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This is exactly right. Experience the glamour and danger of the roaring 20s 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.

Lady to Lady here to tell you we are celebrating our 600th episode. We commemorate every 100th show with the iconic actor and our dear friend, French Stewart. French, French, French, French, French, French, French, French. I'm French Stewart. And this time we took him to Las Vegas, baby. Tune in to hear about all the antics and make sure to check out more episodes. We've got literally 600 to choose from.

They're packed with sleepover games and ridiculous tangents with the best guests. Don't miss new episodes every Wednesday. Follow Lady to Lady wherever you get your podcasts.

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, Paul. Hey, Kate. How's it going? It's going well. How about you? I'm hanging in there, you know, just trying to juggle multiple balls at the same time. You know, I was thinking about you because you and I, I think sometimes are in a similar position where we're doing multiple things in multiple genres.

every day and it burns me out sometimes. I, for a long time, just wanted to write books and then for a long time, I just wanted to teach and then I thought, oh, I'll do podcasting and I'll get involved in TV shows and it can be a lot. Don't you find that all of these different between you with writing books and podcasting and your TV stuff, it just asks

different things of you, like almost like different parts of your brain have to get tapped to get these projects done. Yeah, they're very different in terms of what they ask of me, for sure. Obviously, I'm usually in the crime world in terms of what I'm doing. And so I'm bringing that level of expertise and experience. But podcasting versus TV versus books versus public appearances, you

it's all different. And what I find sometimes is, I can be on the road and I'm needing to be in front of the camera, and that requires me to kind of get into a certain mindset because for my entire career, that wasn't something I did.

So it's a new thing, even though I've been doing it now for several years, it's still a new thing. And there's still a lot of performance anxiety to make sure that I'm comfortable with what I'm putting on camera and what I'm saying. But then to produce content for the podcast, probably even on the same day as having to film something for TV, you know, that's where you feel like it gets stretched thin. Yeah, with my first book, Death in the Air,

I was so scared because my very first interview on my book tour was with a show called Think, which is a NPR affiliate show. And it's an incredible show. It is an hour long.

And I was talking about my book, and I had never done an interview before. And so I created this massive document of like crib notes based on my book, a book I had spent two or three years reading and writing. And you would think that I would not have to have, you know, a reference sheet, but I really needed it. And I was just petrified during that whole interview. And then it got better and better. But I still have to do bullet points because...

People will ask me very specific questions about a book and I'll just kind of go, wait, I've been writing another book now. I can't really remember what levels of pollution were in the air in December 12th of 1952. So it can be very stressful, but I think you and I both really like to embrace the chaos. I think you would not have gone into your job and I would not have tackled my jobs had we both not felt comfortable juggling a lot of different things.

You know, I think throughout my entire career, obviously the cold case side was never an actual assignment for me up until the time I transferred from the sheriff's office to the DA's office. So I was juggling working in a lab or managing a lab and being, I was a division commander with the sheriff's office, handling a $12 million budget at one point. So I was juggling all of those tasks while still trying to work the cold cases.

And so in some ways, you know, having multiple outlets now that I'm

retired, it is keeping me on my toes, you know, and there's so many law enforcement individuals that after they retire, they just kind of wither because they've lost that drive. They no longer getting the adrenaline rush. They no longer have that purpose to live from a career standpoint and it can take its toll. And so even though it can be exhausting juggling all these various

balls that I am and that you are, it is, you know, something that I hope keeps my mind fresh and, you know, kind of just keeps giving me a purpose.

When I was thinking about describing Paul Holes' mind, I was thinking fresh. That's exactly what I thought. That's exactly what I thought. And I'm glad that we are part of your rotation. I know that you and I talk before we start recording the show about what you're doing and what I'm doing, and you're always involved in some really interesting case. And so I'm glad that

you are including us in all of your busyness of the day because it's always been great. I feel like I take a break when I talk to you. I feel like I have to think, but in a different way. So this is a nice outlet for me, not a painful one. Kate, I don't look at this as, you know, I'm taking a break out to work with you. I actually, you are part of what my life is now. Yay, thank you. Yes, okay.

So this story that we're about to talk about starts in Ireland, but ends up in the Dakota Territory before there's a state. We're straddling a couple of different worlds, but I think you're really going to find this story interesting. Okay, no, I look forward to it. You know, the Dakotas aren't too far away from Colorado, though I've never been there. Oh, Paul. Okay, let's go ahead and set the scene.

Let's start with the main character, who is a man named Thomas Egan. I'm not going to tell you who the victim is just yet, but there are a couple of key players in here that I want you to keep in mind. So Thomas Egan's from Ireland, and he was born in 1835. So we're in the 1800s.

