Foul Play: Crime Series

Season 40: America's 250th -- fifty true crime stories from fifty states. Delaware, 1891. A headless body in acommercial canal, the head never recovered. Montana Territory, 1889. A drifter murders five settlers on the openprairie, dumps them in a river, and dies before trial. His coffin, when checked, was empty.Two waterways. Two states. Two historical murders where the water held the dead and refused to give themback.The Victims**Noah Benson** was pulled from the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal in 1891 -- a headless body floatingin one of America's busiest commercial waterways. In an era before fingerprints, dental records, or circulatedphotographs, the human face was the only reliable means of identification. Benson's had been taken from him.That investigators identified him at all, through physical markings or recognition by people who knew him, speaksto the determination of a county with no state police force and no forensic capability beyond what constablescould see with their own eyes.**Edward and Lucina Crowell Biggs**, **Joseph and Sarah Ellen Jolliff Kurtz**, and six-year-old **Ida Schauss**were settlers heading northeast from Helena toward the gold-mining town of Maiden in the Judith Mountains.Ida had been formally adopted by the Kurtzes in January 1889, just months before the journey. Her biologicalfather, Julius Schaus of Helena, recently widowed, had placed her in the couple's care through a formal adoptiongranted by Judge Howey. Sarah Kurtz, a farmer's wife of fifteen years from Iowa, knew what it took to start over.She did not know that the man offering to guide them through the Judith Basin was planning to kill them all.The CrimesIn Delaware, the canal that ran fourteen miles through the flatlands of northern Delaware -- connecting theDelaware River to the Chesapeake Bay since 1829 -- gave up Benson's body but kept the one piece that matteredmost. His head was never found. A murder trial followed, drawing weeks of coverage from the *Every Evening*,the *Morning News*, and the *Evening Journal* out of Wilmington. The prosecution had to prove who Bensonwas, prove he had been murdered, and prove who did it, all without the single piece of evidence that could havesimplified everything.In Montana Territory, **James Wilber** -- also known as Jack Gilding -- met the five settlers in Helena and offeredto guide them to Maiden. The last person outside the party to see them alive was John Beck at Castle Butteon June 7, 1889. That evening or night, Wilber shot all five with a Winchester rifle. He loaded the bodies intothe wagon, drove through open country in daylight, and dumped them in the Judith River at Samples Crossing,roughly twenty miles south of Lewistown.The InvestigationsDelaware's law enforcement in 1891 relied on county constables and local sheriffs. There was no state police force(Delaware State Police would not be founded until 1923). Investigators worked without fingerprinting technology,forensic pathology, or the victim's head. The trial reportedly concluded with a verdict, but the details remainburied in the Delaware state archives and on microfilm at the Wilmington Public Library -- waiting for whoevergoes looking.In Montana, a cowboy from the Moccasin roundup found a woman's body in the Judith River on June 15. Withindays, all five bodies had surfaced. The *Fergus County Argus* declared on June 20 that never in the history ofMontana had such a crime been committed. Sheriff Clary traced Wilber through a horse trade at James Wood'sranch near Stanford. Deputy Jo. Hamilton and Sheriff Downing of Cascade County tracked him to Great Fallsand arrested him. On the night of Friday, June 21, 1889, Wilber hanged himself in his cell with his own belt. Therewas no trial.Historical ContextDelaware in 1891 maintained one of the harshest criminal justice systems in the nation. The whipping post,known locally as "Red Hannah," was still in active use -- disproportionately against Black defendants -- and wouldremain so until 1972. The canal corridor was a place between identities: Major Philip Reybold and his five sonshad once planted over 117,000 peach trees across two states, but peach yellows disease was killing the groves.The canal itself would later be purchased by the federal government, widened, deepened, and converted from alock-controlled passage to a sea-level waterway. Even the crime scene was consumed.Montana was admitted as the 41st state on November 8, 1889 -- five months after the murders. The Wilber casewas the last great crime of the territorial era. And one final mystery remained: when someone later checkedWilber's grave at Highland Cemetery in Great Falls, the coffin was empty. The body was never found. A man whotried to make five people disappear into a river himself disappeared from his own grave.

