A Bridge Too Far PT 2
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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 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. ♪♪

Hey, Kate, how are you doing this week? I'm doing well, Paul. How are you? I am doing very well. Okay, that's it. We have to get into this case. No more talking. We have to jump right in. Yeah, you kind of ended on a detail last week that I'm going, oh my God. I know. I love a good cliffhanger, boy. I try to do that in tenfold all the time. I love a good cliffhanger so that it keeps people coming back for more

So let's summarize this case. I'll summarize it real quick, and then we'll jump right into it. So we're talking about 1896, Ohio. A woman named Bessie Little, who was 23, was dating, it sounds like openly, a man named

A more affluent man named Albert Franz, who was a few years younger, who came from a wealthy family in the area. Bessie's body is found in early September floating in a river. The coroner does a couple of exams and says nothing's amiss. She took her own life, and that's the end of this.

And the police chief is not convinced. He finds out that Bessie and Albert were having sex before marriage, which was a huge no-no in the late 1800s. Her parents found out and booted her out of the house until the two got married. She was distraught.

And she said to Albert's father, you must make him marry me. He has committed some sort of a crime against me. Now, whether or not that was that she had been pregnant at some point, whether or not it was because they had premarital sex and no one would marry her, there's a litany of things that she felt like she deserved to be properly married.

It sounds like Albert had confessed to a reverend and a judge that he saw Bessie take her own life, and he disposed of her body by dropping her over the bridge. Again, the police chief is unconvinced. He thinks this could be murder, but he's tired of the coroner and the coroner saying that this is a suicide. And so after finding blood on the bridge, which, of course, we know we can't identify, but after we find blood on the bridge,

The police chief brings in a police surgeon who then examines Bessie's body. It doesn't seem like Bessie was pregnant at the time of her death, but he does find something interesting, which is the thing you were talking about. He finds two gunshot wounds near Bessie's right ear. So I'll give you all of the details kind of all at once.

He can't recover whole bullets because they've been shattered by bone. Really, a bone can shatter a bullet? Yeah, you know, and it depends on the type of bullet that is being used. I don't know if you have that information. Were these just lead slugs or these jacketed bullets? I do. This is what he says.

He manages to extract enough lead particles to suggest that two .32 caliber bullets had been fired into Bessie's head, either by her or someone else. Okay. The bullets are traveling at such a high rate of speed is that when they hit bone, which is a hard substance, they do deform. They continue to press through the bone going into, in Bessie's case, into her brain, but

But that impact can cause these bullets to fragment. And typically what I've seen is if they're just lead bullets, the lead deforms dramatically impacting the skull.

And you could have several pieces just kind of break off. When they're jacketed bullets, where you have a kind of like this copper alloy coating over the lead core, that jacketing, it's so thin that when the bullet deforms, it often does fragment into many pieces. And in modern times...

We will take x-rays of the victim's bodies, of their head if they've been shot in the head, and it looks like snow. Some types of these bullets will fracture so much. You have so many tiny metal fragments inside the person's brain that they've just fractured that much. So that's not surprising to me. But, I mean, it's informative, though, that they recovered two bullets, and you have two entry wounds to the back of her right ear.

Now, let me tell you what he says about exactly the location of this happening. Okay. So Dr. Weaver says that these two .32 caliber bullets that he believes were fired into her head, they had passed through the brain.

struck the other side of the skull on the inside, perforated it, and lodged between the skull and the scalp on the left, lower, and back part of the head, having entered from the right side."

I don't understand any of that. So does that mean through her right ear onto the other side of her head? Yeah, that's pretty much exactly it. It sounds like it's right behind the right ear. The bullets have a trajectory, you know, right to left, passing through the inside of her head, through her brain.

and then actually pass through the skull on the other side. And they either have lost enough energy from passing through all these structures in her head that the scalp is strong enough to basically catch it. They don't have enough energy to push through the scalp and exit out the other side of her head. But it also could mean that you have what we call a shored exit to

to where let's say she's laying with her left side, her left side of her head up against the floor or up against a piece of furniture or something that you could have the bullet pass through. And as it's trying to push out the other side of her head,

That object her head is against is kind of preventing it from being able to actually penetrate through that scalp. And so either circumstance is possible, but it's significant. You have two bullets passing through her brain in a location that is not indicative of suicide. And this was absolutely missed.

