A Bridge Too Far PT 1
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Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android.

I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold. Very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪

Hi, Paul. How are you? I'm doing good. I've got my energy drink. I'm getting ready. How are you doing? I'm doing pretty well. I am excited to say that we are...

We are opening up Wicked Words for business once again. We've concluded Tenfold More Wicked and it's three seasons and Wicked Words premieres in just a few days. The trailer's out right now. And I love that show. That was our origin story. That was the beginning of it. You and I were on Wicked Words together. Was that, so that was for Bessie Ferguson, right? That was Bessie Ferguson. And we actually have another Bessie in this story that we're going to talk about next.

But Wicked Words, going down that road with journalists and, you know, with people who are authors like yourself, it's such a wonderful journey for me to take a break from talking and to just listen. I listen to you, but I also talk an awful lot and I like to listen to journalists. And you were such a help on that story about Bessie Ferguson that I am always excited to talk to a new slew of people.

And so remind me, though, Wicked Words is you are bringing in somebody who has written an article, written a book, and they tell the story themselves. That's right. Yeah. So it's the stories behind the stories. And I'm always surprised about how open and honest the journalists can be about mistakes that they've made in the reporting and things they've done that made them feel a little bit uncomfortable with sources, challenges that they had, their points of view of the story, because oftentimes the

You'll read one of my books or you'll read, you know, something written in The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times. And I often wonder, I wonder what the journalists really thought about this person that they were covering. And in Wicked Words, you find out a lot of details because I ask questions like that. What did you really think of this guy? Did you really believe he did it or didn't do it? Or what made you uncomfortable about the story?

Yeah, no, and that's an interesting perspective. You know, over my career, of course, I've had many interactions with journalists on cases where they're trying to get information, and sometimes it's off the record, sometimes it's on the record. And it's been hit or miss in terms of the accuracy of what they've written, you know? So that's where I've always just been, oh, you know, how is this going to be portrayed in the article that they're writing? And sometimes it's not negligence on their part or even purposeful deceit, it's

If they're covering, let's say, a lab result and they're now trying to write about something like a complicated science, they summarize it and they don't recognize that they've summarized it wrong, at least factually. And I know that that can be damaging in some of these cases. Let me ask, what technique works on you with a journalist?

Is it someone who just sounds like they've done loads of research on the story already and sounds educated? Or what's the best way to get an investigator to talk to you with details that they're comfortable with, they just are unsure about journalists in general?

You know, I would say there's definitely times where it doesn't matter who the journalist is or what the journalist is asking. There's just no way that details are going to be passed on just due to the sensitivity of the details of the case. You know, notably, as an example, you know, we had Lacey Peterson wash up in my jurisdiction. And that was the biggest story in the world at the time. The big news trucks, satellite trucks are parked out in the corners, parking lot, etc.,

And this is where from on high, you receive orders. You will not talk to the media. But for routine stuff, it really is oftentimes it's journalists that have established a relationship. You know, it's somebody I've talked to before. They definitely appear to be above board in terms of how they cover stories. They're not scandalous. They're not going for that type of thing. They're really just trying to report the facts, right?

And that type of journalist, once I have a relationship, I'm more likely to say, hey, you know, off the record, just be prepared. There's going to be this new information coming and you're going to have a head start in terms of researching it.

So it really is somebody that has proven themselves over time to me, not only in the interactions, but in what they've written. You know, and I think notably people who are familiar with my career was Michelle McNamara. And that really was somebody that we established a relationship, but I was unsure because I'd never seen her write anything before.

until she wrote something. And I had divulged some information that I didn't want out there that was off the record, and she kept it out of the article, and she earned my trust. And from that point on, I was wide open with her. - And I think that's really important. I teach journalism students, people know, at the University of Texas.

And they asked me, how do you establish trust? And I said, it takes time. It is also the people going back and reading your books, your articles, and getting a sense for who you are as a journalist, who you write for. Are you sensational? And one of the things that I do at the end of every interview is I'll say, listen, this has been really great. You've given me some valuable information. I will probably have questions. I might be confused.

Can I make sure that, you know, is it okay if I circle back and ask you more questions and, you know, make sure that these quotes were accurate? And that might not happen. I might not circle back. I might not need to. But I think it leaves my sources with a sense that, boy, she actually cares. She wants to be accurate, and she is willing to come back and say, well, I don't really understand this part. And I think that's very important, and I think most of my students do that now. Yeah.

