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Speaker 1: Diversion audio.

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Speaker 2: A note this episode contains mature content and quite graphic

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Speaker 2: descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.

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Speaker 2: Please take care in listening. The morning of December twenty first,

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Speaker 2: eighteen thirty two was frigid and windy. John Durfey was

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Speaker 2: thirty six years old. He was a Justice of the peace,

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Speaker 2: a town councilman, and he was a profitable farmer on

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Speaker 2: his father's property. John took his team from home down

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Speaker 2: the hill full of gopher holes to the river. About

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Speaker 2: quote sixty rods from the house was a haystack. The

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Speaker 2: haystack was supported with four metal steaks wedged into its

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Speaker 2: metal at about a forty five degree angle, and each

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Speaker 2: steak was driven into the ground to keep the stack

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Speaker 2: from toppling over over the top of it all. A

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Speaker 2: burlap cover protected the hay from moisture, although this was

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Speaker 2: a clear morning, no rain or snow. When John durfy

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Speaker 2: came upon this haystack, he gasped. Hanging from one of

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Speaker 2: the steaks was the frozen body of a young woman.

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Speaker 2: Her short black hair was frozen to her face and

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Speaker 2: covered in frost. Her long black cloak was buttoned to

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Speaker 2: her throat. Her bonnet was drawn around her chin, and

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Speaker 2: her shoes lay neatly on the ground beside her. In

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Speaker 2: the dim sunrise light, John Durfy saw that this woman's

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Speaker 2: knees dangled four or five inches from the ground, her

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Speaker 2: feet dragged behind her. He watched her body sway for

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Speaker 2: just a moment in disbelief before he yelled for help.

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Speaker 2: Three men responded, and together they started taking the body down.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to the greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm

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Speaker 2: Mary Kay mcbrair, author of the true crime book Madame Queen,

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Speaker 2: the Life and Crimes of Harlem's underground racketeer Stephanie Sinclair.

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Speaker 2: Today's episode we're calling the Real Scarlet Letter. It's the

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Speaker 2: story of Sarah Cornell, a young Methodist textile worker who

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Speaker 2: was the inspiration for Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's book

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Speaker 2: The Scarlet Letter. The difference, of course, is that Hester

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Speaker 2: Prynne wasn't murdered, and she certainly didn't kill herself. I'll

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Speaker 2: tell you all about it after this quick break. It

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Speaker 2: probably won't surprise you listener to know that I was

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Speaker 2: always in honors and advanced placement English classes. I was

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Speaker 2: that nerd who always got the book at pizza. Jasmine

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Speaker 2: Williams might have beaten me in every other subject, but

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Speaker 2: I was the accelerated reader. What I mean is I

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Speaker 2: never didn't do the assigned reading. I tell you, I

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Speaker 2: read every single word of the Odyssey, and I did

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Speaker 2: not understand a damn thing. I mean, I understood the

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Speaker 2: phrases singing me muse, and when Dawn with her rose

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Speaker 2: red fingers, and how it was really just the barred

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Speaker 2: buying time basically ancient Greek for what had happened was

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Speaker 2: But how was a ninth grader supposed to understand that

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Speaker 2: the only reason athena goddess of wisdom, could get the

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Speaker 2: warrior Odysseus off of Circe this sex Witch's island is

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Speaker 2: because Uncle Poseiadin was blackout drunk in Ethiopia, accepting sacrifices

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Speaker 2: at his own festival. Yes, that is how the Odyssey

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Speaker 2: actually opens, y'all. Until I had to teach it in

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Speaker 2: university world literature, I didn't even know that. And I

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Speaker 2: also did not understand the gravitas of another required ninth

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Speaker 2: grade reading, that is, of course, Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The

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Speaker 2: Scarlet letter, I remember scraps. One thing I remember is

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Speaker 2: that in order for me to slog through the diction,

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Speaker 2: I kept a tallly of how many times he used

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Speaker 2: the adjective ignominious. I remember that Hester Prynne was ostracized

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Speaker 2: for having a child out of wedlock, and I remember

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Speaker 2: that she would not out her baby's daddy, and that

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Speaker 2: everyone admired her for it. They did not, however, admire

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Speaker 2: her enough to accept her back into the community. And

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Speaker 2: I remember our teacher having to really spell out for

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Speaker 2: us that the ugly reverend was the father, and my

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Speaker 2: brain would not comprehend that the reason Hester didn't want

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Speaker 2: to tell anyone was because it would ruin the minister's reputation.

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Speaker 2: Even at fourteen, I remember thinking, well, it sounds like

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Speaker 2: the minister ruined the minister's reputation. And while that is

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Speaker 2: true and we've come a long way as a society since,

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Speaker 2: even then, I didn't know just how nuanced that situation

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Speaker 2: could be. And I definitely didn't know that Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Speaker 2: was an avid newsreader. Hawthorne was effectively a true crime junkie.

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Speaker 2: His son called it a quote pathetic craving. Six years

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Speaker 2: after Sarah Cornell's death, Hawthorne wrote in his journal about

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Speaker 2: visiting a wax display of Sarah Cornell. That's right, Nathaniel

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Speaker 2: Hawthorne heard the story I'm about to tell you at

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Speaker 2: a traveling wax museum. To be featured in Madame Tusso's Today,

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Speaker 2: one has to be pretty famous. Same then, in her

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Speaker 2: book The Sinners All Bow, which I referenced for this

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Speaker 2: episode very thoroughly, Kate Winkler Dawson says that quote being

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Speaker 2: featured in a wax exhibit indicated that the person had

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Speaker 2: achieved a certain level of fame or notoriety or infamy,

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Speaker 2: and this case absolutely achieved that certain level. By the way,

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Speaker 2: at the end of this episode, I get to interview

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Speaker 2: Kate Winkler Dawson herself, so make sure you stick around.

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Speaker 2: It's really a good talk. I should also mention while

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Speaker 2: we're having this sidebar that Kate Winkler Dawson credits a

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Speaker 2: co author to her book The Sinner's All Bow. Katherine

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Speaker 2: Williams wrote what might have been the first true crime

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Speaker 2: book ever about this case just one year after the

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Speaker 2: crime itself. That's how we have so many direct quotes

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Speaker 2: from court testimonies, of course, but also from interviews that

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Speaker 2: Catherine conducted shortly after the proceedings. This is a component

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Speaker 2: I will definitely ask Kate about in our interview, and

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Speaker 2: the fact that Catherine was not a man writing about

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Speaker 2: this story is definitely relevant, but I'll talk about that

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Speaker 2: more later. Now back to the story. At the top

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Speaker 2: of the episode, I explained how John Durfy found Sarah

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Speaker 2: Cornell and took in everything that he saw, which was

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Speaker 2: fortunate because he became not only a key witness in

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Speaker 2: the case, but also a key investigator. John Durfy called

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Speaker 2: for help when he saw her frozen body. He clocked

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Speaker 2: that her cloak was buttoned up, her head was uncovered,

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Speaker 2: and her shoes were neat at her side. John Durfy's

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Speaker 2: seventy five year old father was the first to arrive

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Speaker 2: at the scene. Richard owned the property even though John

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Speaker 2: managed it day to day. John tried to free Sarah

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Speaker 2: Cornell's body from the cord by quote lifting her up

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Speaker 2: and slipping the line, but he couldn't. His father told

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Speaker 2: him to cut her down, so he did. He later

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Speaker 2: noticed that the reason why he couldn't undo the noose

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Speaker 2: was because the cord was embedded almost half an inch

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Speaker 2: into her neck. Once her body was freed, lying on

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Speaker 2: the ground, John Durfey went to fetch the coroner. A

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Speaker 2: little later in the morning, in just a few blocks

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Speaker 2: away from the durfy farm, doctor Thomas Wilbur was about

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Speaker 2: to have breakfast with his family. He saw from the

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Speaker 2: window that people ran up and down the street, and

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Speaker 2: he felt uneasy. He didn't small fire, which he thought

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Speaker 2: was the most likely reason for panic, but he was

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Speaker 2: determined not to get involved, that is until a concerned

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Speaker 2: neighbor summoned him. By the time Thomas arrived on the scene,

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Speaker 2: a crowd had gathered around the body. No one had

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Speaker 2: yet identified her. A local Methodist minister named Ira Bidwell said,

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Speaker 2: when asked quote, she is a respectable young woman and

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Speaker 2: a member of my church. John Smith also recognized her.

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Speaker 2: He was the overseer of a weaving room where Sarah worked,

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Speaker 2: and doctor Thomas Wilbur recognized her too. She was one

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Speaker 2: of his patients. He knew her well, and her death

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Speaker 2: clearly shook him emotionally. He removed the cord from inside

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Speaker 2: her neck with difficulty. Her face was distorted, her tongue

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Speaker 2: protruded through her teeth, and there was a deep indentation

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Speaker 2: on her cheek. Thomas had been treating Sarah for months.

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Speaker 2: He said he was concerned about her mental health. Thomas

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Speaker 2: believed that she had completed suicide. John Durfy asked the

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Speaker 2: elderly coroner, Ellahu Hicks, if he could move her body

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Speaker 2: to his farmhouse, Ella, who agreed. They laid her in

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Speaker 2: a horse wagon, wrapped in a blanket with hay under her,

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Speaker 2: and they drove the horses slowly up the smooth road

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Speaker 2: to the house. This was later important to note because

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Speaker 2: any marks upon her person would have definitely happened prior

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Speaker 2: to her discovery. Soon after, the coroner summoned a jury.