And in 1855, when he's about 20, Thomas flees Ireland, like many people did, and went to the United States because of the Great Irish Famine. Ultimately, he settles in Madison, Wisconsin. He is really trying to achieve that American dream, and he seemingly gets it at the very beginning. When he has settled in Wisconsin, he meets an Irish widow named Mary Hayden Lyons, and

And Mary had worked the farmland that she had set up with her now-deceased husband. And together, Mary and her husband had a five-year-old little girl named Catherine. And so Catherine becomes Thomas Egan's stepdaughter, and the three of them live in Wisconsin, and everything seems to be fine. Thomas and Mary, as they're

Their marriage goes along, have two sons named Sylvester and John. And then in 1876, Thomas and Mary leave Wisconsin and they move to the Dakota Territory, which is about 20 miles northwest of Sioux Falls. They brought their sons along, so Sylvester and John came along, but Catherine, who was about 15, decided...

She wanted to stay with some of Mary's family in Iowa. So the family's a little bit split up, but everybody seems okay with this. So about two years later, Catherine, the daughter, travels to Dakota, and she reunites with her stepfather and her mother on the homestead, and everybody is living together. And at this point, the Eagans had another kid named Tommy, and they had made a really flourishing farm. Everybody worked on it, including these young boys.

Catherine also began to work on it. She was 17 at this point. So I know we're moving very fast through the Egan's life and marriage, but I have to set it up. We have to know from the outside, this seems like a solid family. You've got an older daughter who's 17, and then you've got three young boys. They're a blended family. In November of 1879, shortly after they got to the Dakota Territory,

Catherine meets a man named James Van Horn, and she moves into the house, and they end up getting married. And the house is very close. It's on the same trail that led to the Egan farm and this adjoining property.

So Catherine is the oldest daughter. She is. Okay, got it. So there's three boys, one older daughter, stepchild of Thomas and daughter of Mary. Again, everything seems to be going well. So Catherine has married this man, James Van Horn, and then things start to not go well as soon as James and Catherine get married. Catherine is about 20 years old at this point when she gets married. James Van Horn does not like Thomas Egan, not one tiny bit.

And they disagreed over, it sounds like it's called timber claim, which sounds like land to me. And on one occasion, there's a big rift that escalated to a point, you're going to find this interesting, escalated to a point that James actually had to pay a fine for verbally assaulting Thomas. Good Lord, if we had that right now...

How many people would be poor? So there was a fine for verbally assaulting, for impugning someone's character. You know, there's a fine for it. So this is a problem. The hostility led to a lot of acrimony between Catherine and the mother and the stepfather. So Thomas and Mary are kind of heartbroken because Catherine seems to be siding with her husband,

So we know that this is going to turn into a murder story. We've got three young boys, an older daughter who's 20, her new husband who seems hotheaded because he's willing to risk a fine for verbally assaulting his now new stepfather-in-law. And then we've got Mary, the wife, who I'm assuming is stuck in the middle of all of this. If you were a betting man, and I don't know if you're a betting man, but if you were a betting man...

Who would you bet would be the victim of this whole menagerie of characters that are in the Dakota territory right now? So James...

and Catherine, and then you have Mary and Thomas. So at least leading up to this marriage to James, it sounded like the family was in harmony. Catherine being the daughter of Mary and Thomas, there weren't any issues there. Everybody seemed to be getting along great. Now you bring in this man, James, and he gets into

disagreements. It sounds, I mean, significant disagreement for the time, at least verbally, with apparent financial aspects with Thomas. Mm-hmm.

And so right now, this is sounding as if there would be acrimony between Thomas and James. And not knowing more, it could go either way. Yep. James could be looking at taking out Thomas, possibly to secure whatever financial interest is in this timber claim. Or Thomas can be saying, you know what? James is not a good addition to the family. And he is...

You know, the paternal aspect comes to head and he decides, yep, he needs to go. And you could have these two women who are caught in the middle of it. So we'll see how it all unfolds. We are now up to September 12th of 1880. And Thomas is trying to prepare for an overnight trip and he's planning to take two of his sons with him. His oldest son, Sylvester, who at this point is 11, almost 12.

is working on Catherine and James's ranch nearby. So he's going to take these two boys with their oxen, and they're going to go do an overnight trip to get some wood and hay for the farm. And they were going to come back

Thomas hasn't seen his wife, Mary, for a while, which would alarm me and would alarm you, but does not alarm Thomas. And it's because they had a very unusual relationship for that time period. Mary would go away for two or three nights at a time because she worked in a nearby town.