by that first pathologist. Yeah, that's why I want to come back to the six days in the water. Can you now see how it's possible that, and I don't know how big a .32 caliber bullet is, can you see how it would be possible with bloating or anything else that would happen in the water, how this inept coroner could actually miss that bullet

Or are we back to the quote on the take corner? I imagine Bessie had fairly long hair. Hold on a second. I never thought you would request a drawing. I never really think that you seeing the victim or the perpetrator, the offender is helpful. But this is an artist's rendering of Bessie. Now, her hair is up, but yes, she looks like she would have long hair if it were down.

Okay. So obviously with the two bullet entry wounds and no exit, where her hair is behind her right ear, that's where the blood would be very apparent if she had just been shot and left, let's say, on the surface of the bridge versus tossed in the water. If she's floating in the water for six days, I can see where the blood would be washed off and she has enough hair to

where I'm assuming these bullet entry wounds are, that that hair would disguise those bullet entries. So this is where the pathologist, if he's just doing a superficial visual exam, he could potentially miss these entry wounds. Now, when bullets pass through your head, they do other damage. 32 is small caliber, so they may not do a lot of damage, but oftentimes the orbital plate

is fractured kind of at the base of the brain. The eyes will look black and be very swollen, you know, and that's an indicator, uh-oh, there's been some massive trauma inside this person's head, even though you don't see the injuries, like if they've been, you know, hit on the back of the head with a baseball bat or something.

But with the absence of any other type of injury like the black eyes, I could see where these two smaller entry wounds that are covered up by her hair mass would be missed if somebody's just looking at her.

But this is where you have to do a thorough examination. Right. And with this information, Police Chief Farrell is really trying to figure this out. His idea, which is pretty sexist, I think, is that I don't think this woman is strong enough to hold a .32 caliber gun and doesn't know enough about firearms to be able to fire the revolver twice into her own body.

head. So let's remove the idea that these are two shots, because you and I have talked about how it is possible, if you're taking your own life, to get two shots off before it happens. But the idea that this woman isn't strong enough and doesn't know enough about firearms, what do you think about this statement, besides it being totally sexist? Yeah, no, that's a bunch of BS. A young child can pull the trigger on a .32 caliber weapon. That's just nonsense.

It's more of assessing now the circumstances because you have this dead woman's boyfriend, Albert, saying, well, she committed suicide and I disposed of her body. And now you have two shots into her head. You have blood that's on the surface of the bridge. Is she shooting herself in the head and still maintains sufficient mobility to get up and over the fence on the bridge to get into the river? You start stacking the values

various facts of the case, and it becomes less and less likely that this is suicide, and more likely this is homicide.

Well, let me ask you, because it's vague about where the bullets entered. It says near the ear. If she's inexperienced with a firearm and she really is putting her right hand has a gun to her head and she's trying to pull the trigger twice. And maybe Albert will eventually say, oh, yes, I was with her and I saw all this happen. Maybe in her haste, she's pulling it twice and not hitting what we would typically say would be the temple, which is where we see a lot of suicides happen.

Can you glean anything from what he's saying, pass through the brain, struck on the side of the skull? Would one or two inches really make that big of a difference as far as a ability to pull the trigger twice? You know, when you start talking about gunshots that are at that level of the brain, you are now having the bullets pass through. I

I mean, the most critical structures that are connecting, you know, the brain, whether or not the brainstem has been injured. But fundamentally, this is even less likely that she would have maintained the capability after that first shot to pull the second shot. The shot to the temple is

there's a greater likelihood that you could maintain consciousness, motor skills after a shot, especially with a smaller caliber like a 32. You know, you think about Phineas Cage, a classic psychology textbook example, a railroad worker who had a iron rod driven up, you know, underneath his jaw through his frontal cortex, you know, and he never lost consciousness. Yeah.

You know, so when it comes down to evaluating, okay, is this something that Bessie could have done? It's really having that expert pathologist taking a look at where the bullet passed through, what brain structures were injured and assessing whether or not she could have maintained the capability after the first shot to pull the trigger on the second shot. And I would say, if you're talking about

At the ear level and the structures in the brain, these bullets went all the way through to the other side of the inside of her skull? I would say no. Okay. I think this is more indicative of somebody else pulling the trigger twice. Because am I wrong in thinking that in 1896, this is not any kind of an automatic weapon?

