If There's a Will PT 2
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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. Listen up. I'm Liza Traeger. And I'm Cara Clank, and we're the hosts of the true crime comedy podcast, That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast. Every Tuesday, we break down an episode of Law & Order SVU, the true crime it's based on, and we chat with an actor from the episode.

Over the past few years, we've chatted with series icons like BD Wong, Kelly Giddish, Danny Pino, and guest stars like Padgett Brewster and Matthew Lillard. And just like an SVU marathon, you can jump in anywhere. Don't miss new episodes every Tuesday. Follow That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Dun-dun!

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 today? I'm well, Paul. How are you doing? I am doing good. What's been going on? Well, I think we're going to jump right into this two-parter. I don't even have time to tell you how things are going. Things are fine. How about that? Okay. That's the short answer. Things are great. Let's move on. Sounds good. Okay. So you remember last week I left you with this case of Captain Joseph White, who was

who was an 82-year-old man murdered in 1830 Salem, Massachusetts. Can you believe how I can keep up with all these numbers? It's amazing. It's the television producer in me, I think, keeping up with all these numbers. Murdered in 1830 Salem, Massachusetts, and nothing was taken. It doesn't appear. And we have the vigilance committee who is led by his nephew, his favorite nephew named Stephen White, who

and a couple of other inexperienced investigators who are trying to figure out who killed this very influential old man in his bed, stabbed and bludgeoned, it appears. We have domestic servants in the house who have seemingly been cleared.

And now we have this informant slash snitch named Hatch who said he overheard two brothers from a very well-known, very affluent family in Salem who were talking about breaking into this man's house. So that's where we're left with. And I teased a little bit that Stephen White was not in the clear here. He was going to be drawn into this story because let's get back to the motive.

The gold was not taken. The other things that he has stashed around the house were not taken. So if we're looking at money as the bigger picture, I think we need to be looking at the full Monty, which is who inherits money.

the estate when this very wealthy man has been murdered. Is that right for me to go towards that area if none of the small petty stuff has been stolen from this murder? That would be the top of my list for a motive for sure. We know there's an emotional dispute that's been going on over the will. We got Mary and Joe who are hoping to receive an inheritance, and the victim wrote his great niece out of the will, and therefore Joe is out.

So that is something, you know, as I have listened to, you know, what happened to White, you know, it appears that this is a targeted homicide. Theft of property, valuable property inside the house does not appear to have occurred. And that's where we're at at this point. But just because he's wealthy and there's this, I don't know if you want to call it a dispute over the will. I'm not sure it's risen to where it's actually being contested in court. But it

That doesn't mean that's the sole motive. 82 years old, but you initially described him as a bastard. Who has he pissed off in his life? You know, who would like to just eliminate him because they don't like him? Those types of homicides do occur. But as we go through this, doing an investigation, you're often juggling multiple theories, multiple leads, multiple potential motives.

And I've always likened it to like being on a seesaw where the most weight seems to be in the case. That's the direction that you go until you eliminate that as the possibility. And right now, the issue about the will, I would say, based on the circumstances, is the prime motive that I can determine at this point in time.

Well, what the Committee of Vigilance is saying is, well, we've got this guy who is saying that he's overheard these two brothers from this family saying that they were planning to break into the captain's house. This seems like a great route.

according to the Vigilance Committee to go down, they decide to go ahead and put the informant named Hatch in front of a grand jury. And these two brothers are now officially indicted in May, a month after Joseph White was murdered. They put Richard and George Crown and Scheldt in front of a grand jury, and they are indicted on murder charges. But it's confusing because

Because it's, number one, based on hatch only. And number two, there's no real motive because nothing was stolen. And so this seems like a case that's a little weird and a little weak already.

It's not just a little weak. You have no case. Just because you have an informant, you know, saying he overheard these two brothers talking about breaking into the house, there's no case there. This grand jury just must have been in cahoots, you know, with this vigilante committee or whatever you call it. I mean, this just seems silly at this point. There needs to be an investigation. There needs to be more information.

