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, Hi, Kate, how are you.
Speaker 1: I'm doing well. I have a question because every once
Speaker 1: in a while I get very down about true crime.
Speaker 1: It's hard to work in this space all the time.
Speaker 1: It can be very sad, of course, and I think
Speaker 1: the more that I allow myself to be affected by it,
Speaker 1: the more I'm sort of like, oh, my gosh, I
Speaker 1: need the inspirational stuff. So, since you were in the
Speaker 1: field and you worked for so long, what were the
Speaker 1: things that you saw, or maybe it's cases that you
Speaker 1: worked where they could have been awful but you were
Speaker 1: inspired by something. I don't know if it's the family
Speaker 1: or a survivor or anything like that, where you just
Speaker 1: kind of thought, Wow, this is a new perspective and
Speaker 1: one that I would not think somebody would be able
Speaker 1: to muster this up, but they have. Can you think
Speaker 1: of anything like that?
Speaker 2: Well, I can think of multiple examples of I guess,
Speaker 2: surprising resilience. Most notably, there's a case. This is the
Speaker 2: Zianna Fairchild case. Seven year old girl. She goes missing
Speaker 2: and she's missing for a long time. Her great biological
Speaker 2: great aunt Stephanie, but she was one who actually raised
Speaker 2: Theianna because Sianna's bio mom was in prison at the
Speaker 2: time Zianna was born. Stephanie raised Theanna believe it or not,
Speaker 2: out here in Colorado Springs before moving when bio mom
Speaker 2: wanted her daughter back, Ziana went to Valleeo, California with
Speaker 2: bio mom and the boyfriend, and Stephanie ultimately moved out
Speaker 2: to Valleo. When Zianna went missing after having to walk
Speaker 2: alone to her bus stop. She was a missing girl.
Speaker 2: I forget exactly how long, like a year, and then
Speaker 2: her skull was found in the Los g Ados mountains,
Speaker 2: a dog brought her skull back. Stephanie reached out to
Speaker 2: me when she found out about who I was and
Speaker 2: asked if I could help on Zianna's case, which I did,
Speaker 2: and I became friends with Stephanie. And here is a mother,
Speaker 2: you know, when like I'm trying to find Ziana, the
Speaker 2: rest is Sanna. That was part of my goal is
Speaker 2: to get Stephanie Siana back. And I distinctly remember I
Speaker 2: was so crushed when I found out that where Ziana
Speaker 2: had been dumped, this is where you have wild boar
Speaker 2: and wild boar eat carry on bones and all. And
Speaker 2: I had to tell Stephanie, you know, I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I don't think you're going to get you're going to
Speaker 2: find Ziana. I don't think she's out there anymore. And
Speaker 2: I so dreaded that conversation and I kind of led
Speaker 2: into this going it's going to be hard, and Stephanie just,
Speaker 2: you know, straight up looked me in the eye and
Speaker 2: said I need to hear it. And I told her,
Speaker 2: you know, and you could see her eyes waver but
Speaker 2: she just became even more resolute after that, and then ultimately,
Speaker 2: you know, she's confronting Zianna's killer, who was Kurtistine Anderson.
Speaker 2: She's literally going into jail confronting him. She's having to
Speaker 2: correspond with him. And I know she has a book
Speaker 2: out about her correspondence with her daughter's killer, you know,
Speaker 2: and you could see through the letters, the exchange of
Speaker 2: these letters, the torment that he was putting her through,
Speaker 2: because this is when she didn't know Sianna was dead
Speaker 2: before the skull had been found. But in many ways
Speaker 2: she was. She was inspiring because even with such a
Speaker 2: horrific tragedy, she really showed kind of perseverance. And you know,
Speaker 2: there's so many aspects to her story that you know,
Speaker 2: it's just it is one of those things where you go, yes,
Speaker 2: this is she she suffered through so much, but she
Speaker 2: really sets the bar in turn terms of showing a
Speaker 2: level of strength and optimistic outlook in the face of
Speaker 2: the worst thing imaginable.
Speaker 1: Well, and I know that you've experienced that with Golden
Speaker 1: State Killer, you know, survivors and families and stuff, and
Speaker 1: you know, I think, what an awful way to see
Speaker 1: that to get you have to be able to get
Speaker 1: an inspiration from it. But I think about that too
Speaker 1: when we talk about our cases and the way that people,
Speaker 1: particularly in the eighteen hundreds just tracked down killers, and
Speaker 1: the you know, the detectives with the magnets on the
Speaker 1: fishing line trying to find desperately find a weapon that's
Speaker 1: been thrown in the river, and you know, Spillsbury, I
Speaker 1: think pulling off some like these amazing things in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties and forties in England. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I always am trying to pick out the things that
Speaker 1: are not the things that I think people find entertaining.
Speaker 1: I think it's the things that are for me, are
Speaker 1: touching and that really do show character. And I tell
Speaker 1: my it's that when you see whether you have grit
Speaker 1: and what your character is oftentimes is when terrible things
Speaker 1: are happening, and hopefully terrible things don't happen, but at
Speaker 1: the same time, it's like, wow, who would have thought
Speaker 1: that the person could have gotten through that? So I
Speaker 1: was thinking that you've witnessed so many of those types
Speaker 1: of stories that you must run into families where you
Speaker 1: just go, man, I don't know how somebody can do
Speaker 1: all this, And then it's inspirational.
Speaker 2: It is, you know, because I think about, you know,
Speaker 2: what if it happened to somebody that was close to me,
Speaker 2: you know, how would I respond? Yeah, you know, so
Speaker 2: to see Stephanie, to see some of these other victims
Speaker 2: that I've interacted with and how they've used these negative
Speaker 2: experiences and these tragedies in order to do good afterwards,
Speaker 2: you know, that's very inspiring.
Speaker 1: Good. Well, I'm glad to hear some of those. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to start with that question for you because
Speaker 1: the story we're going to talk about is one of those,
Speaker 1: for me, very hard stories. And this is graphic, for
Speaker 1: even for me graphic. There's a sexual assault, so we're
Speaker 1: going to do you know, a trigger warning for that.
Speaker 1: But but particularly some of the details that we'll talk
Speaker 1: about with the injuries in the murder are difficult, and
Speaker 1: I just want to tell people that we're going to
Speaker 1: do a really good job I think of making sure
Speaker 1: we only include the stuff we need to include. I
Speaker 1: just really I cannot stand it when I either read
Speaker 1: or hear or watch something in the true crime space
Speaker 1: where it's so graphic and there's no point because now
Speaker 1: I can pick out the things that you would want
Speaker 1: to hear, and if it's not something that's going to
Speaker 1: add and it feels gratuitous. I don't think it's good
Speaker 1: to add you know.
Speaker 2: Sure, that's that's part of the struggle. Like if I'm
Speaker 2: listening to a case or being asked about a case.
Speaker 2: You know, for me, I need to know all no, right,
Speaker 2: And I'm used to having all you know and and
Speaker 2: trying to, you know, juggle the true crime aspect versus
Speaker 2: me doing what I know I can do if I
Speaker 2: have all the information. That's always been struggle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I give you all the information, but I
Speaker 1: really try to think about it as making it not
Speaker 1: gratuitous because it, boy, it bugs me. Anyway, we are
Speaker 1: going back to the eighteen hundreds, which makes me very happy.
