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Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android. 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, Paul. Hey, Kate. How are you? I'm doing pretty well. How about you? I am doing fine. So what's been going on in your world? I am a permanent resident of Algebra City with my kid.
What does that mean? Did you help your kids ever with math? It is terrible for me. Did you ever, were you that dad who helped with the homework and stuff? No, you know, my wife pretty much handles all the homework assignments with the kids. I have just maybe on a handful of occasions just kind of poked over the shoulders and said, hey, try this and walked away.
So that's sort of my, you know, I'm so far removed, I think, yeah, I would have to go back and study in order to really be of any help. And now my youngest kids, I mean, they're a senior and junior, they're taking calculus yet, there's no way.
There's no way. Well, I was going to ask you that. First of all, number one, it sounds like what I've picked up over the past year and a couple of months is that your wife is a saint. She does everything. She runs away from bears. She takes care of your kids. She rescues your jack-o'-lanterns from the deer that eat them on the front porch. What can this woman not do, I think? Yeah, no, she has to make up for my deficiencies. Let's put it that way. Okay.
So do you use a lot of math in the forensic-y stuff that you do? Isn't there trigonometry involved, or am I just making that up in my head based on a TV show? No, there is math. You know, a lot of it is very, very basic math. You know, when you're doing just fundamental chemistry calculations, mixing up reagents, there's nothing complex about that. It's not even algebra. When you start getting into, let's say, chemistry,
You know, blood pattern analysis, yeah, there is some trig that is involved. Some of the firearms aspects, there can be some math. But generally for routine forensic work, most of the math is fairly straightforward. I can say that I don't recall a single instance that I ever had to resort to any advanced math, such as advanced trig or advanced calculus, or any calculus for that matter. Well, there you go. I wish that I got off as easy with this situation.
My kid is not a fan of tutors, even though I say we might need a math tutor. And so now I am the tutor. And I feel like I am maybe a quarter of a step ahead of her. It's fun. I love bonding with her. And she just told me the other day, I really love doing homework with you and stuff. And I love spending time with her. I'm not quite sure I'm okay with the homework part of it. But
You know, what are you going to do? So I am going back to eighth grade algebra and wondering how did I pass this? I have no idea how that happened. He doesn't wish me luck. Yeah, well, you know, I've looked at algebra. I've even thought, you know, as I get older, I probably should do some of these mental gymnastics and, you know, go back and work some math maybe at some of these online sites or, you know, through a phone app.
If you don't use it, you lose it. And I've lost it. And I'm not really willing to go back and find it. I know. I just don't care. I would love to lose it forever. But I'm afraid I'm going to be trapped as a permanent resident of Algebra City for the next probably year or so. And then maybe I'll be freed to move back into the real world. But we'll see. For right now, I'm trying to be the hero here. And I'm crossing my fingers every time we get a grade back because she glares at me when something bad goes wrong.
Yeah, Kate, you're aware that there's 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade math that's going to follow this. So I don't think you're going to get off the hook. Don't harsh my mellow, Paul. I'm already thinking summer is going to be a good one.
Well, speaking of family, we're going to take a pretty quick turn to the left here because thank goodness that we don't have to deal with some of the stuff that this family has dealt with. And our story coming up, this is in California, and I'll be interested in knowing if you know much about this specific area.
It's going to be 1896, and I'm going to keep it a little bit of a mystery of who our person is, but I will tell you this is a horrific story. It does not involve sexual assault that we know of, but does involve just the decimation of an entire family, and I just can't wait to hear what's going on.
what you think happened in this case. All right. Now, in California, whereabouts? I'm curious. Well, we're going to Santa Clara County. Oh, okay. I know Santa Clara County, you know, not necessarily all the smaller towns, but it was a county that was just two counties away from Contra Costa County, you know, was down there quite frequently. Okay. Well, let's go ahead and set the scene.
So this is 1896 Campbell, California. So this is the agricultural hub of Santa Clara County, Steinbeck country, John Steinbeck. So tell me, do you know much about this? You said you know much about Santa Clara County. Have you heard of Campbell before? I'm kind of surprised. I have not heard of Campbell, but it looks like
In the current day, it looks like it's been swallowed up by this metropolis of San Jose. And it's halfway between, you know, really downtown San Jose and Los Gatos. And I actually have a connection to a case in Los Gatos. So I'm somewhat familiar with this general area. Okay, good. Well, I don't know how helpful it's going to be, but I always think it's helpful for us to place you where we are.
So this involves a very well-to-do man named Colonel Richard McGlincy. And this is kind of a famous story in the area. Let me kind of give you context again. This is 1896. So this is 20-some odd years after the Civil War.
He is 56, McClintsey, and he served in the Confederate Army. And in the past, he had been a newspaper editor and a leader in the dairy industry in the Midwest before he was divorced from his wife and he moved to California about seven years before all of this happened. He found more career opportunities in California and he worked in agriculture and politics and
And he also got remarried to a woman named Ada Wells. So they were married shortly after he moved to California. And he becomes very wealthy. So they have a really nice house. They start to build this family. Richard is Ada's second husband. So they had both been married once before. The first husband died and left her with three kids later.
including two who we will revisit later. One, his name is Hattie, and the other one is named James. And Hattie's married.