And these two brothers come from a family of wealth and prominence themselves. So why would they do this? Well, I'm looking at that when I hear that and go, okay, well, if they are truly involved in White's murder, is this a murder for hire scheme? They happen to be two people who would be willing to commit this kind of crime.

And people who come from affluent families commit horrible crimes. So that's not surprising to me at all. I got to go down that route. But you can't just put these two brothers and indict them for murder based off of an informant making that statement that he overheard them.

Three points. One, Richard and George are known as being the black sheep of the family, which I'm going to interpret to mean these are probably troublemakers. Number two, let's remember that the media has just stirred things up and the details of this case have increased.

terrified. All of these people, they're buying guns, they're buying weapons, they're buying watchdogs. So you have the town of Salem in a frenzy. And then on top and top of that, you have Stephen White, who is the head of the Committee of Vigilance.

He is the one who has pushed for these two brothers to be very quickly indicted based on one informant's opinion. And something that just dawns on me is that Stephen White is he's the nephew of the victim. Yep.

the one who's supposed to probably get to inherit a lot, what do you think? We don't know yet. Yeah, and he's potentially being perceived in this community as a very prominent individual in and of himself. So he has influence. I could see where just him pushing for an indictment could get the grand jury to go ahead and do it just because of who Steve White is. And again, you know, Stephen White is a member of the Massachusetts legislature, very powerful politician.

He is on the scene first, along with his friend, the business associate, and then Dr. Johnson. So if there is evidence that would point toward him, Stephen could have done anything he wanted. He could have tossed it. He could have manipulated it. So I'm not sure Stephen White is out of the crosshairs just yet.

But these brothers are not talking. They are indicted. And as things are moving along towards what's going to be a murder trial, something very odd happens. We have the appearance of letters, and I never understand when people send letters.

There's no police to send it to, but to various citizens and to the Committee of Vigilance, who is Stephen White and all of these other people. Some mysterious letters start to pop up, and we have to interpret what the letters mean. Why do people send letters? And I know we've talked about this before. Why? Why? Why? Why do you do this? I don't understand. Right.

Yeah, you know, and it is with these high profile cases. And even, you know, when you have this whodunit aspect, you have people that want to insert themselves into the investigation just because they want to have their own personal satisfaction that they've done something, you know, and sometimes it's in with good intent. Oftentimes, those types of people do not have any

any information related to the case that's helpful to the investigation. There are times when somebody truly has information but is scared. They want the anonymity. That's the one thing that the snail mail affords them. And so they do their best to anonymize themselves in the letter writing process

as well as the use of the Postal Service in order to deliver it, to deliver that information. There are times that the offender themselves send the letter in, and sometimes they claim responsibility, and that's your taunting aspect. That's a certain type of offender, like a Dennis Rader. But other times, they are sending letters in to mislead, to misdirect the investigation.

Well, we have a series of letters and you and I have to sort out if any of them are legitimate or if any of them are helpful. The first letter comes in mid-May. So let's think about six weeks after the murder, but after these two brothers have been indicted.

And it is sent to Joseph Knapp Sr., not Jr., the one who's married to young Mary, the niece. This is to the dad. He gets this strange letter in the mail that's postmarked from Maine. And we're in Massachusetts, remember. The sender signs his name as Charles Grant, which we're going to assume is a fake name. Joseph doesn't understand any of this. He demands in the letter, the letter writer demands $350,000.

as a loan,

to him, the letter writer, but he's kind of saying this is in a very threatening way. You owe me this money. I'm going to call it a loan, but it's really not. He says, if you don't send me this $350, I'm going to ruin your reputation by making what he called ruinous disclosures against him. He's not specific. I think that probably it's insinuated in the letter that this is connected to the Joseph White case.

And Joseph Knapp Sr. is completely confused.