Tell me what actually has to happen. She pulls the trigger, and in order to do another shot, does she have to re-cock this gun? It all depends on the make and model of the gun. Okay. Let's just say it's a standard revolver. If the trigger is what we call double action, so when you pull the trigger back to shoot the gun, the mechanism of the revolver also cocks the hammer back, and

And then once the trigger reaches a certain point, the internal mechanism allows the hammer to drop to fire the shot. When you pull the trigger again after that, it rotates the cylinder to get the next live round into the chamber, and it repeats the process. So with a standard revolver, the shooter, if it's Bessie, would have to consciously pull this trigger twice.

Some guns are different, you know, and there's so many different permutations of firearms out there. It's hard to say for sure in this case without knowing more what Bessie would have had to go through in order to shoot herself twice. It sounds like a standard revolver from information we get later. Right now, we'll operate under the assumption that it would be very difficult for her to get two shots off. From what I am hearing, I think that is a correct assumption to make. Okay.

So now Police Chief Farrell is just trying to build a case because he's convinced this is murder based on these two bullet holes that he's been told are there in her head. They take her head and they put it in a jar that's filled with alcohol, which is how they would have preserved it. It's probably cheap whiskey. Is everything I've ever read. It's always been...

Very cheap whiskey, and they would preserve entire bodies for dissection and anatomy classes using very cheap whiskey. And they would just put it into an oak barrel and preserve the bodies that way. So her head was preserved, and we'll find out why in a little bit. But just that's an odd little note. That would be how you would preserve a body then. What would you do next?

Now, I guess refrigerate it if there's something that's happening six months down the road and you feel like you need to preserve this for some reason. Well, during a standard autopsy, the pathologists are taking samples of a wide variety of tissues in the body, you know, for histological analysis. Sometimes in homicides, there's going to be certain parts of the body that will be preserved in a sample jar.

And they're using formalin, another chemical that basically ceases any type of bacterial activities. These cells haven't been disturbed due to the preservation processes, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Whiskey, I guess in many ways maybe that's what I'm doing when I drink my bourbon is I'm preserving myself from the inside out. How's that?

And with that, we're going to move on to a different piece of evidence. Oh, gosh. Okay. The chief of police is now investigating a little bit more victimology, a little bit more about his now suspect turned what we think will be an offender. He learns that France's story has changed in a pretty big way because what he's saying is that, okay, I admit it. We took a ride in the buggy together that night and

She got very upset because I told her we were going to break up and I wasn't going to marry her. She pulls out a revolver and then shoots herself in the head. And she died instantly. He panics. He says, I don't think anybody's going to believe me when I say that this was a suicide. So to protect himself from false accusations, he threw Bessie's body off of the bridge and into the water. And he tosses the gun into the water also.

Now, before you comment on that, because we knew this was coming, he had eventually said, okay, I was with her. The reason that this comes about is that Chief Farrell believes he can match some buggy tracks that were left near the bridge.

And he thinks that he can match them to Albert's buggy. So he gets to Albert Francis's house and finds out there is no buggy. There is no horse. And in fact, there's no more stable because Albert has burned all of it down, including the horse.

Yeah, that's not suspicious at all. No, not at all. He's gotten rid of buggy evidence and any kind of clothes that she was wearing that might have blood on it, any kind of evidence where there's blood. He's now effectively gotten rid of it.

So, yes, in essence, as you were telling me about the scenario of him saying that she shot herself inside the buggy. Okay, now this is the crime scene. Now it's so important to get access to that crime scene to see what evidence remains.

Well, he's destroyed that with the fire. He's destroyed the ability for the chief to possibly match the buggy tracks or the horse tracks found at the bridge to the buggy and the horse. Now, from my perspective, it's, well, what else is inside that buggy that still exists? Albert himself and the clothes that he was wearing and-

Now, is there any backspatter coming back from these entry wounds? Is he close enough to her where maybe on the sleeve of his coat that he's wearing, do I now see minute particles of blood droplets or blood and brain matter that backspattered onto him? So, of course, the chief probably isn't aware of that.