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Speaker 2: I didn't realize this, but for a lot of American history,

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Speaker 2: coroners summoned juries to rule a cause of death. Doctor

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Speaker 2: Wilbur suspected suicide, but the coroner's jury would determine if

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Speaker 2: that was official. The men on the coroner's jury, and

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Speaker 2: it would have been all men would have had little

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Speaker 2: or no medical knowledge, just good standing in the community.

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Speaker 2: You might remember from some of our former episodes that

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Speaker 2: even coroners didn't need medical degrees because they were just

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Speaker 2: as often appointed as they were elected. The coroner's jury

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Speaker 2: was scheduled to meet the following morning, about twenty four

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Speaker 2: hours after the body's discovery, to determine the cause of death.

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Speaker 2: They all agreed that it was most likely suicide, though

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Speaker 2: especially because they refused to examine her body without her

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Speaker 2: clothes for the sake of propriety. But before that, on

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Speaker 2: the day of her death, the body had to be

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Speaker 2: prepared for examination and subsequent burial, and the people who

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Speaker 2: did that were a group of five or six respectable

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Speaker 2: matrons from the village who often volunteered for this abhorrent task.

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Speaker 2: When they began the preparation, they all assumed that Sarah

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Speaker 2: had died by suicide. It seems like they all pitied

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Speaker 2: her and assumed that some hard fortune had driven her

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Speaker 2: to take her own life. Then they removed her cloak,

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Speaker 2: her dress, and her undergarments, and then they changed their minds.

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Speaker 2: They later told Catherine Williams quote, there were bad bruises

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Speaker 2: on the back, and the knees scratched and stained with grass,

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Speaker 2: as though they had been on the ground during some struggle.

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Speaker 2: And it got much more intense than that. One matron

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Speaker 2: had the opinion that Sarah had been violated, which was

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Speaker 2: the nineteenth century term for sexually assaulted. She thought so

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Speaker 2: based on the blood and fecal matter in her undergarments.

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Speaker 2: There were also bruise marks on her abdomen on the

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Speaker 2: lower part of her belly that fitted large hands. The

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Speaker 2: thumb prints were inside each hip bone and the fingers

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Speaker 2: spread over the hips. There was froth tinged with blood

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Speaker 2: from her mouth and nose as well. It was certain

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Speaker 2: that her cause of death had been strangulation by hanging.

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Speaker 2: What was not certain was who had hanged her before

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Speaker 2: the break I mentioned several key observations that the six

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Speaker 2: matrons observed on Sarah's corpse. She had bad bruises on

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Speaker 2: her back and hand shaped bruises over both hips. Her

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Speaker 2: knees were scraped up. The cord used to hang her

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Speaker 2: was embedded deep in her undergarments. The matrons found blood

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Speaker 2: and fecal matter. Doctor Thomas Wilbur described her face as distorted,

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Speaker 2: with her tongue sticking out. An indentation appeared on her cheek.

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Speaker 2: Bloody froth came from her mouth and nose. Her hair

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Speaker 2: was frozen to her face, and the doctor knew from

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Speaker 2: previous visits as his patient that she was pregnant. The

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Speaker 2: cause of her death was definitely strangulation, and it seemed

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Speaker 2: that she had suffered violence. Some of the injuries to

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Speaker 2: her body might have happened during a suicide, but others,

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Speaker 2: like the bruises shaped like hands around her hips, it

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Speaker 2: was clear that someone else had inflicted. Still, Kate Winkler

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Speaker 2: Dawson reminds us in her book The Sinners All Bow,

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Speaker 2: just because Sarah suffered violence at the hands of someone

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Speaker 2: else before she died doesn't mean she was murdered. Even

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Speaker 2: though it seems like those two things have to go together,

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Speaker 2: they don't necessarily. It only matters what can be proved

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Speaker 2: in court. The matrons asked John Durfy to locate burial

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Speaker 2: clothes for Sarah, and they wanted him to find letters

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Speaker 2: to or from her family and friends so that they

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Speaker 2: could notify her people of her death. So John had

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Speaker 2: Sarah's landlady bring over her belongings. They arrived in a

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Speaker 2: locked bandbox. Her landlady said the key was probably in

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Speaker 2: Sarah's pocket, since she always carried it with her. One

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Speaker 2: of the matrons had indeed found the small key in

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Speaker 2: her pocket, and when John opened the box, he realized

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Speaker 2: Sarah had written many letters. He retrieved four letters that

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Speaker 2: seemed of interest. Two of them were to Reverend Ira Bidwell,

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Speaker 2: the same Methodist minister who had attested to her quote

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Speaker 2: good character when her body was discovered. One of them, unposted, unopened,

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Speaker 2: and undated, said that she wanted to separate herself completely

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Speaker 2: from the Methodist society. She said, quote, I have not

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Speaker 2: seen a well or happy day since I left the

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Speaker 2: Thompson Campground. The meeting at the Thompson Campground was at

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Speaker 2: the end of August, which is important. What happened there

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Speaker 2: would determine the course of her trial. The other three

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Speaker 2: letters were all unsigned but directed to Sarah. One mentioned

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Speaker 2: two days of meeting depending on whether. Another ended with

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Speaker 2: right soon say nothing to no one. They weren't threatening,

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Speaker 2: not overtly. At least, John found more evidence in her trunk.

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Speaker 2: One was a vial of oil of tansy. John Durfy

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Speaker 2: mentioned it in the presence of doctor wilburh and it

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Speaker 2: nowed at him. Sarah had asked doctor wilbur about it

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Speaker 2: in one of her patient visits. He did not prescribe

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Speaker 2: it to her. Rather, he cautioned her against using it.

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Speaker 2: It might have been used for suicide, but in the

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Speaker 2: nineteenth century it was also used to terminate pregnancy, to

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Speaker 2: varying results. Oil of tansy was definitely dangerous, regardless of

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Speaker 2: its intended use. When doctor wilburh learned of its presence

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Speaker 2: in her trunk is when he divulged her secret, he

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Speaker 2: knew Sarah to be pregnant. He also felt that he

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Speaker 2: knew at this point the cause of Sarah's supposed suicide.

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Speaker 2: He caught Reverend Ira Bidwell and said that his brother,

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Speaker 2: a fellow Methodist minister named Ephraim Avery, had made Sarah

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Speaker 2: so unhappy. He had been manipulative and cruel, and doctor

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Speaker 2: Bidwell said to the whole party that despite ruling this

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Speaker 2: death a suicide, he thought she deserved a Christian burial.

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Speaker 2: Sarah Cornell was one of Reverend Ira Bidwell's most favored disciples.

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Speaker 2: Ira left quickly and promised to return with information about

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Speaker 2: the burial and funds with which to do it, but

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Speaker 2: doctor Wilbur felt that something was off. Doctor Thomas Wilbur

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Speaker 2: told the coroner's jury that he suspected a married man

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Speaker 2: had sexually assaulted Sarah, humiliated her, and left her destitute.

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Speaker 2: Still an observation of the suicide verdict. John H. Durfy

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Speaker 2: had a farm hand dig her grave on his own property.

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Speaker 2: The Matrons moved along with their plans, that is until

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Speaker 2: later on when they rummaged around in Sarah's trunk. The

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Speaker 2: two Matrons, who happened to be John Durfy's sisters, were

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Speaker 2: hoping to find others to contact regarding Sarah's burial service.

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Speaker 2: What they found was a key clue. It was a

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Speaker 2: four inch long piece of soiled paper signed s MC.

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Speaker 2: It read, if I am missing, inquire of the Reverend E. K. Avery.

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Speaker 2: The verdict of suicide came and went without acknowledgment of

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Speaker 2: this note. Both Catherine and Kate figured that the coroner's

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Speaker 2: jury did not hear about the evidence before the burial

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Speaker 2: because they still did not suspect murder. Just a few

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Speaker 2: hours before the service, That's when the Matrons turned the

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Speaker 2: letter over to John Durfy. He read it multiple times

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Speaker 2: and he stayed quiet about it, but he did think

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Speaker 2: it was suspicious that not a single Methodist minister was

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Speaker 2: at the funeral service. There was other confusing evidence at hand, too.

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Speaker 2: Sarah's cloak was buttoned all the way up her shoes

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00:20:18,640 --> 00:20:23,159
Speaker 2: were neat and placed beside her. Her gloves were not dirty.

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Speaker 2: The strings of her bonnet were underneath the cord used

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Speaker 2: to hang her. The string was a very specific kind

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Speaker 2: called marline twine, but it was not common in any

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Speaker 2: laborer's tool kit, though it was not present in the

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Speaker 2: mill where Sarah worked, and then her knees were just

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Speaker 2: a few inches above the ground. He also uncovered a

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Speaker 2: few more pieces of evidence. One was a broken comb.

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Speaker 2: When he asked her landlady about the piece found on

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Speaker 2: his farm, she confirmed it with Sarah's. She identified it

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Speaker 2: because of its unique pattern. And then there was the

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Speaker 2: oil of Tansy. John Durfy molded over None of it

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00:21:03,359 --> 00:21:08,199
Speaker 2: rolled out a suicide definitively. It made suicide more unlikely,

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Speaker 2: but it didn't rule it out. Overbidwell also returned with

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Speaker 2: the news that the meeting would not hear of a

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Speaker 2: Christian burial for Sarah as a suicide. John Durfy thought

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Speaker 2: something was amiss. Just yesterday, Ira had vouched for Sarah's character.

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Speaker 2: Now something had changed. Then John Durfy's brother, Williams, a

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Speaker 2: former mariner, brought something to light. The cord was wrapped

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Speaker 2: around her neck twice, and it was tied in an

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00:21:39,240 --> 00:21:43,679
Speaker 2: uncommon knot called a clove hitch knot. He said that

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Speaker 2: to tighten a clove hitch it had to be pulled

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Speaker 2: at both ends. He claimed that it wouldn't have pulled

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Speaker 2: tightly enough to strangle her if she had tied it herself.