And he hands the letter over to Joe, married to young Mary, and says, what is going on? And Joe says, I have no idea. It's a bunch of garbage. But he said, just for good measure, let's send it to Stephen White at the Committee of Vigilance and see what happens. I don't want to be a suspect. I didn't do anything to my wife's great uncle. We know that we're not in the will. It's okay. I don't know who sent you this letter, but it's really odd.

So what do we think about this letter? It sounds like someone is trying to extort money. I don't know why from senior and not junior, but he's trying to someone's trying to extort money by making threats against someone in the Knapp family connected to the case. Yeah, it is odd. You know, this may be somebody who is just trying to take advantage of the fear that the community has.

You know, here he's going, okay, even though he's not explicitly saying this in the letter, there may be an implied threat. I'm the guy that came in to this very wealthy mansion and was able to kill victim White. I can do this to you unless you send me $350.

which in 1830, $350 was a pretty large amount of money. But why Joe Knapp? That's kind of an interesting thing, the senior. So that's one thought I'm having. And the letter writer, this Charles Grant, may have nothing to do with the White Homicide. Or this is from the offender. And now this is a misdirection.

I'm not sure what the misdirection is at this point in time, but the postmark out of Maine may be the primary misdirection to get the investigators, this committee, to start focusing, oh, the guy we're looking for is out of state. It's really interesting because this letter turns everything on its head. Joe Knapp turns this over very quickly. He does not want to be a suspect.

Stephen White looks at it, puts it away, and then more letters, more confusing letters appear. There are a couple of them. One is addressed to the Committee of Vigilance in general, and one is directly to Stephen White himself. These are all from Charles Grant, yet again. And in it, Charles Grant changes his story. He said...

Okay, I've been pulled into a plot here. I was contracted to kill the captain by Stephen White. So this letter is now fingering Stephen White as being the person who wanted his own uncle killed, presumably to get the money. And Charles Grant says, I'm the guy he wanted to hire. And I'm assuming he's going to soon say, well, I didn't do it, but I wanted to let you all know that this is what happened. So what do you think about this? Yeah.

The fact that he's naming Stephen White, who is a suspect kind of, right? We're thinking he's the one who's going to gain them out. We don't know if there's there's no evidence that Stephen White was involved yet. But it seems like he would be the one with the most to gain, even though we don't know where the will is. We haven't seen a will yet. We just know that Joseph White took Mary out of the will. That's it. We don't know anything else about this document.

Okay. So, you know, earlier when you were bringing up Stephen White as potentially somebody who could be responsible, you know, my initial thought as the first letter came in was, could this be Stephen White doing the misdirection himself? Yep. Now that Stephen White is being named in this letter as being the one who's trying to hire Charles Grant to kill the victim, well, that tells me, well, Stephen White isn't behind sending these letters in.

Now, there is no reliable assessment at this point in time that Charles Grant still has anything directly to do with this case. But it is an interesting bit of information. It's just, why did he start out with the threat to Joe Knapp Sr. and then now is coming forward and saying...

"Hey, Stephen White tried to hire me," just so you know. Yeah, it's interesting because I want to know which is, if either of them are true, which is the true one and which is the misdirection?

So the Committee of Vigilance, led by Stephen White, does not believe the second set of letters, doesn't think that Stephen is involved. Of course, he's saying I'm not involved. So they decide to test this. They decide to send $50, not $350 that Joseph Knapp was asked to send, but $50 that was requested in the first letter.

And the directions say, send me this $350. It'll arrive in this post office in Maine, and I will go and pick it up. That's the presumption, is that they're going to send it. It goes to the post office addressed to Charles Grant, and that'll be the end of it, and I'll keep my mouth shut.

So they decide to go ahead and send the $50 with a note saying, we will send more later. When that letter goes out, the committee members send somebody to the post office in Maine to sit there and wait to see who is going to pick this letter up. So they're able to time it to know approximately when it will be delivered to the post office.

And after a very long time, it sounds like, someone does arrive to collect the letter that was sent to Charles Grant. And it wasn't somebody named Charles Grant. It was someone named John C.R. Palmer. Palmer puts his hands up and says, okay, you've caught me. Yes, this is my letter. Let me explain. But first, I want immunity.

