If There's a Will PT 1
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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. On July 11th, 2002, J.C. McGee was shot and killed in the doorway of his home in Ohio. For 22 years, the case remained unsolved until his daughter Madison started asking questions.

This is the journey of a daughter searching for answers, for closure, and for justice, and figuring out exactly what that means as she uncovers some dark truths that have been hidden from her. As far as podcasts go, it doesn't get more personal than this. From Tenderfoot TV, Ice Cold Case is available now. Listen for free on Apple Podcasts or 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, Kate. How are you doing? I'm great. How about you? I'm doing fantastic. Oh, you're perky. So is this sports season? Do you get excited about sports season right now? Well, that's exactly why, you know, I am perky, as you put it. No, I was able to attend a pro football game for the very first time in my life, and I

Wow. And I'm a lifelong Minnesota Viking fan. Okay. So I went up to Minneapolis and, you know, went into...

their stadium and watched a game, and it was such an amazing experience. You know, they unfortunately lost, but you know what? Just the experience was well worth it. I'm going to do it again. Well, so I'm confused. Not an Oakland Raiders, that's right, right? Oakland Raiders fan, not a 49ers? Are you laughing because I got that wrong? No, well, no. Well, Oakland, you know, the Raiders have been in several different cities over the course of my life, but...

I know what you're alluding to is that, you know, I did most of my adult life in the Bay Area, California. And actually, you know, as I was growing up there and starting my career, the 49ers were the most dominant team in the NFL. They were constantly winning Super Bowls, you know, Joe Montana to Steve Young, quarterback situation.

But the Minnesota Viking connection goes back, you know, my parents were born and raised in St. Paul. And my dad was in the military. So as a boy growing up, I was living all over the nation. And I couldn't be changing my sports team allegiance just because now I moved to a new location. So I always just kind of kept that connection.

that I'd always be a fan of the Vikings. And there's a nostalgic aspect. You know, back when I was growing up, we rarely got to see the Vikings play on TV unless it was a nationally broadcast game. I'd wait for halftime just to see the little clips of highlights of what was going on in the game. But...

My grandma, who lived in St. Paul, she would clip out the local newspaper articles the following morning and snail mail those to wherever we were living across the nation so we could read in great detail how the Vikes did. If they did great, it was always a good article to read. If they didn't do so good, then it was kind of a bad article to read. But just that connection, you know, it's just something that I've maintained my entire life. You can see I've got the

You know, the Minnesota Viking head, you know, growing on the wall behind me. Oh, that's it. Yeah. Okay. I've been wondering about that for the past year or so. And now I know. Yeah.

Now I know. I should have asked sooner. Well, I think that's very sweet, and I understand the nostalgic part of it. My dad was a huge Dallas Cowboys fan, huge. And I remember when my folks were married, one of the nicest memories I had was him laying on the couch, kind of halfway falling asleep because the Cowboys weren't doing very well.

And my mom had made chili and it would be cold outside. And, you know, my parents got divorced when I was really young. But there are certain key memories that are nice because I adore my parents. And I think that was one of the nice ones. I don't.

really give a fig about football. I think it's fun to watch, but it's mostly because of my dad, because it reminds me of my father. So I get that. I get that. And I do hope you make it back there. I think that's wonderful. That'll be another one. We'll talk to Karen in Georgia and just say, we must do something in Minneapolis. And we'll just, you know, we'll take a little field trip. It'll be okay in the buried bones van. As long as it's not in the dead of winter. Okay.

I always manage to visit places in the Northeast right in the middle of winter, and people are always going, why do you come during this time? Because I love winter. So, okay, we'll go in the fall. We'll do it in the fall. How about that? That sounds good. And are you familiar with the Hail Mary Pass involving the— No, what is that? You don't know this big controversial thing for Vikings fans. God.

I think it was 1975, end of the game, Vikings were winning, Roger Staubach drops back and chucks up this Hail Mary pass. And the Vikings cornerback was in great coverage, and Drew Pearson ends up catching the ball, and the Cowboys win, and it causes them, I think, to advance to the Super Bowl, or at least advance in playoffs, so it was a big deal.

Yeah, but as a Viking fan, we're like, the Cowboys receiver pushed off. There should have been a penalty called. Oh, my gosh. I'm going to get comments about that, and I'm not going to understand any of them, so I'm just going to pass them over to you. The Cowboy fans are going to light me up.

Well, then, moving on. Well, we're going from Minneapolis and Texas to Massachusetts to Salem, Massachusetts. Have you been to Salem before? No, I still haven't made it up. Really haven't spent much time. I did do a Vermont event for my book tour. Okay. That's the first and only time I've been up in that, you know, northeast corridor, if you will. And Salem, Massachusetts, is that? Yes. Okay.

Where, like the whole witch? Yes. Okay, so it's not the Salem that's up in the Oregon area. No, very different Salem. Okay, got it. Different kind of spooky, yes, Salem as in the witch trials. And this story, if you can believe it, takes place before the witch trials.

Right. No, wait. That's wrong. After the witch trials. But not long after. Well, 100 years after the witch trials. Well, in your world, 100 years is kind of a short period of time. Oh, my gosh. I mean, it really is. Okay. Well, let's get to Salem and let's set the scene. Okay.

This is a story about a very unlikable victim. We have talked about some victims before who have been not so great. And it's usually the men who are the gamblers, who are, you know, the guys who are doing really shady things. And then they get killed. And we still are obligated, as the police were in whatever time period it is, to solve the case because a victim is a victim.

Well, you know, and that's just part of public safety, right? Yeah. And so...