They had maintained separate ownership over a percentage of their livestock. She was very independent. There was a lot of comfortable separation, it seems like, between the two of them. So he did notice that Mary wasn't there and he was packing up. And he said,

And he, Thomas, said to the boys, well, let's go on and go. And, you know, mom will come back at some point. It won't be a problem. And they went on this overnight oxen trip. So, you know, again, we come back to, you know, I'm leading up to some problems with Mary. We get to a point for me where I would be alarmed if I hadn't seen a spouse for a couple of days. But we always talk about we're living in the age of cell phones and email and texting and everything else. And

There was just a big leap of faith in the 1800s for a lot of these folks. They just assumed people would show back up at some point. Sure. You know, Mary going away for a block of time sounds like it was just a routine aspect in their relationship.

Now, of course, if something happens to Mary, then this separation, these periods of time become absolutely critical in terms of assessing, okay, what was she doing when she is separated? Was she living a separate life, which this time and distance could afford her? Is there anything else going on in which now, whether it be James or Thomas, could be exploiting because of this separation? If Mary ends up becoming a victim,

Now you have a situation to where there could be a ready excuse for her going missing. And now nobody is really concerned until it gets to be too long.

But now there's a lot of time that's passed since anything bad has happened to Mary, which complicates trying to figure out what happened. Right. And that time is difficult when we talk about crime in history. If you look at a case like the Bloody Benders, the family who killed all sorts of people in the Midwest...

They would capture people who were traveling, who weren't expected to be home for months and months and months. And then when someone would be alarmed, it would take days or weeks to even get to the area where their loved one was supposed to be. And by that time, who knows what had happened to them? There's such a disadvantage to finding out what happened to a potential crime victim in the 19th century. No, no question. It would be very tough to work.

So we also haven't talked about Mary and her relationship with Thomas or her relationship with the rest of the family. But we find out a little bit later that there were some tough things in their marriage. First, let's talk about what ends up happening on this day. Thomas and the two boys, so just so I've caught you up, the two boys are Tommy, who is eight, and John, who is 11. And then we still have Sylvester, who is 12-ish. And then we have Catherine, who's about 20.

So he takes John and he takes Tommy and packs a lunch and gets on the cart with the oxen and goes overnight. And he comes back and they're unloading all of their stuff. They're loading everything that they've purchased. And Tommy, who was the eight-year-old, goes to the cellar to drop some things off. And Tommy, the eight-year-old, finds Mary's dead, beaten body in the cellar.

Oh, okay. We thought it could have been the men, but it turns out to be Mary who might have been stuck in between these two hot-headed men. We don't know. Right. And now the question is, is how long has she been dead? And therein lies the issue with 19th century forensics sometimes. And...

And the bigger issue probably is where are we? We're not even in a state. We're in a territory at this point. There is a sheriff who can respond, but Thomas's response is a little suspect, and we need to talk about that. So Tommy sounds the alarm. He comes running upstairs. Thomas goes down and looks, and I would presume is alarmed. We don't have a read on the way he necessarily reacted, but he carries Mary's body upstairs and

And then Thomas sent one of the boys to go tell the neighbors, including James Van Horn and Catherine, Thomas's stepdaughter. Thomas is trying to figure out what to do next. He's looking down at his wife's bloody body. We find out it is a beating. She died from trauma to the head. We do know what the murder weapon is, but I'm not going to tell you just yet.

I want to tell you a little bit more about the reaction first. So Thomas is trying to figure out what to do. The neighbors who show up say he was in a daze. And he had a neighbor come up to him and say, when Thomas said, what do I do? I don't even know. She's bloody. I don't know what to do. He said, prepare her for burial. So I don't know if this is a religious thing

Like, this is the next thing to do. But the instinct was not to call the authorities in this territory. It was, let's prepare her for burial. And this is from a neighbor who doesn't end up being connected in any way to the case. This is not a suspect. Wow.

Wow, how easy it would be to get away with homicide in this era. I mean, maybe they thought she fell down the stairs and bashed her head. That was definitely a possibility. Well, you know, that is something that is very common in terms of how family or laypersons, when they walk into a homicide scene, you know, the shock of seeing a dead body and what they interpret happened is,

People like that will go to their known world experiences because they don't see homicides. They don't see what violence looks like on a human body. And so they try to relate what they're seeing with something they know in the past. And so that is a very common reaction. Oh, she fell down the stairs. And that must be what it looks like when somebody falls down the stairs.

It's not, but that's what the layperson, the average person may conclude. And I'm thinking about, you know, here you're in a territory, you know, you've got a sheriff who probably has very limited experience dealing with any type of homicide cases and zero resources. You know, so how are they going to start to sort out what happened? Yeah.

It becomes complicated. It's actually a constable, a local constable. What happens before is what's fascinating to me. Thomas Egan's son-in-law, James Van Horn, shows up with some other neighbors.