So let's talk about immunity for a second. Do we believe people who are granted immunity because isn't it in their best interest? This guy's extorting someone in a huge high-profile murder case. Isn't it in his best interest to say any cockamamie story he can to get the vigilance committee off his back? Or do we ever believe people who have been given immunity? The idea of immunity is it's probably more widely talked

about, I guess, in stories and how it's actually used within prosecution. The only entity, at least at the local level of law enforcement, is the elected DA. Only the elected DA can choose to give this idea of immunity.

And I know something like within a homicide investigation, if there's any chance that the person that is seeking this immunity status is involved in the case, DAs are not going to give them immunity. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. But right now, he's not looking for immunity from the extortion aspect. He's looking for immunity regarding the murder of

quite, right? Yep. So the committee is saying, how are you involved with this? You have sent all of these letters. And John Palmer says, what? What are you talking about? He said, I sent one letter, the one you responded to. And the committee says, the one you sent to Joseph Knapp Sr., why would you do that? John Palmer's reaction was, oh, there's a senior and a junior.

Because he said that was not meant for Joseph Knapp Sr. That was meant for Junior. So we've got all these letters. Many of them are accusing Stephen White of murdering his uncle. But really, this is a snitch who seems legit.

And he says, it's Joe Knapp. And I was at the Crown and Scheldt Brothers' house in Salem. And he overheard the brothers discussing a request from Joe Knapp Jr., young Mary's husband, to kill Joseph White. It is not Stephen White. Experience the glamour and danger of the Roaring Twenties from the palm of your hand in

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

while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club.

There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out. You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.

Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android.

So we have John Palmer who says these two brothers were saying Joe Knapp and Joe's brother, Francis, were looking for someone to murder Captain White in exchange for $1,000. 1830, $1,000 is more than $30,000 today. So if we backtrack...

Everybody's asking for a lot of money. Joe Palmer was asking for $350, so we're looking at more than $10,000. This is a lot of money we're talking about. The Crown and Scheldt brothers are already in custody. So Palmer's testimony is enough to secure the arrest of these two brothers, the Knapp brothers. So you've got the Crown and Scheldt brothers and you've got the Knapp brothers already.

All four of these guys are arrested. And at some point, the vigilance committee is going to want to know who's telling the truth here. Do we believe Hatch and John Palmer, the two snitches, informants, or whatever these brothers are all going to say? I feel like this is more people that we're dealing with than any other episode we've ever done. It was a long list of characters here.

No, it is. And it can get a little confusing. But I think, you know, when we boil it down to the fundamental motive, I think we do have to go back to the will. And, you know, the big question that I have right now is whether or not Palmer had any awareness that White had written his great niece out of the will. You know, that may not have been common knowledge.

What would be Junior's motive to kill White if he's not going to inherit via his wife?

all of that wealth. There's got to be something. I mean, this could purely be, I hate that old man. I want him dead. Absolutely. But seems like there may be more there. There could be some indirect way that Joe Jr. could be expecting to take possession of some of the financial assets as a result of the homicide.

When we do these stories, often you pick up really quickly on what's happening. Even when I try to throw you a bunch of red herrings, you pick up on it, and you've picked up on this one, too. You're right. I mean, you really have gone down the right road here. So Joe Knapp has a crisis of conscience, and a reverend who is sent in by the Committee of Vigilance, of course, goes and talks to him in jail and essentially convinces Joe to confess.

And I believe all of this. I don't think the Reverend was manipulating him. I think he used religion as a way to convince Joe to kind of cleanse his soul here. It's a nine-page long confession. Joe signs it. And this is what Joe says, and this is exactly what you've been talking about. And it still gets convoluted and really interesting. So Joe says John Palmer did write the first letter, misdirected to his dad. It was him.