Many men who've become homicide victims in cases that I've gone out on, you know, they've made a life decision that caused them to, in essence, become a victim of a crime. And we still have to work those cases just as hard as if there was a true innocent victim or a more likable victim. I know for me, I really gravitate towards the cases where you have that true innocent victim. And regardless of what their personality was like,

You know, if they were living their life and fell victim, I become empathetic to their situation. I agree. This is one of those cases. It's a sign of the times when we talk about who the victim is. And I'm not going to sugarcoat who this guy was. And some people have heard this story, but I don't think you will have heard it as in-depth information.

This is a story that inspired two very famous writers. One was Edgar Allan Poe and one was Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was living in Salem. And, you know, these were two writers who would get inspired.

inspiration from true crime stories that were happening in the area and actually a book that I've just finished writing. The case from that book also inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne. So that's what gravitated me towards this particular case. But the guy is a bastard at the center of this. So let's just start there. Wow. I know. Well, again, a sign of the times, you know, that this is kind of the way I'm addressing him because I don't think we've had this situation before.

He's 82, and he was a retired captain. His name is Joseph White, and, you know, had an incredible fortune and lived in a massive house in Salem at the age of 82. But here's how he made his money. He was both a shipmaster and a quote-unquote trader. So while he was a trader, as in goods, under the board, he was in the slave trade also. Right.

And he once wrote that he had, quote, no reluctance in selling any part of the human race.

So when we talk about unlikable victims or unsympathetic victims, this is, to me, the lowest of the low, but we still have to work the case. We're fast-forwarding now to 1830, and he's retired. He is in his home. He has made all of this money by selling people and

He is, of course, in this time period, a respected citizen of Salem. Again, we're talking about the time period here. You know, on the flip side, though, in the 1780s, the state's elected officials were trying to pass legislation to outlaw slavery. So even though this was not shocking to a lot of people, there was some movement when he left.

made this statement at the time. Still, he was respected. Still, he had this stately house. And he was very, very wealthy. He was considered a shipping magnate. Now, he had this big brick mansion in Salem, one of the most beautiful homes in the city. No kids. He had a wife who died years ago. And he only has a couple of people in the house with him. He has Lydia Kimball, who is a domestic servant.

and he has a property handyman named Benjamin White, and they're both key. And I know that there are a lot of names in here, like a lot, especially as we kind of move along with this story. And I'll try to help you keep up with them all. But right now we just have two people who work for him.

It sounds like Benjamin White might have been a distant relative of Joseph White, but he was working for him very clearly. He has a niece who he likes a lot named Mary Beckford. She is in her mid to late 40s. She also lives there, and she works as his housekeeper, which...

Just seems unusual to me. But again, you know, you have people who need a job and he has a lot of money and he probably trusts them. So he has his niece working for him, Mary. She has, to make things even more confusing, a daughter who's also named Mary.

And she really is key in this. She used to live in the mansion. So this is his great-niece. He adored her. He liked his niece. He loved the great-niece named Mary. And she used to live in this big, huge mansion. And I have a photo of it because it's still in existence. She was someone who was very close to Captain White. But then he pulled away from her because she, Mary, was...

married one of his employees, which, of course, we've seen over and over again. You have a parental figure who's also supporting this family who feels like he is able to dictate who somebody is going to be involved with. And he has said to his great niece, if you're going to marry this guy whose name was Joe Jenkins Knapp, if you're going to marry Joe, you can get out.

And I'm sure that she did not take this very well. I have to imagine that not only family conflicts, but violence and homicides have come out over history, over parents trying to dictate who their children are going to marry or be involved with. You know, when you think about Mary and Joe and their emotional connection, and now this older parental figure in Mary's life is...

trying to dictate terms which goes against the emotional connection that Mary and Joe have. Often, because of the strong emotions involved in that kind of relationship, when you have something that is trying to pull those two people apart...

Now you get that extreme reaction on the other side, that anger. So now when I start hearing this dynamic, I'm looking at it from that basic fundamental human behavior and start considering, okay, you haven't even told me, you know, what has happened.

But there is a form of tension as a result of this anger that I imagine Mary, and in particular Joe, is likely experiencing, you know? And does this cause maybe somebody to act out down the road? Maybe. We'll see. Captain White really, really doesn't like Joe. He thinks he's a gold digger, and he thinks the only reason that he married Captain White's

Great niece Mary is to get closer to the fortune. She is in the will. He says, you can't marry this guy. He worked for me. He's beneath you. I don't trust him. He's after our money. She said, I don't care. She marries him, and he writes her out of the will.

So Mary and Joe are on their own. And if Joe Knapp is indeed a gold digger, as Captain White thought, he has now realized that he has been strapped to a woman who...

was the heiress to a fortune because she was so loved by this old man, and now he has no money, and they're stuck on a farm about 10 miles outside of Salem. So this is not good news. I'm not sure yet who's dying, but this is already acrimony within the family and something that everyone, I think, can relate to. I have dated people my parents did not like, and

And every parent reacts differently. So you're right, tension, right? Absolutely. You know, and especially if Joe doesn't have that emotional connection to Mary and was literally just using her to get to this pot of gold.

And now that pot of gold has been stripped away. This is in the 1800s, right? Yeah, 1830. 1830. So you imagine now he can't just go run and get a divorce. Imagine he's pretty locked into this relationship. Very locked in. And oftentimes in the 1800s, you know, I've written about this before, it would actually take an act of the legislature to get a divorce. And most of the time, women were not granted divorces. It

would be the man who would have to go and file. So most of the time, particularly in the 1700s, but still in the 1800s, they would just love separate lives. I hate you. You hate me. You know, you go live where you live, but we're still married. And, you know, if they took on another person, they would just sort of live as a common-law spouse, but there would be no official divorce. It's certainly not today where...