So there are a lot of characters here that we have to get straight. Yeah, I was wondering, you said the colonel ended up making a lot of money. How did he make his money? Just through the agricultural business? Yeah, agriculture in the late 1800s in California would have been big business. So I'm not sure he is like gilded age, ungodly wealthy, but he definitely, they have a nice life. He's retired, but he has some pretty strong opinions about the people in his family, which is what
comes into play later on. But yes, we are talking about someone who is affluent. Okay. So Hattie, who is the daughter, is a graduate of what's called the Normal School in San Jose. This is a little history. It's later called San Jose State, which I'm sure you've heard of. Of course. Yeah. So she married somebody named James Dunham two years before all of this happened. So about 1894, they got married. And
Their relationship is complicated, and that plays into this story. So Hattie dated James, and the rumor is that she dated him initially before she married him because she had once been involved with James' brother, Charles. She dated Charles, and after they broke up, I'm presuming Charles broke up with her, Hattie dated his brother to make him jealous, and then they end up just getting married.
And that was that. So already...
the relationship starts out, I think, kind of negative if we're going to believe that story that she did this, you know, she started dating James specifically to make his own brother jealous. Yeah. Now, obviously, in some ways, this is kind of a weird lover's triangle, you know? So it becomes important to start knowing the two brothers' relationships with each other, you know, and what they were like growing up, what their current relationship was.
If we're starting to talk about something progressing to a crime involving these three, well, obviously, there's a dynamic here that's important to really dig into. Yeah, and James is a central character here. He's very important because this entire family is connected by what happens here.
So let me tell you a little bit about James and his family. He comes from a family of means, the Dunhams. He is, however, a black sheep of the family. He's a ne'er-do-well. He can't hold a job. We don't know why. He goes from job to job. He's started some business ventures that fail. He's about 30, and he enrolls in Santa Clara College as a pre-law student there.
There was a failure to start with him. He just could not get it together. And this was really frustrating to everybody, particularly the colonel who was Hattie's father. He never thinks that James is good enough. And frankly, Hattie's friends don't really like James to begin with. You think that he's coming from this family and he has all of this potential.
And it really does sound like a failure to launch. He should be really providing for his family at this point. Again, another bad start for this whole conflict. Well, you know, and I think it's part of the, you know, the times back then is a 30-year-old man, I believe, was expected to have a fair amount of responsibility, be productive in society.
I mean, we're seeing today these 30-something men that are not engaging with working. You know, they're on video games all day long. And, you know, so it's a little bit different in terms of the era. You know, he sounds like what I would characterize as an underperformer. You know, he has a lot of potential. He's probably very bright, but he, for whatever reason, maybe it's lack of effort, maybe
distractions. He's just not performing up to his capabilities. I agree. And one of the examples that was given was that James talked Hattie into moving to Stockton briefly and opening up a bicycle shop. Failed. They couldn't get it together. Not good at business. And
And then some things start popping up as red flags for Hattie. They worked together at the state fair, and Hattie was looking through her purse, and some stuff that she brought with her, which I presume is probably jewelry, went missing. And she, of course, is stressed out, and James says, we'll find it. It's fine. They find it at a local pawn shop, and a
And eventually, James confesses that he took the stuff from his wife's purse and sold it at the pawn shop. And I have no idea why, Paul. We just know this is a guy who never had money, who married into a well-off family. He came from a well-off family.
Sounds to me like he has this sort of constant black cloud of failure hanging over his head. It is very interesting. I mean, he's married to this woman. I mean, he has access to the financial assets. And yet he's doing this theft and pawning it
I almost wonder if there's a pathology there. You know, he's like this chronic shoplifter, and that's what he does because he gets something out of it. But also, a little bit of a red flag that is kind of popping into my head is, could this be an attempt to—
be at the early stages of some sort of planned crime, where now you're having stolen property from the wife show up at a pawn shop to where if something happens to the wife, then the investigation is going to obviously think, you know, hey, maybe there's a
you know, a burglar, something went awry and this burglar showed up at the pawn shop. So it'd be interesting to see how the story unfolds. Yeah, I mean, at a minimum, we're talking about broken trust between husband and wife. And talk about red flags. I have a bigger one for you now.
They move in with the colonel, with Hattie's father, into this nice house in Campbell. When they move in, James Dunham says to his father-in-law, I'll help you do some things around the house. No problem. You're helping support us. So James falls off a ladder on his father-in-law's property. He gets some minor injuries there.
I'm going to try to say this with a straight face. He threatens to sue the colonel for $10,000, his father-in-law. I mean, what are you thinking? That's $350,000 right now, by the way. What is he thinking? He's trying to sue his father-in-law for minor injuries. Yeah, he's a scammer. You know, he probably set up this ladder. They're just minor injuries. It's not like he, you know, broke his femur as if it were a real fall.
So he just got hurt just enough to say, hey, look, I was on your property and now you owe me some money. So this really is telling about James's inner personality and what his potential is for criminality. Well, get ready because there's more coming.
So the colonel said, go kick rocks. I'm not interested in giving you any money. That's my official phrase, go kick rocks. He said, I'm not giving you any money at all. Forget it. Like that. Good. I'll use it again. And he said, you're not getting anything out of me. He didn't kick him out to the colonel's credit or detriment. I'm not sure which. I guess we'll find out. But we're starting to get a sense, as you said, about what James could be capable of.
His mom tells a story at some point that is really disturbing, and I know you're going to want to talk about this. She says about 10 years ago, which would make him about 20, long before he met his wife, he came to his mother's house and said, I need some cash. She said no, and he kept trying to talk her into it. She said, forget it. He went outside and killed three of the family chickens by strangling each one of them.