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Speaker 2: That was the piece of evidence that at the time

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Speaker 2: of the trial changed things. The day after the coroner

293
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Speaker 2: examined her exhumed corpse again, now there was reason to

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Speaker 2: believe it could have been murder. Listeners Kate Linkler Dawson

295
00:22:21,680 --> 00:22:24,320
Speaker 2: did this really cool thing where she took this evidence

296
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Speaker 2: from two hundred years ago, and she asked forensic investigator

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00:22:28,240 --> 00:22:31,800
Speaker 2: Paul Holes about it, and he said, no, none of

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Speaker 2: this evidence rolls out a suicide completely. She could have

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Speaker 2: gotten the twine, she could have tied the knot, and

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Speaker 2: it was actually more common that suicides hanged low rather

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Speaker 2: than dropping from a height like at a gallows. Sarah

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00:22:45,080 --> 00:22:48,520
Speaker 2: could have hanged herself without dirtying her gloves over her

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00:22:48,520 --> 00:22:52,920
Speaker 2: bonnet's ribbon, with both hands under her cloak. She could

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Speaker 2: have positioned her shoes. She could have broken her comb.

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Speaker 2: She could have written the note specifically to frame a

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Speaker 2: f avery for her murder out of revenge. She could

307
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Speaker 2: have she could have done all that, but why would

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Speaker 2: she have more after the break. I didn't know this

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Speaker 2: about nineteenth century Methodists, but it was kind of a

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Speaker 2: wild denomination at the time. That might sound diametrically opposed

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Speaker 2: to the Methodist faith now, but in the eighteen thirties

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00:23:34,880 --> 00:23:38,639
Speaker 2: it was the trendy new thing. Becoming a minister in

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Speaker 2: the faith did not require any official training, and the

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Speaker 2: denomination was known for its tent revivals in the woods.

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Speaker 2: They were parties that preached to the common man, both

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Speaker 2: inspiring the crowd and controlling it. The revivals were concerning

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Speaker 2: because they lasted for days, they caused physical and emotional fatigue,

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Speaker 2: and they had, of course, a charismatic leader. Religious sects

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Speaker 2: still use these tactics today because the exhaustion yields a

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Speaker 2: kind of lightheaded hysteria that can feel sort of divine.

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Speaker 2: And if these tactics sound cultish, that's because this group

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Speaker 2: of Methodists held several characteristics of a cult. In Sarah's

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Speaker 2: own words, she was seeking a home church when she

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Speaker 2: arrived in Fall River, Massachusetts, and she found one in

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Speaker 2: the local Methodists. In one of her letters to her sister,

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Speaker 2: she mentioned donating the contemporary equivalent of about two hundred

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Speaker 2: dollars toward a Methodist meetinghouse. That was a lot of

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Speaker 2: money for a thirty year old working woman, and it

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00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:54,439
Speaker 2: showed her devotion to the faith. I feel like I

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Speaker 2: should go into detail about what Sarah's work was like too.

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Speaker 2: She was a textile worker. Women were especially well suited

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Speaker 2: to mill work because they quote tended to work hard

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Speaker 2: without complaint. They also drank infrequently, mostly because they were

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Speaker 2: tightly supervised in their boarding houses. Mill workers were husbandless, childless,

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Speaker 2: and untethered to parents, so they could work long hours

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Speaker 2: without the need to tend to a family. And these

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00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:26,440
Speaker 2: women were as a rule compliant. Otherwise they were made

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Speaker 2: to move on, and Sarah had moved on from many

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Speaker 2: other jobs throughout her twenties. She had jumped between villages

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Speaker 2: in New England. She even had a little bit of

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Speaker 2: a bad girl past involving theft in her youth, which

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Speaker 2: she was trying to escape, and she longed for community.

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Speaker 2: She was the perfect prey for a trendy new religious sect.

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Speaker 2: According to some accounts, Sarah held a job within E.

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Speaker 2: Fhram Avery's house until Avery's son came home and told

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Speaker 2: someone Paw kissed Sarah Marine at Cornell. After that, Efrom

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Speaker 2: Avery had expelled her from the church. Efrom Avery denied

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Speaker 2: that Sarah had ever been inside his house, let alone

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Speaker 2: work there, And the reason why Reverend Irah Bidwell was

350
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Speaker 2: not at Sarah Cornell's funeral service was that he was busy.

351
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Speaker 2: He was on his way to tip off Reverend Efrom Avery,

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Speaker 2: who promptly fled. He said later that he feared for

353
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Speaker 2: his safety at the hands of a vigilante mob and

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Speaker 2: that could be true. But let's talk more about e

355
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Speaker 2: From Avery before we judge him for fleeing. The Avery

356
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Speaker 2: family book said that Ephram Avery quote did not wish

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Speaker 2: to become a farmer, which was his father's occupation. He

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Speaker 2: studied to become a doctor, but did not complete his education.

359
00:27:00,320 --> 00:27:03,600
Speaker 2: He then worked at a general store, became a school teacher,

360
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Speaker 2: went into the ministry. After his son's observation, Sarah was

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Speaker 2: expelled from the Methodist community in Fall River. She secured

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Speaker 2: a job in Lowell's textile mill, but because her Methodist

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00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:21,520
Speaker 2: overseer learned the rumors about her, he said she had

364
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Speaker 2: to confess her sins to her former minister in order

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Speaker 2: to keep her job. I am not sure how to

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Speaker 2: explain that this situation is bananas, so I'm going to

367
00:27:34,280 --> 00:27:37,240
Speaker 2: keep moving. But listeners, you can be sure that it

368
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Speaker 2: is bananas. Rather than issue Sarah a certificate of good standing,

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Speaker 2: which was another bananas thing, the minister made her confess

370
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Speaker 2: to fornication so that she would again be expelled, but

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00:27:50,800 --> 00:27:53,600
Speaker 2: Sarah declined to her friends that she had ever had

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Speaker 2: sex before. Sarah left Lowell for New Hampshire, but then

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Speaker 2: the Methodist minister in her new town asked Reverend Ephram

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Speaker 2: Avery for a character reference, and Ephraim said that Sarah

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Speaker 2: was guilty of fornication, theft, and lying. Sarah then confronted

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Speaker 2: Avery and Lowell. He agreed to sign a certificate of forgiveness,

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Speaker 2: another existent banana, but then he immediately revoked it. That

378
00:28:25,880 --> 00:28:30,359
Speaker 2: humiliated Sarah, but she tried one more time. They talked

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Speaker 2: again in late summer of eighteen thirty two at a

380
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Speaker 2: camp meeting. When she returned to her sister's house, Sarah

381
00:28:40,040 --> 00:28:42,600
Speaker 2: told her sister that she had tried to get away

382
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Speaker 2: from Ephraim, but he had raped her, so Sarah could

383
00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:52,840
Speaker 2: have framed Ephram, But I have my doubts. She had

384
00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:56,239
Speaker 2: told a friend before that she'd never had sex. What

385
00:28:56,320 --> 00:28:59,720
Speaker 2: she likely meant was that she had never had consensual sex.

386
00:29:00,920 --> 00:29:03,760
Speaker 2: She had written letters to her friends about local suicides

387
00:29:03,800 --> 00:29:07,200
Speaker 2: and how she abhorred the act, which makes it unlikely

388
00:29:07,240 --> 00:29:09,360
Speaker 2: that she would have done it. But the thing for

389
00:29:09,440 --> 00:29:13,200
Speaker 2: me is she didn't want to out the minister. She

390
00:29:13,360 --> 00:29:16,760
Speaker 2: only told doctor Wilbur after he asked many times, and

391
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:20,520
Speaker 2: after he encouraged her to demand the father to support

392
00:29:20,560 --> 00:29:23,400
Speaker 2: her and the child financially. Whether she spoke his name

393
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Speaker 2: or not, I have to say I'm so glad he

394
00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:28,560
Speaker 2: told her that. I feel like not everyone would have

395
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:32,640
Speaker 2: said that back then or now. Anyway, Sarah thanked him,

396
00:29:33,280 --> 00:29:35,480
Speaker 2: and then she asked about the oil of tansy that

397
00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:39,800
Speaker 2: Ephram gave her. Ephram told her to take thirty drops

398
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Speaker 2: of it. Doctor Wilbur said that four drops was considered

399
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Speaker 2: a large dose. Thirty drops would be violently fatal. I

400
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:54,680
Speaker 2: should remind you efrom Avery was a former medical student.

401
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:59,800
Speaker 2: He would have known that Ephram had tried to kill

402
00:29:59,800 --> 00:30:03,800
Speaker 2: her already, or more specifically, he had tried to kill

403
00:30:03,800 --> 00:30:07,880
Speaker 2: her in a way that looked like suicide. Already, And

404
00:30:07,960 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 2: the thing that really made me doubt that Sarah's death

405
00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 2: was a suicide was this. After the conversation about the

406
00:30:16,200 --> 00:30:19,480
Speaker 2: oil of Tansy, doctor Wilbur told her that if she

407
00:30:19,560 --> 00:30:22,240
Speaker 2: wanted to terminate the pregnancy, she would have to go

408
00:30:22,320 --> 00:30:26,479
Speaker 2: to a different doctor. Sarah said she didn't want to.

409
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:29,880
Speaker 2: She was excited to raise the child, and she told

410
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Speaker 2: him that soon she would meet with the baby's father again.