Well, and especially working with law enforcement, if an investigator is releasing information on a case, they want that information to be accurate as to the form in which law enforcement is putting it out there. There's usually a reason why law enforcement wants that information out in that manner at that particular time. And so that fact-checking becomes important, obviously.

Oftentimes, though, what ends up happening is that law enforcement releases information, but then the journalists, investigative journalists, they are good researchers and they start digging. And pretty soon, now they have found out more information. They've tracked down witnesses on the case.

And now that information gets added into the article and law enforcement was going, no, that's not exactly what we wanted to broadcast at this point in time due to where we are at in our investigation. But there's no way to stop that process. You know, that's just part of the, you know, the freedom of speech aspect. But it is that when...

in a roundtable discussion within law enforcement. What are we going to tell the media? It's also, okay, what is going to be the domino effect? Are we willing to risk the investigation because of that particular domino effect happening? Yeah. And my hope is that all investigators are offering evidence that

They are comfortable with offering that will help the public or help them track down a suspect or clarify what's happening in the case. And certainly my hope is that the journalists who are responding to these stories are taking that information and doing the right thing with it, because ultimately what we're supposed to do is serve the public, shine light on things that are in the darkness.

So when you and I go through these episodes, we're always aiming to be as accurate as possible, as detailed as possible. Things fall through. It happens with any sort of journalistic piece that you do. But always the intent is there, at least for the journalists that I know and I'm close to, to do the very best we can to offer the amount of information and with the accuracy that I think the public deserves when they're consuming information from us. So...

That's enough of my rant, I think, about good journalism. And you're done with your rant about good journalists also.

And we will move on to hopefully good journalism with a case that is just wild to me. Lots of yellow all over my prep document, lots of questions for you, and some nice little twists and turns, which is a little surprising to me because we're in the late 1800s where we don't often get a huge amount of details. And this is pretty detailed. So I'm setting the scene now. We are in Dayton, Ohio. So let's talk more about this story. ♪

Okay, so this is such a big case that we've had to make it a two-part episode. I assume that you never get tired of hearing about a really complicated, in-depth case. You did just ask me if you need to take more extensive notes than usual. So we'll see. You may be nervous about a two-parter.

No, you know, I know for me, as I listen to the story where I start losing track is just if there's a lot of names. Yeah. You know, and so that's where sometimes I'll just say, and who's what was the wife's name or who's the boyfriend's name? And I'll need that reminder. Well, the very first person we're talking about is a woman named Bessie Little.

So let's first talk about where we are. This is Dayton, Ohio, 1896. So this is smack in the middle of the Gilded Age, which I love to write about the Gilded Age. I think when we think of the Gilded Age in America, I often think about New York, Boss Tweed, corrupt politicians, liberals.

gold and diamonds and money and parties where you get a $10,000 bill under your plate. Very, very opulent. And Dayton, Ohio, I don't get the impression is that sort of place in 1896. I think that there are, you know, the typical amount in any city where you would have, you know, people who are in poverty, people who are wealthy. And we have two people here who come from both

sides, one who is wealthy, one who is not, and how their social circles sort of collide in what might be a crime and what might not be a crime. And I know that this is the most vague information possible going into a story, but I sometimes like to tell you stuff like that so you're sort of keyed up and ready to unravel this. Yeah. Is there a case or not? All right, Paul. Okay.

Okay, let's jump right into it then. There's a man swimming in the Miami River in September of 1896, and this is in Dayton, Ohio. And he sees something horrific, which you would call, I think, a bobber, right? Or is that what you would call somebody, a body in the water?

You know, at least out of where I come from, we just would call them floaters. Floaters, that's it, floaters. I knew it was some terrible term. Yeah, there was one case, a man whose head and hands had been cut off and he was weighted down at his ankles. And so his decapitated body...

body was bobbing up and down. So in that instance, I would say, yeah, that's probably a bobber. But yeah, typically we say floater. Well, this one we'll see. So he is swimming and he sees a woman's foot bobbing just above the river surface. And

He freaks out, as anyone would, and he calls the police. The police chief comes. His name is Thomas Farrell. There are only a few characters, I think, in this story that really matter. And when I do the research and when Maren does the research, I try to sort of minimize the amount of names because I know you don't want to be confused by names. So I tried to pare this down to only the people who really count.

