: a crowd had gathered around in Barry, Vermont on a

67
00:05:43,356 --> 00:05:47,476
Speaker 1: Sunday morning in nineteen nineteen. Everyone wanted to turn it,

68
00:05:48,316 --> 00:05:52,556
Speaker 1: turn her into a set of facts, a body of evidence.

69
00:05:53,596 --> 00:05:56,836
Speaker 1: They came by ones and twos. The chief of police,

70
00:05:57,276 --> 00:06:01,916
Speaker 1: the deputy chief, the attorney general, two doctors, a reporter,

71
00:06:02,796 --> 00:06:07,516
Speaker 1: and a photographer. The photograph was how I came across

72
00:06:07,596 --> 00:06:11,036
Speaker 1: this case. I found it in an archive. I held

73
00:06:11,076 --> 00:06:13,636
Speaker 1: it in my hands. It made my head hurt, It

74
00:06:13,716 --> 00:06:16,876
Speaker 1: broke my heart. It had been pasted into a leather

75
00:06:16,916 --> 00:06:21,596
Speaker 1: bound album, pasted almost lovingly, an ancient photo album of

76
00:06:21,676 --> 00:06:26,996
Speaker 1: murdered bodies, nearly all of them were women. But this

77
00:06:27,076 --> 00:06:33,436
Speaker 1: photograph was somehow the worst, the saddest, the cruelest. I

78
00:06:33,476 --> 00:06:36,636
Speaker 1: saw that photograph and I needed to know more, a

79
00:06:36,756 --> 00:06:42,756
Speaker 1: lot more, silenced women bother me. They really bother me.

80
00:06:43,556 --> 00:06:45,716
Speaker 1: I needed to know who she was and what happened

81
00:06:45,716 --> 00:06:52,596
Speaker 1: to her. I wanted to hear her speak. There are

82
00:06:52,636 --> 00:06:56,716
Speaker 1: methods when you conduct a historical investigation steps. Here's what

83
00:06:56,796 --> 00:06:58,956
Speaker 1: I like to do. I like to start with the

84
00:06:58,996 --> 00:07:02,916
Speaker 1: easy stuff. Find out first what everyone knew about whatever

85
00:07:02,916 --> 00:07:05,516
Speaker 1: it is you're interested in. Then think about all the

86
00:07:05,516 --> 00:07:08,316
Speaker 1: stuff that was so obvious to people that they didn't

87
00:07:08,316 --> 00:07:10,596
Speaker 1: even notice it at the time. They took it for

88
00:07:10,636 --> 00:07:14,436
Speaker 1: granted and didn't quite see it anymore. Then find out

89
00:07:14,516 --> 00:07:17,956
Speaker 1: the stuff that only a few people knew. And then, finally,

90
00:07:18,116 --> 00:07:20,036
Speaker 1: and this is the best part, and it only happens

91
00:07:20,036 --> 00:07:22,796
Speaker 1: if you're doing your work right, find out the stuff

92
00:07:23,436 --> 00:07:28,116
Speaker 1: that no one knew. Step one, How do you find

93
00:07:28,116 --> 00:07:31,556
Speaker 1: out what everyone knew? And Berry, Vermont in nineteen nineteen

94
00:07:32,076 --> 00:07:35,476
Speaker 1: the newspaper. So I went to the library and took

95
00:07:35,516 --> 00:07:38,956
Speaker 1: up old issues of this town's main paper, the Buried

96
00:07:39,036 --> 00:07:43,436
Speaker 1: Daily Times. One thing everyone knew. It had been a

97
00:07:43,476 --> 00:07:45,876
Speaker 1: lot of death and barry in the last year the

98
00:07:45,996 --> 00:07:50,956
Speaker 1: pandemic influenza Spanish flu hit. It hit Berry very hard,

99
00:07:51,596 --> 00:07:53,556
Speaker 1: partly because the man who worked in the quarry for

100
00:07:53,676 --> 00:07:57,676
Speaker 1: years had very weak lungs. Schools had closed for months,

101
00:07:58,156 --> 00:08:01,716
Speaker 1: and about the only public events being held were funerals.

102
00:08:02,876 --> 00:08:06,436
Speaker 1: The misery had only just begun to end. The quarantine

103
00:08:06,436 --> 00:08:08,556
Speaker 1: had only been lifted a few months before this body

104
00:08:08,636 --> 00:08:14,596
Speaker 1: was found murdered more senseless death. Anyway, I dug up

105
00:08:14,596 --> 00:08:17,636
Speaker 1: the Barry paper. When I read a newspaper like that,

106
00:08:18,036 --> 00:08:20,076
Speaker 1: I can pretty much hear the reporter talking to me

107
00:08:20,116 --> 00:08:22,556
Speaker 1: in my head, and just the way reporters talk then,

108
00:08:23,036 --> 00:08:26,036
Speaker 1: or at least the way I imagine it. I listen

109
00:08:26,316 --> 00:08:30,436
Speaker 1: for what's weird, and here it's what's weird. Starting with

110
00:08:30,476 --> 00:08:33,436
Speaker 1: this very first story, the reporter for the Very Daily

111
00:08:33,436 --> 00:08:38,116
Speaker 1: Times crammed in the details, detail after detail after detail,

112
00:08:40,916 --> 00:08:44,156
Speaker 1: Very Daily Times, Monday, May fifth, nineteen nineteen, woman was

113
00:08:44,236 --> 00:08:48,596
Speaker 1: strangled and naked. Body left and garden off Main Street.

114
00:08:49,196 --> 00:08:51,756
Speaker 1: Between the fence and the body was a small patch

115
00:08:51,796 --> 00:08:54,316
Speaker 1: of tall grass which did not appear to be trampled,

116
00:08:54,556 --> 00:08:57,036
Speaker 1: but the dirt between the body and the hat, on

117
00:08:57,076 --> 00:09:00,556
Speaker 1: a northerly line seemed to have been disturbed slightly, as

118
00:09:00,596 --> 00:09:03,316
Speaker 1: if it might have been done by dragging some object.

119
00:09:03,516 --> 00:09:06,756
Speaker 1: While the grass still further northerly and under a loose

120
00:09:06,796 --> 00:09:10,876
Speaker 1: wire fence, was somewhat flattened it by the trampling of feet,

121
00:09:11,156 --> 00:09:14,076
Speaker 1: or by the dragging of an object over or through

122
00:09:14,156 --> 00:09:18,716
Speaker 1: the fence. He was writing a style of true crime

123
00:09:19,036 --> 00:09:22,836
Speaker 1: that's familiar now, so familiar that it sounds old fashioned.

124
00:09:23,316 --> 00:09:26,076
Speaker 1: But back then it was new. It really only begun

125
00:09:26,196 --> 00:09:29,356
Speaker 1: a few decades earlier. In the eighteen eighties. The public

126
00:09:29,396 --> 00:09:33,996
Speaker 1: wanted details, and newspapers gave them every last clue, as

127
00:09:33,996 --> 00:09:38,596
Speaker 1: if readers too might solve the murder. Coming within the

128
00:09:38,636 --> 00:09:41,596
Speaker 1: perspective of the camera were the woman's clothing, partly under

129
00:09:41,636 --> 00:09:44,556
Speaker 1: the body, perhaps lying some eight feet away and perhaps

130
00:09:44,676 --> 00:09:48,436
Speaker 1: not discernible in the picture. A pocketbook lying about eighteen

131
00:09:48,436 --> 00:09:50,876
Speaker 1: feet on the opposite side of the body from the hat,

132
00:09:51,036 --> 00:09:54,356
Speaker 1: and her gold watch, the ladder of which had in

133
00:09:54,396 --> 00:09:58,116
Speaker 1: the meantime been picked up. The watch was still running.

134
00:09:59,596 --> 00:10:03,036
Speaker 1: The watch was still running, and it was inscribed with

135
00:10:03,116 --> 00:10:07,796
Speaker 1: three initials l PC. This, by the end of the

136
00:10:07,876 --> 00:10:11,916
Speaker 1: day led the police to her name, Lucina Courser Broadwell.