But that would be critical evidence to look for today. Under a search warrant, you go through all his wardrobe and maybe you get lucky and find something that has blood and or brain tissue or even what we call shattered hair on it and get that examined. And today, of course, we could do DNA to show, this is from Bessie and this is showing that he's in close proximity to her at the time she's receiving these shots.

Chief Farrell does not have that kind of luck in this case. So first, let me set the scene for this fire, which just sounds crazy to me. There were people who saw his stable on fire. They said he was acting oddly. He was outside in his shirt sleeves, which would have been unusual. He had been wearing a suit, as most men would have in this time period. And he was holding an axe and forbidding anyone to come close to the stable to help him put out the fire. He

He said a man had even said, give me the axe. I will bust down the stable door and save at least your horse. And Albert refused to hand over the axe. And he said that the horse and the buggy weren't worth anyone's life. It sounds like he went off the rails and refused.

Finally, the whole thing burns down. And by the time Chief Farrell gets out there, they scour the stable and what's left of the buggy, which is not very much. And they find a few pieces of a man's suit that has been severely burned. But that's about it. And the same thing with the river. They really have no luck finding evidence. And it looks like he really tried to dig this up. And they never found the gun that he said he had.

tossed into the river, right? Listen to this. So this is what I mean by this guy, Chief Farrell, goes above and beyond, particularly for a man in the 1800s who's working on a case. So this is what he does. He decides that he wants to find that stupid murder weapon. And Franz had said, I tossed the gun into the river. I didn't want to see it anymore. She had taken her own life with it.

So he fills rowboats with magnets and they drag the magnets on ropes across the river for days. I just thought, God love you, Chief Farrell. I mean, my goodness, what an incredible feat to try. And of course, there's no luck. Yeah.

It's terrible. Well, I've actually never even heard of that technique to locate a firearm that's been thrown in a body of water. Typically, we send divers down. He did that too. Okay. So then when that doesn't work, he hires a professional diver and...

and a champion swimmer to look. But of course, it's a river, which would have been murky and all kinds of animals and all kinds of vegetation and just no luck. And I will tell you, I had a family who read American Sherlock and then emailed me and told me about their own forensic scientist who had been lost in history, who sounded fascinating. And I remember reading up on him and reading a case that

where he was determined to find a gun. And he had the police build a small dam in a river to collect the water to stop it from moving down. A dam. He built a dam and he found it. He found the gun. It was like two miles down from where it had been dumped. So I love an investigator who goes above and beyond. And that's where we are with Chief Farrell. He is trying everything possible because, Paul...

Someone heard that night someone exclaim murder from the bridge, and then they heard two gunshots. So now he was saying absolutely

absolutely, this was murder. And by the way, screaming murder was very much an 1800s thing. I can't imagine anyone would say that now, but screaming aloud, murder, murder, that's just something everybody did in the 1800s in a good crime story. So is the presumption that the person who's screaming murder is Bessie before she's killed? I think that's it, yes. And it seemed like a woman's voice, but it was a screech more than anything else.

And of course, why would Albert say that if she's taking her own life? I guess maybe he's trying to get attention, but he never says that he screamed murder or anybody else did. Those were just witnesses, you know, near the bridge, but no one actually saw anything. They heard gunshots. They heard someone say murder. They didn't hear a splash or anything like that. Experience the glamour and danger of the Roaring Twenties from the palm of your hand in

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.

So Chief Farrell then gets a big lead. He goes to a local gun shop. He is canvassing everywhere. He goes to a local gun shop and says, did anybody buy a gun over the last couple of months? And the owner says, yes, someone bought a 32 revolver. And he identifies Albert Franz as the person who bought it.

Now, Franz does not know this guy. The guy doesn't know him. It's an identification. And Franz says, I never did that. No. And that's it. It's a case of mistaken identity. So if they don't really know each other and he says this happened, Franz came in three weeks ago. Is that a reliable identification, you think? Just a random customer coming in looking for a gun? Yeah.

During this canvas that the chief is doing, you have this witness that is identifying Albert as the purchaser of the gun. Is he picking Albert out of photos? Is he pulling out a piece of paper and saying, here's the signature of the purchaser of the gun? That's going to kind of all add into how to assess how much weight to put on the reliability of that statement. Right.