Speaker 1: We're going to Pembrook, New Hampshire. So let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and set the scene. So this is relatively rural New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: It's eighteen seventy five, and most of the people who
Speaker 1: live in this area are farmers or they work for
Speaker 1: one of several nearby mills. And this town is about
Speaker 1: seven miles away from the city of Concord, which is
Speaker 1: New Hampshire's capital. So small area. And we're talking about
Speaker 1: a couple of different towns, and I'll explain why in
Speaker 1: a little bit. So here's the main family. It's the
Speaker 1: Langmade family and they live on a farm about two
Speaker 1: miles outside of Pembrook, so even more rural, and they're
Speaker 1: in a village called Suncook. They have two kids. One's
Speaker 1: a girl named Josie who's seventeen, and they have a
Speaker 1: boy named Waldo love that name, who is sixteen. And
Speaker 1: both of these kids attend school at the Pembrooke Academy,
Speaker 1: which is in Pembrooke, in the town. Their normal schedule
Speaker 1: would be that they would walk together, the sister and
Speaker 1: the brother, and then they would meet up with one
Speaker 1: of Josie's friends, who is a girl her age called
Speaker 1: Lilia Fowler on the way, who is a neighbor. So
Speaker 1: here's what happens on the day that we need to
Speaker 1: focus on the morning of October fourth, Josie is running
Speaker 1: late and her brother Waldo is ahead of her. He says,
Speaker 1: I've got to go to school. I don't want to
Speaker 1: be late to school, and she says fine. Lilia waits
Speaker 1: for Josie. She's there. Josie's there, but Lilia says, I've
Speaker 1: got to go. I can't be late for school. So
Speaker 1: she catches a ride into town on a passing wagon,
Speaker 1: which I guess was the thing. I mean, you just
Speaker 1: hitch a ride with somebody who's you probably a neighbor.
Speaker 1: These are small areas. They probably knew each other, so,
Speaker 1: you know, her brother and her friend had seen her,
Speaker 1: and obviously Josie's going to be the focus here, and
Speaker 1: she was at home trying to get out the door.
Speaker 1: So the path that these kids would normally take would
Speaker 1: be past all the neighbors' houses and then there's this
Speaker 1: stretch that goes through some woods. By the afternoon, Josie's
Speaker 1: parents learn that she never made it to school. So
Speaker 1: Waldo made it to school, and then Lilia, who caught
Speaker 1: a ride on a wagon, made it to school. Josie didn't.
Speaker 1: So this is in the afternoon. The question was once
Speaker 1: the parents found out, who do they talk to? They
Speaker 1: talked to the people along the pathway where Josie would
Speaker 1: have gone by herself, including through the woods, so they said,
Speaker 1: where's our daughter? Have you seen her this morning? Witnesses
Speaker 1: in several of these houses, including the one that is
Speaker 1: the last house before you enter the woods, say they
Speaker 1: saw her walking that morning when she was, you know,
Speaker 1: just running a little bit late, she was walking briskly
Speaker 1: in the direction of the school. The parents find out
Speaker 1: that she never made it to school. They were talking
Speaker 1: to the neighbors. The neighbors spread the word. Investigations back
Speaker 1: then were primarily handled by local constables and city marshals.
Speaker 1: I wanted to find out because I was thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: when are they going to sound the alarm to investigators?
Speaker 1: But these are you know, these investigators were far flung,
Speaker 1: especially in these little rural towns, so it looks like
Speaker 1: they were doing their own investigation. First, the officers worked
Speaker 1: part time, so they were like tax collectors and officers
Speaker 1: at the same time. And obviously, you know, they had
Speaker 1: investigated cases, but this might have been outside their range.
Speaker 1: So within a half an hour of the parents finding
Speaker 1: out that their daughter's missing, there's a search party, and
Speaker 1: over that afternoon and into the evening, one hundred men
Speaker 1: accumulate to search Josie's route to school, and as the
Speaker 1: night falls, they used torches to light the way. Before
Speaker 1: I get to you know the next part of this,
Speaker 1: I'll say, they're looking at her last movements, and then
Speaker 1: they do. They form a line by torchlight and sweep
Speaker 1: the woods, which as somebody who loves sort of darker,
Speaker 1: kind of creepy things must have been an incredible sight.
Speaker 1: It's like nighttime grid search. I guess it would depend
Speaker 1: on the conditions. But would they do grid searches and
Speaker 1: overnight searches in the middle of the night even today?
Speaker 1: I mean, is this usually in all if there's somebody
Speaker 1: who's missing, who's at risk, would it be bad weather
Speaker 1: or what would stop them from doing something a search
Speaker 1: at night like this all night?
Speaker 2: Well, it really is down to the exigency, you know,
Speaker 2: and here you have a missing girl that's at risk.
Speaker 2: The people that are in charge of search and rescue
Speaker 2: will make the decision as to whether the conditions are
Speaker 2: not viable for the search. But most certainly you see
Speaker 2: at night, you'll see these types of searches, not with fire,
Speaker 2: with flashlights, you know, but you have a grid search
Speaker 2: where everybody is within arm's length of each other, if
Speaker 2: not a little bit wider spaced, and they are told
Speaker 2: they have to overlap, you know, they're what they're searching,
Speaker 2: so everybody's looking. You know, there's multiple eyes on each
Speaker 2: spot of land that they're walking through. And there's other
Speaker 2: types of search patterns that can be done, so, you know,
Speaker 2: back in eighteen seventy five. To be frank, I'm quite
Speaker 2: impressed that they are doing a grid search. The order
Speaker 2: of magnitude of how tough it is at night to
Speaker 2: see versus during the day is huge. You know, you're
Speaker 2: so much better during the day to see things. But
Speaker 2: when you have an at risk youth, you do what
Speaker 2: you can.
Speaker 1: Well, let me set this scene. They're in these woods.
Speaker 1: I have a picture of the woods, eighteen seventy five picture,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit older, but I know they find
Speaker 1: our body at nine o'clock, so it's pitch black outside.
Speaker 1: It's just them with moonlight and starlight and the storches,
Speaker 1: and they find her about half a mile into the
Speaker 1: woods from the road. This is twelve hours later. So
Speaker 1: if you look at your little packet, only look at
Speaker 1: page one. For me, this to me looks like the
Speaker 1: road that would be, you know, Academy Road, I believe
Speaker 1: is where the road that she took to go through
Speaker 1: these woods.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this picture is showing God, it's maybe half
Speaker 2: the width of a standard road today, but it looks
Speaker 2: like it's dirt. It's going through very dense brush, trees, bushes,
Speaker 2: you know, it's on both sides of this road, so
Speaker 2: I can see the road kind of turn to the
Speaker 2: left in the background and just disappear from sight. You know.
Speaker 2: So this obviously there's limited visibility, you know, these kids
Speaker 2: walking down this path, and they would be doing this
Speaker 2: on a routine basis, you know. So that comes into
Speaker 2: my mind as whoever killed Josie? You know, is this
Speaker 2: somebody that knew the pattern and when he saw that
Speaker 2: she was isolated, which is unusual considering she's normally with
Speaker 2: her brother and her friend that just was happened to
Speaker 2: station themselves at a location and sees Josie alone, fully
Speaker 2: expecting kids to be walking through at this roughly this
Speaker 2: period of time, you know, or is there somebody that
Speaker 2: just happens you know, this was Josie a victim of
Speaker 2: opportunity right now, can't say either way, but most certainly
Speaker 2: an offender could easily hide along this route and there'd
Speaker 2: be no witnesses to see that there's somebody there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what the investigators say
Speaker 1: about was this a crime of opportunity or what happened.