He, Joe, freaked out when he read this extortion letter, and that's when he decided that he was going to misdirect and send these other letters that were going to accuse Stephen White of it. And that this is where I'm saying this becomes very complicated. Joe really thought a lot of this stuff through. So he sent these letters to

Mint is a misdirect. Do letters like that, are they sometimes successful? Is it that you have the police are inundated with so many tips that it does, in fact, distract them to a point where they aren't able to ferret the correct information out because you've got all of these different things, including police.

potentially from the killer trying to redirect them away. It very well can hamper an investigation, especially if there's a lot in the modern era. That's what we see with all the online sleuths that, you know, and I dealt with this group for both the Zodiac as well as notably Golden State Killer. And it can become overwhelming because there's so many of them out there. So in a high profile case,

When you have thousands of tips coming in, it really becomes hard to prioritize those tips. Some tips you can tell, okay, there seems to be some substance there. And there's other tips where there's nothing. They haven't provided any information, any detail that I can go and pursue to determine whether this is legit or not. But when you get that much, and typically most departments, you might have one investigator assigned to a case. You may have a couple assigned.

and you're now dealing with, back in the day, I imagine you're probably on the order of maybe 100 different tips coming in, and it would all probably be in writing in some capacity.

It is a tough thing, and you end up spinning your wheels pursuing false leads. Well, I'll tell you what was more stressful is back in the day, people would show up at your desk, investigators at the police department, and sit there, can you imagine, and having really long conversations with what we would kindly say are cranks these days. They would really occupy their time, and in the case of, you know, my first book,

John Reginald Christie, the serial killer, it was like thousands of letters sent to the Notting Hill police, snail mail from psychics and color readers. And I mean, just like unreal. And it took up so much information, so much time. And it sounds like that's exactly what Joe Knapp was trying to do. He was trying to throw off people. And it seemed like a pretty valiant effort, if we want to say valiant in this case. He worked really hard. Let me get to the motive here.

This, I thought, was I wonder if he was overthinking a little bit here. He knew that Mary had been written out of the will. So he was well aware that Captain White did not want his great niece, who he adored, to marry Joe, that Captain White had taken Mary out of the will.

But here was Joe's plan. Joe knew, and I don't know how that nobody else knew this, but Joe knew that Captain White kept the will in this iron box with the gold pieces. So his plan was to sneak in to take the will, destroy it, and then have these brothers kill Captain White. What?

What Joe thought, and I don't know if this would have been the case or not, what Joe thought was if Captain White was dead and there's no will...

that the fortune would be evenly divided with the closest relatives, which of course would have been Stephen White, but Mary Beckford, the niece, and Joe's wife. Does that plan make sense? It kind of makes sense to me. No, for sure. You know, and that's kind of what I was talking about before is, you know, he, in his mind, thought that with the victim dead, that he would somehow indirectly, not through the will, but indirectly get assets. Right.

And so, yeah, I'm liking this right now. I think this is making sense. So, four days before the murder, Joe manages to get into the mansion without anyone knowing it. He says. He's not indicating that any of the domestic servants were involved, and I'm not going to say that because...

It doesn't sound like they were, and it's a huge space. It sounds like just a couple of domestic servants. He breaks in, he gets in, he sneaks in. Four days before Captain White's murder, he gets into this iron box. He gets the will to...

takes it with the intention of destroying it, which he does later. But before he leaves, he unbarred and unscrewed the back window of the first floor. So he knew he could send the brothers in later on. So, you know, again, I don't know why...

Stephen White didn't know that the will was in the iron box and the domestic servants didn't know. I don't know how he knew about it, but he was right. The will was in this iron box and he took it and he destroyed it. So, so far his plan was working. I think it's very likely that Mary would know. At one point, she was very close to the victim.

And so he probably had told her, hey, you know, when I pass away, this is where my will is at. You know, she was a beneficiary. Yep. Doesn't sound like the victim changed, you know, the location of the will once he wrote Mary out. You know, that that was just where he kept the will. So, of course, you know, Mary would tell Joe, her husband. To me, that all just makes sense.