But you basically have a witness that is saying that Albert Franz bought a weapon that is the same caliber and same type that was used in Bessie's death. This is just going to be a bit of information that...

that, of course, the chief is using as he's building his case against Albert. But it's also going to be something that would ultimately be put in front of a jury. And it's the jurors who will assess how much weight they will put on it. And Farrell hasn't even arrested him yet. He's still trying to figure out if he has enough evidence. He's being very conservative, which is, again, wrong.

unusual for an investigator in the 1800s. I mean, you really, I think just the confirmation from the gun shop owner would have been enough for a lot of investigators, but he's doing his due diligence on

Certainly not photos in 1896. I've never even read about lineups happening in 1896. I think it would be more dragging France down there and having him stand in front of the gunshot owner and saying, is this him? Or having him hide and, you know, be able to see France out in the open. I don't think there's anything professional about it. It's just, do you recognize this guy? Yeah.

So nothing organized. I would say, I don't know, I don't think of all of the customers, I don't think your case should hinge on this gun shop owner being able to positively identify him. And he's not, at least. He's gathering more information. And we know that that type of in-person identification...

is extremely prejudicial. Imagine being the witness and now you have law enforcement saying, is this the guy? That witness oftentimes feels compelled to say, yes. They brought him in front of me, so there must be a reason why they chose that guy. And that's something that is very much frowned upon today or should be.

And my impression is that information came a little bit later where, you know, everybody in town knew about this. They knew who the suspect was. They at least knew who her boyfriend was. So, right, I would toss that out. But it is an interesting piece of information. Here to me is the most interesting piece. Well, there's two most interesting pieces coming up.

Here's one of them. Chief Farrell does some more digging and talks to family friends, talks to friends of Albert Franz, and they find out that he has a girlfriend. And her name is Molly Cart. And she had actually received a letter from him on the day that Bessie died. It was a love letter. And Bessie...

The friends say that, as far as they knew, Albert really was courting Molly. He really, really liked her. He wanted to, you know, be involved more heavily with her. And at this point, Albert has hired some defense attorneys, of course, because he's assuming he's about to get arrested. And the defense attorneys say...

That's just not true. Maybe he was flirting. Maybe he sent a little love letter here and there. But he was in love with Bessie. And his family had said, well, you're too young to get married. Let's just wait. You're only 20 years old. And that was it. So he contends, I don't care who says that I was in love with someone else. I was in love with Bessie. I never would have killed her. I didn't want to see her die. And I was distraught when she took her own life and scared.

But this is just another aspect in evaluating Albert as a suspect. He's got Bessie, who is in essence threatening him and his family if he doesn't marry her. He possibly has a girlfriend that maybe he wants to spend some time with,

but knows that if Bessie follows through with her threats to force him to marry, that he won't be able to pursue a relationship with Molly. So this is where we build into, okay, there appears to be motive for Albert to move on from Bessie. And we know that there's easier ways than killing the person to do that.

But sometimes people will commit homicide because they think that's the only way to get out of the situation. Well, we'll have even more information coming down the pipeline here. Now, Chief Farrell has had enough. He says there's enough to bring charges against Albert. He arrests him.

And Albert goes on trial for murder on December 14th of 1896. This is pretty quick. So she was found in early September, three months, which seems pretty fast. But he worked very quickly on gathering all of his evidence.

Albert denies it, sticks with his story that she died by suicide, and prosecutors say that's BS. And they do something that I think is, I don't know, I wonder from you if this is something that would happen today. So you remember that they preserved her head in whiskey and alcohol. They present the head.

to the jury, and they use it to point to the two, what they perceive to be bullet holes in this head floating in alcohol. And here's a quote from the newspaper, which I'm sure is very accurate. "The jar containing the head was placed on a table directly in front of the jury, and some of the members looked as though they wished it anywhere else on earth." No kidding.

Yeah. That seems like something that could backfire. I mean, what if you discussed this panel of men? It's all men. Well, this is where even today images of the victims are heavily argued in front of a judge as to what will be allowed to be seen in front of the jury because the graphic nature of death, of autopsies,

is perceived as possibly being very, very prejudicial against the defendant because the jurors are going to go, he did that to her. And so the defense often makes very strong motions against anything that is graphic in nature. There is no way that

I could ever see in courts today where a victim's head floating in a jar would be allowed in court. Terrible. There's better ways in order to present the evidence than doing that. And that's just so disgraceful to the victim, the victim's loved ones who are probably present in court. Yeah.