Speaker 1: Let me give you the details about what happened with
Speaker 1: Josie so she's seventeen, and when they come up on her,
Speaker 1: they immediately note many things. She's been decapitated. Her clothes
Speaker 1: are badly torn and covered in blood. Her body appears
Speaker 1: to be badly mutilated, though the full extent is not
Speaker 1: immediately clear, and they're not touching her. So once they
Speaker 1: locate her, I'm assuming they have people sit there all
Speaker 1: night until the next day. The searchers show up, and
Speaker 1: then we'll have a corner investigator show up too. The
Speaker 1: next day, they find her head deeper in the woods.
Speaker 1: It's wrapped in a blue oilcloth cape that she had
Speaker 1: been wearing when she left the house. Oil Cloth is
Speaker 1: a fabric that's been coated to make it water repellent,
Speaker 1: probably like lindseed or something lindseed oil. We're going to
Speaker 1: have three doctors do the autopsy, which is good. I'm
Speaker 1: actually impressed with some of the stuff that happens in
Speaker 1: this case. We talk about investigators all the time, but
Speaker 1: just at first Blush, they said that her face has
Speaker 1: been cut, there's a mark on her cheek that resembles
Speaker 1: a boot heel, other things. Close to the road, the
Speaker 1: searchers find a broken three foot club. It sounds like
Speaker 1: it's cracked, but it didn't break into two pieces. The
Speaker 1: club is made of red oak and an inch and
Speaker 1: a half thick. It appears to have been cut recently.
Speaker 1: One side of the club seems to have been whittled
Speaker 1: to form a handle. They also find her schoolwork near
Speaker 1: this club, and an apple which everybody said she had
Speaker 1: been carrying earlier that morning. What do you think so far?
Speaker 1: You raise your eyebrows when it was very clear that
Speaker 1: someone had actually carried her head somewhere, not let it
Speaker 1: roll down the hill or something.
Speaker 2: Well, I think right now. Absent other behavioral indicators, identification
Speaker 2: of the body would often be done by taking a look,
Speaker 2: having people who know the victim, by taking a look
Speaker 2: at the victim, and obviously the faces the primary feature
Speaker 2: that people will use to identify who the victim is.
Speaker 2: The decapitation may have been a way to just delay
Speaker 2: the identification of the body, but I can't say that
Speaker 2: with confidence without really knowing more of what happened to her,
Speaker 2: because there may be some very sick reasons that the
Speaker 2: offender decapitated her. The initial thought, you know, her clothes
Speaker 2: are torn, of course they're bloody, her body is mutilated,
Speaker 2: and I can extrapolate in terms of the types of mutilation.
Speaker 2: This is sounding like a type of offender that I've
Speaker 2: seen at work with other victims, both in real life
Speaker 2: as well in my own cases as well as textbook examples.
Speaker 2: The presence of this three foot club that has a
Speaker 2: handle already whittled into it, I think one of the
Speaker 2: questions that I have about that is this, is this
Speaker 2: an object that has some sort of purpose in you know,
Speaker 2: for whatever could be happening in this particular area, or
Speaker 2: was this an object that the offender made in order
Speaker 2: to hurt somebody? And if that's the case and the
Speaker 2: offender has that with him, that's showing pre planning.
Speaker 1: I can tell you this is not the kind of
Speaker 1: object that would have been produced in these two towns
Speaker 1: that are next to each other, Primbrook, where you know
Speaker 1: she goes to school, and then where she's from. So
Speaker 1: this is a this appears to be custom made.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you know this This sounds like the offender
Speaker 2: is in this location and is armed with a pre
Speaker 2: manufactured weapon. Could suggest that the offender was lying in
Speaker 2: wait for the right opportunity, and Josie was the right opportunity,
Speaker 2: Because I imagine that it's not just Josie, Lilia and
Speaker 2: Waldo walking to school through this route. There's probably we
Speaker 2: had waves of children that are walking through and so
Speaker 2: here is a source of victim pool and now you
Speaker 2: have a predator going to where the praise at and
Speaker 2: just happens at that particular day. Josie, because she was late,
Speaker 2: was the child that was isolated and the predator pounced.
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to save this for a later
Speaker 1: but because you've been talking about it and you've gotten
Speaker 1: so good at mentioning things that I am going to
Speaker 1: tell you about. Like literally, I'll say, oh, I need
Speaker 1: to tell Paul this, and then you'll say it. It's
Speaker 1: like we're right here, Paul, you and me right here.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go ahead and tell you now. So, yes,
Speaker 1: you're right, this is a route that other kids would
Speaker 1: have used. This is an interesting part once the investigation
Speaker 1: really gets going into her murder. A classmate of Josie's
Speaker 1: said that on the day that she was murdered, that
Speaker 1: morning he was walking to school on that same road
Speaker 1: and at the point right before there's a hill that
Speaker 1: you climb and you could see the school and then
Speaker 1: it's literally all downhill. After that, at the point right
Speaker 1: before the final hill, he heard a rustling in the
Speaker 1: bushes by the road. Kids. They liked to hide in
Speaker 1: these bushes and jump out at each other, which is
Speaker 1: sure a good way to get punched in the face
Speaker 1: as far as I'm concerned. They love to scare each other.
Speaker 1: And that's what the classmate thought it was happening. When
Speaker 1: he heard the wrestling, he said, I know who did this,
Speaker 1: Tom or whoever? Some kid and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: he didn't jump out at him. So he just went
Speaker 1: on to school and said, well, he's going to scare
Speaker 1: the crap out of somebody. But then he got to
Speaker 1: school and that kid was already there, so it wasn't
Speaker 1: Tom or whoever. That kid was Okay. So there's a
Speaker 1: witness who said he heard a rustling and it clearly
Speaker 1: wasn't a classmate, and they had talked to everybody and said,
Speaker 1: now it wasn't me.
Speaker 2: And you said that this was at the top of
Speaker 2: the hill.
Speaker 1: He said, at the point right before the final hill,
Speaker 1: So at the bottom of the hill, and there were bushes.
Speaker 1: Well you saw the bushes, I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is where if this is the offender.
Speaker 2: And I think you know, it's likely it could have been.
Speaker 2: You know, part of the evaluation of this location and
Speaker 2: you put yourself in the offender's mind, is that the
Speaker 2: offender is not going to choose, let's say, a switchback
Speaker 2: location where you have no visibility down either stretch of
Speaker 2: the road. You don't know who's coming, you know, so
Speaker 2: you're going to position yourself where you can see victims approaching,
Speaker 2: so you can evaluate the circumstances. Plus you can determine
Speaker 2: further off in the distance, are there other people coming,
Speaker 2: and then start plotting. If you see somebody that's isolated,
Speaker 2: like Josie, and you look past Josie, because you've purposely
Speaker 2: chosen a location where you can see down the road,
Speaker 2: you see nobody is coming from that direction. I now
Speaker 2: have my opportunity and the wrestling this classmate, who is
Speaker 2: a male classmate. You know, I'm wondering if the offender
Speaker 2: considered this classmate a victim and decided, for one reason
Speaker 2: or another not to attack. And it may have been
Speaker 2: because this was a male and that's not this offender's
Speaker 2: preferred victim. It may be that he saw other kids
Speaker 2: starting to approach and backed away. Who knows, you know,
Speaker 2: but this location tends to suggest that, yes, you have
Speaker 2: an offender who knows these kids are flowing through this
Speaker 2: location and just liide and wait until the right opportunity
Speaker 2: presented itself, and unfortunately that was Josie.