So they retrieve the body. It's of a woman. And they send it over to the coroner in Dayton. And the coroner looks for signs of an assault or a struggle. And he rules this a suicide.

He doesn't see any marks anywhere. And he thinks that this is just a woman who jumped off the bridge and into the river. He does not do an autopsy that shows what we would talk about with a drowning, water in the lungs, or any of that. And I straightaway don't understand why you would not look deeper into a body in a river. Well, the pathologist should. You know, there's no question that a complete autopsy is...

the standard of practice under these circumstances, especially today. But it does beg the question in terms of, okay, so you have a woman's body. Is this body fully clothed? How decomposed is the body? More information to see why the pathologist came to such an opinion just with a superficial examination of the body. Right. So-

Very fresh body, very little decomposition at all, fully clothed, no signs of sexual assault, which we know doesn't mean anything, no signs of trauma, and just a cursory look of

He just thought this is somebody who had jumped off of the bridge. And she is unclaimed, so we don't know who this person is. And unidentified, nobody is saying there's a missing woman. And she is subsequently buried in a potter's field and labeled as someone who had taken her own life. Then she is, you know, forgotten for just a few days.

And I think, again, the most startling part of this to me was I don't know if it was out of propriety. He didn't undress her or what the issue was. But the coroner just didn't look very deeply on whether or not this really was suicide. And I was surprised. Yeah, you know, this basically there is no autopsy that was done in this case.

And that is very unfortunate, you know, because even with this theory that this is a woman who jumped off the bridge, okay, how high is the bridge? What is the depth of the water at that location? You know, there's going to be aspects that...

Let's say it's a fairly tall bridge, it's shallow water. Is there any aspect of the structure of the bridge that she may have impacted on the way down? I would be looking to see, is there evidence to say that, yes, she could have jumped off this bridge and...

There would be no expectation of injury as noted on this particular body in order to support that theory. But he must have been in a rush to get out for a dinner date or something. You know, there is no excuse to do what he did in this case. Right. A complete lack of effort. I agree.

So let me show you the bridge. I was going to show you this a little bit later because there are some things involving that bridge that are important. And I don't think this is going to give you all of the information, but you did ask about is there anything that would have been an object that she could have struck her head against or anything like that. So this is the bridge. This is the bridge that several different sources have said they believe this is what the bridge – it was kind of unnamed in a lot of the contemporary newspapers –

So this seems really wide. This is consistent with what it looked like in 1896. Yeah, you know, this is just a, you know, standard little road bridge. I'm not sure, you know, in terms of the engineering term, but you see the steel infrastructure with fencing along both sides of the roadway, it appears, you know, that, you know, somebody who wants to jump off the bridge would have to get over that fencing.

What I can't see from this photo is if there's any aspect of the structure of the bridge that

beneath it that sticks out? Are there any piers? And then, of course, you know, what is the depth of the water if she were to jump off this bridge? Because at least judging by what I can see on either side of the bridge, that the bridge goes over, this bridge, there's trees that look like fairly mature trees that I'm assuming are 20 feet or higher. Yeah. It almost appears that this bridge, you know, down to the water is...

maybe as high as 20 feet or more. So this is a substantial distance for human body to fall and impact the water. And even just that impact

Especially when we see out in the Bay Area, you know, people that jump off of like the Golden Gate Bridge, you know, they hit the water with such speed that that causes injuries. I can't say that that would happen here, but it's something that has to be taken into consideration. Right. And again, you know, one of the points is, is we don't know how she ended up in the water. They're assuming that if this were a suicide, it would be of her jumping off of this bridge.

So the chief of police does not agree necessarily with the coroner. He had been hearing rumors that there was a man who said that he had a girlfriend. He had seen her take her own life and that he had dumped her body from the bridge into the water.