Where it's much easier. So all of this, we've talked about pregnancy, outside of marriage, in these time periods, we've talked about divorce. It was so hard to separate yourself from somebody in this time period. And I think this is why we see some of these murders where you have people who simply feel trapped. Trapped and in Mary and Joe's situation, probably not prepared.

having the financial assets that they were hoping that they would have. Absolutely. And speaking of financial assets, I'm going to show you what the house looks like. So this is his mansion. Do you see it right in the middle? I do see it. Aside from the Lindbergh baby mansion, this might be the biggest mansion that we've dealt with.

It looks like a fortress, right? Yeah. You know, I'm surprised at the shape. I had something else envisioned when you mentioned this mansion. But what I'm looking at is like as you described. You know, this looks like almost a three-story brick structure with the white walls.

entryway steps going up to the front door. I can see the chimneys indicating you've got multiple fireplaces. You've got multiple chimneys, you've got multiple fireplaces inside. And I can imagine that back in the 1830s, this really stood out as a dominant structure in the area. Let's talk about logistics. Multiple entryways, right? We're in the city. There's a lot of ground level windows. I know they look like they're up high.

But they look accessible to me. What about you? Yeah, well, all of these windows, you know, when you start evaluating buildings in terms of how can an offender break in, doors are obvious, windows, these burglars can be very adept from afar to evaluate whether or not this would be a residence that they could easily access. And with the windows on the first floor, right now there appears to be at least,

four across the front, and then three on the one side that is visible on the right side there. So there's seven windows. It's not only just a point of entry, though. It's also, these are visual portals that burglars will just stand back and watch, and they can determine over the course of, whether it be in the middle of the day or in particular at night when you have lights inside and you can kind of see inside,

But they can start determining living patterns where the various occupants within the residence have a tendency to reside. They can also determine whether or not the residence is empty. You know, if they're just interested in property inside, they probably don't want to confront somebody inside. And that's why they, you know, residential burglars often strike during the day when people are gone at work.

versus commercial burglars, you know, they often strike at night when the employees are not inside the building. You know, they plan their crimes to avoid people.

But if you have somebody that is interested in committing violence to attacking somebody inside, then, of course, they want to be able to get inside the residence silently and surprise the occupant, their intended victim. Now that we're talking about this, we've talked about break-ins quite a lot of stalkings. It's one of the first cases we dealt with, Mary Louise Stammer, someone being stalked through a window. If we're talking for our audience kind of the practical things here,

If we want to prevent our own break-in, somebody coming into our house, someone knowing our schedule, all of that, I know that there are practical things we could do, right? I mean, you have a burglar alarm. You maybe have a dog. You keep an unpredictable schedule well lit. Is there anything else you recommend people doing that might be

not make them so much of a target? Is it like you leave lights on at night if you're out of town? What are the things that you think of doing to throw someone off, to have them say, boy, I really don't think this is the house for me to break into? Well, there's really a lot of things. In fact, on my other podcast, we actually did a whole episode discussing, you know, how to prevent yourself from becoming a victim.

The reality is if somebody wants to get inside your residence, they can get inside the residence. But you can take certain precautions. And notably, it is locking your doors, locking your windows. Don't leave the windows open. Have curtains on all the windows so people can't see in.

The idea of utilizing, you know, these electronic timers that can turn on lights off and on just to make it look like somebody's there. Yes, that is that's going to be something that can help a dog. You know, many of these burglars do not want to deal with a dog, either from the noise the dog makes or from the fear if it's a larger dog that this dog may attack them.

There's just so many things. Randomizing your schedule is hard. You know, that's, I mean, everybody's got a life pattern and to really go out of your way to try to disrupt it

I just don't think that that's really a practical aspect. But you just want to do something where the person who is looking at your residence or looking at you is going, this is going to be more difficult than I want to deal with. Well, you know, what's interesting is I thought, everybody around me has ring cams, and we finally broke down and got a ring cam. I thought a ring cam would solve things. And then one of the girls' friends' moms called me a while back and said,

you won't believe this, but somebody stopped on the side of the road, came out and grabbed, they had like a rod iron heavy bench, two-person bench on their front porch. And the people figured out how to go around the ring camera. You know, they just hit its blind spot, grabbed this bench. You could see the

feet kind of flip into the ring camera. It's just like, I can't believe that they're that brazen to be able to snatch something like that, put a heavy thing in their car and just took off. Well, you know, these offenders, it's a constant cat and mouse game, you know, and as video surveillance cameras, whether it be a ring style camera or any type of video surveillance camera that you put up on your residence, you

They're going to take measures to prevent that camera from being able to identify them, you know, and especially, you know, when the pandemic hit and everybody's wearing masks. That was an easy way to just kind of you look normal walking down the street. Nobody's thinking, oh, he's up to no good, you know. Yep.

But we're seeing these offenders taking the time, you know, oftentimes when you've got the porch pirates or somebody who's trying to, you know, go in through the front door and there's a ring camera or video surveillance camera, they've got the hoodies on, they got the ski mask on. They are taking those steps. And it's going to be something. There'll be other types of home security products that may make it more difficult. And then they will try to figure out a way to get around that. Boy, well, this case is,

as you're going to find out in a second, was a challenge in some ways and very...

Lots of little twists and turns. So let's go back to Salem, Massachusetts. We are April 6th. We're on April 6th, 1830, and Captain White is in his mansion as usual. He goes to bed around 940, which is a little later than his typical bedtime, much later than my typical bedtime, frankly. And at 6 o'clock the next morning, the handyman, Benjamin White, wakes up and he wants to start his day. He has a to-do list that Captain White has given him.

And he notices something strange. And I have a photo, which will probably make you happy, to compare here. He goes down and on the first floor of the house, a back window has been left open. That was your rule number one, I think, when you just briefed us on how to stay safe.