Speaker 1: Let's keep going something odd that I think will be
Speaker 1: important later on. According to some reports, there are twigs
Speaker 1: that are found tied together on top of Josie's body.
Speaker 1: They're kind of vague reports, but it will pop back
Speaker 1: up soon. They don't know what they were used for,
Speaker 1: but there were twigs that were tied together and what's
Speaker 1: described as a Frenchman's not. Why I don't know.
Speaker 2: Looking up this Frenchman's not. It's basically a a bowl
Speaker 2: and knot with two loops. I know how to tie
Speaker 2: a bowl a knot. It's something that can be used
Speaker 2: at like camping. It's a knot in which it's very functional.
Speaker 2: It's very strong. You know, if you were to tie
Speaker 2: it around an object, you know it's going to be
Speaker 2: very secure. But it's also a knot that you can
Speaker 2: utilize the loop in order to be able to put
Speaker 2: more of the line through to make like a quick
Speaker 2: release type of scenario, like using a twig in this
Speaker 2: new loop that you put through the existing loop, and
Speaker 2: so all you have to do in order to release
Speaker 2: whatever the rope is tied around is to remove the
Speaker 2: twig and now you can just boom. You can get
Speaker 2: up and go real quick. Now, the use of the
Speaker 2: two loops, you know, just with the real brief research
Speaker 2: I did watching YouTube video, they indicated it's it's frequently
Speaker 2: used in search and rescue because you can get two
Speaker 2: loops around let's say a person's wrist, and so you
Speaker 2: have sort of additional an additional safety measure that that
Speaker 2: rope is going to hold on to the person while
Speaker 2: you're trying to, you know, bring them to safety. So
Speaker 2: that's that's my understanding of the Frenchmans. But I am
Speaker 2: familiar with the fundamental bowl and not.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, hopefully that'll help us a little bit. Now,
Speaker 1: I told you that they found closer to the road,
Speaker 1: they found this club, and also that they found Josie's
Speaker 1: schoolwork in an apple. These were items that were found
Speaker 1: at the bottom of a hill. So I think this
Speaker 1: is the hill that the schoolmate was talking about, the
Speaker 1: last hill before you hit the school. So they're at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the hill. The bushes are left or right.
Speaker 1: Were not sure if she had climbed to the top
Speaker 1: of the hill, she could have seen the school and
Speaker 1: they could have seen her. So they find this stuff
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the hill, right before she would
Speaker 1: climb the hill. What they think is that the killer
Speaker 1: attacked Josie on that road before she reaches the hill
Speaker 1: through the club and you know, all of this other
Speaker 1: stuff over it says a stone wall, which I didn't
Speaker 1: see a stone wall anywhere, but then dragging her body
Speaker 1: into the woods. I'll have an autopsy report right now
Speaker 1: where they found that she had been sexually assaulted. And
Speaker 1: then one other point before we tell you we commentor
Speaker 1: we talk about the autopsy. She had been wearing a
Speaker 1: plain gold ring that she always wore. She had worn
Speaker 1: a gold enameled breastpin. She had five cents on her
Speaker 1: and some other small items that were trinkets and they're
Speaker 1: all missing.
Speaker 2: Those are souvenirs, you know, So that that really is
Speaker 2: informative about this type of offender. This is now a
Speaker 2: fantasy motivated offender. He's not taking these items because they
Speaker 2: have value. He's taking these items because he has he
Speaker 2: wants to hold on to them. They're a source of
Speaker 2: memory for him. It's also a feeling a conquest. When
Speaker 2: he looks at those items, he knows, you know, he'll
Speaker 2: remember basically conquering Josie. So it's very informative about the
Speaker 2: mindset of this offender. You know, the location of Josie's
Speaker 2: schoolwork and apple, Yes, that suggests that's likely where she
Speaker 2: is confronted by the offender, even though the club is there.
Speaker 2: I need to know more about Josie's injuries to determine
Speaker 2: what you know, was she you know, was she hit
Speaker 2: like over the head with this club at this location.
Speaker 2: It's also possible the offender just used his physical presence
Speaker 2: that you know, threatened her with the club and then
Speaker 2: made her walk back into the woods, further into the
Speaker 2: woods before he attacked her and killed her.
Speaker 1: Okay, get ready for this. So if you all do
Speaker 1: not want to listen to this, I don't blame you.
Speaker 1: There's some pretty brutal details in here, so you can
Speaker 1: please feel free to skip ahead. So, Paul, do you
Speaker 1: want me to just kind of go through this or
Speaker 1: I'll just stop at every paragraph and you can do
Speaker 1: your hum and I'll know and to keep going, or
Speaker 1: if you want to okay, okay, sure. Three doctors conduct
Speaker 1: this post war examination. And by the way, in the meantime,
Speaker 1: they've hired a detective from Boston who's coming in and
Speaker 1: looking at a lot of stuff. So that's good.
Speaker 2: Good.
Speaker 1: So now we have an actual I mean, I assume
Speaker 1: an actual detective who's coming in. Three doctors work on this.
Speaker 1: They examine her body. Here's the first thing. They find
Speaker 1: that her thumb and several small bones are broken on
Speaker 1: her right hand, and they believe that she caught the
Speaker 1: club when the killer was swinging it at her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, defensive injuries.
Speaker 1: It looks like she was struck twice, once on either
Speaker 1: side of her head, and the doctors believe that the
Speaker 1: boot heel impression was from the killer jumping on her head.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I don't know how they're concluding jumping or
Speaker 2: stomping or you know, holding her down, you know, with
Speaker 2: the bottom of his foot. Yes, I don't think you
Speaker 2: can draw that conclusion, but you can draw a conclusion that,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, he put her foot on her head
Speaker 2: with force.
Speaker 1: And they see this mark and said immediately it's a
Speaker 1: boot heel that's on her heart. She okay, remember that
Speaker 1: investigator said that after he had subdued Josie close to
Speaker 1: the road, he dragged her further into the woods. They
Speaker 1: think she was still alive when this happened. Once away
Speaker 1: from the main road. There are definite signs that she
Speaker 1: had been sexually assaulted. Why do you think that they
Speaker 1: would think that she was still alive? Would you see
Speaker 1: more like that she was fighting as she's being dragged
Speaker 1: or what would give them that indication?
Speaker 2: Do you think, Well, it's possible, you know, in terms
Speaker 2: of her being still being alive, it may be because
Speaker 2: of the assessment of the injuries to her head from
Speaker 2: the club were not significant enough that the pathologist or
Speaker 2: these doctors felt would have caused death. So that's one possibility.
Speaker 2: There's also the possibility that there is a trail of
Speaker 2: blood that suggests that there's still active bleeding going on
Speaker 2: where you know, if she has an open wound and
Speaker 2: there's significant bleeding that person along the length of this trail,
Speaker 2: that her heart is still pumping. So there may be
Speaker 2: several factors that they're they're looking at. And then it's
Speaker 2: also well, what's going on at the sexual assault location.
Speaker 2: And then ultimately you've told me previously you have body mutilation.
Speaker 2: Was there, you know, a knife being used. Does it
Speaker 2: look like she has defensive injuries as a result of
Speaker 2: the you know, a knife or whatever is going on.