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Season 40: America's 250th — 50 states, 50 forgotten crimes. Two communities. Two murders decades apart.In the Arkansas Ozarks, a town rushed to convict a man on circumstantial evidence and may have hanged thewrong person. In northern Michigan, an entire town conspired to kill its tyrannical founder — then said nothingfor sixteen years.In 1912, eighteen-year-old Ella Barham walked to a post office in the Arkansas hills to buy cloth for a hat. Shenever came home. Her dismembered remains were found scattered across a hillside that night. The communityblamed a neighbor named Odus Davidson. He was hanged within nine months. His gravestone still declares hewas innocent.The VictimsElla Lillian Ethel Barham was born February 16, 1894, in the Pleasant Ridge community of Boone County, Arkansas— a scattering of homesteads along Crooked Creek in the Ozark hills. Her father, George Solomon Barham, wasone of the largest landowners in the county. Ella was eighteen, described by neighbors as popular and well-liked.On the morning of November 21, 1912, her world measured in creek crossings and ridge trails. Her biggest concernwas a hat.In Michigan, the victim was Albert Molitor — born 1842 in Ludwigsburg, Germany, founder of Rogers City andthe political architect of Presque Isle County. He built the sawmill, the store, the boarding house, the post office.He paid workers in scrip redeemable only at his store. He declared himself "the King of Presque Isle County." Hewas thirty-three when fifteen men decided he had to die. But the shooting that killed Molitor on August 23, 1875,also killed Edward Sullivan — a clerk working late, a bystander, a man whose death nobody conspired to avenge.The CrimesIn Arkansas, Ella Barham's remains were found around 9:00 p.m. by two boys and a hunter on a hillside south ofCrooked Creek. She had been decapitated, severed at the torso, both legs removed, and nearly every bone in herskull crushed. Doctors Taylor and Lair determined she had been sexually assaulted, possibly by more than oneperson. Neighbor Odus Davidson — twenty-nine, known to have expressed romantic interest Ella rejected —was arrested within days. His seventeen-year-old brother Lair was taken in as an accomplice.In Michigan, buckshot from at least two guns tore through the mill office where Albert Molitor and clerk EdwardSullivan worked. Fifteen to twenty pieces of shot struck Molitor in the back and side. Sullivan took a blast throughthe jaw that severed his tongue. Sullivan died the next day on a boat to Alpena. Molitor lingered approximatelythree weeks before dying in Detroit.The InvestigationsThe Davidson case was built entirely on circumstantial evidence: threatening statements Odus made after Ella'srejection, red pepper-filled socks dropped from a Davidson window to confuse bloodhounds, a bloody axe at thefamily woodpile, and Davidson's reluctance to join the search party. No confession. No eyewitness. No forensicevidence that would meet modern standards. The trial before Judge George Reed lasted five days. Davidson wasnot present when the jury returned its verdict of murder in the first degree after four hours of deliberation. Hewas sentenced to hang.Attorney E.G. Mitchell — a former circuit court judge — fought the conviction through the Arkansas SupremeCourt and lobbied the governor for clemency. Every effort failed. On August 11, 1913, Odus Davidson was hangedin Harrison before a crowd numbering in the thousands. His final words were a declaration of innocence. Therope was cut into pieces and thrown to the crowd as souvenirs.In Rogers City, there was no investigation — not a real one. Nobody particularly wanted to find the killers. Forsixteen years the community kept its silence. In 1891, farmer William Repke turned himself in and named fourteenother conspirators. He identified Hermann Hoeft, a rival store owner, as the mastermind and Andrew Banks asthe orchestrator. When authorities tried to seat a jury in Presque Isle County, they summoned, examined, anddismissed 252 prospective jurors. The entire eligible pool. The trial moved to Alpena County. Five men wereconvicted and sentenced to life with hard labor at Jackson State Prison. Approximately five years later, thegovernor pardoned four; the fifth was pardoned roughly two and a half years after that.Historical ContextBoth cases reveal how justice operated in isolated American communities before professional law enforcementand modern forensics. In Boone County, Arkansas, grief and certainty replaced due process. In Presque IsleCounty, Michigan, a community decided collectively that a killing was deserved — and the state eventuallyagreed by pardoning the convicted men. Davidson's appeal has been cited as legal precedent in numerous cases,including the 1915 Leo Frank appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Season 40: America's 250th Anniversary — fifty states, fifty crimes, two hundred and fifty years. This double--feature episode covers Kansas and Virginia.A city marshal with a gold-engraved Winchester and a secret past as a wanted killer. A mountain doctor whopreached Sunday sermons and planned a massacre on a mountain road. Two men who wore badges. Twocommunities that trusted them. Two moments when the authority collapsed and the man underneath it wasexposed. This is the story of Henry Newton Brown and Marshall Benton "Doc" Taylor — and the people theykilled.The Victims**E.W. Wylie Payne** was the president of the Medicine Valley Bank in Medicine Lodge, Kansas. He was aMissouri-born businessman, married to Susan, and the father of nine children. He was shot during a robbery onApril 30, 1884, and died the following day — May 1, 1884. **George Geppert**, the bank's chief cashier, wasshot twice during the same robbery. Dying, he sealed the bank vault with his own hands. The robbers escapedwith nothing because of what Geppert did in his final moments.**Louranza Mullins** was thirty-five years old on May 14, 1892, traveling through Pound Gap on the Virginia-Ken-tucky border with her husband **Ira Mullins**, **Wilson Mullins**, **John Chappel**, and **Greenberry Harris**.All five were killed in a planned ambush at a place now called Killing Rock. Two survived: fourteen-year-old **JohnHarrison Mullins**, whose left arm was shattered, and **Amoda Jane Mullins**, Ira's sister, who was carrying aninfant and identified the killers by their voices.The Crimes**Case A — The Medicine Lodge Bank Robbery (Kansas, 1884):** Henry Newton Brown was city marshal ofCaldwell, Kansas — a man so trusted that citizens presented him a gold-engraved Winchester rifle in January1883. What no one in Caldwell knew was that Brown was wanted for murder in New Mexico Territory. He hadridden with Billy the Kid's Regulators and participated in the ambush that killed Lincoln County Sheriff WilliamBrady in April 1878. On April 30, 1884, five weeks after marrying Alice Maude Levagood, Brown led his deputy BenWheeler (real name: William Sherod Robinson, also a fugitive) and two accomplices to rob the Medicine ValleyBank. The robbery failed. Cowboys sheltering from a thunderstorm in a nearby livery stable gave chase. The gangwas trapped in a flooded box canyon within three miles. Brown was shot and killed by a mob that night. Wheeler,Smith, and Wesley were hanged from an elm tree.