Does this fall into your serial killer torturing animals, or is this a guy who's capable of doing anything because he can just snap for no good reason? Yeah. Now, this is a serious issue. So, you know, many people have heard of the serial killer triad. The bedwetting, the fire setting, and then the violence, hurting animals or killing animals. I put no weight on bedwetting at all. Fire setting, it depends on how the blossoming predator is getting from doing that.
But the biggest red flag, if you will, is when somebody goes out and hurts an animal or kills an animal, they're just one step away from doing that to a human. And so this, when I was with the DA's office, sometimes animal control, the investigators there, or DA's who were having to review cases of teenagers,
torturing animals, you know, I'm now assessing and saying, yes, you know, this is a predictor of future violence and there needs to be some sort of intimidation
intercession, you know, psychological counseling, law enforcement needs to be aware of this person, therapy, et cetera. It's not just charging the crime and forgetting about this 17-year-old boy because once they turn 18 or once they turn 21, they're back out in society and nobody's following them and they potentially could escalate to violence against people. So, yes, so James strangles these chickens out of anger and
He's probably hurt other animals prior to this incident. And boy, will this foreshadow some things coming up. So I want to give you a little insight on our process. You know, Maren does these fantastic prep documents for me, and then I add my own research. The way that she prepped this document starts with the action, which I love because we don't get to start with the action. And boy, oh boy, does a lot happen starting now. I flipped it.
the research. I wanted to tell you about our main suspect. So I'm not sugarcoating this. James does some pretty bad things. But I wanted to build up to it in a different way so that you see where we're coming from when
all of this happens because to me, this is one of the worst things I've ever read happening in a family. So the precursor to this is the colonel and James used to have an okay relationship until James said, "I'm suing you." And the colonel said, "Get out of here. You're not doing anything. You're married to my daughter and I'm going to tolerate you, but I'm not giving you any money."
Hattie is starting to mouth off a little bit and saying to her friends, this guy, you know, I don't know what's going on with him. We've been married a couple of years. I thought that we were going to have a good relationship. He came from a great family. He can't get a job. And they just had a
a child. So they have a newborn. And now we have James going to someone who works with a local lawyer, and the lawyer becomes suspicious because James says, I have a couple of questions. I have a young son, and I want to know if all things being equal in a will, if everyone else
in the colonel's will, for example, hypothetically, dies, would my son stand to inherit because he's a grandchild?
So it's a what will it take if I don't know what's in the will for us to make sure that my son gets this fortune if everybody else dies? And the lawyer says, oh, boy, but doesn't talk about it. He just is alarmed. And I would be alarmed, too, of course. Yeah, this I mean, obviously, there sounds like there's some scheming and plotting being done by James, right?
And now the people that would be in succession to inherit the will are potentially his targets because if his son, the colonel's grandson, would be the primary beneficiary if all these other intermediaries are dead, then, of course, James now is the beneficiary. Yeah. Yeah.
So let's talk about the night that all of this stuff really starts to fall apart for this family. It's Wednesday, May 27th, 1896. And I'm going to tell you what happens first. So this is a sign of the times. The colonel and James Wells, who was the colonel's stepson. So that would be, I mean, if you want to get complicated, that would be James Dunham's stepbrother-in-law, I guess. Oh, my gosh.
And a ranch hand named George Schabel, who is very important later on, they all attend a meeting of an organization called the American Protective Association in downtown Campbell. This is an anti-Catholic secret society. And they were all over the place. They were scared to death of Catholics. I mean, just...
I mean, we can do a whole episode on anti-Catholic sentiment in the United States in this time period and, of course, later on. But they had decided they were going to go to this meeting. And they all go out, George, the ranch hand, the stepson, James, and the colonel go home. And it sounds like James Dunham was also out, but he was around 9 o'clock. He was out until about 9 o'clock or so.
About 10 o'clock, James gets home. Well, he's downstairs from 9 until 10. And at 10 o'clock, he goes upstairs to the bedroom that his wife is sharing with their newborn baby. And then there is a servant named Minnie who's sleeping in a small adjoining room to help, presumably, with the newborn.
So this is where we're left. The doors are closed. People say goodnight. And we would pause here in the story because now we're going to introduce our first witness who gets the hell scared out of him. Okay? Okay. Here we go. There's a lot of chaos happening here, and I'll just stop along the way with questions.
So everybody's gone to bed. We're on a rural ranch, but there are neighbors, but they're on ranches, so this is not particularly close. It's after midnight that night, and there is a neighbor named Elsie Ross, and he hears gunshots coming from the ranch.
He runs to the colonel's ranch and he sees James standing on the porch of a cabin on the property. So he's not in the main house. It's, you know, like an outbuilding where a couple of the ranch hands live.
He's shooting at the door of the cabin with a revolver. So James has officially lost it. What you know about James, I'm assuming you're going to say everybody is in danger, even his newborn son at this point, despite what he said at the attorney's office. He's gone off the rails. Yeah, you know, this, I mean, he could be, you know, in some sort of crisis. He's shooting into this, I'm assuming, an occupied dwelling. But we don't know really what has transpired
leading up to this shooting. So a lot of it is going to be dictated by, well, what are the details in terms of assessing James' mental state? Is he in protective mode, self-defense mode? Did he see a home invader and chase them out and the invader went into this cabin and now James is shooting James?
into the cabin, or did James just pick a gun up and walk over there and start shooting into the cabin with maybe the intent to scare or kill the occupants? So I need more, but this is kind of bizarre behavior. So luckily for us, there are two survivors, one the witness I just mentioned, L.C. Ross, and another one, I'm not going to tell you who it is yet, but it's somebody on the property.