So there's more planning. Joe, of course, is the mastermind of all of this. He meets with these two brothers, with George and Richard, the troublemakers, the black sheep of their prominent family. And he says, I'll give you $1,000 if you do this. And they agree.

He made the club himself, the bludgeon. He said that it was two feet long. It was hardwood ornamented with beads at the end to keep it from slipping. So the newspaper clipping had said it was filled with lead. Joe says that's not what happened. That's what they imagined. But still, two feet of hardwood with a handle on it would have done a lot of damage. Does that tally with the injuries to the left temple that I mentioned?

described to you? Well, most certainly that's a weapon that could produce that depressed fracture. But if it's just the exposed hard wood striking White's left temple, I am surprised that there isn't a significant laceration as a result of that kind of blow. Yeah, I don't know how much manipulation he did to the wood to turn it into a club. I don't know what happened. But

The vigilance committee says, what about the stabbing? He said it was a dirk. I don't know anything about dirks. Five inch long on the blade. Why do people call it a dirk? And is there any difference between a dirk and what I use to cut my mango with in the mornings? I guess so.

There's so many different types of, for lack of a better word, knives. Even within the California Penal Code statute, they list a variety of different names, such as this dirk or this dagger. I'm looking it up right now. And a dirk is a long-bladed thrusting dagger. A dagger typically is a single blade, but

two cutting edges versus, you know, or your standard kitchen knife has, you know, just the one cutting edge. So I'm not sure why, you know, they have these different terms, but they do. That, for me,

You know, long-bladed dagger that fits with what the doctor had found in terms of the types of stab wounds. So what Joe says happened is at 10 o'clock that night, so the captain went to bed at 9.40. At 10 o'clock that night, he was in the hospital.

He and his brother meet Richard, not George, but Richard Crown and Schild outside of the captain's house. There's that unlocked window. He points to it. The Knapp brothers stay outside. They do not go inside. So Richard, which is I think they're on the street, which is why there's only one set of foot impressions, shoe impressions outside of the window. Okay.

So Richard goes in. You know, remember that Captain White lives with his niece, Mary, older Mary, not younger Mary. And the brothers know that older Mary is staying with younger Mary. So he knows that

that floor is most likely cleared because the servants would be on the top floor and Captain White's floor is clear except for Captain White. So he sneaks in, he does the murder, he leaves, and that is the end of it. You know, Joe was happy because he thought, "Okay, Captain's dead. There's no will. None of this is going to be a problem."

And the issue was that, you know, you have an informant, two different informants, one who said he overheard the brothers talk about breaking in and the other one who overheard the brothers talk about being hired specifically by Joe Knapp. And I don't think without argument.

either of these informants that this case would have moved along at all, and there's still more to talk about too. What do you think about that? So in this case, we've got two informants who actually gave us good information and cleared a lot of stuff up. This is the problem when you have a conspiracy, is that you have too many people who have knowledge.

And it just takes one to break the case. And in this particular case, you have two informants. When you have these murder-for-hire schemes, there are occasions, you know, where now, you know, the person who really wants somebody dead, well, they've lost control.

of the case because now there's somebody else out there that has knowledge of their involvement in it. You know, you've got the money being exchanged. You think, oh, that's going to keep the actual person who committed the homicide quiet. Oh, no, not necessarily. You know,

So it's an interesting case because, you know, this is not unlike the cases that we see today when you have the murder for hire plot, the financial motives, the relationships. You know, I'm kind of curious if the great niece knew about this murder plot. Committee of Vigilance says no. The great niece or the niece, there's no indication. They were stunned when this happened.

and very upset. It keeps going. So the confession of Joe completely freaks out Richard Crown and Schild. Remember, he's the one who Joe said went inside. The other brother, George, is not even there, according to Joe and his own brother. It's just Richard.

So Richard now feels like, uh-oh, Joe is going to testify against me. And so Richard dies by suicide before he's able to go on trial. Oh. I know. And what I want to know is, is it automatic for people who are going on trial for murder to be on suicide watch? I don't know anything about suicide watch in jail. Or does something have to happen for them to be monitored 24 hours a day before they go on trial? Yeah.