137
00:10:12,556 --> 00:10:17,916
Speaker 1: Her maiden name was Lucina Phillips Courser LPC twenty nine,

138
00:10:18,156 --> 00:10:22,636
Speaker 1: one hundred and ten pounds, five ft three. Her husband,

139
00:10:22,676 --> 00:10:27,596
Speaker 1: Harry Broadwell, was a carpenter. They had three children, Doris eight,

140
00:10:27,956 --> 00:10:36,196
Speaker 1: Hildred seven, and Wendell, who was only five. Finally, hours

141
00:10:36,236 --> 00:10:38,876
Speaker 1: after the body was found, a horse hitched to a

142
00:10:38,916 --> 00:10:45,676
Speaker 1: wagon carried her to an undertaker's. That afternoon, two doctors

143
00:10:45,756 --> 00:10:49,556
Speaker 1: drove to the undertakers to conduct an autopsy. The word

144
00:10:49,716 --> 00:10:54,996
Speaker 1: autopsy auto plus opsy means something you see with your

145
00:10:55,036 --> 00:10:59,676
Speaker 1: own eyes, the evidence of your senses. This, too, was

146
00:10:59,756 --> 00:11:05,876
Speaker 1: mostly new pathologists gathering evidence and conducting that autopsy in Fermont.

147
00:11:06,396 --> 00:11:08,676
Speaker 1: They were trying to get the dead body to speak.

148
00:11:09,516 --> 00:11:14,276
Speaker 1: In a century on, that's what I'm doing. Historians are

149
00:11:14,356 --> 00:11:19,236
Speaker 1: coroners too. A lot of things, a lot more things

150
00:11:19,236 --> 00:11:23,636
Speaker 1: than murders. Used to be mysteries. A mystery for centuries

151
00:11:24,196 --> 00:11:27,596
Speaker 1: meant what God knows and we do not but must believe,

152
00:11:28,316 --> 00:11:30,756
Speaker 1: the mystery of the origins of life, the mystery of

153
00:11:30,796 --> 00:11:33,956
Speaker 1: what happens to you after you die. After a while,

154
00:11:34,356 --> 00:11:37,996
Speaker 1: the mystery began yielding to the fact as the elemental

155
00:11:38,436 --> 00:11:41,516
Speaker 1: unit of knowledge, as if knowledge is made up of facts,

156
00:11:41,556 --> 00:11:43,636
Speaker 1: the way a body is made up of atoms, or

157
00:11:44,076 --> 00:11:48,036
Speaker 1: electricity is made up of electrons. I took a while.

158
00:11:48,196 --> 00:11:52,116
Speaker 1: This process was slow, but people eventually got fact mad.

159
00:11:53,116 --> 00:11:57,556
Speaker 1: They believed they had discovered a universe of truth. You

160
00:11:57,596 --> 00:11:59,796
Speaker 1: can see that even in how people understood the causes

161
00:11:59,796 --> 00:12:04,036
Speaker 1: of death centuries ago. Starting the late fifteen hundreds, during

162
00:12:04,036 --> 00:12:07,356
Speaker 1: the Age of Mystery, authorities began writing up a special

163
00:12:07,396 --> 00:12:11,236
Speaker 1: document for every death, something called a bill of mortality.

164
00:12:12,196 --> 00:12:14,796
Speaker 1: On a bill of mortality, you could be said to

165
00:12:14,836 --> 00:12:17,676
Speaker 1: have died of lots of different things. What all of

166
00:12:17,676 --> 00:12:21,236
Speaker 1: them to me have a kind of poetry of breach,

167
00:12:21,876 --> 00:12:26,956
Speaker 1: of blasted, of cramp, of each, of a lethargy of fight.

168
00:12:28,676 --> 00:12:32,396
Speaker 1: I love that list. People do die of these things,

169
00:12:32,436 --> 00:12:36,076
Speaker 1: of fright, grief, and misery. The way we think now

170
00:12:36,116 --> 00:12:39,276
Speaker 1: about death comes not from the ancient bills of mortality,

171
00:12:39,316 --> 00:12:42,556
Speaker 1: from the Age of Mystery, but from the modern death certificate,

172
00:12:43,156 --> 00:12:47,476
Speaker 1: from the age of facts. The pathologist who examined Lucine A.

173
00:12:47,516 --> 00:12:50,676
Speaker 1: Broadwell's body in nineteen nineteen, he was looking for a

174
00:12:50,716 --> 00:12:54,156
Speaker 1: cause of death, a fact. He found bruises on her

175
00:12:54,236 --> 00:12:57,636
Speaker 1: hips and thighs, and he also found seamen. And then

176
00:12:57,636 --> 00:13:00,476
Speaker 1: the medical examiner used all this evidence to fill out

177
00:13:00,516 --> 00:13:04,676
Speaker 1: a certificate of death. He had a list to choose from,

178
00:13:04,716 --> 00:13:08,276
Speaker 1: taken from the International List of Causes of Death. You

179
00:13:08,276 --> 00:13:10,276
Speaker 1: could die of all sort to things on that list,

180
00:13:10,676 --> 00:13:14,356
Speaker 1: but unfortunately there's no poetry to it. Number one eighty

181
00:13:14,396 --> 00:13:18,716
Speaker 1: two homicide by firearms. One three homicide by cutting or

182
00:13:18,716 --> 00:13:22,036
Speaker 1: piercing instruments. In the age of mystery, if I'd been

183
00:13:22,036 --> 00:13:25,716
Speaker 1: writing Lucina Broadwell's bill of mortality, I'd have written down

184
00:13:25,836 --> 00:13:30,196
Speaker 1: two things she died of, oh being savaged and of terror.

185
00:13:30,676 --> 00:13:34,316
Speaker 1: But instead the medical examiner wrote something else on her

186
00:13:34,356 --> 00:13:38,396
Speaker 1: death certificate. Number one hundred eighty four homicide by strangulation.

187
00:13:39,676 --> 00:13:48,876
Speaker 1: Her throat had been crushed. But who killed Lucina Broadwell.

188
00:13:49,796 --> 00:13:52,396
Speaker 1: Most people in Barry figured her husband, Harry, had done it.

189
00:13:52,876 --> 00:13:56,436
Speaker 1: He'd been arrested before for beating her he wants cut

190
00:13:56,436 --> 00:14:00,396
Speaker 1: her with a razor. But Harry had an alibi. He'd

191
00:14:00,396 --> 00:14:03,956
Speaker 1: been out drinking, and he had some witnesses to at

192
00:14:03,996 --> 00:14:06,436
Speaker 1: least for part of the night. He'd been at a dance,

193
00:14:06,836 --> 00:14:08,556
Speaker 1: and then he knocked on a friend's door late at

194
00:14:08,636 --> 00:14:10,636
Speaker 1: night and gotten him to make him an egg sandwich.

195
00:14:11,316 --> 00:14:13,996
Speaker 1: The chief suspect had an alibi, and the police had

196
00:14:14,036 --> 00:14:18,236
Speaker 1: no other suspects. They were stumped, so they made a decision.

197
00:14:18,836 --> 00:14:22,956
Speaker 1: What they needed was a detective, a private detective. This,

198
00:14:23,356 --> 00:14:26,436
Speaker 1: after all was the golden age of detective fiction, the

199
00:14:26,516 --> 00:14:30,596
Speaker 1: age of Hercule Pirot and Charley Chan and Lord Peter

200
00:14:30,676 --> 00:14:34,756
Speaker 1: Whimsy and Barry. Though they didn't have any private detectives,

201
00:14:35,596 --> 00:14:37,956
Speaker 1: but they knew one, so they put in a call

202
00:14:37,996 --> 00:14:45,556
Speaker 1: to Boston to the offices of James R. Wood Wood

203
00:14:45,556 --> 00:14:50,276
Speaker 1: Detective Agency James R. Wood Junior speaking. This agency would

204
00:14:50,276 --> 00:14:52,756
Speaker 1: correspondence in all parts of the world. Is prepared to

205
00:14:52,836 --> 00:14:57,556
Speaker 1: undertake all legitimate detective business for co operations, companies or individuals.