**Case B — The Killing Rock Massacre at Pound Gap (Virginia, 1892):** Marshall Benton "Doc" Taylor was aphysician, Baptist preacher, and former federal revenue officer in the Appalachian coalfields of Wise County,Virginia. In 1889, Taylor led a posse that intercepted a Mullins whiskey wagon on the main street of WiseCourthouse — approximately 250 shots were exchanged. The wagon driver was killed, Ira Mullins was shotthrough both hips and crippled for life, and several others were wounded. Taylor lost his federal appointment.Three years later, on May 14, 1892, Taylor and brothers Henan and Calvin Fleming ambushed the Mullins party atPound Gap, killing five people from behind a breastwork of sandstone and rhododendron.The InvestigationTaylor fled and was dubbed the Red Fox of the Mountains by the press. Railroad detectives captured him onAugust 18, 1892, in an empty freight car at Bluefield, West Virginia. His trial was moved 275 miles to Lynchburg forsecurity. A ballistics question emerged — rim-fire shells at the scene did not match Taylor's modified center-fireWinchester — but the jury deliberated two hours and convicted him on five counts of first-degree murder, largelyon the eyewitness identification of Jane Mullins.Brown's case never reached trial. The mob killed him and his accomplices the night of the failed robbery, afterbank president Wylie Payne died of his wounds. A coroner's jury reported the deaths were at the hands of "amob, composed of persons unknown."Historical ContextBoth cases reveal the thin line between law and lawlessness on the American frontier. Brown carried active murderwarrants while serving as one of the most effective marshals in Kansas. Taylor combined medicine, ministry,and federal authority in a single person — and used all three to position himself for premeditated murder. Thegold-engraved Winchester that Caldwell gave to Brown now sits in the Kansas Museum of History in Topeka(collection item 209981). The Red Fox Trail runs 1.5 miles through the George Washington and Jefferson NationalForests past the sandstone outcropping called Killing Rock. Every May, descendants of both the Taylor andMullins families return there together.

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Season 40: America's 250th Anniversary -- 50 states, 25 double-feature episodes. Two fires burned in 1898America. One in South Carolina, where a mob murdered a Black postmaster and his two-year-old daughter. Onein Indian Territory, where a mob burned two Seminole teenagers alive. Both cases reached federal court. Neitherdelivered justice.Frazier Baker held a federal appointment. Lincoln McGeisey and Palmer Sampson were teenagers with noconnection to the crime they died for. The federal government proved it could indict in both cases. What it couldnot do -- or chose not to do -- was convict. This is the story of 1898, when America showed exactly what it waswilling to tolerate.The VictimsFrazier Baker was born around 1857 in Effingham, Florence County, South Carolina. He became a schoolteacher,then a postmaster. On July 30, 1897, the McKinley administration appointed him the first Black postmaster ofLake City, Williamsburg County. He and his wife Lavinia had six children: Rosa, Cora, Lincoln, Sarah, Millie, and theyoungest, Julia, who was two years old in the winter of 1898. Baker refused to abandon his federal post despitethreats, a shooting, an arson, and a boycott. He stayed.Lincoln McGeisey was fifteen or sixteen years old. His father, Thomas McGeisey, was the superintendent of theSeminole Nation's public schools and was in Washington, D.C., negotiating on behalf of his people when the mobtook his son. Lincoln had four siblings -- Martha, Nora, William, and James -- and had never been in trouble. PalmerSampson was also a teenager, the son of Sukey Natuksie and Sampson Walker. Congress formally exoneratedboth young men within six months of their deaths, declaring them innocent before a single defendant stood trial.The CrimesOn February 22, 1898, at approximately 1:00 in the morning, a mob surrounded Frazier Baker's home in Lake City,South Carolina -- which also served as the post office. They set fire to the building and fired approximately onehundred bullets into the structure while the Baker family was inside. Frazier Baker was killed. Two-year-old JuliaBaker died from a bullet that passed through her mother Lavinia's forearm. Three more Baker children survivedwith gunshot wounds.On January 8, 1898, shortly after 2:00 in the morning, Lincoln McGeisey and Palmer Sampson were chained totrees at the Maud tabernacle in Indian Territory. A minister named Andrew J. Mathis prayed over them, then setfire to the dry brush heaped around them. A crowd numbering in the hundreds watched. Three white Protestantministers were documented as present. Neither teenager had been formally charged, brought before any legalauthority, or connected by evidence to the murder of Mary Leard, the crime the mob claimed to be avenging.The InvestigationIn March 1898, journalist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett organized a delegation to the WhiteHouse, meeting President McKinley. She was the sole woman in a group that included eight Illinois congressmen.She demanded federal action and a federal anti-lynching law.In the Baker case, thirteen men were indicted on twenty-four criminal counts in April 1899. Joseph P. Newhamtestified under immunity, admitting in open court that he personally started the fire. An all-white jury inCharleston, South Carolina, acquitted three defendants outright and deadlocked on the remaining eight. Thejudge declared a mistrial. No one was ever convicted for the murder of Frazier Baker or Julia Baker.In the Seminole burning case, more than fifty people were indicted. Fifty-four were tried. The prosecutionsucceeded in convicting six individuals, including Nelson M. Jones, a former Deputy U.S. Marshal whose federalstatus made the prosecution legally viable, and Andrew J. Mathis, the minister who set the fire. It was the firstsuccessful prosecution of lynchers in the American Southwest. When convicted mob member Mont Ballardreturned to Maud after serving seven years, the town threw him a celebration.Historical Context1898 was a year of organized racial terror across America. The Wilmington Massacre rewrote the political mapof North Carolina. The Curtis Act dissolved Seminole tribal government. Federal prosecutors proved the systemcould work -- and then the system refused to deliver results. The United States did not pass a federal anti-lynchinglaw until March 29, 2022, when the Emmett Till Antilynching Act was signed into law -- one hundred andtwenty-four years after Frazier Baker and Julia Baker were killed. Ida B. Wells-Barnett demanded that law in 1898.She died in 1931 without seeing it. Lavinia Baker moved her family to Boston, later returned to South Carolina,and died in 1947. The Lake City post office was renamed in honor of Frazier B. Baker on February 22, 2019. Thereis no major public memorial to Lincoln McGeisey or Palmer Sampson.