So, Elsie Ross has run over at midnight from his ranch. She's scared to death. He's not armed. And so, he hides in a cluster of trees and watches all of this. So, we are going to have somebody outside as a witness, and we'll have somebody inside with all the action as a witness. He knows the family, and he knows that this is James Dunham. And he also knows the colonel has had problems with his son-in-law in the past. Right.
So Dunham is shaking the door. He's got this revolver. He's saying, let me in. Somebody on the other side of the door is holding it closed. And he yells, come out, Mac. Come out. I want to see you. I am bound to have you anyway. Bob, you come out here. I want you too. And you too, Shabel.
So, these are Bob is a domestic worker on the ranch named Robert Briscoe. He's about 30. Shable is George Shable. He's another ranch hand. And a third person, Mac. And I'll tell you about him in a little bit. So, he's demanding these people come out. He's got a gun. He's trying to get in. They're trying to hold the door to not let him in. These guys are all basically the same age. They're in their early 30s or so.
James Dunham and the witness, Ross, don't know it, but George Schabel is actually in the barn, and he's hiding in the hayloft. So he must have heard some shots and escaped. So he is our survivor. He's one of the witnesses. So there's a lot of back and forth. There's so much action in this story. James Dunham fires through the doors of the cabin twice, and Bob Briscoe climbs out the window at the back of the cabin. He starts running away. James chases him.
And this is our first death, shoots him twice with the revolver, killed him. So James is now picking people off, and this is where it gets really scary. What do you think so far? You know, to be frank, I don't know what to think at this point because, you know, what's happened to the occupants inside the primary residence? Is his wife and kids still alive? Is the colonel still alive?
You know, this almost sounds like he's tracking down witnesses. Maybe he has already committed a homicide or a multiple homicide inside the house and recognizes either some of these ranch hands may have been in the house and he didn't realize it. And now he's having to track these witnesses down or he's concerned that maybe they overheard something.
You know, that's kind of where I'm thinking this is going. The fact that Bob was holding the door closed, they're recognizing there's a threat. And so they've either seen James with the gun and went inside, or maybe James has already fired some shots. You know, so they know without having any visual of James that he is a threat.
So it sounds like there's a prior interaction that has occurred. And now James is trying to take care of business. And usually offenders do this for self-preservation. So let me give you more information. When he says, come out, Mac, he's talking about Colonel McGlincy. He's in the cabin, too. So Bob Briscoe is gone, dead. George Shable is in the barn. And so the only person left in the cabin is the father-in-law.
So while James is distracted with killing Bob Briscoe around the side of the cabin, McGlinsey opens up the door. The colonel opens up the door of the cabin and starts running towards the main house. James comes after him and the colonel turns around and goes back into the cabin and shuts the door. But before that, he had been shot in the chest as he's running.
So he's shot in the chest. He goes into the cabin. He shuts the door. James stands on the porch and fires a few more times through the door, hitting the colonel, his father-in-law. And then the colonel opens up the door, runs and falls. And James hits his father-in-law two more times with bullets. And then that is it. Finally, he's dead.
So a lot of shooting. So now we've got a ranch hand who's dead, one that's hidden, and then you've got the father-in-law who's now dead after it sounds like six or seven shots.
Yeah, and with the colonel, here you have this dynamic. You know, the colonel, of course, is trying to avoid being shot. He is getting shot. When the colonel goes down and James fires down into him, I mean, this just shows intent. This wasn't, you know, some sort of self-defense. This wasn't accidental. James intended to kill the colonel. This just seems like an out-of-control spree, and it gets a lot worse because James wants to find George Schabel first
And I don't quite know why. I don't know if this is because he's so angry that he wants to eliminate everybody he sees or if he thinks George should have been in the cabin because he's a ranch hand. He wasn't. And he needs to make sure that he's dead for practical reasons. Or maybe it's both. What do you think? Well, at this point in time...
My guess is that he's eliminating witnesses. You know, maybe there's an aspect, a conflict between him and these ranch hands, you know, and he wants to take them out because of that conflict. But given the information regarding sort of this contentious relationship that James had with the colonel and how he is trying
targeting the colonel and executing the colonel, in essence, seems like the colonel is probably primary targeted and the ranch hands are collateral damage. He's just eliminating the witnesses. So that's kind of what I think is going on right now. Now, we, of course, unfortunately, see these mass shootings. And, you know, is James taking on sort of that...
psychology of a mass shooter. But that seems because of the dynamics in this case, that just doesn't seem right to me. He's taking a lot of chances. The reason we know what we know is because of L.C. Ross, who's hiding in the trees, and George Schabel, who is hiding in the barn. Dunham wants to know where the heck George Schabel is. He knows he's supposed to be there, and he goes to the barn.
He climbs the ladder to the hayloft where Shabel is hiding, which I'm sure just terrified him. James strikes a match to see if he's up there. But luckily, George had covered himself, I presume, with hay and, you know, hay bales well enough where he was hidden. James looks around with this match a little bit in the hayloft and gives up and climbs down.
Now we pick up the point of view of Elsie Ross, the neighbor witness, who is hiding behind the trees. And he sees James come out of the stable, dragging along an unsaddled horse. He hops on it and he rides away. And now Elsie wants to know what is happening in the main house. And when George comes out of the barn and they presume there's no more threat, they decide to sound the alarm and get some help.
Good Lord. I mean...