206
00:14:57,756 --> 00:15:02,396
Speaker 1: Male and female operatives furnished. James R. Wood was head

207
00:15:02,436 --> 00:15:05,796
Speaker 1: of the first detective agency in New England. It had

208
00:15:05,836 --> 00:15:09,556
Speaker 1: been founded by his father in eighteen seventy, nine years

209
00:15:09,596 --> 00:15:13,996
Speaker 1: before the fictional Sherlock Holmes solved his first mystery. Wood

210
00:15:13,996 --> 00:15:18,516
Speaker 1: wore a thin mustache, owl's eye, spectacles and an impeccably

211
00:15:18,556 --> 00:15:23,156
Speaker 1: knotted tie. He smoked a pipe. I mean, of course,

212
00:15:23,196 --> 00:15:28,596
Speaker 1: he smoked a pipe. His specialty was rural murder. Like

213
00:15:28,676 --> 00:15:31,716
Speaker 1: the Broadwell case. It was a complete mystery which had

214
00:15:31,756 --> 00:15:35,756
Speaker 1: baffled the authorities. He took the sleeper train up from Boston,

215
00:15:36,196 --> 00:15:41,316
Speaker 1: smoking his pipe, pondering the evidence. Wood was thirty nine

216
00:15:41,356 --> 00:15:43,596
Speaker 1: at the time and he was also his own Watson.

217
00:15:44,076 --> 00:15:48,636
Speaker 1: He wrote chronicles of his cases James R. Wood's detective notebook.

218
00:15:49,196 --> 00:15:51,716
Speaker 1: That's the gold mine. Most of the stuff you're going

219
00:15:51,796 --> 00:15:54,236
Speaker 1: to hear from him, the stuff comes straight out of

220
00:15:54,276 --> 00:15:56,876
Speaker 1: the pages of his notebook. The case I'm about to

221
00:15:56,876 --> 00:15:59,436
Speaker 1: relate to you has been considered throughout New England as

222
00:15:59,476 --> 00:16:03,516
Speaker 1: one of the strongest circumstantial cases ever tried. James R.

223
00:16:03,556 --> 00:16:06,996
Speaker 1: Wood was not a modest man, but his account of

224
00:16:06,996 --> 00:16:15,316
Speaker 1: the case is pretty thorough. He got to town just

225
00:16:15,476 --> 00:16:18,436
Speaker 1: before Lucie A. Broadwell was to be buried days after

226
00:16:18,476 --> 00:16:21,636
Speaker 1: the murder. He went first to the Broadwell house and

227
00:16:21,716 --> 00:16:25,876
Speaker 1: inspected the body. He interviewed Harry Broadwell, and then he

228
00:16:25,916 --> 00:16:31,236
Speaker 1: wrote four words in his notebook satisfied the husband innocent? Okay,

229
00:16:31,276 --> 00:16:33,876
Speaker 1: but why Harry would seem to have been the most

230
00:16:33,916 --> 00:16:36,396
Speaker 1: likely suspect and even though he had an alibi, it

231
00:16:36,476 --> 00:16:40,276
Speaker 1: was hardly air tight, especially since nobody knew exactly when

232
00:16:40,316 --> 00:16:43,436
Speaker 1: in the night his wife had been murdered. That was

233
00:16:43,476 --> 00:16:45,516
Speaker 1: one of the first things that didn't quite make sense

234
00:16:45,556 --> 00:16:48,036
Speaker 1: to me when I started reading about this case, that is,

235
00:16:48,596 --> 00:16:51,996
Speaker 1: reading James Wood's account. After first seeing the photograph of

236
00:16:52,116 --> 00:16:55,836
Speaker 1: Lucien A. Broadwell's dead body, but would like the Barry.

237
00:16:55,876 --> 00:16:59,876
Speaker 1: Police just wasn't interested in Harry Broadwell, even though they

238
00:16:59,956 --> 00:17:02,956
Speaker 1: knew that he had beaten his wife. A century ago,

239
00:17:03,116 --> 00:17:05,676
Speaker 1: men could hit their wives and even rape them without

240
00:17:05,756 --> 00:17:09,596
Speaker 1: much of any consequence, so would dismiss the idea of

241
00:17:09,636 --> 00:17:13,196
Speaker 1: Harry as a suspect. Instead, he started looking for a

242
00:17:13,276 --> 00:17:17,876
Speaker 1: very particular kind of fact. He started looking for a clue.

243
00:17:21,516 --> 00:17:24,716
Speaker 1: A clue used to mean a ball of yarn or thread.

244
00:17:25,556 --> 00:17:28,116
Speaker 1: The word kept that meaning in English for hundreds of years,

245
00:17:28,756 --> 00:17:31,836
Speaker 1: and then people started using the word clue to describe

246
00:17:31,836 --> 00:17:34,156
Speaker 1: the yarn you'd use if you were stuck in a maze.

247
00:17:34,596 --> 00:17:37,156
Speaker 1: If you enter a maze, a really good idea is

248
00:17:37,156 --> 00:17:39,196
Speaker 1: to unravel a ball of yarn to mark your way,

249
00:17:39,516 --> 00:17:42,076
Speaker 1: since you can find your way back out. So clue

250
00:17:42,476 --> 00:17:44,396
Speaker 1: started to mean a thing you would use to find

251
00:17:44,396 --> 00:17:47,116
Speaker 1: your way out of a maze. And here's another reason

252
00:17:47,236 --> 00:17:49,876
Speaker 1: we use the word clue this way. A lot of

253
00:17:49,916 --> 00:17:53,316
Speaker 1: murder victims are women, and their clothes are often torn,

254
00:17:54,276 --> 00:17:57,436
Speaker 1: so there were lots of clues at the scenes of crimes,

255
00:17:58,356 --> 00:18:02,996
Speaker 1: actual not figurative threads trailing from torn items of women's clothing.

256
00:18:03,916 --> 00:18:06,836
Speaker 1: Wood wrote about the stuff in his notes on Lucine

257
00:18:06,836 --> 00:18:10,556
Speaker 1: a Broadwell. Tied around her neck was her torn shirtwaist

258
00:18:10,676 --> 00:18:13,796
Speaker 1: with the knots in the shirtwaist secured by a man's

259
00:18:13,836 --> 00:18:18,356
Speaker 1: handkerchief with a sail as knot. After a while, clues

260
00:18:18,396 --> 00:18:20,396
Speaker 1: started to mean anything you could find at the scene

261
00:18:20,396 --> 00:18:24,116
Speaker 1: of a crime and follow to solve a mystery. But

262
00:18:24,276 --> 00:18:27,996
Speaker 1: still the best clues tended to be bits of clothes.

263
00:18:28,236 --> 00:18:30,796
Speaker 1: During the day, we had ascertained that the handkerchief belonged

264
00:18:30,836 --> 00:18:33,996
Speaker 1: to Eddie Barrow. We identified it by the landry mark.

265
00:18:35,436 --> 00:18:38,676
Speaker 1: A man's handkerchief with a laundry mark on it. That

266
00:18:38,916 --> 00:18:41,836
Speaker 1: is a pretty good clue. I'd led to a man

267
00:18:41,916 --> 00:18:45,916
Speaker 1: named Eddie Barrow, a drifter. Wood's operatives tracked him down.

268
00:18:47,076 --> 00:18:49,996
Speaker 1: Barrow had lent his handkerchief to someone else, he said,

269
00:18:50,316 --> 00:18:53,236
Speaker 1: a fellow by the name of George Long, a lanky,

270
00:18:53,556 --> 00:18:56,876
Speaker 1: wiry Canadian. But what did George Long have to do

271
00:18:56,996 --> 00:19:01,956
Speaker 1: with Lucina Broadwell. Wood thought he knew mister Broadwell was

272
00:19:01,996 --> 00:19:05,756
Speaker 1: suspicious that his wife was spotty. Sporty meant that you

273
00:19:05,796 --> 00:19:09,316
Speaker 1: slept around. They had been considerable family trouble and had

274
00:19:09,356 --> 00:19:11,676
Speaker 1: told Broadwell that they had seen his wife coming out

275
00:19:11,676 --> 00:19:13,556
Speaker 1: of the Pocket house at the lower end of Main

276
00:19:13,676 --> 00:19:18,476
Speaker 1: Street on more than one occasion. Aha. Another big clue

277
00:19:18,476 --> 00:19:21,596
Speaker 1: for James Wood. Missus Parker's house was sort of the

278
00:19:21,636 --> 00:19:24,476
Speaker 1: town brothel. She'd hosts men who came to town to

279
00:19:24,476 --> 00:19:27,076
Speaker 1: work in the quarries. She'd matched them up with sporty

280
00:19:27,076 --> 00:19:30,356
Speaker 1: women from Barry, including Lucina Broadwell and a friend of

281
00:19:30,356 --> 00:19:34,796
Speaker 1: hers named Grace Grimes. Wood followed his trail of clues

282
00:19:34,916 --> 00:19:37,436
Speaker 1: all the way to Grace Grimes's house, where she told