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Season 40: America's 250th Anniversary -- 50 states, 25 double-feature episodes. This is Episode 13, coveringRhode Island and North Dakota with two true crime cases from the 1880s and 1890s that circle the samequestion: who do you believe when the dead cannot speak?October 1885. A wealthy Black businessman in Newport, Rhode Island, is found dead at his kitchen table -- twogunshot wounds, unchewed bread still in his mouth. The city calls it suicide before the day is over. Eight yearslater, a hired hand in North Dakota murders six members of the family that trusted him, and a fifteen-year-oldgirl walks barefoot to town to report it.Both killers were inside the circle. Both were trusted. Both destroyed the people who let them in. This episodeexamines what trust costs in a country still deciding which lives deserve investigation and which can be dismissedwith a shrug from the mayor's office.The VictimsBenjamin J. Burton was the wealthiest Black businessman in Rhode Island when he was killed in October 1885.He had arrived in Newport around 1845 from Connecticut and spent four decades building a baggage transferempire -- the Original Express and the Bellevue Avenue Express Line -- moving trunks between the wharvesand the Gilded Age mansions. Burton was a civil rights organizer who helped desegregate Rhode Island's publicschools in 1866, working alongside Isaac Rice and George T. Downing. He was fifty-nine years old. He had beeneating breakfast when he was shot.Daniel and Barbara Kreider were a Mennonite farming family who had relocated from Lancaster County, Penn-sylvania, to a homestead southeast of Cando, North Dakota. Daniel was born in 1856; Barbara came from oneof Lancaster County's most established Mennonite families -- the Rissers, whose meeting house had been incontinuous operation since the 1700s. By summer 1893, they had eight children. Four of those children -- Bernice,thirteen; Murbey, eleven; Mary, nine; and David, seven -- were killed alongside their parents on the morning ofJuly 7, 1893.The CrimesIn Newport, Burton's son-in-law Allen Dorsey -- a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania, one year fromfinishing his degree -- shot Burton at 63 Levin Street on October 6, 1885. The wound sequence was medicallydamning: a shot to the head first, a shot to the heart second. No powder burns. Unchewed bread in the victim'smouth. The city ruled it suicide anyway. The coroner signed off. The mayor ridiculed the idea of murder.In North Dakota, Albert Bomberger -- a twenty-two-year-old hired hand who had lived with the Kreider family forfive years -- killed six family members with a shotgun in thirty minutes after the eldest daughter, Annie, rejectedhis advances and her father told him to leave. After the killings, Bomberger forced fifteen-year-old Annie to cookhis breakfast while the bodies lay in the rooms around her. He ate, ransacked the house, beat Annie with a rope,and fled toward Canada on a stolen pony.The InvestigationIn the Burton case, Newport's official investigation went nowhere. The community Burton had spent forty yearsbuilding ran a parallel investigation through church and civic networks. Seven weeks later, Burton's youngerdaughter Emmie came forward and named Allen Dorsey as the killer and Maria Dorsey as complicit. Her testimonymade prosecution possible. The trial began in late June 1886. Allen and Maria Dorsey were convicted andsentenced to life. Emmie was also convicted -- she had served as lookout -- and died of consumption in the prisoninfirmary within six months. In June 1887, the Burton case was presented to the American Medical Associationat their 38th Annual Meeting as an example of physical evidence clearly indicating murder that official authoritychose to read otherwise.Annie Kreider walked to Cando barefoot. No shoes, no horse, no telephone. Her testimony was the entirefoundation of the prosecution. Bomberger was captured at Deloraine, Manitoba, three days later. The threat oflynching was immediate -- the Grand Forks County sheriff moved Bomberger to a more secure jail. On November21, 1893, Bomberger was arraigned. Two days later, he was sentenced to death. The entire court proceedinglasted fifteen minutes. He was hanged on January 19, 1894 -- the first legal execution in North Dakota history.Historical ContextThese two historical murder cases sit at the edges of American justice in the Gilded Age. In Rhode Island, thesystem initially failed a Black man whose physical evidence was dismissed by the same city he had served fordecades. In North Dakota, a state just four years old produced a fifteen-minute guilty plea and a death sentencein two days -- justice delivered under the shadow of a lynch mob. Allen Dorsey was pardoned in 1912, moved toNew York City, worked as a waiter, and died in 1918. Annie Kreider lived until 1960, carrying that July morning forsixty-seven years.