What a story so far. Yeah, you know, you've kind of got me on a ledge here. I want to know what's going on inside the house. Okay, well, let's talk about it. So George is alive. Elsie gets two other men and they look through and they find one .45 caliber revolver that was left on the porch of the main house. So they know that James has been at the main house. All the action has been in the barn or the cabin so far. So they find a .45 caliber revolver.
The four men go inside the main house, and there's blood on the floor of the entryway, and the house is full of broken furniture and splintered fragments of a guitar. I mean, it's just completely wrecked. It looks like a hurricane or a tornado hit this place. The first body that they find is the stepson, who is 22 and presumably pretty strong, and
He's next to the dining room table. Now, let me tell you this. 1896 pictures would not have been that common, but I do have photographs of all of this, all of the crime scene. I'm not sure if they'll tell you a lot, but I do have them. Do you want to hear the details of each person and see each photo, or do you want me to tell you everything that happened and then you could see all the photos at once? Yeah.
It's like a cornucopia of evidence available to you, Paul, that you're not used to. Exactly. I'm not used to you having all of this.
You can't contain yourself, I know. So what is it first? Like when I arrive on scene, of course, I get briefed about the totality of something. And then there's a systematic process in terms of going through the scene to see what's going on and then ultimately the processing of the scene. So I think I would want to know the totality first. And then let's take a look at the photos.
Well, I have a page of totality, so get ready. So the stepson, the colonel's stepson, which is Hattie's brother, is found first. He's ground floor next to the dining room table. His clothes are on fire from being shot at a close range. He had been shot five times with two different guns, a .45 and a .38, and
He was shot in the chest, the back, the shoulder, the thumb, the jaw, and the bullet from the jaw passed out of the cavity of the skull just back of the right ear and followed the line of the scalp to the center of the head, according to the San Jose Mercury newspaper.
And in the crime scene photos, there's an axe on the floor in the same room as James Wells. But, you know, we don't know if he tried to use it to defend himself or if James brought it. It doesn't seem like it was used on James, at least. Okay. Do we know...
What caliber the ranch hand and the colonel were shot with? It was with the 38? I don't think they're saying what gun it was, but it had to have been the 38, right? Because they found the 45 on the porch of the main house. And I think they're surmising that everything happened in the main house first. And then these people ran to the cabin to protect themselves, including the colonel.
So let's assume it's a .38. Yeah, the .38 would be consistent with the revolver. I would want confirmation that the .38 was the same gun used that was used on the ranch hand and the colonel just so I know, okay, so James is likely—
using this .38 in both inside the residence as outside the residence. And now the question is, is he also the one that is using the .45 that's found and used on the victim inside the house? Or do we have a second shooter that has subsequently run off? Experience the glamour and danger of the Roaring Twenties from the palm of your hand in
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Let's keep going, and I'll tell you, because there's a myriad of methods of murder happening. I didn't mean that to be alliteration, but that's what's happening here. There's a lot of different weapons used. Okay, so we know that James Wells, the 22-year-old, is shot five times with two different guns, the .38 and the .45.
On the floor of the downstairs bedroom. So they're doing just what you're doing. They're sweeping from floor to floor, room to room. They find the body of the colonel's wife, who would be Hattie's stepmother. And, of course, you know, James's mother-in-law. They find the body of Ada. She's 53. She had been struck several times with the sharp side of the axe.
And her skull had been crushed by the blunt end. So now we've got three different weapons, and we know that the axe was left there because, you know, it killed Ada. And the axe is found downstairs. Right, next to James. You know, I think...
It's more questions on my side, and maybe they'll be answered when I take a look at the photos. But with Ada, is she asleep in her bed at the time she's being hit with the axe? Would the colonel have been in bed with her, sleeping with her? And I'm assuming it's James, but right now that's just an assumption. Did James go in with the axe with the intent to take out the colonel and his wife and then ends up confronting him at some place in the residence? But obviously that sounds like there's a struggle downstairs.
And is James armed? Has he armed himself ahead of time with two different guns and uses both guns on James? You know, the trajectories through James, as you described them, suggest that James is being shot while he is moving.
You know, victims often don't just stand in an anatomic position while they're being shot. They're often ducking and weaving and running. And so trajectories can be from front to back, back to front, up, you know. So that's all part of reconstructing what's going on.
And again, I'm still not convinced that there isn't a second offender that's assisting, you know, the use of two weapons during this very dynamic aspect with Weller. Is James got a .45 in one hand and a .38 in the other? And it's like this cowboy shoot? That's odd.
and somehow the axe gets downstairs. Yeah, and in a little bit, I'll tell you what the sheriff thinks happened, but let's go on because there are more bodies. So now we've got Bob the ranch hand, we've got the colonel dead, we've got a stepson that's dead, and we've got the colonel's wife who's dead. So we're up to four. The men go upstairs, and in the upstairs bedroom, they find Hattie, the wife, who was 26, and she's lying on a cot. She had been...
strangled and her neck was broken. And then on the floor nearby is a woman named Minnie Schessler. She was a household servant. She was 28. She had been struck several times with both end of the axe. And just like Ada, the mother, her skull had been crushed too.
So he's killed his wife and he's killed the domestic servant also. Who was sleeping next to her, you know, in an adjoining room? Well, it's interesting that Hattie, his wife, the one he has the most personal connection with, is strangled.
Strangulation is a very personal type of act of violence. And there's a reason why sexually motivated, fantasy motivated offenders, many of them have the preference to strangle. They may do other things to the victim, but often strangulation is a component of the method of violence because that is that connection, that physical connection. So
We've got the two women, Hattie and the household servant, but they're sleeping in the same room.