283
00:19:37,516 --> 00:19:39,756
Speaker 1: him that Lucina had written her a letter on the

284
00:19:39,916 --> 00:19:42,876
Speaker 1: very day she died. In the first part of the letter,

285
00:19:43,076 --> 00:19:46,276
Speaker 1: Missus Broadwell explained about having been down to Missus Parker's

286
00:19:46,316 --> 00:19:49,556
Speaker 1: house several times, of having met a lodger there by

287
00:19:49,556 --> 00:19:52,356
Speaker 1: the name of George, that George and she had been

288
00:19:52,436 --> 00:19:56,916
Speaker 1: quite friendly, that George talked about buying an automobile, that

289
00:19:57,036 --> 00:19:59,636
Speaker 1: George had asked her to go to California with him,

290
00:19:59,676 --> 00:20:02,916
Speaker 1: That she, Missus Broadwell, had decided that George was full

291
00:20:02,956 --> 00:20:05,636
Speaker 1: of hot air, that he was no good, and that

292
00:20:05,676 --> 00:20:08,276
Speaker 1: she was not going to see him again. That the

293
00:20:08,316 --> 00:20:11,756
Speaker 1: second part of the written on Saturday, red I've received

294
00:20:11,796 --> 00:20:14,116
Speaker 1: a call from Missus Parker, and she wants me to

295
00:20:14,156 --> 00:20:18,196
Speaker 1: come down tonight and meet George again. Most everything our

296
00:20:18,236 --> 00:20:21,676
Speaker 1: actors say in this podcast is taken from historical documents.

297
00:20:22,276 --> 00:20:26,276
Speaker 1: We know they said this stuff, But this little bit

298
00:20:26,316 --> 00:20:30,876
Speaker 1: of Lucia Broadwell, this is not that. This is what

299
00:20:31,036 --> 00:20:34,516
Speaker 1: James Wood wrote down from what Grace Grimes told him

300
00:20:34,916 --> 00:20:38,236
Speaker 1: that she remembered from a letter Lucia Broadwell had written

301
00:20:38,276 --> 00:20:41,636
Speaker 1: to her that Grimes had destroyed. I'm sick and tired

302
00:20:41,676 --> 00:20:45,516
Speaker 1: of the whole bunch. However, I'll go down tonight and

303
00:20:45,556 --> 00:20:47,676
Speaker 1: I'll tell Missus Parker what I think of her, and

304
00:20:47,676 --> 00:20:49,636
Speaker 1: I'll ditch George as I know he is full of

305
00:20:49,636 --> 00:20:51,876
Speaker 1: hot air and has no money, and as a bluff

306
00:20:52,196 --> 00:20:55,676
Speaker 1: would believed he had found his man. George Long was

307
00:20:55,676 --> 00:20:58,756
Speaker 1: a drifter in love, and Lucina Broadwell had lost patience

308
00:20:58,756 --> 00:21:01,236
Speaker 1: with him. He'd been fun for a while, but she

309
00:21:01,356 --> 00:21:03,196
Speaker 1: planned to break up with him because he was full

310
00:21:03,236 --> 00:21:06,396
Speaker 1: of hot air and he was a bluff. A liar.

311
00:21:07,556 --> 00:21:10,276
Speaker 1: Put this new insight into the miss of Broadwell's murder.

312
00:21:10,836 --> 00:21:14,116
Speaker 1: Wood headed back to Vermont. It all started with the

313
00:21:14,196 --> 00:21:17,596
Speaker 1: laundry mark on that white handkerchief. Wood loved this clue.

314
00:21:18,116 --> 00:21:20,636
Speaker 1: He loved it so much that he titled his account

315
00:21:20,636 --> 00:21:24,516
Speaker 1: of the case The Clue of the White Handkerchief. Wood

316
00:21:24,596 --> 00:21:26,756
Speaker 1: knew he was now near the end of the maze.

317
00:21:27,636 --> 00:21:30,836
Speaker 1: On Sunday morning, May eleventh, he invited George Long to

318
00:21:30,876 --> 00:21:34,316
Speaker 1: meet him at the hotel Barry, a big, elegant Victorian,

319
00:21:35,236 --> 00:21:39,116
Speaker 1: and then he and the deputy sheriff kept Long at

320
00:21:39,156 --> 00:21:44,756
Speaker 1: that hotel, questioning him for four days. They submitted him

321
00:21:44,876 --> 00:21:50,876
Speaker 1: to an ordeal, a very ancient sort of ordeal. In

322
00:21:50,956 --> 00:21:53,676
Speaker 1: the age of mystery, no one could know could truly

323
00:21:53,716 --> 00:21:57,036
Speaker 1: know the guilt of another person. Only God could know.

324
00:21:57,876 --> 00:21:59,876
Speaker 1: The point of a trial was to find a way

325
00:21:59,876 --> 00:22:04,276
Speaker 1: for God to reveal someone's guilt. These tests were called

326
00:22:04,316 --> 00:22:08,196
Speaker 1: trials by ordeal. One kind was the ordeal of the corpse,

327
00:22:08,516 --> 00:22:11,916
Speaker 1: where you'd be found guilty if the murdered corpse bled

328
00:22:12,356 --> 00:22:16,116
Speaker 1: when you touched it. The Pope banned trial by ordeal

329
00:22:16,316 --> 00:22:20,116
Speaker 1: in the year twelve fifteen, But that year twelve fifteen

330
00:22:20,396 --> 00:22:24,116
Speaker 1: something else happened. In Magna Carta, the King of England

331
00:22:24,316 --> 00:22:28,716
Speaker 1: established the right to a trial by jury. So just

332
00:22:28,836 --> 00:22:31,036
Speaker 1: hold on it and think about that for a minute.

333
00:22:31,556 --> 00:22:34,716
Speaker 1: The end of trial by ordeal and the beginning of

334
00:22:34,796 --> 00:22:38,236
Speaker 1: trial by jury took judgment out of the hands of

335
00:22:38,316 --> 00:22:45,116
Speaker 1: God and placed it into the hands of men. But

336
00:22:45,276 --> 00:22:50,116
Speaker 1: still the age of mystery lingered. I've come across American

337
00:22:50,196 --> 00:22:53,276
Speaker 1: cases from as late as eighteen ninety four where the

338
00:22:53,276 --> 00:22:56,596
Speaker 1: suspects were subjected to the ordeal of the corpse, told

339
00:22:56,636 --> 00:22:59,436
Speaker 1: to approach or murdered body to see if it would

340
00:22:59,436 --> 00:23:02,836
Speaker 1: bleed again. And something very much like that happened in

341
00:23:02,876 --> 00:23:06,116
Speaker 1: that hotel room in Berry, Vermont in nineteen nineteen, when

342
00:23:06,156 --> 00:23:10,316
Speaker 1: Detective James R. Wood questioned his suspect, George Long, in

343
00:23:10,476 --> 00:23:13,716
Speaker 1: that hotel room. Wood tried for hours at a time

344
00:23:13,876 --> 00:23:18,156
Speaker 1: to get Long to confess. Long admitted to knowing Lucina

345
00:23:18,156 --> 00:23:21,396
Speaker 1: Broadwell and even having dinner with her on the night

346
00:23:21,396 --> 00:23:24,796
Speaker 1: of her death in missus Parker's house. He admitted two

347
00:23:25,076 --> 00:23:27,316
Speaker 1: that he'd had sex with her that night, but he

348
00:23:27,396 --> 00:23:31,956
Speaker 1: insisted he hadn't killed her, and then, desperate for evidence,

349
00:23:32,276 --> 00:23:34,836
Speaker 1: would had submitted Long to a series of what I

350
00:23:34,876 --> 00:23:37,836
Speaker 1: think you can fairly call ordeals, those old tests of

351
00:23:37,916 --> 00:23:42,476
Speaker 1: truth from the age of mystery. One day, Wood handed

352
00:23:42,556 --> 00:23:45,436
Speaker 1: Long two pieces of rope, and he asked them to

353
00:23:45,476 --> 00:23:49,836
Speaker 1: tie them together. Long you've been lying to me. I

354
00:23:49,876 --> 00:23:53,236
Speaker 1: want you to tell me the truth about it. Tie

355
00:23:53,236 --> 00:23:55,516
Speaker 1: a square knot. A square knot is about the only

356
00:23:55,556 --> 00:23:58,196
Speaker 1: knot I know how to tie. A square knot happened

357
00:23:58,196 --> 00:24:00,236
Speaker 1: to be the type of knot the murderer had used

358
00:24:00,236 --> 00:24:04,996
Speaker 1: to tie up Lucina Broadwell. Could it be a clue? Later,

359
00:24:05,236 --> 00:24:08,556
Speaker 1: Wood took out the photographs of Lucina Broadwell's dead body

360
00:24:09,316 --> 00:24:12,316
Speaker 1: and made Long look at them, subjecting him to a

361
00:24:12,436 --> 00:24:15,876
Speaker 1: kind of ordeal of the photograph. While Long looked at

362
00:24:15,916 --> 00:24:19,236
Speaker 1: the photographs, Wood opened a box containing the clothes that

363
00:24:19,276 --> 00:24:22,196
Speaker 1: had been found next to the body, and then carefully,

364
00:24:22,436 --> 00:24:25,316
Speaker 1: one by one, he draped them over the railing at

365
00:24:25,316 --> 00:24:27,236
Speaker 1: the foot of the brass bed in the hotel room.