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This episode is part of Season 40: America's 250th Anniversary -- 50 states, 25 double-feature episodesexploring the cases that shaped American history from every corner of the country.Hawaii, 1889. A Japanese shopkeeper is lynched from a telephone pole on the main street of Honoka'a forspeaking English on behalf of plantation workers. Louisiana, 1887. Ten thousand sugar cane workers strike for cashwages instead of scrip -- and armed paramilitaries sweep through residential streets at dawn, killing between 35and 300 people. Two plantation economies. Two communities who challenged the system. The same answer.The VictimsKatsu Goto was twenty-seven years old when he was killed on October 29, 1889. Born in Japan in 1862, hechanged his family name from Kobayakawa to Goto to qualify for the Hawaii immigration program. He arrived inHonolulu Harbor on February 8, 1885, aboard the SS City of Tokio -- one of 944 immigrants in the first wave ofgovernment-contract Japanese workers under the kanyaku imin program. After three years cutting cane at ninedollars a month on the Hamakua Coast, Goto opened a general store in Honoka'a, the second-largest town onthe Big Island. He spoke English. He used that skill to help Japanese workers file complaints against plantationabuses. That made him a target.In Thibodaux, Louisiana, the victims of the November 23, 1887 massacre were overwhelmingly Black -- formerlyenslaved people and their children who had struck for fair wages during the sugar harvest. Eight names survivedthe historical record: Willis Wilson, Felix Pierre, Archy Jones, Frank Patterson, Grant Conrad, Marcellin Weldon,Riley Anderson, and Mahala Washington. They represent a fraction of those killed. The full death toll has neverbeen established.The CrimesOn the night of October 28, 1889, Katsu Goto rode on horseback to Robert Overend's plantation to meet withJapanese workers who had been fined for a cane field fire they may not have set. He left the meeting around teno'clock. Six men were waiting on the road: Joseph R. Mills, Thomas Steele, William C. Blabon, William D. Watson,John Richmond, and a man identified only as Lala. Goto was found the next morning hanging from a telephonepole on Honoka'a's main street. The coroner determined he died of asphyxiation -- he was alive when the ropewent around his neck.In Louisiana, the 1887 sugar strike began on October 29 when approximately 10,000 workers laid down their caneknives at the start of harvest season. The Knights of Labor had demanded $1.25 per day in cash wages, eliminationof the scrip system, and biweekly payment. Governor Samuel Douglas McEnery -- himself a planter -- deployedeleven companies of state militia to evict striking families from plantation housing. Parish District Judge TaylorBeattie, a former Confederate and sugar planter, declared martial law over the Black population of Thibodaux,assembled a committee of three hundred armed white men, and required Black residents to carry passes. Onthe morning of November 23, 1887, armed paramilitaries moved through Black neighborhoods for more than twohours, killing men, women, and children in their homes, yards, and streets.The InvestigationIn Hawaii, all six perpetrators in the Katsu Goto lynching were identified within weeks. Lala and Richmondcooperated with authorities in exchange for dropped charges. The 1890 trial convicted four men of manslaughter-- not murder. Mills and Steele received nine years; Blabon and Watson received four years each. But justiceeroded: Steele escaped to Australia, Blabon escaped to California, and Mills was pardoned in 1894 by the sameplanter-aligned provisional government that had overthrown Queen Lili'uokalani the year before. Only Watson,who played the smallest role, served his full sentence.In Thibodaux, no one was arrested for the killings. No one was tried. No one was convicted. The bodies werecollected and dumped in unmarked graves at a site that later became the city dump. Andrew Price, a sugar planterwho participated in the attacks, was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1889 -- two yearsafter the massacre.Historical ContextBoth cases occurred within plantation economies that ran on the same equation: keep labor costs low, keepworkers dependent, and make it dangerous to organize. In Hawaii, the Bayonet Constitution of 1887 had alreadystripped voting rights from Asian residents. In Louisiana, the scrip system effectively trapped formerly enslavedworkers on the same land they had worked before emancipation. Black farm labor organizing in the AmericanSouth did not resume in earnest until the 1930s -- more than forty years after the Thibodaux massacre.Today, a memorial to Katsu Goto stands near the Honoka'a Library on Mamane Street, erected in 1994 -- 105 yearsafter his death. A documentary, Honoka'a Hero: The Story of Katsu Goto, remains in production. In Thibodaux,the City Council officially condemned the violence in 2017, and a state historical marker was approved for 1123Bourbon Street. Ground-penetrating radar surveys of the former dump site have found anomalies consistentwith burials. As of 2025, excavation and formal identification have not been completed. The bodies are still in theground.