Speaker 2: So there'd be multiple things that they could be relying
Speaker 2: upon to say she's still alive at this location where
Speaker 2: her body is found.
Speaker 1: Okay, here are the last bits that I think are
Speaker 1: the most difficult. I want to preface this by saying
Speaker 1: that they aren't sure whether any of this stuff happened
Speaker 1: aside from the sexual assault, before she died or after
Speaker 1: she died. But I mean, what I think is good
Speaker 1: about these three doctors is they don't seem to be
Speaker 1: assuming too much. There's a lot of this is what
Speaker 1: we think, but we're not sure and we need more evidence.
Speaker 1: They said that the killer ripped and cut at her clothes,
Speaker 1: so this was in the woods, that he gashed her
Speaker 1: body and mutilated her. But the newspapers, i'm sure, out
Speaker 1: of propriety, don't describe the injuries in great detail. But
Speaker 1: what the doctors say is that her volva had been
Speaker 1: mutilated and partially cut away. The doctors say that the
Speaker 1: killer used a knife or some kind of sharp instrument
Speaker 1: to slit her cheek, her ear and her lip. They
Speaker 1: do not know what kind of knife. I don't even
Speaker 1: think they want to try to guess. They think that
Speaker 1: she was alive when her head was cut off using
Speaker 1: that same knife or a sharp instrument. And one more
Speaker 1: line before you react to that her head had been
Speaker 1: cut off at the shoulders, They say this was done
Speaker 1: skillfully because of the way the first and second vertebrae
Speaker 1: were separated.
Speaker 2: So this is a sexual statist and that's exactly what
Speaker 2: I thought was going on. You know, he in essence,
Speaker 2: this is the worst type of offender that any victor
Speaker 2: whatever want to be confronted by, because he gets sexual
Speaker 2: pleasure out of out of torture, out of inflicting fear
Speaker 2: and doing these extreme violence while the victim is still alive.
Speaker 2: You know, Josie's last moments were horrific. You know, the mutilation.
Speaker 2: You know, part of that is the sadism that's going on.
Speaker 2: Part of that, you know, some of the sort of
Speaker 2: the behavioral experts, you know, they talk about this defeminization
Speaker 2: and I'm not going to go into details, but this
Speaker 2: is where specific parts of the female anatomy are targeted
Speaker 2: by the offender. And let's just say obliterated or remove
Speaker 2: from the victim's body, and it it's something that has hapened.
Speaker 2: You know, I've seen it in person. I've there's plenty
Speaker 2: of textbook examples of this type of offender. He's a
Speaker 2: serial predator, there's no question about it. Now. Has he
Speaker 2: committed other attacks prior or other attacks afterwards? You know,
Speaker 2: I can't say that. But he is motivated by fantasy.
Speaker 2: His fantasy is to inflict sadistic acts on his victim
Speaker 2: and have them writhe in pain and scream out in
Speaker 2: pain and be in fear before he kills them. And
Speaker 2: then you know, the decapitation. You know, there may be
Speaker 2: just what we would call an mo aspect to it
Speaker 2: is to delay identification of Josie. You know this again,
Speaker 2: this is a you know, it's eighteen seventy five, and
Speaker 2: it just really underscores that this type of predator existed
Speaker 2: before we even knew what a serial killer was or
Speaker 2: that term was, right, That was really not until the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies that that term was even applied or used.
Speaker 2: I go back that you think about the lore of
Speaker 2: these various monsters, the werewolfs, the vampires, Well, some of
Speaker 2: the victims of these monsters are probably victims of this
Speaker 2: type of predator, and people didn't know what they were
Speaker 2: looking at when they came across them, and they had
Speaker 2: to come up with an explanation. Must have been a warewolf,
Speaker 2: must have been a vampire. But the reality is is
Speaker 2: that these predators have existed since the dawn of time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well this was so brutal. Oh what about the
Speaker 1: did you talk about this the second and the first vertebrae?
Speaker 1: They thought it was done skillfully.
Speaker 2: Must be somebody medically trained type of dismemberment, right, because
Speaker 2: they're not right. They're noticing, right, they're noticing, Oh, this
Speaker 2: this person is cutting through the easy part of the
Speaker 2: neck in order to remove her head. You know, it's
Speaker 2: in between the vertebrae. This may suggest that you have
Speaker 2: somebody that has some training. I wouldn't say it necessarily medical,
Speaker 2: but it could be because they're you know, they've they've
Speaker 2: butchered animals. They're a hunter. You know, they understand that,
Speaker 2: but also understand this type of predator probably has killed
Speaker 2: animals prior and has dismembered these animals and then learns, well,
Speaker 2: the knife isn't going to go through the vertebrae. So
Speaker 2: I have to go in between the vertebrae to get
Speaker 2: this animal's head off. They learn this just because this
Speaker 2: is what they're doing. It's like a Jeffrey Dahmer, you know,
Speaker 2: who's butchering animals and putting there. You know, I think
Speaker 2: I remember a picture of a dog's head being put
Speaker 2: on a steak. He's got experience with animal anatomy, and
Speaker 2: so of course that translates into dismembering humans. So it
Speaker 2: really to me, It just suggests that this offender has
Speaker 2: probably dismembered animal and or humans before.
Speaker 1: Well, I can tell you in the eighteen hundreds, I
Speaker 1: would have a hard time finding a man who hadn't
Speaker 1: at some point had to break down the carcass of
Speaker 1: an animal. You know, I guess if you were extremely wealthy,
Speaker 1: but not out here in the rural area. So that
Speaker 1: wouldn't surprise me these days, yes, but not then. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad we've made it through that autopsy. As I
Speaker 1: had mentioned before, the townspeople hire a detective from Boston.
Speaker 1: The news goes everywhere, of course, and there are several
Speaker 1: people of interests that are identified and arrested. Of course,
Speaker 1: they shake down what they call tramps, which are the
Speaker 1: homeless or itinerant men. The only black man in one
Speaker 1: of these small towns is arrested and comes to nothing.
Speaker 1: None of this happens. Everybody has alibis. The leads go
Speaker 1: nowhere until this story gets really, for me, disturbing, and
Speaker 1: not in a violent way necessarily, but in a just
Speaker 1: a weird, creepy way. So here we go. We start
Speaker 1: to have a suspect pretty quickly, even though they've sort
Speaker 1: of looked through all of these different people who are
Speaker 1: more likely suspects. They start to home in on this
Speaker 1: guy who worked for the friend Lilia. Her dad would
Speaker 1: hire people to do farm work, and there was an
Speaker 1: odd man who was there. So I'll give you all
Speaker 1: the context. So this is Josie's friend Lilia. She was
Speaker 1: one who was supposed to go to school but she
Speaker 1: called a ride instead. Their neighbors. Lilia's Father's name is
Speaker 1: true Worthy Fowler, great name. So Fowler has hired several
Speaker 1: men to do farm work the day before Josie's murder,
Speaker 1: and among this group of men is someone who mister
Speaker 1: Fowler doesn't know his real name, but people call him
Speaker 1: the Frenchman. While they're working the Frenchman sees Lilia. This
Speaker 1: is not Josie, it's Lelia coming home on the road
Speaker 1: from school one afternoon. He asks her brother, who was
Speaker 1: working with the men on this project, which route that
Speaker 1: his sister Lilia takes to get to school. And then,
Speaker 1: of course you know the story of the classmates saying
Speaker 1: that there was somebody in the bushes. And now, of
Speaker 1: course the detective and other authorities think that this guy
Speaker 1: who nobody knows his real name, was waiting in the
Speaker 1: woods Frenchman, and he was actually targeting Leah, not Josie.