And they show up on the property because they hear what happens. They're all armed, and they hold a gun to Thomas's head and essentially conduct a citizen's arrest without trying to figure out what killed this woman to begin with. So, you know, there's a bloody cellar. There's no other signs of violence except her bashed head, which is a sign of violence, but I'm not

quite sure why they thought so quickly that this was murder. But James Van Horn says he killed his wife, I know it, and they arrest him. Experience the glamour and danger of the roaring 20s 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.

Now I start getting suspicious about Thomas and Mary's relationship. You know, is there some past history there to cause people to think that Thomas would inflict this level of violence on Mary? Secondarily, kind of getting back to my initial thought, how long has she been dead? You know, because Thomas and his, you know, two boys, you know, went on a fairly long trip together.

Were there indications that Mary could have been dead prior to Thomas leaving? Or was she killed while he's gone? You know, this becomes critical to assessing Thomas's role in this case.

They went on an overnight trip. The problem with the timeline is that Mary had an unpredictable schedule where sometimes Thomas didn't even know. They just trusted each other. She would go to town and work a couple of days, spend the night at whatever house she was at, and then she would come back in. So his timeline was very fuzzy. He said, my boys and I went overnight to pick up some hay and some wood. We came back.

The boy found her dead in the cellar. I have no idea how long she's been there. He hadn't seen her for a few days, just in general.

So you've got James, who is very suspicious, along with these local men. He is placing him under arrest. The local constable shows up and pretty quickly locates what turns out to be the murder weapon, which is a—now you're going to have to put your 19th century hat on—a hardwood picket pin, which is a weighty stake used to keep horses or other livestock from venturing off.

And I have a photo of what it will look like, and it looks like a hell of a weapon to me. And it sounds like I can guarantee you it's a weapon that they would have had. So this now to me, when I show you this, because it's something any farm would have, it has the potential of either being a weapon that was intentionally brought for use...

or it was a weapon that was found as a weapon of opportunity. So this is a wooden picket, and it's fairly large. Wow. Yeah, I've never seen this. Looks like a spike that has almost a hammer-like head on the opposite end of the point. Now, one of the things that I'm having trouble is, do you have a sense of how long this is?

You know, I don't. You have to think, this is meant to hold an ox in place. It's got to be pounded into the ground pretty deeply, I would guess, wouldn't you? I think so. I mean, obviously, this would be a devastating weapon and a bludgeoning. Both ends, you know, the spike end has the ability to be used to puncture.

And then you have the shaft, which is a working surface if this is wielded as a weapon. And that would leave linear bruising or linear lacerations depending on what part of the body is struck.

And then, of course, we have this hammer-like head that has a circular, you know, literally like a circular face of a hammer on one end and then almost like a claw on the other end. And these would leave potentially unique wounds on the victim. So this here, now in the case, if they are saying this is actually the murder weapon...

Are they finding blood? Are they finding hair adhering to this weapon? And then, of course, does it appear that Mary was killed in the cellar where she's beaten in the cellar? Or had she been beaten somewhere else and then placed in the cellar to be hidden? Well, let me answer the first question you had, which was what was found on the weapon? How did they know that this was a weapon and not some old hardwood picket pin that was discarded in the woods?

It had blood and it had hair on it, and the constable just compared the hair strands to Mary, and who else would it be really, and assumed that this was the murder weapon. It had been tossed in the cottonwood trees, which were just steps from the house. This seems like conclusive she had been at least beaten—I don't know about beaten to death, but at least beaten—

And the blood and the hair was transported onto this weapon, and then the weapon was tossed by the killer. Now, do they give any description of the crime scene? When you have a bludgeoning, and I'm assuming, you know, the fact that there's hair on this weapon is that you have blows being inflicted to Mary's head. After there's sufficient bleeding, a sufficient pooled blood source, when there's more blows, now you get...

pretty significant blood spatter from this type of weapon. This weapon will provide a lot of energy when it delivers a blow. And so that blood spatter can be significant and it can go a fair distance. Is that what is seen?

in the crime scene. And, you know, of course, this increases the likelihood of Mary's blood being spattered onto the killer. Well, it's interesting, the amount of details in this case, you know, we don't have it from public record. We're gathering it from a lot of different sources, but

but we don't have information from the trial. A lot of it comes from the newspapers. The reporters are saying this is what the evidence appears to show. There's a lot of blood in the house above the cellar, and the way that the prosecutor is framing this as he begins to put a case together against Thomas Egan, which who else would it be, has said that it seems like they would have gotten into a fight

And he beat her on the head. There's blood around the kitchen area up above. And there's a trap door, which was very common, in the kitchen, which would open up and allow you to drop trash, whatever goods, down into the cellar below. And that's what it appears like happened.