366
00:24:28,036 --> 00:24:30,956
Speaker 1: After Long finished looking at the photographs, he got out

367
00:24:30,956 --> 00:24:33,396
Speaker 1: of his chair and stepped over to the bedrail to

368
00:24:33,436 --> 00:24:35,636
Speaker 1: look at the clothes, and made as if we were

369
00:24:35,676 --> 00:24:39,196
Speaker 1: about to pick them up. Suddenly, there in that hotel

370
00:24:39,316 --> 00:24:43,556
Speaker 1: turned interrogation room, Wood interrupted him. Look out, George, you

371
00:24:43,676 --> 00:24:45,716
Speaker 1: get your hands all covered with blood. There isn't a

372
00:24:45,756 --> 00:24:48,836
Speaker 1: goddamn bit of blood on these clothes. Wood figured he'd

373
00:24:48,956 --> 00:24:53,276
Speaker 1: nailed him. Lucian A. Broadwell had been strangled. She hadn't bled.

374
00:24:53,956 --> 00:24:56,476
Speaker 1: But if George Long hadn't been there, if he wasn't

375
00:24:56,516 --> 00:24:59,156
Speaker 1: the murderer, how did he know there wouldn't be blood

376
00:24:59,156 --> 00:25:03,276
Speaker 1: on those clothes? Like I said, Wood question Long for days,

377
00:25:03,956 --> 00:25:06,876
Speaker 1: the ordeal of the rope, the ordeal of the photograph,

378
00:25:07,356 --> 00:25:10,956
Speaker 1: the ordeal of the clothes, And then at the end

379
00:25:10,996 --> 00:25:14,156
Speaker 1: of those four days, the police charged George Long with

380
00:25:14,236 --> 00:25:18,556
Speaker 1: first degree murder. This case was going to a trial

381
00:25:18,636 --> 00:25:24,796
Speaker 1: by jury. It began on a Friday in autumn, the

382
00:25:24,916 --> 00:25:28,316
Speaker 1: leaves falling to the ground, rustling in the wind, at

383
00:25:28,316 --> 00:25:34,076
Speaker 1: the Washington County Courthouse in Montpelier, Vermont. The courthouse was

384
00:25:34,116 --> 00:25:37,396
Speaker 1: packed with spectators, and there were seven reporters there too,

385
00:25:37,476 --> 00:25:40,956
Speaker 1: including four from big city papers in Boston. The story

386
00:25:41,036 --> 00:25:47,796
Speaker 1: was front page news all over New England. Oiay oiay.

387
00:25:48,356 --> 00:25:50,876
Speaker 1: George Long sat next to his lawyer, who planned a

388
00:25:50,956 --> 00:25:53,876
Speaker 1: question Harry Broadwell's alibi and to point out that it

389
00:25:53,916 --> 00:25:56,596
Speaker 1: was Broadwell, not Long, who had a motive to kill

390
00:25:56,676 --> 00:26:00,916
Speaker 1: Lucina Broadwell. The prosecution had a difficult case to make,

391
00:26:01,316 --> 00:26:04,996
Speaker 1: after all, there were no witnesses to the crime, but

392
00:26:05,076 --> 00:26:08,316
Speaker 1: the prosecution hoped to prove that Long had raped Lucina

393
00:26:08,316 --> 00:26:11,956
Speaker 1: Broadwell and then strangled her. Quite why, it was harder

394
00:26:11,996 --> 00:26:16,036
Speaker 1: to say. And when Long took the stand, he denied everything,

395
00:26:16,636 --> 00:26:20,556
Speaker 1: including everything he'd told James Wood in that hotel room.

396
00:26:20,996 --> 00:26:25,436
Speaker 1: You knew missus Broadwell, didn't you? No? I didn't you

397
00:26:25,636 --> 00:26:29,716
Speaker 1: say you never spoke with missus Broadwell, No, sir. It

398
00:26:29,836 --> 00:26:33,036
Speaker 1: went on like this. Then ten days into the trial,

399
00:26:33,876 --> 00:26:39,476
Speaker 1: the prosecution did something really interesting. Now called to the

400
00:26:39,556 --> 00:26:45,116
Speaker 1: stand James Wood Junior. Long had just testified under oath

401
00:26:45,276 --> 00:26:50,236
Speaker 1: that he'd never met Lucina Broadwell. Perfect. The prosecution must

402
00:26:50,236 --> 00:26:53,436
Speaker 1: have thought, we've caught him lying, because when Wood had

403
00:26:53,476 --> 00:26:56,476
Speaker 1: questioned him, Long had admitted not only that he knew Broadwell,

404
00:26:56,796 --> 00:26:58,756
Speaker 1: but they did had dinner with her, even that he'd

405
00:26:58,756 --> 00:27:00,716
Speaker 1: had sex with her on the night of the murder.

406
00:27:01,316 --> 00:27:03,476
Speaker 1: The prosecution could have asked Wood to tell the jury

407
00:27:03,516 --> 00:27:06,836
Speaker 1: what Long had said, but it wanted something better, and

408
00:27:06,956 --> 00:27:10,436
Speaker 1: wanted the court to admit as evidence the entire transcript

409
00:27:10,636 --> 00:27:15,436
Speaker 1: of Wood's interrogation. To this scheme, Long's lawyer objected. He

410
00:27:15,596 --> 00:27:18,996
Speaker 1: said that Wood and the deputy sheriff had essentially kept

411
00:27:19,036 --> 00:27:22,276
Speaker 1: Long as their prisoner for four days and four long

412
00:27:22,396 --> 00:27:25,996
Speaker 1: nights in the hotel. Berry not arresting him, just grilling him,

413
00:27:26,356 --> 00:27:30,036
Speaker 1: which of course was against the law. Well, all that time,

414
00:27:30,076 --> 00:27:33,076
Speaker 1: from Sunday until the next Thursday, mister Long was kept

415
00:27:33,116 --> 00:27:35,636
Speaker 1: in close confinement up there in that hotel by you

416
00:27:35,956 --> 00:27:39,876
Speaker 1: or some other officers. Wasn't me, No, sir, what sir? No, sir,

417
00:27:40,316 --> 00:27:43,396
Speaker 1: You were pumping him. You were some of your associates

418
00:27:43,436 --> 00:27:46,556
Speaker 1: all the time, No, sir, weren't you? No, sir? Didn't

419
00:27:46,596 --> 00:27:48,156
Speaker 1: you wake him up in the middle of the night,

420
00:27:48,196 --> 00:27:51,196
Speaker 1: out of a sound sleep and pump him about this murder?

421
00:27:51,236 --> 00:27:53,436
Speaker 1: I did not? Do you know who did? No? Sir.

422
00:27:55,916 --> 00:27:59,636
Speaker 1: Long's lawyers cross examination relied on a bigger point about evidence.