Speaker 1: But Lilia gets a ride to school on a passing
Speaker 1: carriage and Josie comes instead, so that's what they think happened.
Speaker 1: The issue, of course, is this guy's long gone, so
Speaker 1: what do you think about that?
Speaker 2: It's entirely plausible, but it's just, I think, one of
Speaker 2: many possibilities. But of course he's a suspect because why
Speaker 2: is he asking about the route that Lily is taking
Speaker 2: to school, back and forth to school. That's showing a
Speaker 2: unusual level of interest in the details about this young girl,
Speaker 2: you know, and her whereabouts. So it's possible that, yeah,
Speaker 2: he planned on making Lily a victim. If the circumstances
Speaker 2: were right, and then that morning Lily was not somebody
Speaker 2: that he would be able to victimize. And while he's
Speaker 2: out there, Josie presented herself, if you will, in terms
Speaker 2: of of walking to school, not far behind the other kids,
Speaker 2: but still isolated.
Speaker 1: Okay, well let's start putting this together. And this is
Speaker 1: where I become impressed with some of the folks here
Speaker 1: in New Hampshire. October eighth, we're going to go back
Speaker 1: a little bit. This is three days after Josie's murder.
Speaker 1: True Worthy Fowler comes into play. Lilia's dad. So remember
Speaker 1: he knows this information. I think his son had said, well,
Speaker 1: you're weird. Guy who now has gone as of the
Speaker 1: day that Josie was murdered, asked this question about Leah.
Speaker 1: He has this information in his head. Fowler happens to
Speaker 1: be what's called a selectman of Suncook, where everybody's from,
Speaker 1: and it's like a mayor. So three days later, while
Speaker 1: he's ruminating on all of this and this mystery Frenchman,
Speaker 1: he gets a letter from a judge in the town
Speaker 1: of Saint Albans, Vermont, which is close to Canada. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you know the letter is from a judge who says,
Speaker 1: you need to hear about this. There's a murder that
Speaker 1: happened in Saint Albans and it sounds kind of like
Speaker 1: what happened in your town. To Josie. The judge says
Speaker 1: that about a year earlier, the evening of Friday, July
Speaker 1: twenty fourth, eighteen seventy four, there's a young school teacher
Speaker 1: named Marietta Ball. She is at the school building where
Speaker 1: she works. This is at night. She locks up by
Speaker 1: herself and she sets off on a one mile walk
Speaker 1: to a friend's house. Part of the walk is through
Speaker 1: a wooded area. The road is not heavily trafficked. She
Speaker 1: never made it to the friend's house. Her body was
Speaker 1: found about halfway between the school where she locked up
Speaker 1: in the friend's house. She was found off the road
Speaker 1: in the woods. It's they say forty yards. I like
Speaker 1: it when they say rods. It's forty rods into the woods.
Speaker 1: You know that is now sixteen and a half feet
Speaker 1: per rod, So it's you know, six hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: feet off the road and into the woods. Evidence she
Speaker 1: had been raped. Marietta has described, I don't know what
Speaker 1: this means. Uncommon muscular strength. There are a lot of signs,
Speaker 1: according to the medical examiner or the corner there, that
Speaker 1: Marietta fought very hard against the attacker, but we don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of information about the autopsy. There's a
Speaker 1: mask that's found near Marietta's body. It's made out of
Speaker 1: carpet and has strings that have been tied in what's
Speaker 1: described as a Frenchman's not, which is the way that
Speaker 1: the twigs were tied above Josie's body. A year later,
Speaker 1: there you go, So what do you think about all.
Speaker 2: That well as Frenchman's not? You know, the commonality between
Speaker 2: the two victims, You know, I think that's that's reasonably significant.
Speaker 2: I don't know how much weight to put on that,
Speaker 2: because I don't know back then in terms of, you know,
Speaker 2: how common was it this particular not being used. I
Speaker 2: would tell you today that would be hugely significant, because
Speaker 2: you just never see that in all the cases in
Speaker 2: which I've had knots. The reality is is that, with
Speaker 2: the exception of one case, which wasn't even my case,
Speaker 2: it was one out of Coronado, most of these knots
Speaker 2: are what i'd call cluster knots. These are just the
Speaker 2: offender tying half hitches on top of half hitches. I've
Speaker 2: got neo shoelace knots, you know, whether it be a
Speaker 2: granny knot or a square knot, which is basically the
Speaker 2: same thing except to some slight differences in terms of
Speaker 2: how they're tied. That's what you see. And so the
Speaker 2: use of a specialized knot like the Frenchman's knot. Right now,
Speaker 2: I go, yeah, there's significance that in both victims that
Speaker 2: this knot is present. Both victims have. The where they're
Speaker 2: attacked in the woods is similar. It's like a lying
Speaker 2: in weight and the offender is comfortable utilizing let's say
Speaker 2: the brush or the trees in order to hide. You've
Speaker 2: got sexual assault in both cases. In Marietta's case, you're
Speaker 2: not talking about any of the mutilation or the kind
Speaker 2: of the sadistic aspects that we see in Josie's case.
Speaker 2: But it sounds like we don't have those types of details,
Speaker 2: because that for me would in essence if there was
Speaker 2: similar mutilation occurring where I'm going, yeah, this is a
Speaker 2: sexual statist at work that I would say the same
Speaker 2: offender killed both of these women. Right now, It's say
Speaker 2: it's likely these cases are related. I'd want more of
Speaker 2: those types of behavioral details in order to say yes,
Speaker 2: these are definitely related.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let me tell you what they think in
Speaker 1: Vermont about who did this to Marietta and why it's
Speaker 1: so alarming that they're contacting you. This mayor in New Hampshire,
Speaker 1: the authorities in Saint Almonds was certain it was a
Speaker 1: guy named Joseph Lapage that had killed Marietta. There wasn't
Speaker 1: enough evidence to bring him to trial, according to this judge,
Speaker 1: but there circumstantially they thought it was him. I actually
Speaker 1: honestly don't know why.
Speaker 2: But it's a French name.
Speaker 1: Well, he's from Quebec, Okay, and he was a wood
Speaker 1: cutter if you remember the club.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So well this is where you know, you have
Speaker 2: this nebulous suspect, you know, this hired worker that they
Speaker 2: refer to as a frenchman in Josie's case, and now
Speaker 2: you have this Joseph Lapage as a suspect in a
Speaker 2: similar case. French name from Quebec, you know. So there's
Speaker 2: some overlapping characteristics with suspects. In the suspect characteristics within
Speaker 2: these two cases.
Speaker 1: I think most Crucially, he had since Marietta's murder, Joseph
Speaker 1: Lapage and his family had moved to sun Cook, New Hampshire,
Speaker 1: where Josie was from, so he's.