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Season 40: America's 250th Anniversary — fifty true crime stories from fifty states. Wyoming, 1892. A fiftee-n-year-old orphan train rider murders two young men in a boxcar and becomes the first person executed bythe state. New York, 1906. A seventeen-year-old immigrant kills the uncle who abused her and walks free froma packed Manhattan courtroom. Two teenagers. Two states. Two verdicts that split the question of whether achild's history belongs to them or to the law.In this historical true crime double feature, Foul Play examines the execution of Charles "Kansas Charley" Millerand the acquittal of Josephine Terranova — two cases that reveal how gender, geography, and political timingdetermined which children America chose to protect and which it chose to destroy.The VictimsWaldo Emerson and Ross Fishbaugh** were eighteen and twenty years old, from St. Joseph, Missouri. Theywere not vagrants. They had outfitted themselves for a tramping adventure on the Union Pacific line with newclothes, spending money, and arms. On the night of September 27, 1890, they were shot in the head while theyslept in a boxcar somewhere between Pine Bluff and Hillsdale, Wyoming, by a fifteen-year-old boy they had beentraveling with. Fishbaugh was found alive but died without recovering.**Gaetano and Concetta Riggio** were killed in their home at 110 East 220th Street in the Bronx by their nieceand goddaughter, Josephine Terranova, in 1906. Gaetano had been Josephine's legal guardian and godfathersince her arrival from Sicily. Trial testimony established that he had subjected her to years of forced labor andsustained sexual abuse behind closed doors.The CrimesCharles Miller — known as Kansas Charley — was born in a Manhattan tenement in 1874. Orphaned by age six, hewas placed into the Children's Aid Society orphan train system founded by Charles Loring Brace in 1853. Roughlytwo hundred thousand children rode those trains between 1854 and 1929. Charley was beaten by his foster familyfor bedwetting and abandoned at a train depot at thirteen. He was gang-raped in a boxcar in Omaha. He boughta pistol. On September 27, 1890, he killed Emerson and Fishbaugh in their sleep and took their belongings.Josephine Pullare arrived at Ellis Island from San Stefano, Sicily, around 1903. Within a year, her aunt and unclehad turned her into a domestic servant working from four in the morning until midday, seven days a week.The sexual abuse began sometime after. Following her husband's departure, Josephine experienced a ten-daypsychological collapse involving auditory hallucinations she believed were the voice of God commanding her tokill her uncle. She traveled to Park Row in lower Manhattan, purchased a revolver and a long potato knife, andreturned to the Bronx to kill both Gaetano and Concetta Riggio.The Investigation and TrialsMiller turned himself in through his brother Fred's foster family in Manhattan, Kansas. His court-appointeddefender, Frank Taggart, had never handled a capital case and was not yet admitted to the Wyoming bar.Taggart's defense included the humiliating strategy of having Charley testify to chronic masturbation — anineteenth-century theory linking the practice to moral derangement. The jury convicted. First-degree murder.Death by hanging. An eighteen-month petition campaign involving senators, congressmen, and the son of EstherHobart Morris — the first woman to hold judicial office in the United States — failed to persuade Acting GovernorAmos Barber to commute the sentence. On April 22, 1892, Charles Miller became the first person executed bythe state of Wyoming, killed by a hydraulic gallows mechanism designed by James Julien that had never beenused on a person before.Josephine Terranova's trial opened May 14, 1906, in Justice Francis M. Scott's courtroom on Franklin Street inManhattan. Several hundred people packed inside, including more than forty women from the Italian-Americancommunity. Defense attorney ex-Judge Palmieri argued temporary madness. Prosecutor James R. Ely argueddeliberate calculation. Competing alienists — the 1906 term for forensic psychiatrists — reached irreconcilableconclusions. The jury delivered a swift verdict: not guilty. Scholars have called it jury nullification. Josephine wasseventeen years old.Historical ContextThese two cases, separated by fourteen years, mark a fault line in American juvenile justice during the historicaltrue crime era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Wyoming in 1892 was less than three monthspast statehood, assembling its legal institutions while the Johnson County War between cattle barons andhomesteaders demanded hard enforcement. New York in 1906 had a legal tradition that sometimes extendeda margin of leniency to female defendants — the so-called "unwritten law" — though it was not applied equallyacross race, class, or ethnicity.Cornell historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg brought Charley's story back to public attention in a 2003 book,discovered while researching juvenile male violence after the 1998 Jonesboro school shooting. In 2005, theSupreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that executing people for crimes committed before age eighteen wasunconstitutional. Josephine relocated to California — reportedly with financial assistance from William RandolphHearst — and settled in Marin County. She died on July 16, 1981, at ninety-two years old, outliving her uncle byseventy-five years.