411
00:30:49,520 --> 00:30:53,280
Speaker 2: The second inspection of Sarah's corpse was a more appropriate autopsy.

412
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Speaker 2: Both doctor Thomas Wilbur and a new doctor, Foster Hooper

413
00:30:58,760 --> 00:31:04,400
Speaker 2: inspected her. They confirmed irregular indentations on her face. One

414
00:31:04,480 --> 00:31:08,200
Speaker 2: side of her abdomen was severely discolored, but he attributed

415
00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:12,680
Speaker 2: it to decomposition, not a bruise from trauma. The left

416
00:31:12,720 --> 00:31:16,200
Speaker 2: side of her abdomen, though, also had a large contusion.

417
00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:21,120
Speaker 2: He then confirmed through an incision to her belly that

418
00:31:21,240 --> 00:31:26,160
Speaker 2: Sara was in fact pregnant. It was a girl about

419
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:30,600
Speaker 2: half grown. That meant that the child was conceived when

420
00:31:30,680 --> 00:31:34,520
Speaker 2: Sarah told doctor Wilbur. He had apparently pressed her for

421
00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 2: the name of the father's child. When Sarah told him

422
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:39,880
Speaker 2: that the married man would not help to support her

423
00:31:41,200 --> 00:31:44,560
Speaker 2: at long last, she disclosed that it was the Methodist

424
00:31:44,600 --> 00:31:50,160
Speaker 2: minister Ephram Avery. She actually had asked early on if

425
00:31:50,160 --> 00:31:52,440
Speaker 2: it was safe to take the ol of Tansey to miscarry.

426
00:31:53,480 --> 00:31:55,960
Speaker 2: He told her it was not, not at all, that

427
00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:58,200
Speaker 2: it would endanger her life and if she lived through it,

428
00:31:58,240 --> 00:32:01,480
Speaker 2: her health would suffer, and just like that, she decided

429
00:32:01,520 --> 00:32:05,360
Speaker 2: against it. The age of the fetus aligned with the

430
00:32:05,400 --> 00:32:08,360
Speaker 2: time Sarah had been alone with Ephrom Avery at the

431
00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:14,080
Speaker 2: Thompson campground. Doctor Wilburgh recognized that this illegitimate pregnancy could

432
00:32:14,240 --> 00:32:18,120
Speaker 2: very well be the motive for murder, but the other

433
00:32:18,240 --> 00:32:23,440
Speaker 2: men on the coroner's jury did not look at this evidence. Again,

434
00:32:23,720 --> 00:32:27,960
Speaker 2: she was denied a proper exam for the sake of respectability.

435
00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:33,000
Speaker 2: Doctor wilbur looked for signs of attempted pregnancy termination, but

436
00:32:33,040 --> 00:32:36,160
Speaker 2: he did not find any. By the way, in the

437
00:32:36,160 --> 00:32:40,400
Speaker 2: eighteen thirties, abortions were not illegal, but the drugs used

438
00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 2: for them were, and those drugs were often fatal. When

439
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:48,680
Speaker 2: Reverend Ira Bidwell met up with Ephram Avery and told

440
00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:52,640
Speaker 2: him the facts, Ephram seemed panicked, and then he went

441
00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 2: into hiding. Harvey Harndon went with a warrant in hand

442
00:32:57,400 --> 00:33:00,640
Speaker 2: to collect him. He found him hiding at the family

443
00:33:00,680 --> 00:33:06,240
Speaker 2: home of another Methodist. Shortly after, two judges remanded Ephraim

444
00:33:06,360 --> 00:33:10,720
Speaker 2: for trial for murder. Listeners I said at the beginning

445
00:33:10,840 --> 00:33:13,320
Speaker 2: that the government had to prove Sarah's death was not

446
00:33:13,560 --> 00:33:18,440
Speaker 2: suicide beyond a reasonable doubt. The opening statement of Richard

447
00:33:18,560 --> 00:33:23,280
Speaker 2: Randolph demanded, if the jury doubted whether this was murder

448
00:33:23,480 --> 00:33:27,280
Speaker 2: or suicide, they need go no further. They must acquit

449
00:33:27,360 --> 00:33:32,120
Speaker 2: the prisoner. Long story less long. They did acquit Reverend

450
00:33:32,120 --> 00:33:51,480
Speaker 2: f from avery. They had the same information that we

451
00:33:51,560 --> 00:33:56,160
Speaker 2: do now, and it could have been a suicide. She

452
00:33:56,360 --> 00:34:00,960
Speaker 2: could have physically done it. When Kate Winkler Dawson asked him,

453
00:34:01,160 --> 00:34:06,120
Speaker 2: even contemporary forensic investigator Paul Holes conceded that she could

454
00:34:06,160 --> 00:34:10,360
Speaker 2: have physically done it. Kate also spoke with legal experts

455
00:34:10,760 --> 00:34:13,160
Speaker 2: who say that the jury in the criminal trial was

456
00:34:13,239 --> 00:34:18,160
Speaker 2: correct in their verdict. The jury determined based on evidence

457
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:22,320
Speaker 2: that Ephraim was not guilty, not that he was innocent.

458
00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:26,360
Speaker 2: He was burned in effigy six times in total, and

459
00:34:26,520 --> 00:34:30,239
Speaker 2: ultimately he was dropped from the church and shunned. He

460
00:34:30,480 --> 00:34:34,760
Speaker 2: became a farmer after all, and when Kate Winkler Dawson

461
00:34:34,840 --> 00:34:39,760
Speaker 2: interviewed his surviving family. They agreed that Ephram Avery killed

462
00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:45,200
Speaker 2: Sarah Cornell. Paul Holes agreed too. She might have tied

463
00:34:45,239 --> 00:34:48,319
Speaker 2: that complicated, not by herself, but it wasn't likely. And

464
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:51,120
Speaker 2: Avery had already tried to convince Sarah to take poison.

465
00:34:52,280 --> 00:34:54,400
Speaker 2: No one else had a motive, and she was not

466
00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:58,400
Speaker 2: psychologically at risk of suicide. But the thing that sealed

467
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:02,560
Speaker 2: the deal for our contemporary very expert was the testimony

468
00:35:02,600 --> 00:35:07,160
Speaker 2: of the matrons. The matrons were familiar with dead bodies.

469
00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 2: They would not have confused decomposition with bruising. He did it.

470
00:35:14,400 --> 00:35:17,960
Speaker 2: There just wasn't convincing enough evidence to legally seal a

471
00:35:17,960 --> 00:35:22,560
Speaker 2: guilty charge. And now here's my interview with Kate Winkler Dawson,

472
00:35:22,760 --> 00:35:26,520
Speaker 2: author of The Sinners All Bow two authors, One Murder

473
00:35:26,760 --> 00:35:41,080
Speaker 2: and The Real Hester Prynne. Kate, thank you so much

474
00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:44,520
Speaker 2: for coming on the show to talk about Sinners All Vow.

475
00:35:44,840 --> 00:35:46,640
Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Thank you.

476
00:35:46,920 --> 00:35:48,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just gonna go ahead and jump in. We

477
00:35:49,040 --> 00:35:53,439
Speaker 2: want to know what was your research process and how

478
00:35:53,480 --> 00:35:56,160
Speaker 2: did you get to Catherine's notes on the case.

479
00:35:56,520 --> 00:36:01,480
Speaker 1: Oh well it's complicated, I figured. Yeah, Well, the research

480
00:36:01,520 --> 00:36:04,400
Speaker 1: method was. You know, first I initially got the story

481
00:36:04,440 --> 00:36:07,280
Speaker 1: I thought from a listener she had suggested the Haystack murders,

482
00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:10,520
Speaker 1: and then I found Sarah's story and then went back

483
00:36:10,560 --> 00:36:12,560
Speaker 1: to the listener said thanks for the recommendation, and she said,

484
00:36:12,560 --> 00:36:14,719
Speaker 1: that's not what I was talking about. But I'm glad

485
00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:18,759
Speaker 1: you found the subject of her next book. And my

486
00:36:18,880 --> 00:36:22,440
Speaker 1: show Buried Bones will cover the actual Haystack murders that

487
00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:26,360
Speaker 1: she was talking about. So, you know, my research method

488
00:36:26,480 --> 00:36:29,479
Speaker 1: is I think most writers would agree, nonfiction writers would

489
00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:32,799
Speaker 1: agree that research is their favorite part and writing is

490
00:36:32,880 --> 00:36:35,040
Speaker 1: what's really really hard to do. I bet you feel

491
00:36:35,080 --> 00:36:35,520
Speaker 1: like that.

492
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:36,920
Speaker 2: I mean, definitely, I.

493
00:36:36,880 --> 00:36:39,479
Speaker 1: Don't actually know anybody who loves writing as a job.