Speaker 2: In the area. So now now, now we have geographic
Speaker 2: connections between the two cases, the suspect in the two cases. Okay,
Speaker 2: this is churn. I always describe this, you know, because
Speaker 2: having worked massive cases like Golden State Killer, you're looking
Speaker 2: at different men all the time as suspects, and some
Speaker 2: of these guys it's like just static. No matter how
Speaker 2: what you look, where you look about this particular suspect,
Speaker 2: nothing seems to do anything. It's just that there's nothing
Speaker 2: going on with this guy in terms of elevating him
Speaker 2: as a suspect. But then you come across somebody and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden there's some connections being made. And
Speaker 2: then this is where you have some churn. And this
Speaker 2: is where what I'm saying with this Joseph Lapage, it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: there's churn here. Now is he the killer? I can't
Speaker 2: say that right now, but you know what's there's enough
Speaker 2: here where he's he's percolating to the top and is
Speaker 2: going to get my full attention.
Speaker 1: M m well, here we go. October thirteenth, the authorities
Speaker 1: from New Hampshire Attorney General's Office arrest Joseph at his house.
Speaker 1: He has his wife with him and four of his
Speaker 1: five kids, and they search the house. They find a
Speaker 1: coat with bloodstains on it and a pair of boots,
Speaker 1: and the heel of the boot matches the mark on
Speaker 1: Josie's cheek. I mean, I'm sure you could throw a
Speaker 1: rock and hit somebody you had those kind of boots.
Speaker 1: But still he has boots, pointy boots. It sounds like
Speaker 1: so the local French community feels like Joseph is being
Speaker 1: unfairly scapegoated. That doesn't surprise me. One of the community
Speaker 1: leaders tells the police, wait a second. This guy was
Speaker 1: with me all day on the day of Josie's murder,
Speaker 1: so you got to leave him alone. The problem was
Speaker 1: that when Joseph was with the police, he said, I
Speaker 1: was lost in the woods all day during that time,
Speaker 1: at the worst outbi. But I have said I often
Speaker 1: have terrible outbies if something out and I was accused
Speaker 1: of murder, so driving around in a circle in my
Speaker 1: neighborhood listening to Taylor Swift, So you know this is
Speaker 1: why alibi witnesses can be unreliable. I just couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2: So there you go.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about this, communities coming together to get
Speaker 1: behind people even though they're sure they're guilty, and oftentimes
Speaker 1: it's based on ethnicity or some you know, religion or
Speaker 1: some kind of common factor where they're on the defensive, right.
Speaker 2: Right, right, No, absolutely, the.
Speaker 1: Police say anyway, and they put them on trial January
Speaker 1: of eighteen seventy six. So now we get even more
Speaker 1: background on Joseph. He's got a sister in law, so
Speaker 1: it's his wife's sister. She travels from Quebec to testify
Speaker 1: against him. So she says, in eighteen seventy one, so
Speaker 1: this would be eighteen seventy one, would be three years
Speaker 1: before Marietta, four years before Josie. In eighteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: a masked man in Quebec threatened her with a club
Speaker 1: and a cow pasture and raped her. So he was
Speaker 1: wearing a mask that I had to look up, a
Speaker 1: buffalo robe mask, which is cured buffalo hide that still
Speaker 1: has the hair on it. Must have been absolutely terrifying
Speaker 1: among everything else that was happening. She rips off the
Speaker 1: mask and sees it's Joseph, and nothing happens to him.
Speaker 1: I don't know if she doesn't, you know, because of
Speaker 1: her sister, she doesn't report it or what happens. But
Speaker 1: at least one person confirms his identity in a violent attack.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then there's I mean, obviously there's overlap.
Speaker 1: Maah.
Speaker 2: Here you have a club being used, and we see
Speaker 2: the club being used in Josie's case, you see a
Speaker 2: mask being used in Marietta's case. You have the geographic
Speaker 2: connections of Joseph lapage between those two cases. And now
Speaker 2: you have a sister in law offering a details on
Speaker 2: her attacker that overlap with the Josie and Marietta cases.
Speaker 2: He's attacking her out in a cow pastor. He's he's
Speaker 2: comfortable outside. He's not the Golden State killer who's comfortable
Speaker 2: breaking into houses and attacking people inside the house. He
Speaker 2: likes to work in the outdoors. And these are sexually
Speaker 2: motivated crimes. Now, you know, for me, it's the The
Speaker 2: interesting aspect is with the sister in law and Marietta.
Speaker 2: It doesn't we don't have information that is indicating the
Speaker 2: sadistic aspects and sadism can you know you can still
Speaker 2: the sexual assault can be sadistic in and of itself
Speaker 2: in terms of I mean people say, of course, you know,
Speaker 2: any sexual assault is sadistic. But when I use that
Speaker 2: term sadistic, I am talking about a very very narrowly
Speaker 2: defined set of behavioral criteria characteristics that indicates that this
Speaker 2: person is getting sexual gratification through the you know, literally
Speaker 2: the physical and psychological violence that they are doing versus
Speaker 2: the sexual act in and of itself. But Josie is
Speaker 2: sexually mutilated, and she's mutilated before she's killed, you know,
Speaker 2: So this is those sadistic acts. So do we have
Speaker 2: an offender that is actually escalating in his fantasy and
Speaker 2: is really starting to display the sexual sadism that we
Speaker 2: see in Josie at that point in time and didn't
Speaker 2: display it fully in the prior cases.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it seems definitely like escalation to me. Gosh,
Speaker 1: he is keeping his trap shut this whole time through
Speaker 1: this trial. So he is initially found guilty of first
Speaker 1: degree murder. His lawyer appeals on the grounds that some
Speaker 1: of the testimony and the trial should have been inadmissible.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter because when he wins the appeal, but
Speaker 1: then there's another trial and he's convicted. He's sentenced to death.
Speaker 1: So then the question is what happens. Do we learn
Speaker 1: anything else from Joseph, and we do thanks to a priest.
Speaker 1: You know, the French community is in denial. I don't
Speaker 1: know if his wife is or his kids are. But
Speaker 1: the day before he's supposed to be executed, which is
Speaker 1: March of eighteen seventy eight, so this kind of surprises me.
Speaker 1: He's a lie for another two years. So maybe this
Speaker 1: was a a you know, jump in appeals or something,
Speaker 1: but usually this would have been quick. Maybe New Hampshire
Speaker 1: was more progressive. I don't know. So he's a lie
Speaker 1: for two more years. On death row, the priest comes
Speaker 1: in and he's set to be executed by hanging, and
Speaker 1: he confesses. And the priest of course would not be
Speaker 1: able to reveal information that Joseph said, but he convinces
Speaker 1: Joseph to confess to the police. He confesses to the
Speaker 1: murders of Josie and Marietta. And you were right about this, Paul.
Speaker 1: Sometimes when I think people take things, oh they're going
Speaker 1: to go hawk them there, maybe they aren't, you know,
Speaker 1: trinkets or memorabilia or trophies or any of that. But
Speaker 1: he tells him where to find in the woods Josie's
Speaker 1: possessions like the ring and the breastpin and stuff. He
Speaker 1: had hidden them, and he told him exactly where to look.
Speaker 1: So he is executed. And there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a PostScript here. He's executed and then he becomes a
Speaker 1: suspect in two eighteen sixty seven unsolved murders that happened
Speaker 1: in Quebec. So these predate by four years the attack
Speaker 1: on the sister in law. He had been in the
Speaker 1: town when they happened, at the time when they happened,
Speaker 1: and so he's dead at this point, there's no information.
Speaker 1: Obviously they were able to get some information out of
Speaker 1: them before. So it's a shame in this only to me,
Speaker 1: in this circumstance, that he was executed, because if they
Speaker 1: really thought he was a suspect, I mean, maybe they
Speaker 1: could have gotten more information and closure from families, but
Speaker 1: too right now.