423
00:28:00,076 --> 00:28:03,836
Speaker 1: There are rules. They're old, change all the time, but

424
00:28:03,876 --> 00:28:06,956
Speaker 1: there are rules, and the prosecution had broken a bunch

425
00:28:06,956 --> 00:28:10,156
Speaker 1: of them, mainly because of the circumstances under which Wood

426
00:28:10,316 --> 00:28:14,716
Speaker 1: had questioned Long. Another judge might have disallowed as evidence

427
00:28:14,756 --> 00:28:18,476
Speaker 1: the transcript of James Wood's interrogation of George Long, but

428
00:28:18,596 --> 00:28:22,516
Speaker 1: this judge allowed it, and so the entire transcript of

429
00:28:22,516 --> 00:28:25,676
Speaker 1: Wood's interrogation was read to the jury so that the

430
00:28:25,756 --> 00:28:28,516
Speaker 1: jury could imagine that they too were sitting in that

431
00:28:28,636 --> 00:28:31,676
Speaker 1: room in the hotel. Berry watching Wood give Long the

432
00:28:31,756 --> 00:28:36,156
Speaker 1: third degree. Long's lawyer, in his closing argument, pleaded with

433
00:28:36,196 --> 00:28:39,196
Speaker 1: the jury to ignore all of it. I say and

434
00:28:39,356 --> 00:28:42,996
Speaker 1: submit you, gentlemen, that under the evidence there must be

435
00:28:43,356 --> 00:28:47,916
Speaker 1: a doubt. But the prosecution said the case was open

436
00:28:47,996 --> 00:28:51,876
Speaker 1: and shut. And the prosecutor and his closing argument was

437
00:28:52,076 --> 00:28:55,116
Speaker 1: very good. He talked about the rope of evidence that

438
00:28:55,196 --> 00:28:58,636
Speaker 1: tied this case together. And as he walked around the courtroom,

439
00:28:58,756 --> 00:29:01,516
Speaker 1: he held in his hands a rope which he tied

440
00:29:01,596 --> 00:29:05,676
Speaker 1: and untied, tied and untied, as if he had George

441
00:29:05,716 --> 00:29:10,556
Speaker 1: Long all roped up. The jury deliberated for less than

442
00:29:10,596 --> 00:29:15,796
Speaker 1: a day, party fun on a charge of second degree murder.

443
00:29:16,836 --> 00:29:27,036
Speaker 1: We find the defendant guilty as charged. All right. The

444
00:29:27,196 --> 00:29:31,556
Speaker 1: judge sentenced Long to life in prison, and Barry Vermont declared,

445
00:29:32,276 --> 00:29:36,876
Speaker 1: mystery solved facts one the day. But to me, either

446
00:29:36,916 --> 00:29:40,276
Speaker 1: something was missing or else something had gone terribly wrong.

447
00:29:41,716 --> 00:29:44,676
Speaker 1: Long might have done it, sure, but on what evidence,

448
00:29:44,716 --> 00:29:47,596
Speaker 1: said the jury actually convicted him. I couldn't see it.

449
00:29:48,436 --> 00:29:51,276
Speaker 1: Somewhere along the line, I must have missed something, some

450
00:29:51,316 --> 00:29:57,356
Speaker 1: stray fact, some clue. Here's what you do when your

451
00:29:57,396 --> 00:30:01,676
Speaker 1: investigation reaches a dead end. You do it all over again.

452
00:30:04,276 --> 00:30:06,636
Speaker 1: So I went back and I looked at that super

453
00:30:06,636 --> 00:30:09,716
Speaker 1: creepy photograph again, the one where Luciena Dwell looks like

454
00:30:09,756 --> 00:30:13,196
Speaker 1: a hunted animal, tied and about to be roasted on

455
00:30:13,236 --> 00:30:16,516
Speaker 1: a spit. And then I looked at the newspaper stories again,

456
00:30:17,276 --> 00:30:20,556
Speaker 1: and I read Wood's notes again. And then I noticed

457
00:30:20,596 --> 00:30:24,436
Speaker 1: something I hadn't noticed before. I noticed that when Wood

458
00:30:24,476 --> 00:30:27,716
Speaker 1: first took the stand, the prosecution read a statement into

459
00:30:27,716 --> 00:30:31,276
Speaker 1: the record, but in the newspaper the contents of that

460
00:30:31,356 --> 00:30:35,076
Speaker 1: statement just got a passing mention. You'd think it would

461
00:30:35,116 --> 00:30:38,676
Speaker 1: have been summarized in full by that very Daily Times reporter,

462
00:30:39,036 --> 00:30:41,436
Speaker 1: poured over by. The reporter had been so eager to

463
00:30:41,476 --> 00:30:44,276
Speaker 1: report every last fact gathered at the scene of the crime,

464
00:30:45,356 --> 00:30:48,956
Speaker 1: But nope, he had only this to say. Much of

465
00:30:48,956 --> 00:30:50,996
Speaker 1: the statement has to do with facts that cannot appear

466
00:30:51,036 --> 00:30:58,356
Speaker 1: in print. Why what facts were unprintable? Then I figured

467
00:30:58,396 --> 00:31:01,076
Speaker 1: whatever the newspaper didn't print I might still survive in

468
00:31:01,076 --> 00:31:04,716
Speaker 1: the original trial transcripts. Those would be stored far away,

469
00:31:04,996 --> 00:31:09,716
Speaker 1: deep in Vermont's state archives. There should be more cows.

470
00:31:11,076 --> 00:31:15,596
Speaker 1: Landscape would be well, it's not a visual media. We

471
00:31:15,636 --> 00:31:19,996
Speaker 1: could just say there it cows. It's mostly cows here.

472
00:31:20,676 --> 00:31:23,276
Speaker 1: That's my son. Since this is a show about truth,

473
00:31:23,356 --> 00:31:26,116
Speaker 1: I should just stay for the record. There were no

474
00:31:26,236 --> 00:31:29,756
Speaker 1: cows in sight, so just ignore my son and ignore

475
00:31:29,796 --> 00:31:35,476
Speaker 1: me and ignore to my producer Ben on the right,

476
00:31:39,396 --> 00:31:51,716
Speaker 1: that's some arrowloom wild cows. Okay, cows, Look at brand.

477
00:31:52,236 --> 00:31:56,876
Speaker 1: I don't get that one. The trial records were waiting

478
00:31:56,916 --> 00:31:59,196
Speaker 1: for us in a low slung building on the side

479
00:31:59,196 --> 00:32:02,156
Speaker 1: of Root two in Montpelier. I've got some of the

480
00:32:02,196 --> 00:32:05,796
Speaker 1: boxes pulled. Few of them have changed their box numbers

481
00:32:05,836 --> 00:32:08,596
Speaker 1: because we would reprocessed them, so I should be all

482
00:32:08,596 --> 00:32:12,636
Speaker 1: set free. You too. That's reference artivist Marisa Dobrick, and

483
00:32:12,676 --> 00:32:15,196
Speaker 1: she'd pulled out a big box full of George Long's

484
00:32:15,196 --> 00:32:19,156
Speaker 1: trial record, bound in giant books. The record runs to

485
00:32:19,236 --> 00:32:21,556
Speaker 1: more than twelve hundred pages, so we can kind of

486
00:32:21,596 --> 00:32:24,796
Speaker 1: get a whole piece of the puzzle this way, I

487
00:32:24,836 --> 00:32:26,596
Speaker 1: see it is when you're doing a court case, you're

488
00:32:26,596 --> 00:32:29,196
Speaker 1: looking at pieces of a puzzle. I drive past or

489
00:32:29,276 --> 00:32:32,836
Speaker 1: murderacing every day? Do you really think of her? Just

490
00:32:32,876 --> 00:32:39,756
Speaker 1: about every day? The trial records had actually been misfiled,

491
00:32:39,796 --> 00:32:41,636
Speaker 1: and it had been lost for a very long time

492
00:32:41,916 --> 00:32:45,916
Speaker 1: until this amazing archivist Gregory Sandford, the man who'd hired Marissa,

493
00:32:46,316 --> 00:32:48,876
Speaker 1: found them after I'd emailed him with a few questions.

494
00:32:49,516 --> 00:32:52,396
Speaker 1: There's almost nothing as thrilling as finding something you've been

495
00:32:52,436 --> 00:32:54,836
Speaker 1: looking for for a really long time. So you open

496
00:32:54,916 --> 00:32:57,196
Speaker 1: that one box and all of a sudden there are

497
00:32:57,476 --> 00:33:00,236
Speaker 1: two or three volumes and saying, wow, this is it.