She was killed up above and dropped through the trap door below. So there must be blood up above also, and then below where it presumably pooled as she lay there for God knows how long. Sure. Now, this becomes critical because it's not just Thomas and Mary living inside this house. If you have a large amount of blood in a common area in the house...

where the kids can go. Now they become important witnesses in terms of establishing a timeline of when they were in it. I think you said the blood was in the kitchen area? Yeah, but the kids, remember, are gone. Nobody is around when this is happening. Nobody's in the house. The kids don't report anything. Where I'm going is, okay, we know Thomas has left, right?

And so he's done an overnight trip. He comes back and little Tommy finds his mom down in the cellar. So this would necessitate, if Thomas is involved, then Thomas killed Mary prior to this trip. That would tend to indicate that the blood in the kitchen was deposited prior to them going on the trip. Now I want to know what the boys saw. If Thomas is suspect,

Did these boys, and they're of age in terms of the youngest is eight. So you have what, 12, 11, and eight, if I believe is what you said. Had they been in that kitchen prior to leaving on the trip? When did they go into that kitchen? Were they told not to go into the kitchen by Thomas? You know, there's so many questions about these boys as potential witnesses to try to establish when was this blood in the kitchen? Could it have been deposited and they would not have seen it?

And that opens up the door for Thomas having killed Mary and then throwing her body down the chute into the cellar. And he keeps his boys away from the kitchen and goes and leaves. The boys don't have a lot of good information to offer. They just said, we haven't seen our mom for a few days. They didn't say they saw blood anywhere. They did say a couple of key things.

He, as you can imagine, is arrested and then goes to trial because, number one, she's been murdered on the property. Number two, the constable starts asking a lot of questions from family and friends, including James, the son-in-law, and Catherine, the stepdaughter. And they find out that Mary and James

Thomas had a hard relationship. One of the boys testifies, the oldest son said that Thomas used to, quote, pound Mary. He would abuse her and call her all kinds of names.

And he remembered a time in June that his father had struck Mary three times and knocked her down. So we're learning a little bit more about their marriage, which doesn't sound like things are going that well. This is the oldest boy saying this, the 12-year-old. Obviously, Thomas is not a good guy. However, a case still needs to be proven against him.

So that's what I am now wanting to hear is, okay, what do they have against Thomas besides just the relationship aspects? How are they making a case against him? They're not making a very good case aside from relationship and the question who else would it have been. Obviously, they can't confirm that this is her blood, this is her hair. That would have been very limiting in the 1800s.

Thomas says, I wasn't there when this happened, but because, you know, Catherine testifies, his stepdaughter testifies that she hadn't seen her mother for several weeks.

So then that expands the timeline even more. No one can put her on the farm at a certain time, at a certain location. The boys are not reporting anything unusual that happened during this time. And so they have very little evidence. I'm sure with modern technology, of course, but also with just modern thinking and policing, they would have gotten more information.

but I think that they're assuming that this was a crime scene, Thomas is lying, and there was not even really enough information to say when she died. They didn't use stomach contents, it doesn't appear. This is still Dakota territory. I mean, again, this is...

Very rudimentary, this poor constable trying to put together a case. It must have been very stressful. What time of year was this? So this happened on September 12th of 1880 is when Thomas left. I don't know what September and the Dakotas are like, but not extraordinarily hot, not extraordinarily cold.

- Yeah, so I'm just going to assume, you know, average, you know, kind of moderate temperatures. Her body's in a cellar. - Yeah. - That's going to be cooler than, you know, being up probably on the main level of the house, you know, so there could be a kind of a slower rate of decomposition.

But obviously, if she had been killed several weeks prior to this oxen trip, her body, even in that cellar, is going to be in a pretty significant state of decomposition. Yeah. And that's going to be obvious. The fact that they're not talking about that or the insect activity up there on her body, it would tell me that likely her body was in a fresher condition, so probably had been killed closer in time to the oxen trip. Yeah.

There's an absolute lack of the forensic techniques that we could use today. They just didn't have access to that. But there is just fundamental common sense investigative steps that should be taken. And Mary going away, you know, she had a job in a different town. Investigators need to be going out there verifying that she was out there, that she was working. And then when did she leave to go back home? Is it possible that she returned back home

when Thomas and the boys were out on this overnight oxen trip. If they could really verify that oxen trip really happened and Thomas was unavailable, now this is a window of time in which a different person could have come in and killed Mary. So this is just...

you know, straight up, you know, gumshoe detective work that they most certainly could do back in the 1800s. Well, Thomas said, I have an alibi. I was with my two boys when this happened. And the prosecutor said, as we've been talking about, I'm not convinced that this happened, Thomas, while you were on your trip with your boys.

You could have sent the boys away. He could have sent them away to James's ranch for 12 hours and cleaned up and then said, mom, you know, we'll be gone for a few days. I can tell you right now where my mother is right now. I know exactly where she is.