Right. Because there's a baby, remember? Yeah. And so what's going on with the baby? Well, my fear was, of course, that he had killed his son. But remember, he did ask that question, what happens if everyone in the family is wiped out of the attorney? Would my son inherit everything? So he, in fact, did not hurt his son, Percy. He was three weeks old. He is the only survivor in the main house. I mean, good Lord. Yeah.
Okay. You know, and obviously, you know, James' conversation with the attorney about if his son would inherit, if everybody, all these intermediaries that could be beneficiaries of the colonel's will were wiped out. So he had schemed ahead of time, and it appears that he, you know, probably started with Hattie and the servant, right?
and then went into where the colonel, I'm assuming where the colonel and his wife would be with this ax, trying to use a relatively silent method to kill. And at some point, the colonel's able to escape. If the colonel and the wife were in this room together, and that right now, you haven't said one way or the other if that's the case.
But just the logical sequence is now the colonel somehow is able to escape and it appears that Weller
Whether he comes upstairs and confronts James as he's trying to figure out, you know, there's some commotion going on or he's downstairs and James comes down with the axe. And somehow, some way, James and or a second offender have the firearms. And there is a struggle. You mentioned the smashed guitar. Sounds like there's furniture overturned.
But ultimately, you know, and the trajectories indicate that Weller is moving and he's shot by two guns during this dynamic shooting event.
And then right now, the only thing that we know from witnesses or the only person we know that's involved in chasing down these potential witnesses is James. And he's armed with a revolver, assuming it's the same 38 that was used on Weller. And that's where, you know, if the colonel's out there, which he is, that's the primary target. But James is also now having to eliminate witnesses. And then he escapes. He gets on this horse and rides off.
And, you know, obviously there's going to be a huge manhunt for James. He would never be able to directly benefit from these homicides in terms of the financial aspects. But at some point in his mind, if his son is the one that ultimately inherits this wealth from this agricultural magnet, that maybe he comes back into his son's life secretly, you know, to be able to enjoy the financial assets. I've got to think that he's thinking that.
But the interesting psychology to me is there's no question James is a scammer. He's interested in committing crimes for financial means. But, you know, the killing of the chickens out of anger, you know, he has a pathology inside of him that is likely a predictor for this type of violence. And so is there some other type of gratification he's getting by committing this mass homicide? Yeah.
Boy, I don't know. I'm going to show you the photos in a second because I think we're at the photos. So I've got three things and you just tell me what order you want. I've got all the photos. I've got the sheriff who's now interviewed a very frantic George to get a better idea of the timeline, which I think will answer some of your questions about what order things happened in.
And then I have a very cryptic, mysterious clue left behind in Hattie's room. So those are your three options? Yeah. Let me see the photos first. All right. Let's do it. And I won't dwell too long on them, but I do want to see if there's anything significant that might change my initial thoughts on what happened and what transpired. Okay. Here we go. Let me start at the top.
This is where Hattie and the domestic servant were in the upstairs bedroom. I know these are not great, but you could see a woman on the ground and then I can see one on the bed. What do you think? It's hard to tell. Well, it is hard to tell, but I do see, you know, what I'm looking at is a black and white photo that's taken from
what appears to be the bedroom doorway looking in diagonally across, and you could see against the far wall the part of what appears to be the equivalent of a twin-size bed. And then in the middle of the room appears to be the cot. There is feet that can be seen underneath this comforter of the woman that's laying on this diagonally.
And what I can't see is her upper body. She's completely covered except for her feet. And then the woman that's laying on the floor between the bed and the cot, the only thing that can be seen really is from her waist down. Looks like her clothing are on. Looks like she has socks on minimally, if not shoes, but can't see anything just due to the cot being in the way. It's significant that
with the woman on the bed is completely covered. That's not likely how this woman is sleeping, whether it's Hattie or the servant. So...
When an offender takes the time to cover a victim's body, that is behaviorally significant. Often the offender has got a personal connection to that victim, doesn't want to look at what he has done to that victim, sometimes could be a matter of remorse.
There are times when victims are covered in order to kind of hide them. So it delays discovery if somebody were to poke their head in. But obviously, if somebody poked their head into this room, they would know something's wrong here. So that's interesting, but it doesn't necessarily alter discovery.
what I think happened. It appears that James went in and targeted both Hattie and the servant, and Hattie being strangled, there is a more, you know, personal connection between the offender and the victim, and that just makes sense knowing their relationship. When we're at the end of these photos, what I'm going to want to know from you is, how was one person able to do all of this? Because I'll tell you now, Paul, there's no indication anybody else was involved except James. We don't know if that's true or not, but...
We just don't have any indication anybody else did this. It just seems like a lot. But when we get to the timeline, that might answer some questions for you. Just to give an example, think of Ted Bundy and the sorority house. Yeah, I know. I know. You know, people are sleeping. They're vulnerable.
James initially starts out with an ax and strangulation. So if done right, there would be very little sounds alerting other potential victims.