Just beneath the window outside, there's a wooden plank propped up against the side of the house. And I have a shot of the house, that particular window, so you'll see the height, but there's a wooden plank propped up against the side of the house. Windows open. We don't know anything about the victim just yet. So already, this feels a little Lindbergh baby for me with the rickety...

ladder outside of this massive house. Yeah, no, for sure. And this plank, the configuration of the plank, does the picture show this or is there a sketch that was taken back in the day and how this plank was set up? Well, the way that they were describing it is I'm going to show you a picture of the actual window, but you know, this is 1830. So they just know this was the window.

Here's the window right here. You see it, it's the one on the left of the door and it's one of the side windows. There's multiple entryways, I believe, into this house. So this is not the front. This is one of the side entries.

So tell me what you're seeing here, three step or four steps. I mean, this doesn't look particularly tall to me. Yeah. So this is a photo. It looks like it's a door, either a back door or side door into the house. The door is elevated above the ground. So there's four what appear to be concrete steps that lead up to the door.

And of note is there's panes, you know, the tall, narrow panes of glass window on either side of the door. And then the window is to the left of the door. And the base of this window appears to be

I'm going to just say those steps look like they're maybe each 10 inches tall. So, you know, the base of the door is maybe three and a half feet to I'm not sure it's quite four feet above the ground. I think it's probably closer to three and a half feet.

And the base of the window appears to possibly be another foot and a half above that. So you're looking at the base of this window at about, I don't know, four and a half feet tall. So somebody like myself, I'm 5'10", you know, I could easily see into this window if the

and would be able to readily get up over the ledge of that window and get inside the house if it's open. Well, what's interesting is that Benjamin White notes that the window was left open. I'm a little surprised that he noted that because...

Maybe the captain is paranoid about people breaking in. I'm not sure, especially in the spring and April, if it would have been common practice for everybody in this area to have locked their windows tight or.

I guess maybe the first floor windows and the servants were on the top floor because you notice when I showed you the exterior shot of the home, there were two rows, you know, the first floor and the second floor of really nice, beautiful, tall windows. And then the top floor is

the smaller windows, and that's where the domestic servants would have been. So this plank is described as something that goes from the ground to the windowsill. And immediately, you know, once this case unfolds, you'll see that investigators said this is a plank that would have supported a grown man to be able to use to climb kind of up to the window and open it.

And they thought that's the way that the entry was. Does that make sense to you? I don't see any other explanation. What I'm envisioning is this plank is probably a fairly thick, like let's say a 2x12 style plank.

piece of wood that's leaned from the ground to the base of the window like a ramp. Yeah, like a ramp. I could see where somebody might use the plank and use it like a ramp to get up into the window. But there's an easier way in terms of you look at the stairs, you have the handrail on the right hand away from the window, but the stairs themselves have no railing between those stairs and where the window's at.

So I would consider that the offender could have placed that plank there but didn't walk up the entire length of the plank, likely just stepped on, you know, off the porch, you know, and used one leg to be able to be on the plank in order to get over to access the window and get inside. You're talking about some acrobatics there, right?

I agree. There's a bunch of different ways they could have gotten in. And frankly, you know, a little ladder would have been easier. What I'm imagining is if they plan to do this, a domestic servant might not notice that somebody had left a plank of wood leaning up against the wall if this was a situation where...

Captain White's house had been cased by burglars beforehand, and a ladder would have been noticed, but a piece of wood maybe left from some building materials might not have been noticed. And it's an easy way to store something that could be used late at night later on. You know, for me, though, I'm having a problem with this plank in that this window isn't so high that I think the average male would

would be able to have the upper body strength to pull them up into this window? Why use the plank? That seems unnecessary. So right now, I have no other opinions about that, but I just want to point that out. Anytime I see something where I go, why did the offender need to do that? That

gives me pause. And I have to, you know, maybe circle back around to that as we get further into this case. Okay. I think you might want to. We'll talk about the plank later if you want. So, Benjamin White, the next morning, very early, 6 a.m., is alarmed because the window's unlocked and left open. He thinks there's a break-in. He said, you know, Captain White has...

A lot of money, a lot of valuables, and they are stashed everywhere. There's not one central safe for Captain White. He has squirreled things around all over the mansion, which the domestic servants would know. So would his family. So would quite a few people, most likely. But he has squirreled stuff away everywhere. Benjamin wakes up Lydia Kimball, who's the other domestic servant, and she is alarmed also that

the niece, so not his grandniece who married the guy who's questionable. This is his niece. Her mother is out of the house. She is spending the night with Mary, the great niece. I hate it when they name themselves after each other. It drives me crazy.

Mary, Mary Jr. I just, I'm in the middle of writing a tenfold season that's got a Rebecca and a Rebecca Jr. too, and it drives me crazy to keep writing seniors and juniors. But anyway, we'll go with older Mary and younger Mary so I don't have to keep saying niece and great niece. So older Mary is spending the night with her daughter, younger Mary, and the two domestic servants decide to do a sweep of the house. They start with Captain White's bedroom, which is a smart idea. He has a

Gold doubloons. Doubloons in an iron box. Spanish, I would imagine. I don't know much about doubloons. Do you know anything? I know I keep saying doubloons. Do you know anything about them? Except they're gold and worth a lot of money in the 1800s. Yeah, I can't say I know anything about them. I'm just, when you said that word, my immediate mind went to Pirates of the Caribbean, you know? Yep, there you go.

Well, he's got a lot of money and it's everywhere. He has an iron box and it's full of gold. And they go to his room. They see that the door's wide open. I would say Captain White sounds like a very private man. This is also alarming for them. They cautiously enter the room and they see Captain White is on his bed. Now we get to talk about forensic stuff.