Speaker 2: You know, and I would guess he has others up
Speaker 2: and beyond those, you know, and imagine, I mean, this
Speaker 2: is obviously they don't have DNA to link these cases together.
Speaker 2: They really have a poor understanding of this type of
Speaker 2: sexual predators, so they're not necessarily recognizing that this is
Speaker 2: a behavioral characteristic that would be predictive that you are
Speaker 2: dealing with somebody who is a serial killer, serial rapist,
Speaker 2: serial killer, and so you probably have other communities that
Speaker 2: this guy, whether he had a connection or he flowed
Speaker 2: through and has committed similar crimes, and nobody's put two
Speaker 2: and two together that this is this is their killer. So,
Speaker 2: you know, I think they did a remarkable job in
Speaker 2: terms of figuring out who Josie and Marietta's killer was
Speaker 2: to be frank, you know, for this day and age
Speaker 2: and for the limitations that they had. But I think,
Speaker 2: you know, like the message that I want to underscore
Speaker 2: in maybe some of our listeners, this is the first
Speaker 2: time they've ever heard about, you know, the bruteality that
Speaker 2: some of these offenders do to their victims. And this
Speaker 2: is where I you know, we always want to tell
Speaker 2: our kids there's no such thing as monsters, but the
Speaker 2: reality is there are monsters, and these guys are the monsters.
Speaker 2: And to see what they do firsthand to their victims,
Speaker 2: it's absolutely horrific and I wish there was a way
Speaker 2: to find them all and get them all off the
Speaker 2: street and prevent these guys from being out there. But
Speaker 2: there just isn't and you just have to be you
Speaker 2: have to be aware and keep yourself safe.
Speaker 1: I mean, what a story. And I'm always looking for heroes.
Speaker 1: And clearly the judge put it together. I mean, the
Speaker 1: judge in Vermont read this story and was thinking, this
Speaker 1: sounds familiar. This obviously happened. I don't know if the
Speaker 1: news from what happened with Marietta Ball didn't make it
Speaker 1: down to New Hampshire and this detective didn't put it together.
Speaker 1: This seems similar. But you know, being able to get
Speaker 1: information from him from Joseph right before his execution with
Speaker 1: the priest, and then you know, turning this information over
Speaker 1: getting him, convincing Joseph to confess to the police. I mean,
Speaker 1: some of the stuff does go above and beyond. They
Speaker 1: wouldn't have caught him if it weren't for the judge,
Speaker 1: obviously sure, and for the almost victim's father to be
Speaker 1: in a position in the community where he would have
Speaker 1: been the one to receive this information from the judge.
Speaker 1: So you know, we talk about jurisdiction issues today and
Speaker 1: there's just it. You know, we've got two communities reaching
Speaker 1: out to each other and getting information in eighteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: which to me is pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: That's impressive, you know, And I actually put a lot
Speaker 2: of stock into the strength the sister in law had.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, because Amy, she's going against you know, her own
Speaker 2: sister to go testify against her sister's husband and is
Speaker 2: putting it out there that she was a rape victim
Speaker 2: of this guy. You know, so there's a lot of
Speaker 2: barriers she had to overcome to have the strength and
Speaker 2: the courage to get on the stand to testify against
Speaker 2: you know, her brother in law.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and picking up on things like the classmate who said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought that was weird that somebody was in the bushes.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're you have all of these people who
Speaker 1: are able, the neighbors who are noticing Josie, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean these are small communities were generally now, but
Speaker 1: especially in the eighteen hundreds, people are looking out for
Speaker 1: each other very closely, so you can see everything happening,
Speaker 1: what happens to her, even though she's alone at the
Speaker 1: time when she unfortunately encounters this guy. You know, we've
Speaker 1: got enough people who have an eye out and are
Speaker 1: putting pieces together pretty quickly. I was surprised. This is
Speaker 1: a very upsetting story, but also in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways inspirational that you have all of these people thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: what do we need the priest. We've got to get
Speaker 1: a confession out of this guy, you know, And I'm
Speaker 1: frustrated that they acute to him, and now we don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on with these other cases.
Speaker 2: Sure, you know, and I think from an investigative side,
Speaker 2: early on, when you were talking about the route that
Speaker 2: the kids would would take and they're walking through a
Speaker 2: neighborhood and then going through the woods, you know, for me,
Speaker 2: I immediately was binning two different suspect pools. And one
Speaker 2: of the common suspect pools is somebody who lives along
Speaker 2: the route and is watching these kids day in and
Speaker 2: day out and they just happen to be somebody that's
Speaker 2: willing to victimize. And then the other route, and this
Speaker 2: is what this Joseph la Page, this other suspect pool,
Speaker 2: this Joseph la Page fell into, is that, well, what
Speaker 2: is the transient population in the area, you know, And
Speaker 2: you have to think about that very early on in
Speaker 2: the investigations, so you can now start capitalizing on information
Speaker 2: that witnesses may have as to who has flowed in
Speaker 2: and out of your community. Nowadays, some times we get
Speaker 2: that off of surveillance cameras and stuff. Back then it's well,
Speaker 2: who's been here? And it turns out, you know, Lily's
Speaker 2: dad was hiring this you know, pool of transience, if
Speaker 2: you will, and brought Joseph Lapage into contact with his daughter.
Speaker 1: I still don't understand about the Frenchman's not on the twigs.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe that was some kind of rumor, but
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think so. I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: that what he was thinking with that.
Speaker 2: You know, the bowlan knot is a very very versatile
Speaker 2: knot and it's a you know, of course, I'd like
Speaker 2: to see how it was used to tie these twigs up,
Speaker 2: but you know, it just it just tells me this
Speaker 2: is a knot he is familiar with with being able
Speaker 2: to tie. I can tie a bowl of knot, and
Speaker 2: now that I've seen how a Frenchman's knot is tied,
Speaker 2: I can tie a Frenchman's not, you know, So it's
Speaker 2: I don't think it's anything that's behaviorally significant what he's doing.
Speaker 2: It's just a knot he's familiar with, and it's an
Speaker 2: he knows will be suitable for this particular application.
Speaker 1: Well, when I first thought about the story, I was
Speaker 1: not thinking this was going to be a serial killer story.
Speaker 1: And then I started reading it and thought, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: a serial killer from eighteen seventy five. You know, it's incredible.
Speaker 2: Well, and this is the same type of offender as
Speaker 2: Jack the Ripper.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the same ones that we're getting every you know,
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five too. And that's the point, Yep.
Speaker 1: These guys have just like exactly what you said. These
Speaker 1: guys have been around since the beginning of time. Well, Paul,
Speaker 1: hopefully no serial killers next week, but I guess we're
Speaker 1: going to see. I like the serial killer story every
Speaker 1: once in a while, but I uh, sometimes I need
Speaker 1: a little bit of a break. And that was a
Speaker 1: hard one. But you did a great job giving me
Speaker 1: some insight.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Yeah, Well you can always throw a serial
Speaker 2: killer case at me anytime, Kate.
Speaker 1: Okay, good to know. Okay, I will see you next week.
Speaker 2: All right, sounds good. Take care bye.
Speaker 1: This has been an exactly right production for our sources
Speaker 1: and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia dot com slash Buried
Speaker 1: Bones Sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Emirosi.
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, and
Speaker 1: Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life Solving America's Cold
Speaker 1: Cases is also available now