France's team is really trying to insist that she could have shot herself twice. There are dueling experts, which we've talked about, can be problematic for a jury. Who do I believe? There are all these people in white coats saying opposite things. This is something I need to talk to you about because we haven't really talked about this forensic technique before.

There is the secretary of the local fire board testifies because the prosecutor wants to prove that France was covering up evidence by setting the stable on fire along with his horse and his buggy, which were present during this death. And he's

He brings in this man from the local fire board who says that he believed that it was, he called it incendiaryism. Is that right? Is that a word? I haven't heard that word. You know, of course, incendiary device. This is incendiaryism. Incendiaryism is, well, indicating that it was, you know, basically purposefully lit. Arson. But the prosecutor says,

said, can you please elaborate? This is his witness. Can you please elaborate on the conclusion? But the judge says no. And the

And the judge says, you know, this is purely based on your observation. It's not a proven fact because arson and forensics were not something that were considered reliable unless I suppose you found a gas can at the scene. There was no way to prove really then whether or not this was arson or an accidental fire. No electricity, of course, at the time.

Are there any techniques involved in arson investigations that you think could be brought legitimately in front of a Dahlberg hearing as an argument from a defense attorney saying, this is not valid evidence, this is not a good technique to use? I mean, this is a whole discipline unto itself.

So arson investigators are very well trained. You know, there's so many studies that have been done to show how fires are started as well as how they...

move through a particular structure. The way the burn occurred can be interpreted to be able to point towards, yes, this appears to be where the origin of the fire was. What is at that origin? It appears that there's a small electrical appliance. Maybe this was just an accidental fire.

Or you collect debris from that origin, you send it to the lab, and we do what's called accelerant analysis, where we look for the volatile chemicals that are present there. And different flammable chemicals, such as gasoline or kerosene, have different volatile components present. Back in the day, when we were doing arson analysis within the lab, the forensic scientists that did that work, you know...

which flammables have certain chemicals in there using this gas chromatography. So there is bona fide science behind it, but it is something that requires an expert to interpret. And sometimes they can't determine origins of fire or detect incendiary devices or accelerants. Well, it was useless in this case. The judge squashed it and said, no, this is...

This is just your opinion, and it's not very valid. And luckily, the prosecutor's case didn't hinge so much on that. Here is the big kicker to this case, as far as I'm concerned, and this really speaks to motive. Now, if we go through the motives right now, they've had premarital sex, doesn't look like she was pregnant at the time of her death.

She really wants to get married because it sounds like he wronged her in her mind and she wants to be married. It's proper. Her parents kicked her out. She needs to be properly married. It sounds like he could have been courting another woman. And it also sounds like this might have been, from Albert's point of view, the end of their relationship. So here's the kicker.

There's a local doctor named Dr. Francis, and he testifies that he examined Bessie a couple of months before she died in July, not close to when she died, a few months before. She came to his office with Albert as a couple, and Dr. Francis said she was pregnant. Now, we remember Dr. Weaver said she was not pregnant when she died. Would there be any telltale signs that she at one point died?

had been pregnant, because then we have to talk about whether she miscarried or had an abortion. But Dr. Francis is certain she was pregnant in July. Does he say how far along she was? He didn't say how far along, but it must have been far enough along for him to be able to tell doing a basic exam, not using a sonogram. I mean, I don't think she was 15 weeks along or anything. And this was several months prior to her death. Yeah. Yeah.

It was. It was in July. So August, September, two months. Yeah, I don't know what telltale signs would be within her body that could be interpreted by the pathologist if she had miscarried. If there had been an abortion, I think that there may have been some injuries, internal injuries that could possibly have been present. But this is way outside of my wheelhouse for sure. I really don't know.

Here's where the abortion thing comes in. Dr. Francis said during this conversation when he says, Bessie, you're pregnant, Albert jumped in and alluded to the idea that he would like her to have an abortion. But Albert never says to Dr. Francis, can you do it? Or he never says, can you give me a referral? Of course, this would have been illegal. Can you give me a referral to someone who could do it?