He's lying on his side and his body is lying diagonally across his mattress. And they could see he's not sleeping. This is not a normal position for him. His posture seems unnatural to them. But there, of course, then the more obvious thing is there are enormous bloodstains all over the bedding.

He's obviously dead. And we can talk about the autopsy in a little bit, but they are stunned that their boss is dead and there's blood all over the place. And he's lying on his side. This may be the only time these people have ever seen crime scene in which there was homicidal violence.

And you can imagine the shock, which could also alter their perception. I have a case where a woman comes in to see her husband and son laying on a floor. And she's thinking they're down trying to clean up some spilled fruit punch because of all the blood. And that was her initial perception. So, obviously,

Oftentimes, the details that these witnesses have are skewed a little bit because of the trauma of what they're looking at, as well as not having the experience and expertise to truly interpret what they are seeing. So, but right now, this sounds like a relatively straightforward crime scene with an adult, elderly adult victim laying on his side, dyingly across the bed.

You haven't told me exactly anything about the blood patterns, except that you have large amounts of blood that's present on the bed itself. Experience the glamour and danger of the roaring 20s from the palm of your hand and

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 we have two things we can talk about, and you tell me the order. It sounds like you want to talk about autopsy stuff, how did he die, all of that, but we also have...

Do they immediately see a motive, as in was anything stolen? Which one do you want to talk about first? You look like you're in a blood kind of mood, so. Yeah, you know, part of my process is I always try to start with the autopsy. I need to know, you know, how the victim died, what injuries the victim had, and then, you know, interpret the crime scene from there. So let's start with the autopsy. The first thing that Benjamin and Lydia do when they see that their boss is dead is they call a man named Stephen White in.

He is a member of the Massachusetts legislature, so he's a very respected citizen, but he's also Captain White's nephew. So there are a lot of family members here. His closest relative, and we're going to presume that he, well, I know that he's in the will also. So we'll talk about suspects in a little bit, but there are a lot of options here. Stephen White is one of them.

He thinks of Captain White as his father. He's devastated when he shows up. But he starts, of course, immediately inspecting the scene. And he's trying to kind of gather some evidence. There's no police officials on the scene yet.

There's a friend of his who is also a business associate of Captain White named William Ward, and he is bringing along a guy named Samuel Johnson, who is a doctor. So now we have three people here, and Samuel Johnson, the doctor, is going to kind of be the head of this coroner's jury once we get there. So the doctor looks at Captain White's body, and here's what he notices. And then there's a lot of detail about an autopsy.

He says that his left temple shows signs of a beating, likely with some sort of a blunt object like a cane or a bludgeon. And I have a drawing of a bludgeon, not this one. If you want to know what it is, it's a formidable weapon. But the skin's not broken.

Which makes me think, once I've read the description of what a bludgeon is, it must have been that. But what do you think? Severe beating on the temple, but the skin has not been broken. What does that mean about the weapon? This is, yeah, no, this is interesting. Right now, obviously, you haven't told me anything about what bleeding injuries he does have. But if the doctor is noticing something to his left temple, he must be noticing some sort of depression.

you know, like a heavier-mast blunt object struck white on the head, typically if it's a sufficient blow and there is no intermediary object between the victim's head and the weapon itself, you often would see the skin lacerated, where it's literally crushed open. The lack of that type of laceration, this tells me that there's a chance that

There's two things that may be going on here. First, there may have been a soft intermediate object, such as a pillow, that had been placed on his head prior to this blow being delivered. And it would have to be a fairly significant blow in order to cause this, I'm assuming, a depressed fracture to hit the victim's skull.

but also his head is on the bed. I don't know if his head is on a pillow or his head's on the mattress, but this is a forgiving surface. And so there's energy when that weapon strikes the victim's head. Well, the mattress or the pillow is going to kind of cushion that blow on the opposite side. So if his head is both as a pillow on the top to his left temple,

as Wallace's head is on the mattress or another pillow, then I can see where there's a lot of energy that is being dissipated. It may allow for the skull to fracture, but

without causing the skin to, in essence, rupture. Well, this is interesting. I was thinking about what you have said in the past, which is right. If this is happening in bed, which it seems like it is, and the mattress is cushioning or the pillow is cushioning all of this, that's one thing. Let me show you a photo of what they think the weapon was, which is this bludgeon. This is an illustration from a newspaper, and it's...

It looks to me like this is probably wrapped in leather. That's what I'm reading is most of these would have been wrapped in leather. But you see underneath it says loaded with lead. So you can picture that kind of a heavy object and you can describe it in a second with a handle, but a soft outer and a really hard inner core. Yeah. So this bludgeon, you know, it appears to be roughly in the shape of a small...

small bat. And at least the way that I see these lines going all the way from the handle all the way to the working end of this bludgeon, I'm assuming those lines are indicative of the leather that is wrapped around it. Part of what I would be evaluating or what I would want to know is, okay, it has a lead core. There's obvious mass to this weapon.

How thick is the leather? Is there something that the leather is holding on? Like, let's say, like cork as an example. So you have a lead core, then you have cork, and then you have the leather wrapped around. And so now you have a forgiving aspect to this blunt object. So when it strikes a hard surface, it in and of itself absorbs some of that energy because it can compress in.

that could account for the lack of the skin laceration, I would need to actually hold this thing and actually hit something with it just to get a feel for how it responds when used as a bludgeoning object. Part of our budget

I think, encompasses me sending you things via Amazon to demo. And since we don't have a corpse in the budget, I think I could probably buy you a bludgeon and send it to you. There was a leather-wrapped cane someone was beaten with in a previous episode, as well as you'll remember the

shawl-carrying object that a torso was carried in. So I feel like there's all sorts of things I can eBay to you if possible. Well, you think law enforcement, there was a time, like when I went through the academy, we were trained with the use of batons. Earlier, law enforcement, they would carry these more padded, soft things

tool that was padded, but then they could use it to strike somebody they were interacting with, like to get them under control. And so it was padded in order to prevent inflicting too much damage, but it would still get the person's attention when they were struck by it.