This was a rumor that had been started by a confession that this man, Albert France, made to a reverend. So the chief of police had heard this, but there was really no reason to approach him because it was sort of a rumor. But then when this woman shows up in the river, he thinks, OK, well, maybe there is something to this. Again, not really.

really suspicious. He had just heard that this had happened, and it was something that kind of stayed in his mind. So when this woman was discovered in the river, he just thought, well, this is something to investigate. And I'm not 100% sure that this was actually a suicide. Well, and part of what the chief has is local knowledge in terms of

the frequency of the various types of crime that occur within his jurisdiction. Right. So the chief wants to know more about this man. And the way that all of this goes down is the man is named Albert Franz. And Albert Franz is the one who went to his reverend and said, my girlfriend took her own life. I tossed her body over the Dayton Bridge out of despair. I didn't know what else to do. I didn't want her family to be embarrassed.

The reverend connected France with a judge for legal advice because he said, I need this off my hands. So he sends him to someone else who is committed to keeping a secret. And the judge gave him some legal advice, which I'm pretty sure is keep your mouth shut. And they tried to keep this all under wraps.

So the reverend had really not said anything. The judge had not. And yet this gets out and it starts spreading around that Albert and his girlfriend, a woman named Bessie Little, this had happened with Bessie and that he has confessed that he disposed of the body. The first big question to me is why are people trying to keep this under wraps? Because you would think that that's a little odd. You know, I understand disposing of a body is against the law, but

But you now have a judge and a reverend who are really trying to keep this quiet. And it's because Albert is from a very wealthy family, which starts to explain a little bit more about this story because Bessie is not from a wealthy family. What's interesting is that at this point, you have three people who have knowledge, Albert, the judge, and the reverend. And yet there's a leak. Mm-hmm.

There's a rumor that got started. So somebody told somebody. Was the judge married? Did he talk to his wife? Did she ends up saying, hey, I'm hearing this to maybe her best friend? And that's how things start. You think you're just talking to a confidant and then that person thinks they're talking to a confidant, but no.

It just spreads. So that's just an interesting phenomenon that we experience all the time in law enforcement. You know, the rumors on the street just spread like wildfire. And oftentimes the facts are wrong, but there's frequently a core nugget of

that has some truth to it for the reason of that rumor. But also this, she took her own life and then I'm disposing of the body. Well, you have to get to the bottom of that, you know? Right. And do you have a desecration of a human corpse? You know, there's different types of statutes against doing it, but they're typically minor crimes versus the

is this a homicide? And trying to cover up the homicide and second guessing, am I going to be able to get away with this? And now, you know, seeding through this confession and talking to the judge that it really was a suicide and she was just trying to get rid of the body. I agree. And to Chief Farrell's credit, we often talk about the lack of effort from

coroners and investigators in the 1800s, I think simply because they just didn't have as many resources as we do now, of course. Chief Farrell, throughout this entire investigation, goes above and beyond, as far as I'm concerned. He talks to France. France gives him the story. She took her own life. He's very vague about why. I threw her body over the bridge and, you know, have been mourning her death ever since.

He does not take his word for it. He arranges to have the corpse to be exhumed. And this is one exhumation of two that happens to poor Bessie Little. He has exhumed the body and he looks to confirm, he wants to just confirm that this is her, first of all, because remember, she's in a potter's field. She's unidentified. He identifies her using dental records.

And this is confirmed 23-year-old Bessie Little. He goes to her parents, who are her adoptive parents, to corroborate the identification. And her mother and father say, we haven't talked to her in several weeks. But they didn't think that this was suspicious because they had sort of had a lack of communication with her ever since she moved out of their house.

and moved into this local boarding house. Again, lack of communication in the 1800s is not at all surprising to me. This happened all the time. People just wouldn't see each other or talk for weeks or months at a time. Well, you could have just picked up a phone and say hi. You know what I mean?

It was a different era. You had to actually go walk down the street to go and talk to somebody. You know, something you said, though, that was surprising to me is the use of dental records in 1896. Okay. I was not expecting that. I thought that they would have resorted to almost having to have the parents come in and take a look at Bessie's remains in order to do this. So the fact that a dentist had...

paper records that had sufficient detail to be able to be matched to the dentition in the body is surprising to me. And I'm often surprised about what they did have as a resource. Toxicology in the late 1800s was viable. There were quite a lot of forensic tools. Still, it's the lack of resources still stymied investigators. But again, I see Chief Farrell as being the real hero here because he

He is concerned about the supposed suicide of this young woman from his town, and he is pursuing it. And he is not trusting, who turns out to be an affluent member of their society. Chief Farrell is a little confused about the lack of communication between the parents and Bessie Little. And it's because they don't live very far apart. And he assumed that a woman of her age, 23, would have kept in better touch with her parents. So he goes back...

and says to the Littles, why did she leave again? And they said, well, you know, she wanted to be independent. She wanted to strike out on her own and find more work opportunities. But he keeps asking them questions. And at some point, the Littles confess that they kicked Bessie out of the house because she had been having premarital sex with Albert Franz. Experience the glamour and danger of the roaring 20s from the palm of your hand.