494
00:36:39,560 --> 00:36:42,960
Speaker 1: It's really difficult to do. So the research part is

495
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:46,640
Speaker 1: so much fun. You know, I create, I'm pretty I'm

496
00:36:46,640 --> 00:36:49,560
Speaker 1: pretty rigid, so I create a lot of different folders

497
00:36:50,040 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 1: and I have just a list of resources that I

498
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:53,960
Speaker 1: go through. So, you know, the biggest thing I needed

499
00:36:53,960 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 1: to do was figure out what my my primary sources

500
00:36:57,600 --> 00:37:01,319
Speaker 1: were so I would write a book. This is my

501
00:37:01,719 --> 00:37:04,800
Speaker 1: fourth and a half book. I have a half book

502
00:37:04,800 --> 00:37:07,319
Speaker 1: which is you know, called The Ghost Club, and it's

503
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:12,279
Speaker 1: an audible only book. So this is, you know, one

504
00:37:12,320 --> 00:37:14,440
Speaker 1: of many projects that I've had to really deeply research,

505
00:37:14,520 --> 00:37:17,880
Speaker 1: and I have a checklist I can't do without. I

506
00:37:17,880 --> 00:37:20,360
Speaker 1: can't do a book or a project really without having

507
00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:24,400
Speaker 1: a huge amount of primary sources, which means not newspapers

508
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:29,520
Speaker 1: or necessarily other people's articles. It means for me, trial

509
00:37:29,560 --> 00:37:32,960
Speaker 1: transcripts and you know, books that have been written when

510
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:35,280
Speaker 1: the person is there, like a reporting like what Katherine

511
00:37:35,320 --> 00:37:38,120
Speaker 1: Williams did. And so you know, the first thing I

512
00:37:38,120 --> 00:37:39,480
Speaker 1: do is I go to a couple of I probably

513
00:37:39,520 --> 00:37:42,680
Speaker 1: about six or seven sources where I look and see

514
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:45,920
Speaker 1: what's available. And that's how I found out the prosecutor's

515
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:49,880
Speaker 1: notes where we're in Rhode Island. Katherine Williams wrote a

516
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:52,239
Speaker 1: book where she was a centrally, a reporter right there

517
00:37:52,280 --> 00:37:55,719
Speaker 1: on the scene. She had so many interviews. There were

518
00:37:55,840 --> 00:37:59,960
Speaker 1: letters at the Fall River Historical Society from the original

519
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:05,080
Speaker 1: letters from Sarah Cornell who is our victim to the

520
00:38:05,160 --> 00:38:09,200
Speaker 1: suspect from avery, as well as cash of a lot

521
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:11,359
Speaker 1: of other things. So then you know, you put all

522
00:38:11,360 --> 00:38:13,040
Speaker 1: that stuff together, and then you of course didn't look

523
00:38:13,040 --> 00:38:16,680
Speaker 1: at the secondary sources, which are unreliable beyond belief. I mean,

524
00:38:16,760 --> 00:38:21,279
Speaker 1: eighteenth century nineteenth century newspapers are terrible, but they do

525
00:38:21,320 --> 00:38:24,040
Speaker 1: give a lot of social context and that's really helpful.

526
00:38:24,280 --> 00:38:26,960
Speaker 1: And then you know, I will often go to Happy Trust,

527
00:38:27,160 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 1: or I'll go to archive dot org and look and

528
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:33,120
Speaker 1: see what other kind of books are out there, you know,

529
00:38:33,239 --> 00:38:36,160
Speaker 1: from the time period. So there was a book from

530
00:38:36,840 --> 00:38:41,080
Speaker 1: the deputy sheriff who pursued the suspect from avery across

531
00:38:41,160 --> 00:38:44,440
Speaker 1: New England, and he thought so much of what he

532
00:38:44,480 --> 00:38:46,120
Speaker 1: did that he wrote a little book about it that

533
00:38:46,160 --> 00:38:49,279
Speaker 1: was really helpful. And then of course the trial transcripts.

534
00:38:49,360 --> 00:38:51,520
Speaker 1: It would be very difficult for me, I think, to

535
00:38:51,560 --> 00:38:53,480
Speaker 1: write a full book about something that didn't go to

536
00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:57,439
Speaker 1: trial in some way only because you know, that's where

537
00:38:57,480 --> 00:39:00,480
Speaker 1: you get the most information and what I would consider

538
00:39:00,520 --> 00:39:03,239
Speaker 1: it to be in many ways the most accurate, unbiased information.

539
00:39:04,040 --> 00:39:06,719
Speaker 1: Although I find trial transcripts in the eighteen hundreds to

540
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:08,840
Speaker 1: be very inconsistent because any of y'all who could go

541
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:10,960
Speaker 1: and sit there and take notes and then sell it

542
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:14,279
Speaker 1: as a trial transcript, so I would say that's it.

543
00:39:14,320 --> 00:39:15,920
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just like a mass like you take

544
00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:18,759
Speaker 1: a large, large net and you throw it out there

545
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:20,759
Speaker 1: and kind of keep whatever it is. And then I

546
00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:23,799
Speaker 1: usually have like a little folder that says unused, and

547
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:25,640
Speaker 1: I'll dump stuff in there that I think I'm not

548
00:39:25,680 --> 00:39:26,920
Speaker 1: going to use, and every once in a while I'll

549
00:39:26,960 --> 00:39:29,160
Speaker 1: check on it and pull stuff out of it. So

550
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:30,000
Speaker 1: there you go.

551
00:39:30,480 --> 00:39:33,359
Speaker 2: That's amazing. I love how organized it is. I'm just like,

552
00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:35,680
Speaker 2: this is where you know the worm hole took me,

553
00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:37,919
Speaker 2: and then you fill it in later. But that makes

554
00:39:37,920 --> 00:39:39,600
Speaker 2: a lot more sense and it's probably a lot more

555
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:42,240
Speaker 2: efficient of a move. And so thank you for sharing

556
00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:47,279
Speaker 2: that with us. I remember in the opening of the

557
00:39:47,320 --> 00:39:51,440
Speaker 2: book that we have of yours, you talk about Catherine

558
00:39:51,480 --> 00:39:56,840
Speaker 2: Williams's book and how you are noticing biases in some

559
00:39:57,000 --> 00:39:59,560
Speaker 2: of her writing. Can you just talk about that and

560
00:39:59,600 --> 00:40:01,440
Speaker 2: how to Well, like first tipped you off to that,

561
00:40:01,560 --> 00:40:02,400
Speaker 2: what'd you do about it?

562
00:40:02,840 --> 00:40:05,759
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the things that's unique about the book

563
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:07,600
Speaker 1: is that I kind of call her my well, I

564
00:40:07,600 --> 00:40:10,240
Speaker 1: do call her my co author, and I actually wanted

565
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:13,040
Speaker 1: her on the title of the book on the front page,

566
00:40:13,080 --> 00:40:15,360
Speaker 1: on the front cover, and my editor said, well, there

567
00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:18,760
Speaker 1: might be some legal issues with that. Who knows, because

568
00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:20,560
Speaker 1: you know, when I got her book, it was the

569
00:40:20,560 --> 00:40:24,120
Speaker 1: first of this kind written in America. It's amazing. I

570
00:40:24,120 --> 00:40:26,200
Speaker 1: had never seen anything like it, and I've gone very

571
00:40:26,200 --> 00:40:28,840
Speaker 1: far back to find narratives. And she had written this book,

572
00:40:29,000 --> 00:40:31,080
Speaker 1: you know, a couple hundred pages, and I thought, okay,

573
00:40:31,080 --> 00:40:32,920
Speaker 1: she's going to be a great source. And then the

574
00:40:32,920 --> 00:40:36,239
Speaker 1: more I read how it read like what I would do,

575
00:40:36,280 --> 00:40:38,480
Speaker 1: what a journalist did, I thought, okay, this is you know,

576
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:40,799
Speaker 1: this is going to be somebody who contributes so much.

577
00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:44,879
Speaker 1: Because Sarah's family wouldn't talk to anybody, barely the prosecutors

578
00:40:44,880 --> 00:40:48,080
Speaker 1: in the case, and she and they shared letters with Catherine,

579
00:40:48,480 --> 00:40:50,520
Speaker 1: you know, on and on. She was given access, this

580
00:40:50,600 --> 00:40:53,640
Speaker 1: incredible access to the factories where Sarah worked. She had

581
00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:56,840
Speaker 1: all of these great interviews with the people who Sarah

582
00:40:56,920 --> 00:40:58,879
Speaker 1: worked with. So she had this access that I had

583
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:01,520
Speaker 1: to acknowledge, I mean, and there was so much of it.

584
00:41:02,080 --> 00:41:05,000
Speaker 1: So I thought, okay, well i'll introduce her. And Sarah

585
00:41:05,120 --> 00:41:07,279
Speaker 1: or Catherine and I had a lot in common. You know,

586
00:41:07,320 --> 00:41:09,400
Speaker 1: we both were the heads of our household and we

587
00:41:09,400 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 1: were kind of slogging through writing and we just had

588
00:41:12,560 --> 00:41:15,239
Speaker 1: these sort of parallels, and so I related to her.

589
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:18,200
Speaker 1: But as I have to do, I have to chuck,

590
00:41:18,320 --> 00:41:20,359
Speaker 1: double check myself. And then of course, you know, I

591
00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:22,359
Speaker 1: immediately said, well, I have to double check her, and

592
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:24,680
Speaker 1: I haven't hard enough time double checking myself. Now I've

593
00:41:24,680 --> 00:41:26,439
Speaker 1: got to add this lady into it, who I can't

594
00:41:26,480 --> 00:41:29,560
Speaker 1: talk to because she died in eighteen seventy two. So

595
00:41:29,760 --> 00:41:32,360
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going through everything, and it just starts

596
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:35,800
Speaker 1: to occur to me that when you read Catherine's narrative,

597
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:38,480
Speaker 1: which is beautiful, she talks about standing in the moonlight

598
00:41:39,680 --> 00:41:42,680
Speaker 1: where Sarah died and going to her burial ground. I mean,

599
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:44,840
Speaker 1: you know, all of this stuff, and it's very poetic,

600
00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:48,279
Speaker 1: but it's also very factual. But within I would say,

601
00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:51,239
Speaker 1: the first three or four pages of her book, it

602
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:54,520
Speaker 1: is very clear that she thinks this Methodist minister is

603
00:41:54,520 --> 00:41:57,200
Speaker 1: guilty of murder. And I wasn't so sure. That was

604
00:41:57,200 --> 00:41:58,959
Speaker 1: the reason I was interested in the book. I wanted

605
00:41:58,960 --> 00:42:02,200
Speaker 1: to re examine. It rose a lot about handwriting and notes,

606
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:05,200
Speaker 1: anonymous notes, which you know, were the reason that Sarah

607
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:07,560
Speaker 1: showed up at that place to begin with where she died,

608
00:42:08,200 --> 00:42:10,040
Speaker 1: and so I really, you know, I had to hire

609
00:42:10,320 --> 00:42:13,319
Speaker 1: handwriting expert, which is not cheap, by the way, and

610
00:42:13,520 --> 00:42:14,759
Speaker 1: you know I had to talk to all of these

611
00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:17,040
Speaker 1: other a not forensic, not expert. I had to figure

612
00:42:17,040 --> 00:42:20,680
Speaker 1: out all this stuff. But Catherine was so sure. And

613
00:42:20,719 --> 00:42:23,040
Speaker 1: I teach a true crime podcast class, and you know,

614
00:42:23,040 --> 00:42:26,080
Speaker 1: I always talk to them about the intent. Don't just

615
00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:29,240
Speaker 1: listen to what the story is. Why is the content creator,

616
00:42:29,320 --> 00:42:33,239
Speaker 1: whether it's TikTok or HBO or everything in between, or me?