498
00:33:00,756 --> 00:33:03,396
Speaker 1: Anybody should research at any point, because there's that moment

499
00:33:03,396 --> 00:33:07,116
Speaker 1: of discovery that it's like, wow, you know this is cool,

500
00:33:07,796 --> 00:33:11,156
Speaker 1: and it is cool, it's super cool. But it takes

501
00:33:11,156 --> 00:33:13,996
Speaker 1: a long time to read through trial transcripts, and I

502
00:33:14,076 --> 00:33:16,676
Speaker 1: noticed there was a lot in them that hadn't made

503
00:33:16,676 --> 00:33:19,916
Speaker 1: it into the very daily times. Okay, first thing to report.

504
00:33:20,316 --> 00:33:22,876
Speaker 1: There was so much hanky panky going on in this

505
00:33:23,076 --> 00:33:27,436
Speaker 1: little granite city, especially at Missus Parker's house, that brothel

506
00:33:27,556 --> 00:33:31,796
Speaker 1: where George Long had met Lucina Broadwell. A great many

507
00:33:31,836 --> 00:33:34,156
Speaker 1: of the hundred witnesses who marched to the stand during

508
00:33:34,156 --> 00:33:36,916
Speaker 1: the trial were asked about the goings on at Missus

509
00:33:36,916 --> 00:33:41,276
Speaker 1: Parker's house. That stuff was scandalous, but it wasn't entirely unprintable.

510
00:33:42,036 --> 00:33:45,516
Speaker 1: Hundreds of pages into the trial transcript I finally found

511
00:33:45,556 --> 00:33:47,876
Speaker 1: the part of the testimony that the very Daily Times

512
00:33:48,036 --> 00:33:51,956
Speaker 1: could not print something that George Long had told James

513
00:33:51,956 --> 00:33:56,796
Speaker 1: Wood about the Knight of Lucina Broadwell's death. Go ahead, yes,

514
00:33:57,036 --> 00:33:59,916
Speaker 1: go ahead. And we was in the room then a

515
00:33:59,956 --> 00:34:05,916
Speaker 1: while and came out. Were you intimate with her there? Yeah?

516
00:34:05,956 --> 00:34:08,476
Speaker 1: But before become an intimate did she get any money

517
00:34:08,476 --> 00:34:11,436
Speaker 1: from you? No, sir? Did you remove a close her skirt,

518
00:34:11,516 --> 00:34:14,436
Speaker 1: just skirt, just her skirt and a hat, yeah, and

519
00:34:14,476 --> 00:34:16,996
Speaker 1: her hat and gloves and gloves. Now on that occasion

520
00:34:17,036 --> 00:34:19,436
Speaker 1: when you were intimate with her, is that the occasion

521
00:34:19,516 --> 00:34:22,516
Speaker 1: you told me about once you used some sort of preventative.

522
00:34:22,916 --> 00:34:24,756
Speaker 1: She used a blue tablet. I have a bottle in

523
00:34:24,796 --> 00:34:26,796
Speaker 1: my room over there. Now I can't tell the name

524
00:34:26,796 --> 00:34:29,436
Speaker 1: of the tablet, but there's a blue wash that comes

525
00:34:29,436 --> 00:34:33,556
Speaker 1: in an oblong bottle or a three cornered bottle. Those

526
00:34:33,796 --> 00:34:37,116
Speaker 1: blue tablets or the blue liquid in that oblong bottle

527
00:34:37,636 --> 00:34:39,676
Speaker 1: that must have been a concoction made from a plant

528
00:34:39,676 --> 00:34:43,956
Speaker 1: called blue koosh, a perennial with blueberries. Who's the sort

529
00:34:43,996 --> 00:34:46,916
Speaker 1: of thing you'd take Before birth control was legal, it

530
00:34:46,956 --> 00:34:51,556
Speaker 1: was advertised as aiding menstruation. This part of the interrogation

531
00:34:51,596 --> 00:34:56,516
Speaker 1: transcript was unprintable because legally, it was obscene. That is,

532
00:34:56,916 --> 00:35:01,036
Speaker 1: it violated the terms of the eighteen seventy three Comstock Act,

533
00:35:01,476 --> 00:35:04,116
Speaker 1: a federal law that prohibited the printing of any information

534
00:35:04,196 --> 00:35:07,636
Speaker 1: relating to, among other things, the prevention of conception or

535
00:35:07,636 --> 00:35:11,716
Speaker 1: for causing unlawful abortion. The newspapers could say that lucian

536
00:35:11,796 --> 00:35:13,916
Speaker 1: A Broadwell's stomach had veal and bread in it when

537
00:35:13,916 --> 00:35:16,476
Speaker 1: they opened her up. They could talk about the bruises

538
00:35:16,516 --> 00:35:19,556
Speaker 1: on her thighs, but they couldn't mention her alleged use

539
00:35:19,556 --> 00:35:26,676
Speaker 1: of birth control that was illegal. Is that something you gava? Yes,

540
00:35:26,796 --> 00:35:28,716
Speaker 1: I had them sitting there in the dresser, and I

541
00:35:28,756 --> 00:35:32,756
Speaker 1: had them in my pocket that night. None of the

542
00:35:32,796 --> 00:35:35,596
Speaker 1: evidence used to convict George Long had ever been very good,

543
00:35:36,036 --> 00:35:39,476
Speaker 1: but in the end it hadn't really mattered. George Long

544
00:35:39,556 --> 00:35:42,436
Speaker 1: had provided a married woman and mother of three with

545
00:35:42,476 --> 00:35:45,596
Speaker 1: birth control in order to have sex with her without

546
00:35:45,596 --> 00:35:49,356
Speaker 1: fear of pregnancy and discovery by her husband, and then

547
00:35:49,396 --> 00:35:52,876
Speaker 1: he lied about it. These on principal facts were reason

548
00:35:53,036 --> 00:35:56,716
Speaker 1: enough for the jurors, a jury of twelve men, to convict.

549
00:35:57,596 --> 00:36:01,916
Speaker 1: That evidence cinched the case. Not the clue of the

550
00:36:01,956 --> 00:36:13,076
Speaker 1: white handkerchief, but the clue of the blue bottle up

551
00:36:13,076 --> 00:36:15,916
Speaker 1: in on Pelio. In the state archives. Some people think

552
00:36:15,996 --> 00:36:19,916
Speaker 1: Lucia broadwell spirit has never found dressed. Berry's got a

553
00:36:19,996 --> 00:36:24,116
Speaker 1: feel into it. It's weighted with history, and I mean

554
00:36:24,276 --> 00:36:27,036
Speaker 1: I think that sometimes you can feel that. That's Marisa

555
00:36:27,076 --> 00:36:30,356
Speaker 1: Dobrick again, reference archivist for the State of Vermont. All

556
00:36:30,396 --> 00:36:33,356
Speaker 1: I can say honestly is I feel like she haunts it.

557
00:36:33,436 --> 00:36:36,036
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I believe in ghosts myself, but I

558
00:36:36,156 --> 00:36:38,756
Speaker 1: find her stories so haunting that every day I drive

559
00:36:38,796 --> 00:36:41,756
Speaker 1: past it. I don't think any good answers were given.

560
00:36:41,836 --> 00:36:44,956
Speaker 1: I think she's still there. I do. I don't think

561
00:36:44,956 --> 00:36:48,796
Speaker 1: they found him that place. I mean, you can go there.

562
00:36:49,556 --> 00:36:53,156
Speaker 1: You can go to the parking lot. Lucina Broadwell has

563
00:36:53,196 --> 00:36:56,716
Speaker 1: been dead and buried for a hundred years. I never

564
00:36:56,756 --> 00:36:59,996
Speaker 1: really got her to speak, but I did want to guess,

565
00:37:00,156 --> 00:37:03,756
Speaker 1: to pay my respects, I decided to go find that

566
00:37:03,876 --> 00:37:07,716
Speaker 1: unfinished grave, the place where she'd been first found naked,

567
00:37:08,116 --> 00:37:11,276
Speaker 1: bound and gag. So my producer Ben and my son

568
00:37:11,356 --> 00:37:14,236
Speaker 1: Simon and I piled into my subaru and headed twenty

569
00:37:14,236 --> 00:37:17,756
Speaker 1: minutes south on Vermont sixty two to barry to the

570
00:37:17,796 --> 00:37:21,876
Speaker 1: scene of the crime. Like Maurica said, there's a parking

571
00:37:21,916 --> 00:37:25,356
Speaker 1: lot there. Now. We brought with us a stack of photographs,

572
00:37:25,716 --> 00:37:29,196
Speaker 1: that terrible photograph of Luciena Broadwell's corpse and then all

573
00:37:29,196 --> 00:37:33,276
Speaker 1: the other forensic photographs shots of the scene. It looks

574
00:37:33,276 --> 00:37:35,876
Speaker 1: really different there now, So it took a lot of

575
00:37:35,916 --> 00:37:39,556
Speaker 1: looking to find the exact spot. There's like the garden,

576
00:37:39,636 --> 00:37:43,236
Speaker 1: then there's a road. Here's this street right here, and

577
00:37:43,276 --> 00:37:46,036
Speaker 1: then there's a garden a little way as a road,

578
00:37:46,436 --> 00:37:49,396
Speaker 1: and then this curb and then the fence again. So

579
00:37:49,476 --> 00:37:52,716
Speaker 1: that parking lot really is the former garden man. Yeah,

580
00:37:53,076 --> 00:37:56,276
Speaker 1: we're pretty sure that we found the spot, and so

581
00:37:56,556 --> 00:38:02,156
Speaker 1: we just stood there a moment of silence for her.