So the idea is that she was pregnant in July. When she's dead in September, she wasn't. Either way, it sounds like she either miscarried or they ended up finding someone to do an abortion. So either way, this makes her a very high-risk victim, which I did not think she was at the beginning of this story. Now I feel like the picture is really coming in. He's gotten this woman pregnant. He doesn't necessarily want to be with her. He has his eye on someone else.

And now it seems to me I might be a little bit more convinced about this being murder and not a suicide. Oh, I'm convinced. This is homicide. Yeah. I know you were convinced three pages ago. You know, when I start talking about an investigation, early on in an investigation, of course, you have many leads, many tendrils that you're following. But then as information comes in, as lab results come in, as statements are made, etc.,

All of a sudden, some of these tendrils start to line up. And then pretty soon, I use this term stacking. Now you start to see circumstances stack on top of each other. The physical evidence is supporting the circumstances. And a case gets built based on the stacking. And as you are telling this story, that is what I was seeing, is that it really started stacking towards this being a homicide case.

And many of these things taken by themselves don't differentiate.

But when you take them in an overview, such as this burning of the buggy and Albert preventing people from doing things that would help get rid of the fire or save his horse. I mean, that again, that's just another by itself. It's like, well, you can't necessarily draw a conclusion one way or the other. Yeah. But then you add it into everything else. It's like, yeah, okay. She was last seen getting into a buggy and now that buggy is burned. Yeah. You know, it stacks. Yeah.

And that's you can just keep stacking the letter she wrote to the father and him going in and buying a 32 per this dealer. It all just adds up that he wanted to get out of that relationship and felt that the only way to do it was to kill her. Let me play defense attorney.

which I'm awfully good at sometimes. The defense attorneys put witnesses on, and actually several state witnesses say the same thing, which is that Albert Franz, at the very beginning of this investigation, had denied that this happened, but then he was incredibly convincing and consistent.

that the night she went missing, she took her own life. He panicked and threw her body into the river. The people who saw him right after this happened say he didn't have any blood anywhere on his clothes or on his body when they saw him. The police didn't find any bloody clothing anywhere. Of course, we know that might have burned up. There's no proof that this fire was started on purpose, and he was acting a little oddly, but maybe you would too if you saw your girlfriend take her own life.

And, you know, he is denied that he is courting another woman. Also, Franz's father, Albert's father, testifies that there's a letter that Bessie sent him that was threatening suicide, right, if Albert did not marry her. Then the defense finds a witness who was an acquaintance of Bessie's. There was a recent exchange where Bessie had threatened to take her own life if this woman, Isabel Fowler, didn't take her in as a roommate.

So they're framing Bessie as a woman who was really fragile and possibly had some mental health issues and was on edge and had threatened suicide in many different instances. And one more thing that occurs to me, Paul, the detail I have about these supposed two shots, I'm a little unclear about how we know it is definitely two bullets. So Dr. Weaver says that he felt like he found enough lead particles in

to indicate that these were two bullets, but it doesn't sound like there are two really clear bullet entry holes into her head. I know they pointed to them, but the notes just indicate that he was piecing together these bullets to figure out how many there were. Is there a way he might not have put that together correctly and it was only one bullet and she was the one who did it?

Well, usually it's very obvious that you have multiple shots. Now, the skull could be fractured extensively. That could cause a disruption. But if the pathologist had taken the time, and it sounds like possibly this police surgeon was the one that concluded this.

Two shots into the body. I've never really seen it to where two consecutive bullets had entered the wound in such a way that you couldn't tell that, oh, hold on, we got an unusual wounding pattern here. Because there's just no way they perfectly aligned. The two bullets going in will perfectly align into the same location. However, let's just put that aside and talk about the collection of all these fragments.

We know, you know, you take a look, you got a 32 caliber round, you know how much one bullet weighs. And

And now let's say you have enough lead out of her head that is almost twice the amount that the standard 32 caliber round weighs. You go, yes, there's more than one bullet here. The fact that they're drawing the conclusion that it's 32 caliber round tells me that they have a large mass to be able to determine caliber. And then of course, you've got smaller pieces off of this large mass of the bullet that have fragmented off.