617
00:42:33,840 --> 00:42:36,719
Speaker 1: Why am I telling the story in this way? Why

618
00:42:36,800 --> 00:42:38,960
Speaker 1: is the victim framed in this way? And why is

619
00:42:38,960 --> 00:42:41,239
Speaker 1: the killer framed in this way? And I wanted to

620
00:42:41,280 --> 00:42:43,360
Speaker 1: know why she was framing it for Avery as the killer,

621
00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:47,000
Speaker 1: just straight away from the beginning. And so that's when

622
00:42:47,000 --> 00:42:49,600
Speaker 1: I started to think, Okay, well this is problematic, and

623
00:42:49,640 --> 00:42:52,880
Speaker 1: I am not used to putting this in first person,

624
00:42:52,960 --> 00:42:54,480
Speaker 1: and this kind of you know, my book kind of

625
00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:58,719
Speaker 1: goes back and forth. But when I am double checking myself,

626
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:02,480
Speaker 1: I am also double checking Catherine, and I acknowledge, you know,

627
00:43:02,680 --> 00:43:05,719
Speaker 1: pretty quickly in the book that there are some things

628
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:08,880
Speaker 1: that she's done wrong that are inconsistencies. But I kind

629
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:12,279
Speaker 1: of figure out why she's doing it, and so much

630
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:15,759
Speaker 1: of it is to frame her victim, which you know

631
00:43:16,000 --> 00:43:19,680
Speaker 1: came about in the eighteen thirties. Her victim needed to

632
00:43:19,719 --> 00:43:22,920
Speaker 1: be the perfect victim, no matter what Sarah had actually

633
00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:26,480
Speaker 1: done in life. She had stolen several times. But then

634
00:43:26,520 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 1: I found out Catherine conflated all of these you know,

635
00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:32,040
Speaker 1: thieving incidents into one because oh it was a simple mistake,

636
00:43:33,120 --> 00:43:35,400
Speaker 1: and in the eighteen hundreds that would have been unacceptable.

637
00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:40,960
Speaker 1: So Catherine, I think, really needed Sarah Cornell to be flawless.

638
00:43:41,719 --> 00:43:43,799
Speaker 1: And we don't do that. I mean, that's what journalists do.

639
00:43:43,920 --> 00:43:46,280
Speaker 1: But if you read her book, it is the gospel.

640
00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:48,320
Speaker 1: It has taken his fact, and the people in the

641
00:43:48,360 --> 00:43:50,160
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds did that when they read her book. It

642
00:43:50,160 --> 00:43:52,160
Speaker 1: went through two different printings, so a lot of people

643
00:43:52,200 --> 00:43:54,319
Speaker 1: read it and it was taken his fact, and I

644
00:43:54,360 --> 00:43:56,760
Speaker 1: needed to correct the record, no matter what the record

645
00:43:56,800 --> 00:43:59,000
Speaker 1: reflected about Sarah Cornell.

646
00:44:00,120 --> 00:44:02,120
Speaker 2: So one of the things that I thought was super

647
00:44:02,200 --> 00:44:05,000
Speaker 2: interesting and that I thought it in the beginning, and

648
00:44:05,040 --> 00:44:07,239
Speaker 2: then you circle back to it at the end as

649
00:44:07,680 --> 00:44:11,120
Speaker 2: it's so objective, right, you're an incredible journalist. But at

650
00:44:11,160 --> 00:44:15,680
Speaker 2: this time we had a coroner's jury of appointed like

651
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:19,160
Speaker 2: men about town who had a ton of integrity but

652
00:44:19,360 --> 00:44:23,120
Speaker 2: no real medical knowledge. And it seemed to me and

653
00:44:23,160 --> 00:44:25,799
Speaker 2: I think it seemed dot three quarters the way through

654
00:44:25,840 --> 00:44:29,600
Speaker 2: that the matrons, the group of matrons who dressed the

655
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:34,359
Speaker 2: body really function more like literally as the medical examiners.

656
00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:35,160
Speaker 1: Yeah.

657
00:44:35,200 --> 00:44:37,560
Speaker 2: And they may not have had formal training either, a

658
00:44:37,640 --> 00:44:40,040
Speaker 2: formal education either, but they did have a lot of

659
00:44:40,080 --> 00:44:45,759
Speaker 2: firsthand experience treating bodies. So is the reason why they

660
00:44:45,800 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 2: were not the ones to determine the cause of death?

661
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:51,000
Speaker 2: Is it just sexism or is there like another reason?

662
00:44:51,760 --> 00:44:54,279
Speaker 1: No, it's sexism, And I would and I would, I mean,

663
00:44:54,320 --> 00:44:57,239
Speaker 1: I think you were being incredibly generous to the men

664
00:44:57,320 --> 00:44:59,520
Speaker 1: who were able to be on this corner stury. It's

665
00:44:59,520 --> 00:45:01,160
Speaker 1: like you had to own a land, a little bit

666
00:45:01,200 --> 00:45:03,760
Speaker 1: of land, and that was it. And actually the next

667
00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:06,800
Speaker 1: day they had to replace two of the members of

668
00:45:06,800 --> 00:45:09,120
Speaker 1: the corner's jury because they found out they didn't have land.

669
00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:12,120
Speaker 1: So that was it. So they found these two new people.

670
00:45:12,520 --> 00:45:14,040
Speaker 1: So it took nothing. You just had to be a

671
00:45:14,080 --> 00:45:17,680
Speaker 1: man in decent standing, not even good standing, and that's

672
00:45:17,880 --> 00:45:20,040
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's still the case. I mean, you know,

673
00:45:20,120 --> 00:45:23,120
Speaker 1: corner's juries don't have to have a medical background. So

674
00:45:24,640 --> 00:45:28,040
Speaker 1: you know, when what was very very common in the

675
00:45:28,040 --> 00:45:31,480
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds is that when a woman died,

676
00:45:31,880 --> 00:45:34,560
Speaker 1: she was not undressed, she was not strip naked in

677
00:45:34,560 --> 00:45:38,359
Speaker 1: front of men. That would be very, very improper, and

678
00:45:38,560 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 1: it would have to be an extreme circumstance, especially if

679
00:45:42,040 --> 00:45:46,520
Speaker 1: they thought that this was a suicide. And when Sarah

680
00:45:46,600 --> 00:45:49,640
Speaker 1: is found hanging from this pole and it's freezing, and

681
00:45:49,719 --> 00:45:54,279
Speaker 1: she looks sort of content and at peace, you know,

682
00:45:54,360 --> 00:45:57,800
Speaker 1: she's wearing clothing, her shoes are neat next to her.

683
00:45:58,640 --> 00:46:01,200
Speaker 1: Her physician says, I think this is a suicide. She

684
00:46:01,360 --> 00:46:03,600
Speaker 1: was pregnant and she was going through a lot of turmoil.

685
00:46:03,960 --> 00:46:07,960
Speaker 1: So that was that they weren't highly motivated to break

686
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:11,400
Speaker 1: these rules of society. These men and stand around and

687
00:46:11,440 --> 00:46:14,080
Speaker 1: look at it, a naked dead woman in a barn,

688
00:46:14,920 --> 00:46:17,240
Speaker 1: and so you know, they just ruled it very quickly

689
00:46:17,280 --> 00:46:20,680
Speaker 1: as suicide. And then when the matrons, whose whole purpose

690
00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:24,919
Speaker 1: for a couple of hundred years has been to take

691
00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:27,920
Speaker 1: the clothes off the woman and then you know, clean

692
00:46:27,960 --> 00:46:31,160
Speaker 1: her and dress her properly for burial, which now I

693
00:46:31,160 --> 00:46:34,399
Speaker 1: think would probably be a funeral director's job. They would

694
00:46:34,400 --> 00:46:36,960
Speaker 1: be the ones that would see, you know, what happened.

695
00:46:37,080 --> 00:46:40,800
Speaker 1: And so when the matrons did that with Sarah Cornell

696
00:46:40,920 --> 00:46:43,759
Speaker 1: preparing her for a quick burial the next day. There's

697
00:46:43,760 --> 00:46:47,360
Speaker 1: no embalming involved in the early eighteen hundred, so this

698
00:46:47,360 --> 00:46:50,280
Speaker 1: one had to be pretty quick, which was a challenge,

699
00:46:50,280 --> 00:46:52,400
Speaker 1: I'm sure, because we're talking about fall River in the

700
00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:56,960
Speaker 1: you know, the in December, and so digging the ground

701
00:46:56,960 --> 00:46:59,080
Speaker 1: would have been hard. And so when they take all

702
00:46:59,080 --> 00:47:01,440
Speaker 1: her clothes off and they start to you know, prepare her,

703
00:47:01,520 --> 00:47:05,960
Speaker 1: they see immediately what one woman described as rash violence.

