S39E04 - The Longest Inquest

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 1

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 summone

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 cas

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 Context18

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 imme