It's not just automatic. Okay. Jails, properly run jails, of course, are monitoring the inmates. But-

Usually, there has to be some sort of indicator that's going to cause the jail to kick into a suicide watch scenario. And that's very intensive on the staff within there. And there are jails out there that have specialized cells that really are, have been constructed in a way in order to transform.

try to completely eliminate the possibility from somebody utilizing structures within that cell in order to hang themselves or to make a weapon to kill themselves, etc.?

This story, boy, just keeps getting odder. George, who is Richard's brother, who was one of the people accused of being a co-conspirator here, when his brother dies, George says, I didn't have anything to do with it, and they cannot figure out how to charge him with anything anyway. He says, I have an alibi. Two sex workers testified that he had spent the night with both of them on the night of the murder. So...

They tried to put him on trial, but he had this strong alibi from these two women who didn't seem to have a dog in the fight. Even though George was there and it seemed like he was helping develop this plot to kill Captain White, he's let go. He's never charged with anything.

So Joe has a confession. He's saying yes. Yes. I hired these two brothers. Richard went in. I stood out there. He's minimizing his role in this in terms of the actual homicide. That's just one of those things that I would go, you know, are we sure Joe didn't go inside and participate in the homicide? And the one person, you know, like Richard, possibly, you know, would know, but he is no longer around. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I think Richard taking his own life really complicated this case. You'll recognize this name. The lead prosecutor is a man named Daniel Webster, who was a future secretary of state luminary in legal world's

And Daniel Webster is the one in charge of this case. It seems like now that Richard is dead, that Joe might want to walk back on his confession. But the defense instead actually employs something I thought was interesting. The defense said when Daniel Webster is saying, listen, you know, these two brothers, the Knapp brothers, maybe they weren't inside. We don't have proof that they were inside, but they are certainly accessories. Right.

And what the defense said was that Joe Knapp and his brother could not be considered accessories in the murder because the legal requirement said that an accessory must be present during the murder. And if you remember, the Knapp brothers had been standing on the street 300 feet away from the room where the murder was being committed.

So the defense is trying to, you know, get off on a technicality here saying, you guys can't even put them on trial appropriately. They weren't accessors. Even if they say we were there, which they said, OK, well, we were there. We didn't hire them, but we were there. You can't charge us as accessories. Yeah, this is where, you know, I would be punting over to a prosecutor in terms of,

Is there any arguments? You know, statutes vary from state to state, you know, in terms of, you know, what accessory is, how it's defined. And I think a good prosecutor could probably formulate an argument that, you know, there is a presence. It may not have been within the room in which the homicide occurred.

But in essence, they escorted, you know, the killer to that location. They're outside, you know, they hired him. You know, there most certainly is some arguments that could be made. And I do not have the legal acumen to be able to construct any type of argument on that front. But there's other statutes that Junior has violated. You know, it's not just accessory. So, you know, hopefully he's been charged with other crimes. Yeah.

Well, during this trial, the prosecutor, Daniel Webster, makes a great argument. Of course, he's got all of this evidence. He's got these two informants. And ultimately, not surprisingly, Francis and Joe are found guilty of murder after about five hours of deliberation. And ultimately, they are executed, which is not surprising.

And this case is gone down in infamy in Salem. The house is very famous. You can do kind of ghosty tours of the house. It's now owned by the Peabody Essex Museum. And it was restored to its 1814 condition. They have the club that was used, but they don't, you know, display it at all. And it is part of the lure of all the weird things that have happened in

And it's just been one of those historic cases that I have read about for years. I've just never done anything about it. And I liked this case for you because there's a lot of criminal profiling, I guess. I don't know what you would even call it, like thinking, why do people do this? What are their motivations and how do they organize things?

to throw off police, to cover their tracks. There's some forensics in there. I felt like there was a whole lot of different things for you. It's a fascinating case. It's somewhat complex with the various moving parts and the number of people actually involved in committing the crime. You know, it's crime in human nature. And that fundamentally...

is really understanding the motivations that cause people to want to hurt others. And there's really just a few, when you boil it down, there's just a few true motives. And there's subtleties. And there may be multiple motives in each crime. It could be financial and vindictiveness.