704
00:47:06,640 --> 00:47:09,279
Speaker 1: It was just very clear that she had been in

705
00:47:09,480 --> 00:47:11,640
Speaker 1: the fight for her life. But the men didn't see

706
00:47:11,680 --> 00:47:13,480
Speaker 1: it because they saw none of it because she was

707
00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:16,560
Speaker 1: fully clothed. Right, So it was women. It was the

708
00:47:16,600 --> 00:47:19,920
Speaker 1: women who sounded the alarm initially. Right, this would have

709
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:21,920
Speaker 1: been a suicide. This would not have been a book,

710
00:47:22,120 --> 00:47:24,560
Speaker 1: and Catherine wouldn't have had a book unless it was

711
00:47:24,640 --> 00:47:26,840
Speaker 1: not for these women. And I'm always looking for women

712
00:47:27,320 --> 00:47:29,400
Speaker 1: as heroes in my books, and they also happen to

713
00:47:29,440 --> 00:47:33,120
Speaker 1: be the villains in this book because later on, you know,

714
00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:36,960
Speaker 1: there are many many women who Sarah thought were her friends.

715
00:47:37,480 --> 00:47:40,200
Speaker 1: Other Methodists who worked in the same factories, would take

716
00:47:40,239 --> 00:47:43,160
Speaker 1: the stand and lie to make sure that their Methodist

717
00:47:43,280 --> 00:47:47,040
Speaker 1: minister wasn't convicted of murder, so I have good women

718
00:47:47,080 --> 00:47:48,320
Speaker 1: and bad women in this book.

719
00:47:49,400 --> 00:47:54,440
Speaker 2: Nathaniel Hawthorne used this case as the basis ish for

720
00:47:54,560 --> 00:47:58,200
Speaker 2: his novel The Scarlet Letter. So obviously he took some

721
00:47:58,320 --> 00:48:02,080
Speaker 2: artistic license a lot with the story from true crime

722
00:48:02,120 --> 00:48:04,920
Speaker 2: to novel. You know, the most important distinction being like,

723
00:48:05,280 --> 00:48:09,840
Speaker 2: there's no murder in The Scarlett Letter. Talking about intent,

724
00:48:10,520 --> 00:48:13,160
Speaker 2: Why do you think he made the changes that he made.

725
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:16,360
Speaker 2: Was it like for his audience or was it not

726
00:48:16,480 --> 00:48:19,040
Speaker 2: okay to talk about the murder or what do you think?

727
00:48:19,560 --> 00:48:23,400
Speaker 1: I think that with Sarah's story, it's very clear that

728
00:48:23,440 --> 00:48:26,600
Speaker 1: this was sort of the basis for hester Prinne, for

729
00:48:26,880 --> 00:48:30,360
Speaker 1: the most famous I think heroin ever in American literature.

730
00:48:31,080 --> 00:48:33,719
Speaker 1: And you know, this woman who is demonized because she,

731
00:48:34,080 --> 00:48:36,279
Speaker 1: you know, has a child out of wedlock and she

732
00:48:36,560 --> 00:48:41,160
Speaker 1: cannot live up to society's very strict expectations of women.

733
00:48:41,880 --> 00:48:45,960
Speaker 1: And you know there are other women who certainly, you know,

734
00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:49,480
Speaker 1: inspired Hawthorne. It seems like in this book too. I mean,

735
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:51,520
Speaker 1: I think it is the general plight of what I

736
00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:54,960
Speaker 1: just said, women in these societies in the eighteen hundreds,

737
00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:58,200
Speaker 1: in the seventeen hundreds and the nineteen hundreds who were

738
00:48:58,719 --> 00:49:01,680
Speaker 1: not it was impossible to live up to these expectations.

739
00:49:02,680 --> 00:49:06,720
Speaker 1: The parallels are pretty surprising in a lot of ways

740
00:49:06,760 --> 00:49:09,719
Speaker 1: for me. You know, you have Sarah Cornell who is

741
00:49:10,000 --> 00:49:14,200
Speaker 1: pregnant and she ends up dead because she has begun

742
00:49:14,239 --> 00:49:19,000
Speaker 1: to demand financial support, child support essentially from the man

743
00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:23,759
Speaker 1: who sexually assaulted her, something that always gets rewritten incorrectly.

744
00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:25,719
Speaker 1: I think when I read this story is that they

745
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:28,399
Speaker 1: had an illicit affair. It's not what happened. She says

746
00:49:28,440 --> 00:49:32,120
Speaker 1: that he sexually assaulted me, and I absolutely believe that

747
00:49:32,239 --> 00:49:34,960
Speaker 1: she wrote that to her family, and you know, she

748
00:49:35,000 --> 00:49:36,640
Speaker 1: said it to her family. She had no reason to

749
00:49:36,640 --> 00:49:41,440
Speaker 1: lie about any of that. So I think that, you know,

750
00:49:41,480 --> 00:49:44,279
Speaker 1: you've got these parallels between Hester Prynne, who has a

751
00:49:44,360 --> 00:49:48,120
Speaker 1: child out of weblock involved with a minister, and Sarah

752
00:49:48,160 --> 00:49:51,279
Speaker 1: Cornell has been sexually assaulted by a minister. They're both

753
00:49:51,360 --> 00:49:54,080
Speaker 1: quote unquote factory girls. They're both women who you know,

754
00:49:54,400 --> 00:49:58,839
Speaker 1: use their trade, they can they're weavers or knitters, and

755
00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:03,200
Speaker 1: Sarah was a taylor and they're both very altruistic. You know,

756
00:50:03,239 --> 00:50:05,520
Speaker 1: they do things for people who are not very nice

757
00:50:05,560 --> 00:50:08,239
Speaker 1: to them. You know, there's Hester Prinne who because she

758
00:50:08,239 --> 00:50:11,200
Speaker 1: wears the scarlet letter looks down, you know, people don't

759
00:50:11,239 --> 00:50:14,280
Speaker 1: make eye contact with her. But then those same people

760
00:50:14,480 --> 00:50:16,680
Speaker 1: ask her in the dead of night for help and

761
00:50:16,760 --> 00:50:20,920
Speaker 1: she gives it. And Sarah Cornell from several stories, had

762
00:50:20,920 --> 00:50:22,400
Speaker 1: done the same thing. There was one where she was

763
00:50:22,400 --> 00:50:24,640
Speaker 1: getting kicked out of a boarding house because somebody thought

764
00:50:24,680 --> 00:50:27,320
Speaker 1: she was flirting with a man would have been inappropriate.

765
00:50:28,120 --> 00:50:30,680
Speaker 1: And there was a sick person in this house, and

766
00:50:30,760 --> 00:50:32,440
Speaker 1: Sarah said, I'll take care of them, even though she

767
00:50:32,480 --> 00:50:35,239
Speaker 1: was getting kicked out. So, you know, the parallels are

768
00:50:35,239 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 1: pretty amazing, I think, and I think more importantly the

769
00:50:38,200 --> 00:50:41,080
Speaker 1: academics who have really dug into these parallels, who I

770
00:50:41,160 --> 00:50:44,160
Speaker 1: was able to, you know, use some of their material.

771
00:50:45,320 --> 00:50:52,280
Speaker 1: I think that this is Sarah Cornell was, who Hester

772
00:50:52,360 --> 00:50:55,319
Speaker 1: Prynne was, who Sarah Cornell could have been if things

773
00:50:55,320 --> 00:50:58,080
Speaker 1: had gone differently. She planned to keep the baby. She

774
00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:01,000
Speaker 1: told her family how much child so or how much

775
00:51:01,400 --> 00:51:03,360
Speaker 1: daycare would be, and so she could keep working in

776
00:51:03,360 --> 00:51:06,400
Speaker 1: the factory. She seemed excited about all of this, and

777
00:51:06,440 --> 00:51:09,760
Speaker 1: she was very happy when she left for this meeting

778
00:51:09,840 --> 00:51:12,560
Speaker 1: with an anonymous person because she was going to get

779
00:51:12,600 --> 00:51:16,200
Speaker 1: money finally, And so I think then you look at

780
00:51:16,239 --> 00:51:18,440
Speaker 1: hester Prerinn, who eventually at the end sort of fits

781
00:51:18,440 --> 00:51:22,120
Speaker 1: into society one way or the other, and under her

782
00:51:22,760 --> 00:51:25,000
Speaker 1: other's terms, but also under her own terms, she takes

783
00:51:25,000 --> 00:51:27,040
Speaker 1: a lot of control. And I think that could have

784
00:51:27,120 --> 00:51:30,640
Speaker 1: been Sarah had things not gone differently. And I mean,

785
00:51:30,680 --> 00:51:34,480
Speaker 1: I just think the biggest regret ever, is that she

786
00:51:34,840 --> 00:51:38,200
Speaker 1: left without somebody going with her to that situation with him,

787
00:51:38,520 --> 00:51:40,520
Speaker 1: And that to me is not blaming the victim. That's

788
00:51:40,520 --> 00:51:43,359
Speaker 1: simply to say she just did not know, and it's

789
00:51:43,400 --> 00:51:46,040
Speaker 1: so upsetting because then she ended up dead.