In June's Journey, you have the chance to solve a captivating murder mystery and reveal deep-seated family secrets. Use your keen eye and detective skills to guide June Parker through this thrilling hidden object mystery game. June's Journey is a mobile game that follows June Parker, a New York socialite living in London. Play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists

turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club. There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out. You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world

and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android.

I'm surprised they didn't cut her off completely because in the 1800s, that would have been expected. They found out she was having sex before marriage. Goodbye. And that's it. There was very little sympathy for a woman in the 1800s. So that is the story. They booted her out and she was on her own at this hotel. Yeah, you know, it's obviously...

information that goes to Bessie's victimology. It's establishing that her and Albert had a physical relationship, you know, so it really shows that Albert and Bessie are in this very close relationship. But the parents kicking the daughter out isn't a crime. You know, this isn't anything that would be something that the chief would be following up on. It's just of note. It

It's establishing her timeline at the boarding home. Is Albert frequently coming over? You know, do they have witnesses there? And is Bessie going over to Albert's place? And do you have witnesses there? Start branching, you know, now that you have identified the victim and you understand the relationship between the victim and Albert is a suspect at this point, you know, you're trying to determine, did he kill her or is he just disposing of her body? This per

provides the direction of the investigation now that you know this background? Well, here's the issue.

Poor Chief Farrell is relegated to using the same coroner who had examined Bessie in a crappy way, as far as I'm concerned, to begin with. And when he makes a positive identification and goes back to the coroner and says, let's take another look, the coroner takes another look and still says, I think she died by suicide. I do not think this was murder. And she is reburied once again. I still don't understand why.

how that can happen and that he doesn't do a more thorough investigation because I'll give you a hint, Paul, another doctor does and he does find things. With this second attempt by this pathologist, does he actually do a dissection of the body this time? It doesn't sound like it. I think it's just a cursory examination yet again and says, I am not convinced that this is anything other than a suicide.

You know, this just smacks of incompetence by this initial pathologist. Which must be frustrating to a chief of police who I consider to be very competent at this point. He is working all of the angles and he has managed to get some very important victimology information out of the Littles in that they had an acrimonious relationship with their daughter because she was having premarital sex.

And that premarital sex causes some pretty big issues in a little bit, as we'll find out. But let's talk about one half of this couple, Albert Fonce. He's 20, so he's three years younger than Bessie.

And, you know, Bessie was from a fairly poor family, and Franz is very wealthy, as I had mentioned before. And I think that might have been an influence over the coroner, that this would have never occurred to him, that anyone like Albert, who would have been involved with Bessie, would have taken her life. I think this might have been a classist thing. I'm not

really sure or as you said just a really incompetent lazy coroner. Or is this pathologist on the take? Yeah. Is there a possibility that Franz whether on his own or talking to this judge is

It was brought up, well, Bessie's body is going to be found. She'll end up at the coroner's office. And now, you know, before the body comes in, you have somebody looking out for Franz telling the coroner, if this body comes in, it's a suicide.

I don't think I've ever heard you say on the take before. I think you need to use that phrase more often. On the take. I think the more mobby type phrases we could use, the better. And it never occurs to me. I'm so innocent. It never occurs to me that people are being paid off. It takes a lot for me to think, oh, man, maybe that person is being paid off. And I would never have thought of paying off the coroner. But that does make sense as one option. Well, you're putting a rumor out on the street. Right.

you know, of this suicide. And then you're also now paying off, you know, people who would have influence over the direction of the investigation. And you have the resources to do it. Well, let's say that this is a murder and let's say that Albert is our prime suspect.

If we're looking at his history, he doesn't have a criminal history at all. People say in the town, he's snotty, he's spoiled, he's been given too much in life. But he has a good reputation and he seems to be respected by friends and acquaintances. And friends of Bessie and Albert say there doesn't appear to be physical violence or any verbal abuse, anything like that.