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Season 40: America's 250th Anniversary. Fifty states. Fifty crimes. Two hundred and fifty years of Americanhistory, told through the true crime cases that other shows leave behind.New Mexico, 1892. A former sheriff walks into the dark with a man he trusts and never comes home. Illinois, 1871.A former Secretary of State steps off his porch for a midnight train and is shot dead in the street. Both menserved their communities. Both were killed for it. Both were largely forgotten — until now. This is historical truecrime, and tonight both cases are about what happens when political power turns lethal.Case A: Francisco Chavez and the Santa Fe RingFrancisco Chavez was born around 1851 in New Mexico Territory, the son of a family that had shaped this regionfor generations before the American flag flew over Santa Fe's plaza. He was Hispanic, a nuevomexicano, and hebecame sheriff of Santa Fe County at a time when the territory's government had been captured by the Santa FeRing — an informal network of Anglo-American lawyers, politicians, and land speculators who exploited Spanishand Mexican land grants to strip Hispanic families of land they had occupied for generations.At the center of the Ring stood Thomas Catron, a Confederate veteran and Missouri lawyer who arrived in NewMexico in 1866. By the 1890s, Catron had acquired interests in thirty-four land grants totaling approximatelythree million acres — making him, by most accounts, the largest private landowner in the United States. He hadserved as district attorney, territorial attorney general, and U.S. attorney. He owned the territory as surely asanyone could.Chavez stood against him. Historian Tobias Duran, writing in the New Mexico Historical Review, called Chavez aformidable foe of the Santa Fe Ring. He was the rare Hispanic Democrat using the blunt authority of the sheriff'soffice to push back against the most powerful men in the territory.On the night of May 29, 1892, Chavez was lured from a Santa Fe bar by a man named Atilano Gold — someonehe trusted. Gold walked him toward the Guadalupe bridge, near the Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe,the oldest shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe in the United States. Armed men waited behind a telegraph pole.Chavez was shot multiple times. His last words, spoken in Spanish, were that brutes had assassinated him.Four men were indicted: Francisco Gonzales y Borrego, his brother Antonio, Laureano Alarid, and PatricioValencia. Their defense attorney was Thomas Catron — the man widely suspected of ordering the murder,now defending the accused killers. The prosecution's key witness, Juan Gallegos, testified that a $700 paymenthad been offered through intermediaries for Chavez's death. Judge Seeds ruled that he did not believe Catronpersonally made the offer, but accepted the conspiracy existed. That distinction shielded Catron from criminalliability.All four defendants were convicted and sentenced to death. Appeals dragged on for nearly five years. On April2, 1897, they were hanged simultaneously at the Santa Fe jail grounds. Forty-five National Guard soldiers werepresent. At 9:09 AM, the trap bolt was drawn. Three necks broke on impact. Patricio Valencia strangled for threeto four minutes before he died.Thomas Catron was never charged. When New Mexico achieved statehood in 1912, the territory he had helpedplunder elected him as one of its first two United States Senators. He died in 1921. A former senator. Nevercharged. Never tried.Case B: Sharon Tyndale and the Seal That Outlasted HimSharon Tyndale was born in Philadelphia on January 19, 1816. He arrived in Belleville, Illinois in 1833 — the sameyear Chicago was incorporated as a town — and spent the next three decades building railroads and building acareer. Abraham Lincoln personally appointed him Postmaster of Belleville in 1861. When Lincoln was assassinatedin 1865, Tyndale was among the committee members who received the president's coffin in Springfield. He wasone of the original fifteen members of the National Lincoln Monument Association, the group that built Lincoln'stomb at Oak Ridge Cemetery.In 1865, Tyndale was elected Illinois Secretary of State. His younger brother Hector had bled for the Union atAntietam, was promoted to brigadier general, and was later breveted major general for gallantry. The family'sloyalty to the Union was bone-deep.In 1867, the Illinois legislature authorized a new state seal. Tyndale proposed reversing the state motto from "StateSovereignty, National Union" to "National Union, State Sovereignty." The Civil War had settled that question withblood. The Senate rejected his proposal. So the legislature gave him the wording and handed him the design.Tyndale kept the words in their mandated order. But he designed the banner in the eagle's beak to twist, placingthe word "Sovereignty" upside down. The seal entered use in 1868. More than a hundred and fifty years later, theword "Sovereignty" still hangs inverted on the Great Seal of the State of Illinois.On April 29, 1871, two years after leaving office, Tyndale walked out of his home on Adams Street in Springfieldjust after one in the morning, heading to the Chicago & Alton railroad station for a 1:50 AM train. On the darkstreet, steps from his own front door, someone clubbed him to the ground and shot him behind the right ear witha single-shot Derringer — the same type of weapon used to kill Abraham Lincoln six years earlier. His $50 walletwas taken. His gold watch was not. His killer was never identified.A five-thousand-dollar reward went unclaimed. Four theories competed — robbery, romantic entanglement,political enemies, railroad business dispute — and the competition destroyed the investigation. The 1929 IllinoisState Journal concluded the welter of possible motives had hindered the case. No arrest was ever made.The seal lives on. Every official document issued by the State of Illinois, every state flag that flies over Springfield,still carries the handiwork of a man who was murdered two years after completing it.

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Shane Waters and Gemma Hoskins close out their reunion by going down the list of the people who appeared in the Netflix documentary The Keepers, where they are today, who is still fighting, who has found peace, and who the world has lost. It is a warm, reflective conversation about the unsolved 1969 murder of Sister Catherine Ann Cesnik, the young School Sister of Notre Dame who taught English and drama at Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore, and about the community of survivors, investigators, journalists, and filmmakers her case brought together.The Investigators and AdvocatesGemma gives an honest update on her own life, recovering from a broken hip, stepping back from the day-to-day advocacy, and finding peace in a quiet home in the woods. She talks about her fellow amateur investigator Abbie Schaub, who remains active in the legislative fight and helps run the official Keepers community online.The SurvivorsShane and Gemma share where the survivors are now. Jean Hargadon Wehner, known as "Jane Doe" in the case, is doing meaningful work