582
00:38:06,436 --> 00:38:09,916
Speaker 1: Standing there, During that long moment of silence, my mind wandered.

583
00:38:12,116 --> 00:38:15,436
Speaker 1: Jurors are known as finders of facts, but for a

584
00:38:15,516 --> 00:38:19,476
Speaker 1: very long time women couldn't serve on juries. Only men

585
00:38:19,916 --> 00:38:23,356
Speaker 1: then could decide what was true and what wasn't true.

586
00:38:24,716 --> 00:38:28,396
Speaker 1: Who killed truth? Standing there on the spot where James R.

587
00:38:28,436 --> 00:38:31,876
Speaker 1: Wood had once stood, I thought about his sister, maud

588
00:38:32,076 --> 00:38:36,396
Speaker 1: Wood Park. She hadn't joined the family business, the Wood

589
00:38:36,436 --> 00:38:41,956
Speaker 1: Detective Agency instead. In nineteen nineteen, the year Lucia Broadwell

590
00:38:41,996 --> 00:38:46,036
Speaker 1: was murdered, Maudwood Park, who was arguably the most influential

591
00:38:46,076 --> 00:38:49,276
Speaker 1: woman in American politics, was leading the fight for women's

592
00:38:49,276 --> 00:38:53,676
Speaker 1: suffrage as a congressional lobbyist in Washington, and she hadn't

593
00:38:53,716 --> 00:38:56,196
Speaker 1: stopped after women finally got the right to vote with

594
00:38:56,276 --> 00:39:01,476
Speaker 1: the Nineteenth Amendment. After its ratification in nineteen twenty, women

595
00:39:01,516 --> 00:39:03,676
Speaker 1: like Maudwood Park went on to fight for the right

596
00:39:03,716 --> 00:39:06,956
Speaker 1: of women to serve on juries. That fight's date by

597
00:39:07,036 --> 00:39:11,196
Speaker 1: state took a really long time. In Vermont, women didn't

598
00:39:11,196 --> 00:39:13,836
Speaker 1: get to serve on juries to decide on matters of

599
00:39:13,876 --> 00:39:20,276
Speaker 1: fact until nineteen forty three. That same year, Moudwoodpark started

600
00:39:20,316 --> 00:39:24,916
Speaker 1: collecting documents chronicling women's history. Like me, she couldn't stand

601
00:39:24,916 --> 00:39:29,316
Speaker 1: the idea of silenced women, so she created her own archive,

602
00:39:29,716 --> 00:39:33,276
Speaker 1: an archive of women's history, the Sleasanter Library on the

603
00:39:33,356 --> 00:39:42,036
Speaker 1: History of Women in America. Lately, libraries like that archives

604
00:39:42,356 --> 00:39:46,156
Speaker 1: have been busy digitizing their records. A few years back,

605
00:39:46,476 --> 00:39:48,796
Speaker 1: the library that holds the records of the Wood Detective

606
00:39:48,796 --> 00:39:53,756
Speaker 1: Agency digitize them. They lived at James Wood's notebook and

607
00:39:53,836 --> 00:39:57,196
Speaker 1: his leather bound photo album out of boxes and plays

608
00:39:57,276 --> 00:40:01,076
Speaker 1: them gently in scanners, and then they uploaded them to

609
00:40:01,156 --> 00:40:06,236
Speaker 1: the Internet. If today you do a Google search for

610
00:40:06,316 --> 00:40:10,036
Speaker 1: Lucyna Broadwell, a photograph of her dead, bo pale and

611
00:40:10,156 --> 00:40:12,956
Speaker 1: animal might float to the surface of the ocean of

612
00:40:12,996 --> 00:40:16,796
Speaker 1: the Internet. That's how most of us find evidence these days,

613
00:40:17,356 --> 00:40:20,796
Speaker 1: not by way of mysteries and ordeals, facts and clues,

614
00:40:21,276 --> 00:40:26,836
Speaker 1: juries and rules, but searches and data. Why does it

615
00:40:26,836 --> 00:40:28,996
Speaker 1: seem lately as if it's hard to know anything at

616
00:40:29,036 --> 00:40:35,436
Speaker 1: all because of the nature of this search Lucino Broadwell,

617
00:40:37,316 --> 00:40:40,116
Speaker 1: like every other search result, she will have been ripped

618
00:40:40,156 --> 00:40:45,916
Speaker 1: from her context and stripped bare of her history. She

619
00:40:45,996 --> 00:40:59,276
Speaker 1: will be faceless and factless. True crime. Here in the

620
00:40:59,316 --> 00:41:03,316
Speaker 1: Last Archive, we've got all kinds of records, shelved, stacked, filed,

621
00:41:03,676 --> 00:41:08,476
Speaker 1: sprawling all over the floor, photographs, ledgers, facebook posts, fingerprints.

622
00:41:09,236 --> 00:41:11,916
Speaker 1: This season we'll be pawing through all this stuff to

623
00:41:11,916 --> 00:41:15,316
Speaker 1: find out what happened to knowledge and truth and maybe

624
00:41:15,356 --> 00:41:20,396
Speaker 1: even what to do about it. Stick around the doors

625
00:41:20,396 --> 00:41:33,636
Speaker 1: always unlocked. The Last Archive is produced by Sophie Crane,

626
00:41:33,716 --> 00:41:36,596
Speaker 1: mckibbon and Bennette of Haafrey. Our editor is Julia Barton,

627
00:41:36,916 --> 00:41:39,876
Speaker 1: and our executive producer is Mia Lobell. Jason Gambrell is

628
00:41:39,876 --> 00:41:43,116
Speaker 1: our Engineer, fact checking by Emy Gaines, original music by

629
00:41:43,156 --> 00:41:47,356
Speaker 1: Matthias Bosse and John Evans of Selwagen Symfinette. Many of

630
00:41:47,356 --> 00:41:49,276
Speaker 1: our sound effects are from har Janette Junior and the

631
00:41:49,276 --> 00:41:53,236
Speaker 1: star Ganette Foundation. Our full approoved players are Barlow, Adamson,

632
00:41:53,316 --> 00:41:56,436
Speaker 1: Daniel Burger, Jones, Jesse Henson, John Kuntz, Becka A. Lewis,

633
00:41:56,836 --> 00:41:59,996
Speaker 1: and Maurice Emmanuel Parent. The last archive is brought to

634
00:41:59,996 --> 00:42:03,556
Speaker 1: you by Pushkin Industries. Special thanks to Ryan McKittrick in

635
00:42:03,596 --> 00:42:07,116
Speaker 1: the American Repertory Theater, to Emily Shulman at Harvard Law School,

636
00:42:07,316 --> 00:42:10,516
Speaker 1: to Vicki Merrick Atlantic Public Media, and to Alex Allenson

637
00:42:10,516 --> 00:42:14,676
Speaker 1: and the Bridge Sound in stage and at Pushkin. To

638
00:42:14,756 --> 00:42:18,196
Speaker 1: Heather Fane, Maya Caney, Carl Migliori, Emily Roostick, Maggie Taylor,

639
00:42:18,636 --> 00:42:24,876
Speaker 1: and Jacob Weisberg. Our research assistants are Michelle Gaw, Olivia Oldham,

640
00:42:24,876 --> 00:42:28,836
Speaker 1: Henrietta Riley, Oliver Ruskin Kutz and Emily Spector. I'm Jill

641
00:42:28,916 --> 00:42:29,236
Speaker 1: Lapoor