We also know that doesn't mean anything. There is an awful lot of things that happen behind closed doors. But on the surface, Albert seems to be a little spoiled. But other than that, an OK person for her to be involved with. Right. You know, but you still have to come down to...

How did Bessie truly die? And no matter Albert's past behavioral history and lack of violence, doesn't mean he's not capable of violence in a particular moment. And so that's really key to understand is, of course, in evaluating suspects,

Their past history does factor in, in terms of, I think this person is more likely than not to be capable of committing this type of crime. But just because you have somebody who has got a clean criminal history, no known behavioral issues, doesn't mean that in a particular moment that they could flare up and commit violence.

What I'm about to tell you, I think, I sometimes like to categorize when we're talking about murder versus suicide, what category this would go under, this information. And I'm afraid that this kind of goes in both columns. And, you know, we'll see why.

Chief Farrell wanted to know how long they had been together, how they met. People had very vague answers. Nobody really knew. I'm not sure that this was some huge public romance. I think that they were dating, that Albert seemed to like her. But I don't know if he felt like they were on track to be married. And it could have simply been from where she came from and what her socioeconomic level was.

But police eventually learn, after a lot of questioning, that Bessie had been pressuring Albert to marry her before she died. And they search her house, and Chief Farrell finds a letter that was addressed to Albert France's father that begged the father to force Albert to marry her.

And now that seems like a motive for murder right now. So she is saying, for whatever reason, your son has to marry me. Well, is she holding the fact that they're having premarital sex over his head? You know, I will expose you, cause you and your family damage to your reputations unless you marry me. And maybe she's truly in love, but she's also seeing deep pockets. Yes.

And this letter was never sent, but Albert's father later said that he had received other letters from Bessie before. She wrote him a letter saying that she was, this is a quote, "sorry to trouble an old man like him with his son's misdoings," but that she wanted Albert to marry her and right the wrong he had done to her, and that if he didn't, she would take her own life.

So to put that in context in 1800 terms, we've talked about the heart bomb lawsuits before. This does not necessarily mean he got her pregnant and she needs to be married. This absolutely could mean we've had sex. I am sullied to other men unless he marries me. He has no other choice.

So at first I thought, "Oh, maybe she's pregnant." But it doesn't have to be that in the 1800s. It could be as simple as, "We had sex. He has to marry me. Otherwise, no one else will marry me." So she's writing the letters to Albert's father. Yeah. And Albert's father is the one probably that controls the monies. He's the reason this family is wealthy. He has a reputation in town. He now is recognizing this woman could hurt the family.

So from my perspective, of course, Albert is a suspect. Is it possible that he caused harm to Bessie to get himself out of this predicament? But now is Albert's father, who would be the type that could have a coroner on the take. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

And have that political influence and the life experience to recognize we need to nip this in the bud. Right. And so now I think the chief has a almost a another prong to his investigation. You have to take a look at Albert's father.

And what's interesting is she refers to him as an old man. So as you were talking, I was thinking, so what if he does it? What if the father does it? But an old man. And then I remember you saying old man strength. And then I remember the reality is that in the 1800s, I'm sorry, Paul, but old man could have been a 55-year-old man.

Because life expectancy was not what it is now. So the son was 20. He could have been in his 50s and, of course, perfectly capable of killing someone and tossing them over a bridge, as I'm assuming you would be capable if need be. So I guess my old man theory is out the window. Yeah.

I am not going to confirm nor deny my ability to get rid of a body. Old man strength. No, well, I mean, you really think about it. If Albert is 20, in all likelihood, his father is in his 40s. Yeah, could be. So this is, again, a very common thing, the heart bomb lawsuit. And she might not have even been threatening a lawsuit, but

That was a thing where you could sue a man and it would ruin them. And it was always in the newspapers. So this is a very valid reason to kill someone in the 1800s. And it's going to be very apparent to the Franz family, you know, the direction that this possibly can go.

Yep. So let's talk about the timeline. And I know you want to talk about cause of death, and I have one. But I just am trying to get the characters out of the way, the victimology out of the way, and the timeline out of the way. And then we'll talk about the confusing forensics involved with her death. So here's the timeline. Police are interviewing Bessie's landlady, because remember, she's now out of her parents' house and into the boarding house. And she was there for the last week of her life. And the woman's name is Minnie.