Here's a second photo. And of course, it notes very badly damaged, but it's better than nothing is what I say. So this is where the mother was in the downstairs bedroom. And I'm assuming that the figure on the floor that's covered up, it must be her mother. Maybe rigor has happened and her knees are up. I don't know. Or I could be completely wrong. I don't know. Yeah. And when you say badly damaged photo, the photo itself appears to have damage to it. Yeah. Water
maybe or something, yeah. It almost looks like it's, you know, maybe some sort of corrosive got on it at some point. But in this, again, another black and white photo, from what I can see, there is a bed. This is also a photo that looks like it's taken from the entrance into the bedroom. And then on the floor is...
the victim's body that is also covered up with sheets. And now we may be dealing with a situation to prior to the photo being taken, you know, the responders were the ones that are covering up the victim's body just out of respect, which does happen. We discourage that today because that contaminates the scene, but that may be what's going on here.
I can almost maybe see a hand sticking out on the floor, but because she's covered up and the damage of this photo, it really doesn't inform me of anything. It's interesting she's on the floor. Was she awake when James went in? Was there a confrontation? Did he pull her off the bed?
And we don't know for sure if did the colonel and his wife sleep together or did they have separate bedrooms? This looks separate to me. I mean, that does not look like a large bed. But, you know, I'll give you a hint about the timeline. George tells the sheriff we were not home when this happened. We were out and about at that meeting. So he has done this to his wife, his
Minnie, the servant, his mother-in-law, and the 22-year-old stepson, it sounds like kind of without... I don't think James Wells was at this meeting, but I'll have to double check. I don't see blood on the bed. So unless somebody changed the sheets, it sounds like she was up.
when this happened? I mean, what do you think? It's hard to tell with a black and white photo, but I don't see blood on the bed. I'm not seeing anything on the sheets, but I, you know... We don't know. I can't say for sure, but, you know, her body being on the floor would tend to suggest that she likely was...
At some point, upright, drug off the bed, you know, who knows? But this room does not look like it's shared between husband and wife. That bed just doesn't look like it's large enough for the two people to sleep together, at least comfortably. And, you know, this starts to suggest if we know the colonel has to be a target at the beginning of this. And so James takes advantage of the colonel being at that meeting, wipes out
the three women, and is probably lying in wait for the colonel to come home. Well, it gets more interesting. Let's go down to these next set of photos. So I don't think we have a photo of James Wells, who's the stepson, but this is the room. I mean, these are huge rooms. This is a big house.
This is a photo of the dining room where James Wells died. So just look at the scope of this room. It's pretty big, especially for, you know, 1800s standards. Yeah, no, it most certainly is. And, you know, what I'm seeing in this photo is you see the dining room table right in the middle. There appears to be
what appear to be double doors at the far end appears to be something that I would classify as like a curio style cabinet with one of the upper cabinet doors open. And that's interesting to me is this
Something that, you know, trinkets, you know, what do you call it? Schlotchkies? I think it's tchotchkies. Tchotchkies, thank you. Schlotchkies. I think that's a restaurant. Yeah, I think you're right. No, but also oftentimes this type of cabinet is where firearms are kept.
So is this open cabinet door suggestive of, you know, James comes down with an ax and is confronted with this other adult male and knows exactly where guns are and goes to the cabinet. There's dishes on the floor. Some of them may look broken. So there does appear to be some sort of a struggle. And then...
You have James Weller being killed here with the firearms. So that would be one thing, you know, from a just confirmation of talking to the survivors is, okay, where, whose guns are these? Where would they have been kept inside the house? Just to help reconstruct the offender's movements. Everybody had guns in the 1800s. So I'm sure James had guns and I'm sure you're right, the colonel, especially being a Confederate soldier, he would have had guns.
guns everywhere also. Let me go down here. This is, I think, the most gruesome photo. This is not where it happened, but this is where they piled the bodies. So this is the colonel and then Bob Briscoe and then the stepson. And it says, you know, of course, the colonel and Briscoe died outside the house and they were brought in and laid next to the stepson. And their axe is also in the photo. You see it at the top of their heads. So what
We don't know if James left the axe there or if it was put there or... Obviously, there's not a lot of information regarding the crime itself with these bodies being so moved. Yeah. You know, basically, I'm looking at a photo of these three men. They're all lying face up. Covered. And they're covered. And so that would suggest that the other bodies upstairs of the women were not covered by James, the offender, but by the responders. Yeah. The description...
The witness statements is so much more important in terms of understanding the sequence of the shootings and what could be discerned from this photo. Yep.
I agree. I'll have another photo to share in a second. But first, let's talk about what the sheriff said about what he thinks the sequence of events were based on what George has told him. And I think the witness was helpful, the Elsie Ross, who came, you know, at the sound of gunshots. But I think George is the most helpful because he can really help with the timeline.
So the sheriff comes, and he gets there a little bit after all of this happens. He finds the three women are found to be rigid. So they've already hit rigor, which he says that he believes that they were killed several hours before the men even got home. George says, we all went to that anti-Catholic meeting, and they didn't get home until midnight.
But James got home around 10. So there's two hours there where their best guess is that he killed everybody in the main house. Does that make sense to you? It does. What time of year is this? So it's end of May in California. Okay. So end of May in California, even in the South Bay. Okay.
You know, it can get relatively warm during the evening time. There isn't a description on, you know, how much rigor is present. Is it just in the fingers, you know, the smaller muscles? Has it progressed to the larger arms, you know, the full body? But
I think the sheriff is spot on, is that the victims had been dead for a period of time prior to the men being killed. So one of the things I think is interesting is, let me tell you what George says here. So it sounds like the stepson went to the meeting, but...
He does not sound like he's involved with all of the chaos that's been happening. So I think, let me go through this and then maybe you'll help me get some clarity here. And then there's a surprise piece of evidence that's a little shocking to me that I'll bring up in a minute. So between the crime scene and George and Elsie Ross, the man who responded, the sheriff thinks this is what happens.