They probably have two fairly large masses from the two separate bullets that have deformed and then broken up. But you still have where you go, yeah, it's obvious that I've got two bases of this bullet that's recovered. But even absent that, firearms examiners do this all the time. They're weighing all the various fragments that are being collected to determine, okay, well, what am I working with here if everything is just completely smashed up and fractured?

So it sounds like Dr. Weaver, as a police surgeon, he would have had enough knowledge to be able to piece this together and say two bullets. I know that Albert is acting weird, and he's doing all sorts of things that are unusual. But really, it sounds like to you, this comes down to the two shots, and specifically where the first shot or either shot hit would basically disable her from being able to take off another shot. At least in terms of the manner of death,

Everything about these two shots, I heavily weigh towards this as being homicide versus suicide. But when we start talking about the case circumstances, and yes, there's alternate explanations that the defense is putting out there that you've pointed out. But fundamentally, you start adding everything up, start stacking things up. And this is where I go, this is homicide. Now, is it provable in court? Well,

Well, that's on the prosecutor to figure out. I know from my perspective, I'm in line with the chief. This was a homicide. And I've compiled everything to show why I believe this is a homicide.

There's the alternate theory that the defense has that she took her own life. Well, let's put this in front of a jury and see what they think. And that's fundamentally what our system is about. And the prosecutor, you know, the same prosecutors who put Bessie's head on a table in front of the jury appeal to them and say, would any caring person be willing to take someone's body who they loved, who just took their own life and dump them there?

off a bridge into a river. Nobody would do that. Only a monster would do that.

So we know, I know at least, to refrain from judging the way somebody behaves. But that also, I think the prosecutor has a point there. Is it fair, from your point of view, Paul, to judge someone's immediate reaction after a death as part of a murder investigation? Don't we all react differently? Yes. And that's something that is very well known, is that people, when they suffer trauma, do act

differently from other people. So it's hard to draw a solid conclusion based on that. But it's something that has to be acknowledged, has to be observed. What does it mean within the context of the case?

And that's where I'm coming from on this case. And it sounds like you are, too, is that it's just one suspicious thing after another with Albert. Yeah. I strongly lean he killed Bessie. And was he convicted? He was. It convinced the jury. All of the police chief's hard work paid off and they convict him. And he sentenced to death.

in November of 1897. That's when he's supposed to be executed. There's a very disturbing footnote to this. Boy, have I written stories about bad executions.

And this was a bad one. The electric chair is only seven years old in the U.S., and that is what Albert is facing. Once his appeals are exhausted, he is placed in the electric chair. It takes five applications of electricity to finally kill him. I mean. An electric chair in 1897. Yeah. And this was supposed to be the humane alternative to a hanging. Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know. Yeah, boy. I mean, and I've heard of some bad hangings before, but five jolts of electricity must have really been terrible. He ends up dying and, of course, never wavered as many of the guilty do, never wavered in his innocence. He always said, I didn't do it. She took her own life.

But this, to me, is a story of a testament to good police work. Boy, this guy in 1896, Thomas Farrell, covered all of his bases. Next time I need you to suggest to the police, next time they're trying to recover a weapon, that you need a boat full of magnets.

And they're sort of trolling, trying to find, I mean, a fruitless effort trying to find this weapon. But that's how convinced he was that Albert Franz was guilty of murder. And a jury agreed. He's doing the legwork. As new information comes in, your job as an investigator is to go out and corroborate or refute that information. And here he's got information that this revolver has been thrown in the river and he's doing everything he could at the time to

to try to recover it. Now, the use of magnets. I thought that was ingenious. You know, in this day and age, our divers have metal detectors. Oh, that's cheating. I think that's cheating. You have sonar equipment. There's so much more side scanning sonar on the marine boats for, you know, larger objects and

But no, it does sound like this chief, you know, he recognized how to investigate a crime. Even though he didn't have all the training and technologies available to him that modern law enforcement has, he knew how to build a case. And he put in the legwork. The gum shoe detective in him really paid off. It's amazing. It's an amazing case.

We are off next week because this has been such an endeavor for us that we need a week off. So I think you need to fit in an extra workout and be ready for next week. Well, I'm a little bit exhausted after this one, Kate. So I might just take it easy. You worked hard. You worked hard. Rest up and look forward to hearing the next case. Okay. See you in a few weeks. Sounds good.

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