I have her on Life 360. I know where everybody in my family is right now. But it was so different then. Even if Mary had disappeared for weeks, the boys probably wouldn't have thought anything of it. It's just such a different world. Right, but it really still, it comes down to this window of time in terms of determining Thomas' involvement. And the investigation has to take a look at all possibilities. Here you have a dispute with the son-in-law, James, and Thomas.

You know, is it possible that James set Thomas up when Thomas left? He's now eliminated his wife's parents and has this financial interest, which now Catherine is likely going to inherit. There's a financial motive there for James to be getting involved with this. I hadn't thought about that. See, I do learn things from you, Paul. It's rare, but I know that. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to mark this on my calendar. Mary and Thomas had separate finances. So you're right. Now, it might have all gone to Thomas. We don't know. We don't know if she had a will or any of that. They did confirm that Thomas was on this oxen trip with her boys. Let me ask you this.

You saw the weapon, and we know Sylvester stayed home, the 12-year-old. Is it possible that a 12-year-old could use that weapon if it was heavy enough, and he could have done this damage to his own mother for whatever reason? There's no question a 12-year-old boy would have sufficient strength to yield this weapon to inflict lethal blows. You know, now, of course, it's going to be, okay, what would be the reason? What was their relationship like?

Does he possess the physical strength to move her body into the cellar? Chances are, yes, would be my guess. Because I think of myself, I was a boy that matured pretty fast physically. By the eighth grade, I'm the same height I am now. I grew very fast.

And I had a fair amount of strength as a 12-year-old boy, so I probably could have easily accomplished this type of violence on an adult woman at that age. But did he? You know, that's the question. What's the motive? You're right. We don't work a lot with crimes of passion on this show. Most of our crimes feel as if they're trying to be sophisticated.

Our criminals are trying to be sophisticated on this show. They're often premeditated. So a crime of passion would surprise me here. Yeah, I just want to throw that out there that that's another possibility that you have someone else who was not with Thomas. If we take Thomas and the two younger boys and say they did take that trip, this is when she died, who are we left with? You've got James, you've got

I guess, Catherine. You've got Sylvester. And then you have anonymous offender. There's a host of people in the wilderness who could have come out and attacked this woman. But let me say this. The strength, we were talking about the strength of a 12-year-old boy. Remember, they think this happened in the kitchen.

She was beaten, and then all the person did was open up the cellar door and drop her down. So I don't know how much dragging would have been involved, and she was just found right below the cellar door. You know, part of assessing the offender's physical attributes to be able to accomplish this crime, it is taking a look at the body disposal. If she's dropped down this chute,

What is the height of the chute from the floor? How high would the body have to be picked up in order for the offender to have gotten her into the chute to drop down? Right. Well, let's focus back on Thomas because we're getting to the end of this trial. And Thomas just says, I have an alibi. I didn't do it. You can't prove it. And...

The defense attorney goes over the evidence, which is, yes, they've identified the murder weapon. The fingerprints are either not available or they never examined them. They can't even confirm it's her hair. They're just assuming he has an alibi. But time of death is so inaccurate that they don't really know.

This seems like a circumstantial case, but he sounds like such an asshole that it seems like if she is being killed intentionally, this is the person who did it. What do you think if you're on a jury? You're one of the 12 men on a jury in rural Dakota, and you're hearing this case about this poor woman who's found dead in her cellar by her eight-year-old son. I know. Obviously, if he is really as abusive as the son testified, he's just a piece of shit.

And so as a juror, that is going to be something that if presented in front of the jury, they are going to be weighing heavily.

But this is part of the reason why many of these aspects of a defendant's life are not presented in front of the jury because they need to be judged on the facts of the case and not prior events or something that's going to bias the jury. So part of what I would be evaluating if I were looking at this case, let's say from a conviction integrity standpoint is, okay, what was presented? Did

Did the prosecutor present very biasing information that probably should have been excluded? And did that unnecessarily influence the jurors to conviction? So you're a not guilty based on lack of evidence.

Right now, I would say, I just don't know. You know, at least with what you've presented me, it's too open in terms of what Thomas's role in Mary's death was. Bad guys do come around, you know, while husbands are away and kill women. That happens, you know, so I have to take that into account. I can't just assume because Thomas is an abusive husband that he must absolutely be responsible for this homicide.