It can be sexual and financial. You can't just say it's one motive, but in this case, it really underscores that you have this relationship between the victim, White, his great niece, and that relationship goes sideways when she gets involved in a relationship. Now you have a triangle. That triangle, it's not a lover's triangle per se. There's an emotional triangle between these three people

And there is a financial aspect to it. You stack those two types of motives together, and that's how it played out. And Junior was greedy. He probably hated White and had...

the connections with the brothers to ask them to commit this crime. And it's notable that these brothers are really in the same demographic social status as Knapp. And that's generally what you see.

Knapp Jr. probably isn't going into a, let's say, a very impoverished crime-ridden area and trying to find, you know, some criminal within this environment that he doesn't fit in and doesn't understand. He wants the rich troublemakers. There you go. Yeah, he probably thought about, who do I know that I'm fairly confident they would be willing to

commit this crime with sufficient motivation, which would probably be, hey, you go commit this crime. And when I get my share of White's assets, I'll give you X amount.

Well, I have a little postscript for you. I know you always appreciate these. I like a good ironic twist, and this is a little sad. So the motivation for this, that will. We remember that Joe Knapp snuck into the mansion, opened up the lockbox, found the will, took it, and destroyed it.

Because he thought he would destroy the will, then White would die, and then in test date, they would just split everything between, you know, Stephen White and ultimately his wife. So what Joe Knapp didn't know is that Captain White was smart enough to make a copy. He kept it in the office of his lawyer.

And in that version, which Joe Knapp didn't know existed, Mary was out and Stephen White got most of it. So it didn't do him one bit of good. Even if he had gotten away with it, it just meant that Stephen White got basically everything. Isn't that ironic? I mean, how terrible. That old man died for nothing, really. I mean, I know it wouldn't have been satisfying if Mary had gotten any of the money, but if

He had known that, I would guess, Joe Knapp would not have killed Captain White. Initially, my thought is, when you start talking about this idea of, well, if there's no will, then they'll just evenly split up the assets between the family members. And so Joe would indirectly end up having become very wealthy. It's just like I was initially thinking, why not just do a forgery and put it back in and have the old man killed?

And that way now, Mary's getting everything. You know, maybe that's too direct, becomes too obvious. But back in the 1830s, forgery detection, I think, would have been very primitive. Well, I wonder if the timeline was too much for him because he snuck in four days before the murder. So I wonder if it was just too much of a, not hassle, but you're right. I mean, he could have forged the will. But what if the timing were off? What if the night before he was killed, there was an hour and a half before

Captain White seemed like the kind of guy who was checking on his money and his fortune in his lockbox a lot. So what if he saw this forgery and immediately sounded the alarm here? I'm just trying to think of if it was too risky from Joe Knapp's point of view to do that. It's a good thought, though. Yeah, you know, and he may not have any knowledge of a copy being at the attorney's office, but if it's a sufficiently good forgery,

The argument is in court, as you see all the time, which will is the true will. Well, what a story. And I'm leaving you now with this story as we head into our two-week Christmas break, which I think is well-earned. At least you've earned it. I don't know.

You know, you've earned it more than I. I just sit here and listen to you tell stories. I don't know how you do it. I love a good story. So it's a pleasure. But I hope you have a wonderful winter break. Get a lot of rest because I'm going to have a slew of complicated, stressful. You're going to need like 19 kava drinks to get through. Oh, this may be more than kava. This may end up having to be some bourbon stories coming up.

Oh, bourbon. Oh, gosh. Okay, very good. Well, have a wonderful couple of weeks off for the holidays, and I'll see you then. All right, you too, Kate. Take care. This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbonessources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashan, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Talladay. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel. 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.