and published her memoir, Walking with Aletheia. Teresa Lancaster, "Jane Roe, " became an attorney and a leading public voice for survivors, helped pass Maryland's 2023 Child Victims Act, and wrote her memoir, Safe in Socks. Donna testified in Annapolis for the Child Victims Act and helped get Father Neil Magnus added to a public list of credibly accused clergy. They also remember Charles Franz and several of Sister Cathy's former students, including Kathy Hoback, the student Sister Cathy once shielded from Father Maskell, who passed away thispast year.The Journalists and ExpertsThey remember journalist Bob Erlandson of the Baltimore Sun, who covered the case as it happened and died this past year at 94, and renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Werner Spitz, who died in 2024 at 97. Shane and Gemma also revisit Delegate C.T. Wilson, the abuse survivor who championed the Child Victims Act, and journalist Tom Nugent, whose reporting first brought the case back into the light.The FilmmakersGemma catches listeners up on the team behind The Keepers, director Ryan White, producer Jessica Hargrave, and cinematographer John Benham, whose work since the series includes the Oscar-nominated, Peabody-winning documentary Come See Me in the Good Light. And, of course, they give a nod to Kim, who edits this very podcast.What Comes NextShane and Gemma agree to keep going as the story unfolds, and invite listeners to suggest the people they would still like to hear from.Content WarningThis episode discusses clergy abuse and violence.Frequently Asked QuestionsWhat is The Keepers about?The Keepers is a 2017 Netflix documentary series about the unsolved 1969 murder of Sister Catherine Cesnik, a Baltimore nun and teacher, and the allegations of abuse at Archbishop Keough High School that may be connected to her death.Who were Jane Doe and Jane Roe?Jean Hargadon Wehner was known as "Jane Doe" and Teresa Lancaster as "Jane Roe, " two survivors whose accounts were central to The Keepers. Both have since written memoirs and become advocates for other survivors.What is the Maryland Child Victims Act?Passed in 2023, the Maryland Child Victims Act removed the time limits on lawsuits for survivors of child sexual abuse. Survivors featured in The Keepers, along with Delegate C.T. Wilson, were instrumental in its passage.Is Sister Cathy's murder solved?No. The murder of Sister Catherine Cesnik remains unsolved more than fifty years later. Crisis ResourcesIf you or someone you know has been affected by abuse:US: RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline, 1-800-656-4673US: Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline, 1-800-422-4453UK: NSPCC Helpline, 0808 800 5000UK: Rape Crisis England & Wales, 0808 500 2222

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Shane Waters and Gemma Hoskins continue their first sit-down in over a year, working through the second half of the questions listeners submitted through the show's Facebook community. This is the follow-up to "The Mary Statue and Unanswered Questions, " a wide-ranging conversation about the unsolved 1969 murder of Sister Catherine Ann Cesnik in Baltimore, Maryland. Known to millions through the Netflix documentary The Keepers, Gemma has spent more than a decade investigating what happened to Sister Cathy, the young School Sister of Notre Dame who taught English and drama at Archbishop Keough High School.The Persons of InterestListeners asked about the figures who have circled this case for years. Gemma explains why "Brother Bob" has never been publicly identified, how the nickname came to stand for more than one man, and why she has stepped back from the theory she put forward in her own 2019 book. She and Shane talk through how a single murder sits at the center of a web of other abuse and other suspected crimes, and why that makes Sister Cathy's case so difficult to untangle.New Questions Around Father KoobGemma describes the women who have come forward in recent years with accusations against Father Gerard Koob, and walks through why, in her understanding, charges have been so hard to bring, including questions of jurisdiction and corroboration, since only some of the accusers were abused in Maryland. She recounts asking Detective Josh Battaglia to put her questions to Koob directly. Koob, who was the subject of a 2023 Baltimore Banner investigation by reporter Justin Fenton, continues to deny wrongdoing and says listeners are thinking of a different man. He has not been charged.Who Knew, and the Attorney General's ReportShane and Gemma discuss how much the staff at Archbishop Keough may have known, and why so many people went quiet after Sister Cathy was killed. They place it in the context of the Maryland Attorney General's 2023 report on clergy abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, a 456-page document detailing the abuse of more than 600 children across decades and the conclusion that "no parish went untouched. " That history is part of what is driving the Archdiocese's current bankruptcy.Joyce Malecki and the Sealed FilesThe conversation turns to Joyce Malecki, the 20-year-old whose 1969 murder near Fort Meade has long been discussed alongside Sister Cathy's. Gemma updates listeners on the 2023 exhumation of Joyce's body, the family's still-unanswered request for thousands of pages of FBI files first sought in 2014, and the letter Senator Chris Van Hollen carried to the White House on their behalf. Shane makes the case for why physical evidence in an unsolved murder should never be destroyed.Cathy's FamilyGemma reflects on why Sister Cathy's family chose to step out of the spotlight after The Keepers, the heartbreak of learning their loved one's death may not have been random, and the dignity of their decision to protect their own peace.Content WarningThis episode discusses clergy abuse and violence.Frequently Asked QuestionsWho is Gemma Hoskins?Gemma Hoskins is a retired Baltimore teacher and former student at Archbishop Keough High School. She has spent more than a decade investigating the murder of her former teacher, Sister Cathy Cesnik, and was one of the central figures in the Netflix documentary The Keepers. She was named Maryland Teacher of the Year in 1992.Has anyone been charged in Sister Cathy's murder?No. The 1969 murder of Sister Catherine Cesnik remains unsolved, and no one has ever been charged.What is the Maryland Attorney General's report?Released in 2023, the report documented decades of child sexual abuse within the Archdiocese of Baltimore, naming Father Joseph Maskell among its most prolific abusers and identifying more than 600 victims across the Archdiocese.Who is investigating Sister Cathy's case today?Detective Josh Battaglia of the Baltimore County Police Department currently handles the investigation. He took overfrom Corporal Robin Teal after her retirement.Crisis ResourcesIf you or someone you know has been affected by abuse:US: RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline, 1-800-656-4673US: Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline, 1-800-422-4453UK: NSPCC Helpline, 0808 800 5000UK: Rape Crisis England & Wales, 0808 500 2222

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