So there is a possibility, you know, with something like this bludgeon that you showed me, if the weapon was designed in such a way to try to prevent, you know, that surface damage to the skin.

I think there's a possibility that that's what's going on here. I still think whether a pillow had been used as an intermediate object or the fact that his head is cushioned on the bed in some manner, that is also a contributing factor. Well, listen, the beating was terrible, but I'm not sure that's what killed him because we now need to talk about a second weapon. And I want to speculate about how many people we're talking about here because, well, let me just tell you...

So as Dr. Johnson continues to examine Captain White's body, he notes that there are five stabs in the region of the heart. So he's been stabbed also. Three in front of the left pap, which they say in parentheses is nipple, and five others still further back, as though the arm had been lifted up and the instrument struck underneath. Yes.

So they're saying that he was stabbed all with one weapon, likely a long dagger, 13 times. And that's where all the blood came from. Okay. So, yeah, the position of the arm being possibly raised, you know, there's so much that goes into interpreting what's going on here. But...

There's a couple of possibilities. Is he clothed like he hasn't gone to bed yet? Is he in his pajamas? Can we kind of discern anything in terms of where he was at for his nighttime routine? I believe he was in his nightclothes, and he was in bed when he was attacked. Okay. They think he was—and I have a lot more details about the autopsy, about broken bones and oozing blood versus spraying blood—

Dr. Johnson has a lot of theories going on here, when he died, how he died, what killed him. So there's a lot of medical stuff. So you just tell me kind of where you want me to go after this. Sure. Just on the surface, prior to hearing the details of the autopsy, there's two scenarios that are going through my head. You know, one is he's asleep when he's attacked. He's just blitzed.

And he may have just been naturally in a position with his arm raised up in such a way in which now the offender, before White even wakes up, he's able to stab and do those 13 stab wounds. Right now, I can't sequence anything in terms of with the information provided. So whether he's struck in the head first or

possibly rendered unconscious and then stabbed or stabbed, which he's not necessarily just, you don't die instantly with this type of stabbing, but he's now mortally wounded with these 13 stab wounds and then is struck in the head. So now let's, why don't you get into

more of the medical details. Okay. This is what was printed in the Salem Gazette. I can't imagine picking this up and having to read this over your mush in the morning. This is the autopsy report. This is a partial sentence. A fracture of the skull bone was discovered, the largest diameter of which was three and a half inches. This portion of bone was depressed below the level of the surrounding skull and was somewhat loose and movable.

On examining the heart, there were found at its apex two wounds. Also, a little nearer the base of the heart were two slits. The slits were found connected with the perforations of

and were evidently produced by the same blows. The posterior and inferior portion of the left lung was likewise perforated in several places. End of autopsy report. Okay. You know, so he's, several of the stab wounds ended up being to the heart or near the heart, and then several of the stab wounds went into his lungs. You know, that's fundamentally what that says. Then you have this depressed fracture, you know. So this is a significant blow to his head,

This really underscores there is something that is preventing the skin from being lacerated.

Now that I know that, the next thing I want to know is the description of any of the blood patterns at the scene. Hmm. Okay. There's no observation of incisive injuries to his hands or his arms, like he's in a defensive posture? No, I don't see that. I don't see anything about defensive wounds, no. What I see is Dr. Johnson in 1830 predicting a couple of things. The first is he said based on the temperature of Captain White's body.

He thinks that Captain White was murdered three or four hours before being discovered by Benjamin White. So Captain White went to bed at 940, 945 the night before. Benjamin found him at 6 a.m. So it sounds like based on his temperature,

Dr. Johnson thinks it was around 3 in the morning, maybe 2 in the morning. You know, this is obviously 100 years before at least liver temperature tests. So is that accurate, the temperature of Captain White's, but not at all, right? I don't put much weight on that. You know, there's so many variables when it comes to how fast the body loses its temperature after it dies. You know, of course, just the ambient temperature that the body's resting in. You know, how cold or hot is it inside the house?

how many layers of clothing does the body have on? You know, does he have the comforter from the bed on him? And, you know, we're talking April, you know, it's not like they have all the necessary data to be able to really refine what the time of death was based on the loss of temperature. There's a reason we don't do liver temperature anymore. You know, we don't take temperatures of bodies out there, rarely anyways, in my jurisdiction, we don't. A

a lot of the estimations on how long the body's been dead is based on, you know, the pathologist taking a look at the visual characteristics of the body. Rigor mortis is also a prime thing. That's a little bit better studied, but that's also subject to a lot of variability in terms of how fast somebody goes into rigor and what sequence they go into rigor in terms of the smaller muscles to the larger muscles and et cetera. So,

Right now, you know, from my perspective is he was last seen at 940 the night before. Right. He's found at six o'clock in the morning. He could have been killed any time in between those two moments. Yep.

And I think really what it comes down to is who had access to the house. How would the windows have gotten open? We'll talk about that in a minute. I've got one more piece of medical information that I'm not sure is particularly helpful, but I just want to see if Samuel Johnson, the doctor in 1830, is right, because I hadn't thought about this before.

Dr. Johnson thinks that Captain White received his head injury before he was attacked with the knife, if that's what we think it is, because the captain's stab wounds seem to have oozed, not sprayed.

So Dr. Johnson thinks that the blows to the captain's head might have slowed down his blood circulation, which would explain why with these stab wounds, the blood didn't spray everywhere. It sort of oozed out. Is that a thing? Is that real? No, he's way off on that. Oh. So this is pretty telling in terms of what his level of expertise is when it comes to evaluating the wounds and what's going on in a crime scene.