790
00:51:47,239 --> 00:51:48,880
Speaker 2: Is there anything I should have asked you that I

791
00:51:48,920 --> 00:51:51,080
Speaker 2: didn't like? What do you want to talk about when

792
00:51:51,239 --> 00:51:53,240
Speaker 2: you come on interviews to promote your book?

793
00:51:54,040 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think it's the main message I

794
00:51:56,920 --> 00:51:59,560
Speaker 1: always told my journalism students at the University of Texas.

795
00:51:59,680 --> 00:52:02,640
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's the why are we doing this

796
00:52:02,680 --> 00:52:05,120
Speaker 1: story now? And I think you've had to answer that

797
00:52:05,200 --> 00:52:07,720
Speaker 1: question for your editor or your agent, and I always

798
00:52:07,719 --> 00:52:10,960
Speaker 1: have to answer that question. Why why would an audience

799
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:13,400
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five care about a story that happened

800
00:52:13,440 --> 00:52:16,719
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty two? And you know, for me, the

801
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:21,080
Speaker 1: answer is that Sarah was vulnerable, she was pregnant, she

802
00:52:21,320 --> 00:52:27,240
Speaker 1: was demanding, you know, support from the man who who

803
00:52:27,400 --> 00:52:30,560
Speaker 1: was the father of this child, and when she finally

804
00:52:30,560 --> 00:52:35,400
Speaker 1: stood up for herself, she ended up dead. And that

805
00:52:35,560 --> 00:52:38,759
Speaker 1: happens now, and it's happened then. I mean, you know,

806
00:52:38,840 --> 00:52:41,480
Speaker 1: I work in historical crime. Some of it's even more

807
00:52:41,480 --> 00:52:44,279
Speaker 1: recent though, and it's a lot, an awful lot about

808
00:52:44,320 --> 00:52:47,560
Speaker 1: stories about women who are murdered when they're pregnant or

809
00:52:47,640 --> 00:52:50,080
Speaker 1: right after they have children. I mean I just dozens

810
00:52:50,120 --> 00:52:51,840
Speaker 1: and dozens of them. And you know, we see that

811
00:52:51,880 --> 00:52:55,719
Speaker 1: Colonel Lacy Peterson as a really high profile example, you know,

812
00:52:55,800 --> 00:52:57,879
Speaker 1: Shenan Watts from Colorado.

813
00:52:58,080 --> 00:52:58,239
Speaker 2: There.

814
00:52:58,560 --> 00:53:01,719
Speaker 1: The list goes on and on, and you know, I

815
00:53:01,800 --> 00:53:03,880
Speaker 1: was so curious about it. I looked it up. And

816
00:53:04,480 --> 00:53:08,400
Speaker 1: the main reason that women who are pregnant die in

817
00:53:08,440 --> 00:53:13,120
Speaker 1: this country right now is murder. It's not infection. I mean,

818
00:53:13,160 --> 00:53:15,200
Speaker 1: you know, probably a couple hundred years ago is infection,

819
00:53:15,320 --> 00:53:18,880
Speaker 1: but it's not infection. It's murder, and postpartum it's murder.

820
00:53:19,239 --> 00:53:21,440
Speaker 1: So and of course we have to assume it's often

821
00:53:21,520 --> 00:53:26,280
Speaker 1: by mostly by their partners. So there were Sarah Cornell's

822
00:53:26,360 --> 00:53:29,600
Speaker 1: before Sarah was found hanging from that pole, and there

823
00:53:29,640 --> 00:53:32,480
Speaker 1: are Sarah's more to come. It just doesn't stop. And

824
00:53:32,560 --> 00:53:34,880
Speaker 1: so when people say to me, why should I care

825
00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:38,400
Speaker 1: about somebody from eighteen thirty two? You know what makes

826
00:53:39,000 --> 00:53:42,000
Speaker 1: why did you want to tell this story? It's because

827
00:53:42,040 --> 00:53:46,240
Speaker 1: the reason that people kill, the reason that people are victims,

828
00:53:46,320 --> 00:53:49,240
Speaker 1: is no different in eighteen thirty two than it is now.

829
00:53:49,440 --> 00:53:52,520
Speaker 1: It's the same people. The family annihilator, like Chris Watts

830
00:53:52,600 --> 00:53:54,680
Speaker 1: just a couple of years ago in Colorado, is the

831
00:53:54,719 --> 00:53:57,640
Speaker 1: same as John List in the sixties who killed his

832
00:53:57,680 --> 00:53:59,799
Speaker 1: whole family. Who was the same as Eugene Burt here

833
00:54:00,040 --> 00:54:02,480
Speaker 1: austin Texas in the eighteen hundreds, who killed his own family.

834
00:54:02,840 --> 00:54:05,400
Speaker 1: They all say the same thing. It's all the same excuses.

835
00:54:05,560 --> 00:54:08,400
Speaker 1: It's they are the same people. And so, you know,

836
00:54:08,520 --> 00:54:11,480
Speaker 1: to learn from Sarah, if we can learn anything and

837
00:54:11,560 --> 00:54:16,759
Speaker 1: at least understand what makes people vulnerable. What you know,

838
00:54:16,840 --> 00:54:20,120
Speaker 1: I mean, anger is fear and what is that that

839
00:54:20,280 --> 00:54:24,080
Speaker 1: drove eform Avery to do this. I think all of

840
00:54:24,080 --> 00:54:27,040
Speaker 1: that is valuable information. Yes, it's from the eighteen hundreds,

841
00:54:27,080 --> 00:54:28,719
Speaker 1: but this is you know, this is a story that

842
00:54:29,280 --> 00:54:32,120
Speaker 1: reverberates throughout history and I think that's important. This is

843
00:54:32,120 --> 00:54:34,440
Speaker 1: not about a battle. To me, it's not a battle

844
00:54:34,440 --> 00:54:38,400
Speaker 1: between mainstream Protestants who hated the Methodists and the Methodists

845
00:54:38,440 --> 00:54:40,480
Speaker 1: are trying to protect their reputation. I read that a

846
00:54:40,520 --> 00:54:42,840
Speaker 1: lot in the context of this case, and that, to me,

847
00:54:42,960 --> 00:54:46,120
Speaker 1: is not the story. The story is this woman finally

848
00:54:46,160 --> 00:54:49,200
Speaker 1: standing up for herself and then she ends up dead

849
00:54:49,280 --> 00:54:52,600
Speaker 1: hanging from a haystack pole by herself on a desolate

850
00:54:52,680 --> 00:54:56,520
Speaker 1: farm in below freezing temperatures in Fall River, Massachusetts.

851
00:54:57,760 --> 00:55:01,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, what a takeaway if you can see like I'm

852
00:55:01,520 --> 00:55:03,560
Speaker 2: not an easy crier, like my eyes are wondering up

853
00:55:03,600 --> 00:55:06,479
Speaker 2: at this story. But thank you so much for coming

854
00:55:06,520 --> 00:55:10,200
Speaker 2: on to our show. Love talking to you always. Where

855
00:55:10,200 --> 00:55:11,680
Speaker 2: can our listeners find.

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Speaker 1: You well, Instagram and Facebook is where I am, and

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00:55:17,080 --> 00:55:19,759
Speaker 1: then you know you can post stuff or whatever and

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00:55:19,800 --> 00:55:21,800
Speaker 1: you can reach out to me on I have a website,

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Speaker 1: you know, Kate Winklare Dawson, So you know those places.

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Speaker 2: Okay, great, We'll make sure to link to them in

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Speaker 2: our show notes. And thank you again so much for

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Speaker 2: coming on.

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00:55:31,040 --> 00:55:32,520
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

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00:55:43,560 --> 00:55:46,440
Speaker 2: I'd like to thank Kate Winkler Dawson again. Both for

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00:55:46,520 --> 00:55:48,400
Speaker 2: taking the time to talk to me and for writing

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00:55:48,480 --> 00:55:52,680
Speaker 2: this episode's key source, The Center's All Bow two authors

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Speaker 2: One Murder and the Real Hester Prynne Listeners. This is

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00:55:57,120 --> 00:56:00,319
Speaker 2: our last episode of season two, so i'd also to

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00:56:00,360 --> 00:56:03,439
Speaker 2: thank you for sticking with me this long. I hope

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00:56:03,440 --> 00:56:07,279
Speaker 2: you've enjoyed these women centered stories around true crimes. If

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00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:09,239
Speaker 2: this seasonin't enough of them for you, come on and

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00:56:09,280 --> 00:56:21,080
Speaker 2: follow me on Instagram, where I'll keep going, probably forever.

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00:56:22,600 --> 00:56:25,440
Speaker 2: The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is a production

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00:56:25,560 --> 00:56:29,560
Speaker 2: of Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, and I hosted

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00:56:29,560 --> 00:56:33,239
Speaker 2: this episode. I also wrote this episode. Our show is

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00:56:33,280 --> 00:56:38,280
Speaker 2: produced by Leokulp and edited by Antonio Enriquez. Theme music

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00:56:38,360 --> 00:56:43,160
Speaker 2: by Tyler Cash, Executive producer Scott Waxman, and one more

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00:56:43,160 --> 00:56:46,440
Speaker 2: thing before I go, If you haven't already, I'll love

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00:56:46,480 --> 00:56:49,320
Speaker 2: you forever. If you get my true crime book Madam Clean,

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00:56:49,760 --> 00:56:53,800
Speaker 2: The Life and Crimes of Harlem's underground racketeer Stephanie Sinclair,

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00:56:54,400 --> 00:56:56,360
Speaker 2: there's a link to do it at your favorite retailer

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00:56:56,480 --> 00:57:07,040
Speaker 2: in our show's notes