Okay. So in May of 1882, the jury of 12 men was convinced that he was guilty, and he was found guilty. And he was sentenced to death by hanging. What was so upsetting to Thomas, particularly was Catherine's testimony, his stepdaughter. He felt like he had been good to her. He didn't get along with her husband, but he felt like he always got along with her. And when she got on the stand on behalf of the prosecution and just

put into question the timeline by saying, listen, I haven't seen my mom in several weeks. I think he did it and they had a hard marriage. He was very hurt. And he said, when the judge said, do you have anything to say? He said, judge, I have nothing against anybody in the court who

or anybody around the country except the Van Horns, which are Catherine and James. They betrayed me. May the curse of God be upon them. This is very 19th century, by the way, this kind of speech. I can't stand it, sir. The law may not reach the Van Horns, but the curse of God will. And the judge said, you're sentenced to hang.

It's an uncomfortable case for me because we just at this point don't know enough. But we know that he is going to go through a very public hanging. And it was such a big deal. It was such a high profile case that the sheriff ordered a noose from a Lincoln, Nebraska-based company that was created specifically for executions.

This rope was made of a blended silk and hemp. I know this is a weird detail for me to tell you, but it arrived late, and they were not able to test it before Thomas Egan's execution in July.

You can tell this is going to be a big uh-oh moment. Yeah, that's what I was just thinking is, okay, this execution is going to get messy. Listen, these are not easy. This was not easy for them to figure out. There's the jerk-up method. There's a drop-down method. There's how big of a weight you use. I'm saying this in a very detached way, but I've just written about public hanging so often. It feels like everything I've ever written about is when they go wrong. Mm-hmm.

And this went very wrong. So 930, July 13, 1882, Thomas Egan was taken to the gallows. He was 47 years old. And he, I presume, I didn't read this, but I presume they put a hood. That was very common in the 19th century. They put a hood over him so he couldn't see. He could have last words.

They put a noose around his neck and positioned him over, ironically, a trap door. Five minutes later, they opened the door, and Thomas fell five and a half feet, but the rope snapped. And he dropped like a large sack of seed corn and landed on his feet before falling onto his face and stomach because he was pinioned. His hands and feet were pinioned, so he couldn't flail around.

And he made this blood-curdling noise. So he was dropped and then promptly thrown onto his face. I mean, it's terrible, and I'm sure it was terrible for people to view this kind of thing. Sure. You know, the fact that his body weight, you know, it applied enough force to snap this rope. And it sounds like there was a defect in the rope. But that's still a significant force to the human neck. It's entirely possible that his neck was broken because

at that point, you know, which would cause up in the cervical area, depending on where in the cervical area it's broken, but you can most certainly have complete paralysis, you know, where he couldn't move, even though, you know, he's still uttering, making utterances while he's laying there. He's in misery. Whatever the medical condition he was in, they drag him up back onto the stage and

Four attendants put him back up above the trap door, and all of the prisoners from inside the jail can see it. And they're yelling, a condemned man can only be hanged once. You know, they're saying, stop this. This is cruelty. They put a new rope around his neck. But then somebody, I don't mean to laugh at this, but somebody trips the trap door before they got it on correctly, and he falls again. And it still doesn't do it. This is the incredibly...

difficult thing about public execution. You just never know what was going to happen. So finally, the third attempt works.

and Thomas Egan is pronounced dead at 946 that morning. It's considered a triumph to many people in that area because of what he did, because he killed his wife. An 1899 publication called The History of Minnehaha, I'm sorry, you guys, if I pronounce that incorrectly, Minnehaha County, wrote that while the scene was harrowing, it seemed but the just retribution for so horrible a crime. So a terrible story, right?

A terrible ending, this poor wife who died, who seemed to be a good woman, is murdered, and her husband is hanged, and the children are left without parents. Catherine takes them, and they all move to Washington State. And the story of the Eagans vanishes from the late 1800s, and it's just a sad story.

Yeah. Except? I'm still skeptical. I want to know, it's follow the money. How did Catherine and James benefit from this? Well, you should be skeptical because the story's not over yet. Of course. And the story's not over because Thomas Egan didn't do it. Wow.

What? We have a deathbed confession. Oh, you've been holding way back on me on this one. I have. And now we're going to see what you think about this. Okay. Now let's look at the cast of characters. You've got the 12-year-old Sylvester, who you've said has the ability, the physical ability...

to beat his mother to death, and we don't know why that would happen. You've got James Van Horn. You have just the wild guy who comes in from the wilderness and kills her. And you also have her daughter available. So right now, from what you know, and I know you don't have a ton of information, who would you think is on the deathbed making a confession? This is the longest you've gone without talking, I think. Yeah.

Well, I really lean towards it's either going to be James or Catherine. I can't say one over the other at this point without knowing more. It was Catherine. Oh, okay. Daughter came over while dad was with his sons on the oxen trip and...

and got into, what, a dispute with mom? Yep, you got it. This is decades later. This is 1927. So he was executed in 1882. This is a long time, 45 years. Catherine Van Horn is now living in Seattle. She's 65.