People have this impression, and a lot of it has to do, like, when you cut into, let's say, you expose an artery while the heart is pumping. You get what's called an arterial spurt, if it's able to actually, you know, emanate out of the wound. But when you start talking about stab wounds, and typically you see arterial spurts when you see a cut to the neck that cuts down into the carotid arteries, stab wounds to the chest...

You're not breaching. You know, these arteries, really you're talking, you know, the aorta. You're not opening up an artery that's close to the surface and you have all the tissue, surrounding tissue with the stab wounds. The knife goes in six inches. It may nick or completely cut into an artery. When that knife comes out,

Stab wounds generally will bleed and potentially can bleed heavily. But if somebody's wearing a shirt, that prevents a lot of the blood from actually, you know, if they're up walking around while they're stabbed or even after they've been stabbed, you're not seeing a ton of blood flowing.

being deposited at the crime scene just merely from the stab wounds, where you really start to see a lot of blood, especially if you got patterns like cast-off patterns. That's where, from the defensive injuries, now you have heavily bleeding wounds on the arms, and as the victim is moving around, either warding off the offender or the offender, you know, there's a fight going on, that's when you start to see a lot of this cast-off patterns or spatter patterns if you have a blow to a bloody source.

but merely stabbings to the chest is not going to cause this spraying, you know, and the idea that he's saying, well, this oozing is,

versus spraying is just completely inaccurate. You know, basically, what I would be looking at is, well, how much bleeding did occur from these stab wounds? Did the margins of the stab wounds appear to exhibit hemorrhaging like the blood that the heart was still pumping? There was still blood pressure causing the bleeding. Or did the blow kill Dr. White? His heart has stopped

beating, and then he has received some stab wounds, and then you have some seepage, if you will, you know, as the body's being moved or as he's kind of laying there for a period of time, you know. So it's more nuanced than what this pathologist or this doctor is saying. Well, and I'm not sure it really has an impact on the case. I think it was really...

Interesting just hearing, you know, we're always sometimes either dismayed or impressed by the experts in the time periods that we talk about. And sometimes they are right on and sometimes they are using magnets to drag the bottom of a river to try to find a gun, which I think is a valiant effort, but maybe not particularly effective.

So, I like to hear what experts thought, and sometimes it goes awry and convicts an innocent person. But this, I'm not sure, has that much impact on the case. What I want to know from you is this. How many people do we think we're talking about? 82-year-old man. But I think this is weird because they are predicting this is a long knife.

They are predicting this is a bludgeon, which was found nearby, kind of in the yard of a church underneath the church. Heavy, heavy weapon, long knife. Is one person really carrying those things into the house and using both of them? I mean, I could see a gun and a knife, but two people?

handheld weapons for one person seems weird to me for some reason. But it's entirely possible. Okay. You know, first, right now, this dagger that possibly was used, it may have just been something that was...

inside the victim's house. The offender may have brought a bludgeoning weapon with him, and I'm using the term him right now just generically, no opinion right now in terms of the gender of the offender. And after striking the victim with this bludgeon, sees a knife and grabs a knife, could have brought both weapons. D'Angelo, the Golden State Killer,

would come in. In one case, he has a padded baton and a handgun with him that he brought to the scene. Wow. Right? So this is not unheard of at all. Okay. The assessment of the number of offenders can't be done right now. You know, there is sometimes a suggestion that you may have multiple offenders because you have different weapons, two different weapons being used, but it does not eliminate the possibility of a single offender utilizing both weapons. Yeah.

Well, that's good to know moving forward. We have these two lay investigators, Stephen White, who is a nephew of Captain White, and then a business associate named William Ward. And they are conducting this investigation, potentially contaminating the crime scene. But let's see what they found. They looked at the window. It was not tampered with.

So it doesn't look like somebody has been messing with the lock to remove it and managed to jimmy it open. It doesn't look like somebody broke anything. It seems like it was intentionally broken.

left open. So immediately, people are thinking about the domestic servants, and is this some sort of setup? And we can talk about that in a second. Let me tell you what other physical evidence they find. They see two well-defined footprints in the mud because it had rained. It was April, right outside the mansion, not far from the window. And foot

Footprints were not used in the 1830s traditionally, but these two guys thought this was important and maybe they would be helpful in identifying who the person was who killed this man. And so they take a milk pan and put it over the footprints to preserve them because it was starting to mist. And then they start trying to say, well, what is the motive here? The domestic servants scour the whole house and nothing was taken. Right.

including the iron box of gold pieces that were laying very close to the captain's body where his bed was. So it does not seem like robbery was a motive, which is pretty surprising to me. If you've got these gold pieces right there, the box is open, they can take them. Why would you not take

just out of convenience, steal something from this house. Yeah, so the property crime aspect does not appear to be the primary motive. The primary motive was to go in and kill White. Now, what you're describing as footprints, I'm going to just make a comment, is that it sounds like, since it said mud, probably these, I'm assuming they weren't feet, but they were shoes or boots, you know, so shoe impressions, impression evidence,

And it is something you have to pay attention to. I mean, we do the same thing. And I have to commend them to recognize that if they hadn't protected this impression evidence, they could have lost it. And that's part of approaching a crime scene. It's looking for, oh, I've got potentially some transient evidence that could be lost unless I do something now. I've got rain coming in and I've got tire impressions, shoe impressions. I got cartridge cases in the gutter.