Minnie confirms that Albert France had been paying Bessie's rent at the boarding house. So what does that say to you? Well, it's interesting. Albert is 20 years old. Right. How is he paying? Is he paying with money that he has personally earned? Is he paying with money that his dad is giving him as a weekly allowance? It also shows that Bessie is relying upon Albert for those financial resources after her parents have kicked her out. Mm-hmm.

And so this kind of weaves a tighter web in terms of the burden that Bessie was having on the Franz family. She's not an independent woman like the parents initially claimed that she wanted to be. She is relying on the Franz's in order to survive.

Now, this timeline becomes very important, and it will be to you, for a body in the river. So Minnie says that she is the last person to see Bessie alive, as far as we know, aside from if there is a killer or not. She says that about six days before Bessie's body is discovered in the river, which was, this is August 27th, on that night, she...

She told Minnie that she was going to go out on a buggy ride with Franz. Again, this is not a secret relationship. He doesn't appear to be ashamed of her. They seem to be openly dating. I don't think he's flaunting her anywhere. But Minnie says that she never actually saw Bessie get into the buggy with Albert.

She says, then I became alarmed because Bessie never came home that night. And that was the last time anybody had seen Bessie Little. So if we think that that was her last night, August 27th, and she was discovered six days later.

What sort of bloating in early September in Ohio, it's probably not blazing hot. What sort of bloating can we expect after being in a river for five and a half days, maybe? If she had been killed that night, the night going into the buggy. So we're now talking six days and she's been in the water for six days. There is going to be

obvious changes to the body just due to floating in the water, let alone to the decomposition that is going to be occurring. Now, the amount of decomposition, of course, is going to be dependent on the water temperature. As I've talked about before, when bodies are cooled down, it slows down the decompositional process. And I would imagine, even though this is August to September, that

This river water is probably going to be cool. It's not warm water. So that is going to slow things down. However, she is in the water and she is going to be, obviously, you look at her, probably skin slippage. There's going to be a lot of deposits on the body. I wouldn't imagine there's much in terms of organisms that are going to necessarily be affected.

consuming aspects of the body within this river environment. As long as she's completely submerged and we're not having insects landing on her while she's floating on the surface. But it would be pretty apparent after six days that, yes, she's been in this river for a while. Okay. I'm going to ask you that again a little bit later on. If there is a possibility that the coroner missed something because of the state of decomposition, potentially for being in the river for that long,

So what Minnie says to Chief Farrell is that after she didn't see Bessie come home that night, Minnie says that Franz stopped by the boarding house and he said, where's Bessie? I don't know where she is. And Minnie says she hadn't seen Bessie since Bessie was supposed to go on a buggy ride with Albert Franz. And Franz is confused. And he says, I didn't go out with her last night. I don't know what you're talking about.

He doesn't seem alarmed, but he is denying that they were ever together the night before. One little note that I think is interesting, but I know it's not hard evidence, is that Albert told Minnie, here is Bessie's rent in advance for next month, but just so you know, this will be the last payment for her room and board at your boarding house. Yeah.

That's coincidental, isn't it? I wanted to say dun-dun-dun afterwards, but that's how I felt. I just thought, well, okay, how do you know that? And is he cutting her off? What's happening? If we're on the suicide side, I guess that's what that could mean is he was planning to break up with her or he told her, I'm breaking up with you. I'm not supporting you anymore. She takes her own life. He dumps her body over, like he says, and everything that he has said is true, but he

This does sound a little odd and inconsistent with what he had been saying in the past. So now everybody's confused. And when the police go and speak to Albert France, he said exactly the same thing that he told Minnie. He hadn't been with her that night, but because of the rumors surrounding everything about Albert France, she was able to get in touch with him.

Chief Farrell is not convinced. He knows they're involved. He knows that she has been threatening his father with either her taking her own life or something where she's trying to pressure the family into pressuring him to marry her.

So this is all one big mess at this point. The problem is, is the chief is having an issue finding very specific hard evidence, any kind of forensic evidence that can directly tie Albert Franz to what might be a murder. They aren't sure just yet.

Three days after Bessie's body is discovered, the police are examining the bridge that I showed you, and they find a pool of blood, recently dried, so three days or so, on the Stillwater Bridge.