She's dying from a stomach obstruction, and in the final days of her life, she wanted a deathbed confession documented that she was the one who killed Mary. She said, back in South Dakota in the early 80s, which is 1880s, I killed my mother. I did not live far from my mother. One day, when my stepfather and the kids were away from home, I went to my mother's. We quarreled.

I hit her over the head with a picket pin. She fell to the floor. I hit her again and again. Then I realized that she was dead. I was terribly frightened, so I opened the trap door of the cellar, shoved her through the hole, carefully closed the door, and fled. After I got outside, I noticed the picket pin was still in my hand. I threw it away. I looked cautiously around. No one was in sight. Neither

No one would ever know what I had done. Then I turned and ran as fast as I could. No one ever suspected of me. Wow. Crime of passion. We don't know what they got into a fight about, but that was a surprise to me. You know, as I'm listening to the details of the confession, I'm weighing those details against the crime scene.

You know, I want to hear specific details that would separate, you know, her confession to give me something that I could go to, let's say, photos, to the autopsy, etc., and be able to confirm.

Obviously, this went through trial and she would have learned a lot about the crime. She had not been the killer, but she could probably have learned everything she confessed to during trial. I'd be looking for that bit of information that was not presented at trial, but I could verify through the physical evidence, something objective to say, yes, she truly is the killer. Now, I'm not doubting. I don't see any motivation for her to confess to this if she didn't do it.

Right. And I want to bring up two points to you as I was reading through the research on this that made me think. Number one, you remember who arrested him immediately without figuring out, was this a fall? Did she fall through the trap door accidentally? No. James Van Horn arrested him immediately, Catherine's husband.

And I am going to bring into question whether or not Thomas was actually abusive toward Mary. And the reason I say that is no one else testified to that. Number one, it was Sylvester, the 12-year-old.

But Sylvester was with the Van Horns all the time. Who is not to say that they did not convince him to testify? We don't know, but that is a possibility. Yeah, I would say that's a distinct possibility. And I would say one of the primary questions that I have about Catherine's confession is she's indicating it was in the moment.

Heat of the moment. Yeah. No pre-planning, yet she had this oxen picket pen with her. Was there actually more intent behind this than what she was willing to divulge in her deathbed confession? Because she would look a lot worse if this was something pre-planned. Right. And then James, her husband, is the one who is now, in essence, pointing the finger immediately at his father-in-law. Yeah.

You know, was this a conspiracy between James and Catherine? Again, I go back to, in this particular instance, the money, because that appears to have been the primary family dispute prior to this homicide. Yep. And how did Catherine and James benefit? And I bet they benefited pretty significantly. Yeah. Yeah.

And what's interesting is that Catherine had a son named John, and John was the one who took this confession. He chose to not go public with it. So she said, I did it, and then she died. And rather than exonerate his grandfather, who had been wrongfully executed, he chose to sit on it. That changed when John's kids found out about all of this. They're the ones who went public with it.

And in 1993, South Dakota's governor issued a posthumous pardon for Thomas Egan, finally. And there's a historical marker that designates the location where he was hanged. What an incredible story, I mean, boy. Wow. Yeah, 113 years later, in essence, Thomas's conviction is thrown out. Yep, and we see that. I don't know anything about Thomas. We'll never know whether he was truly abusive or not.

But we do know that Catherine was a liar. Yeah. And she covered up something for a long time. And Thomas did not lie about his alibi. So I don't know what happened. But boy, she got away with it. We have this quote from him where he says, the law may not reach the Van Horns, but the curse of God will. I wonder what happened in Catherine's life to make her finally do that.

at the very end of her life if that was guilt or what? I'm assuming that James had died prior to Catherine. I would believe so, yes. Yeah, so in essence, you know, at this point, there's no harm being done to anybody she cares about by giving this confession. Right. And in essence, you know, I'm assuming that they were religious individuals and now she's going to go meet her maker. Yeah. You know, she's,

got her father saying in court the curse of God on the Van Horns, right? So now she's recognizing, oh, maybe I do need to, you know, make a confession just ready for what's going to be coming after me in the next life.

We have done cases about this where we know, of course, the executions are irreversible. I mean, this is once you've executed someone, and I am not interested in talking about my stance or your stance or anybody's stance on the death penalty on this show, but I am interested in stories like these where you just say, this happens. People are innocent sometimes, and this happens. So,

I will say, Paul, I need a week off after this case. This was a very hard case, and we thankfully have one week off. We're on hiatus next week. So that gives you a week to think about, are there any more suspects? I think it's open and shut on Catherine. There you go. There you go. Okay, thank you, and we will see you in two weeks, Paul. Awesome, Kate. Thank you very much. ♪

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 Ryo Baum. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogle. Our art

work is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones Pod. 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.