I have to take steps very rapidly to protect that evidence or it could be lost forever. Well,

Benjamin and Lydia are immediately dragged over to these shoe print impressions and compared because these are the domestic servants. They don't match the sizes or the type of shoe that we're talking about. There's no mud on their shoes. And of course, these two men examined Benjamin and Lydia's, all of their shoes, no mud. It doesn't appear like they were the ones responsible. And they also say, Stephen White says,

Nothing was taken. What is the motive for these two domestic servants to kill this man? He is gainfully employing them. He was not a particularly nice person, Captain White, but it doesn't sound like he was a bad person to work for necessarily. So it's a little bit of a "Why kill the golden goose?" situation. And Benjamin and Lydia, I guess to their delight, are dismissed. They're not suspected in any way.

And Stephen White and his pal William Ward are trying to figure out what happened after that. What do you think about going ahead and dismissing the domestic servants just based on the fact that nothing was taken? And why else would domestic servants kill their boss? Well, you know, I think along these lines, when you start saying that they were dismissed, how much of an interview was actually done? It doesn't appear that they would not have financially benefited from killing William.

white without taking some property. But what else is going on between them and the victim? You know, is there potentially a non-financial motive that could have caused them to act out and go ahead and kill? So they would be extensively interviewed because they have opportunity. They're inside the residence. They know how to move around the residence. They know when

White would be the most vulnerable. So very early on, you have to get to their statements, but they're also potentially witnesses in some capacity, you know, in terms of their observations of the state of the house, the window, something that is

standing out to me a little bit as you're talking about it had rained. Mm-hmm. Is there any information you have that there had been mud tracked inside this house? Not that's been mentioned in the research, no. And I can't imagine, and maybe I'm wrong on this, but thinking back to that photo of that window, if that was the point of entry... Mm-hmm.

There was no pavement underneath that window. That was just soil. So if it had been raining at the time the offenders, let's say, entered the house and had to walk across that location in order to get up into that window, I would think that there would be maybe some soil transferred on the windowsill and inside the residence. But-

Without any observations, it's kind of hard to draw any conclusions. You know, this is where I'm trying to evaluate, do we know that the offenders came from the outside or could the offenders have come from the inside and never left? Yeah, it'll be interesting as this unfolds. There are a lot more details with no police. So this is the time in Salem before police, it seems like. And in lieu of the police in a lot of towns in the United States was something called a Committee of Vigilance Committee.

which I've written about a lot. I mean, every story I've ever, every book I've ever written has some sort of committee of vigilance, which are good citizens, supposedly, who come together and often it turns into a lynch mob, essentially. But they are here to investigate. So Stephen White, who is the captain's nephew, has posted an incredibly large reward for

for any information about his uncle's murder. And this murder has sent shockwaves across Salem and really New England in general

People are starting to arm themselves with cutlasses. They have watchdogs. They have pistols. Of course, it's terrifying because you've got this fortress that's locked up. Someone managed to get inside of it, kill a respected citizen who had a lot of wealth with servants and relatives who were in the house at the same time. So this is terrifying to a lot of people.

There are 27 members of this committee, all men, of course, and the committee is starting to search private homes, no warrants, of course, and businesses, and Salem residents don't seem to mind this because they really want to figure out what's been going on. And about a week after the captain's murder, the investigation finally gets a break when Stephen White, the nephew, receives a very odd letter in the mail.

This is from a jailer, supposedly, in New Bedford, which is about 70 miles away from Salem. He says that an inmate had information on the case and you should contact this guy. So Stephen White connects with the inmate, who is only labeled as a convicted pickpocket that is nicknamed Hatch,

Hatch says that back in February, this is two months before the murder, he overheard two brothers hatching a plan to break into Captain White's home.

So before we even talk about that, let's talk about snitches. Is that the politically correct term? Did we say something different now? I think snitches is probably still acceptable. So snitches, are they reliable or is it a snitch-by-snitch basis, really? Is that a phrase? Snitch-by-snitch. Snitch-by-snitch.

Yeah, well, you know, snitch, you know, today it's usually an informant. Okay, there you go. It is politically correct. There is another term, okay. You know, it all depends on the informant, who they are, their motivation to pass on the information. You know, when I'm initially hearing a jailer has an inmate who has information,

I'm immediately going, hmm, I need to know more before I trust this inmate. And this was a high-profile case. You know, you do have these informants that come forward claiming they have information. They're trying to leverage information

information that they may have overheard, like in this case, the two brothers talking about breaking into the victim's house, in order to benefit them in terms of their current plight. I want a shorter sentence. I want better accommodations when I'm here in jail or prison. So if all he's saying is, okay, I heard these two brothers talking,

that information has to be verified as to, okay, where did you hear these two brothers talking? What exactly did they say? Can I truly place this inmate at a location where those two brothers were, where legitimately, you know, let's say they were cellies together or, you know, in the same, who knows, you know, same town. And then what details can this inmate provide? I mean, in many of these current cases that we have,

We do have informants come forward, and oftentimes they are inmates, and sometimes they provide good, solid information. Oftentimes they don't. So it really, it's like what you said, it's snitch by snitch.

Snitch by snitch. Well, we're going to have to find out if Hatch the snitch slash informant is reliable or not. So he says, I heard this plot by these two guys to break into Captain White's home. What's confusing is nothing was stolen. They did not say we're breaking in to kill this guy. They just wanted to break in and Hatch just assumed they were talking about robbery. So the vigilance committee says to the snitch,

So who are these brothers exactly? And he says they are the Crown and Scheldt brothers. And immediately the vigilance committee knows this family. They are a very prominent, well-known family in Salem. And this is now turned into a big case because why would two brothers from this prominent family...

Oh, yeah.

So you just threw a twist out there. I did. I almost said dum-dum-dum, but that was too cliche. Part two coming at you in one week, Paul Holes. All right. I'm looking forward to it.

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 McClashan, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Talladay. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogle. Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Daniel 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.