And this is only about a half a mile from where Bessie was found on the river. I wonder if recently dried. It must have been recently within 10 days, not recently within two years or something. So they find blood is the big deal. They find this blood on the bridge, which is just about a half a mile from where Bessie is found in the river. That's not good. No. Well, it's also, you know, in 1896, how do we show that this blood is

Yeah, you can't. Can't really. And I think, you know, maybe there's an assumption and it could be a correct assumption. This now gets back to the autopsy. I don't know how big this blood pool is, but there's going to be a bleeding injury. And yet the pathologist is saying she has no injuries. Okay, I'll get to it. You always make me move my drama up.

I know it tortures you. So Chief Farrell is stymied and he's had just about enough of this coroner. And he hires his own person, a surgeon for the police department, a brand new person to take another look. So they dig up this poor woman's body once again. And I am now concerned because now we're talking about, let's say she died the night she disappeared. So that's six days and then another three or four days later of investigation work.

So we're talking about almost two weeks of her being in the ground, out of the ground, back in the ground. And we cannot assume that she has been embalmed because embalming became a really big deal in the Civil War so that they could preserve soldiers' bodies to come back and be properly buried and viewed and everything by family. But the first undertaker classes weren't until maybe 10 years before this. So I don't think a woman who...

was in a sort of a poor family would have been embalmed. And I'm wondering after two weeks under the ground what this might have done with her body. Well, it's less than ideal. You know, of course, it also is dependent upon how she is buried. Is she in a sealed casket? Is she just in a wooden box?

If her body is protected, she's not below the water table in the ground, there is still going to be active decomposition without any embalming going on. But it's possible that there is still going to be sufficient soft tissue and, of course, the skeleton in order for the pathologist to be able to possibly see, yes, here is...

you know, whether it be stab wounds or blunt force trauma or broken bones, et cetera, that would be fairly readily present even two weeks after burial. Well, the surgeon for the police department comes up with some really good information. He performs this examination, the third on Bessie Little,

And let's just start with my suspicion, which was that she was pregnant. And that's what the threat was. Your son needs to do the right thing. He must marry me. Dr. Weaver looks at Bessie's internal organs. They all seem to be healthy. There don't seem to be disease or anything. But when he looks at her uterus, he concludes she was not pregnant at the time of her death. Is that possible to ascertain necessarily?

knowing that the body has deteriorated over a couple of weeks? Is that something that he would be able to definitively say? Yeah, I think it all depends on what's present, but I do believe that he would be able to form that opinion. Okay.

So then he looks at her head. So he's doing a very thorough examination. Here's the technique, which is horrifying, and I've had to write about this technique for breaking into a head and looking at a brain. This is a quote from the Dayton Herald article in 1896. "'The skull was sawed through and the top removed. When the outer skin-like covering of the brain was punctured, brain matter ran out like water.'"

Is that from being in the river? Well, that's just, she's putrefying. You know, this is where, you know, when the brain decomposes, it kind of turns into sort of a runny mess. So the removal of the top of the skull, the calvarium, you know, by using the bone saw and then this covering, the dura mater, which is this very tough, fibrous process.

protective covering of the brain, you know, that's, it's almost like this really thick, plasticky cover that protects the brain. And of course, if the brain is gelatinous at this point, you know, the brain, a brain that hasn't decomposed has the consistency of jello almost, you know, it's not a real rigid tissue, but as you have the decomposition, you

then yes, you do get this putrid fluid. And that's with all these organs. As the body decomposes, you have this liquefaction that occurs.

And so the further along the body is in the decompositional process, the more the tissues have been broken down, the structure of tissues have been broken down, and they turn fluid-like. And we know that when a body deteriorates, there are simply manners of death that we're not going to be able to determine because the toxicology would not be available or strangulation marks would be gone. I know a myriad of things there.

So what happens next is very fortuitous for Dr. Weaver and for Chief Farrell. So Dr. Weaver is looking at her head, examining everything, and he notices two gunshot wounds near Bessie's right ear.

Oh, good God. So we'll talk more about this case next week because there's a lot more to this case from 1896. All right. See you next week, Paul.

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashen and Kate Winkler-Dawson. Our mixing engineer is Liana Scrolacci. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel. Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at BuriedBonesPod. Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.