He says that on the night of the murders, the colonel and the stepson and George, the farmhand, all go to this anti-Catholic meeting, and that James Dunham was out doing something separately. He came home about nine. And what he believes is that about an hour later,
James goes upstairs to the bedroom where Hattie is and Minnie is there. And according to what the San Francisco call says, they believe, you know, all of this is pieced together from what the sheriff is telling them. They think James, the first thing he does is strangles and gags Hattie by shoving some clothes in her mouth while she lies on the cot next to the baby. So I think the figure that was covered up was Hattie.
And this is the sheriff giving a little bit of information, but the reporter came to the crime scene later that day. And that's what the reporter thinks. It looks like James broke Hattie's neck. That's what the coroner had said. So during the struggle, it sounds like Minnie quickly got dressed and ran into the room. She was in an adjoining room. And that's when James attacks her with an axe.
He strikes her several times with the sharp end of the axe, crushes her skull. And it sounds like that he's also shoved some clothes into her mouth to keep her quiet. I mean, this just sounds horrific at what's happening right now. Yeah, he's taking out the victims, you know. He strangles wife. You know, the broken neck is unusual. Really? Yeah, that's rarely seen. What does that mean?
You know, I'm not sure how he would have done it if he would have just put her in, you know, some sort of head hold and snapped her neck.
And it's also, you know, what is the sequence? He's likely not breaking her neck while she's just laying there on the cot. Right. So does he initially confront her while she's standing up? I mean, I'm envisioning, you know, he goes into the room and she turns her back on him, not expecting that there's any intent on James' part to hurt her. And then as soon as, you know, her back's to him, he...
grabs her and maybe during the process of trying to strangle her with a chokehold, you know, ends up breaking her neck and has the axe. You know, he strangles her and then the servant comes in, uses the axe on the servant. Of course, the insertion of the clothes, oftentimes these offenders, you know, they're naive to how to kill and if somebody's actually dead.
And so, you know, the insertion of the clothes doesn't sound like this is occurring while they're alive. So, you know, he's just doing something just as a safeguard, just in case for whatever reason they happen to come to him.
just in order to still have this kind of this shroud of silence, if you will, that he can operate within. So the sheriff says that while James is killing his wife and the domestic servant, Ada is downstairs and Bob Briscoe is by himself in the cabin.
So this is, again, you know, the next day, essentially, where the sheriff is trying to get information out of a very shaken George being the only one who survived. So what George believes and what the sheriff believes happened is after, it sounds like Paulette started with his wife. He strangles her. He has an axe. When Minnie comes in, he attacks Minnie. Then he goes downstairs and Ada's there, right?
So here's where things get a little bit confusing. It sounds like this stuff happened between 10 o'clock and midnight. The men are gone with the exception of Bob Briscoe, who's, you know, in the cabin. So the stepson, James, the colonel, and then George, these three guys are gone. So after he kills his mother-in-law, that's the third person in the house who's killed. And
James starts rummaging through all different parts of the house. It sounds like he's packing up cash. He's packing up his belongings. He's focusing, according to the family where they were able to see what he took, focusing on letters and photographs of himself.
And a newspaper reporter said, well, obviously he's trying to make his identification more difficult by taking these photographs. So they can't send these out to newspapers everywhere. So he's trying to be smart. It sounds like he's getting ready to leave. Here's my question. The three men, the stepson, the colonel, and then the farmhand, George, all get home around midnight. So I don't know if they surprised him and he reacted differently.
or if he was laying in wait.
Because the colonel walks through the door and he says that the three men returned about midnight. The colonel told George to open the door and the back windows to the barn, which is near the cabin. And that's why George ended up where the barn is, is because the colonel told him, don't come in the main house or to the cabin, go straight to the barn and open up the windows. Because it was maybe presumably warm there.
Then the colonel opens the front door and steps inside. And that's where he is confronted with an axe with one blow to the side of the head. And then he runs and then the stepson follows the colonel into the house and James drops the axe and picks up the gun and shoots him five times.
And it says that a short but terrific fight followed, the witnesses of which are broken furniture, a guitar crushed to fragments, torn clothes, blood over everything. A track leading through the hall to two rooms at the end of which the body of Jimmy Wells was found with five bullets, one passing clear through and into the floor.
This is rage. I'm not sure this is just eliminating witnesses. What do you think at this point? I think it is. I mean, the target is the colonel. There's a lot of emotions that are involved, you know, with the colonel. And, you know, the whole financial motive is the undercurrent to all of this. You know, now he's dealing with James, this other adult male. For me, what's interesting is the use of the two guns. That is unusual. And I'm wondering...
was this a situation where he grabbed one gun, James grabbed one gun, fired a couple of times, and then it jammed on him. It stopped firing. And now he had to go grab the .38, and James is fleeing, is trying to get away, and then eventually is executed. The bullet going down into the floor, likely under James' body, which is commonly what we see when somebody's laying on the floor being shot,
You know, he's just laying there being executed. I didn't realize that the colonel had any injuries to show a blow from the ax. And that is important sequencing information because we know the ax is inside the house. Right. But now everything flows. You know, the colonel flows outside.
The stepson is taken care of inside. And so now James, armed with the 38, goes after the colonel, but also recognizes that there's other witnesses, the ranch hands, you know. So he's trying to take care of everybody. And now he's armed with a firearm to be able to do that. So the shots that George Schabel hears while he's in the barn opening up the doors at the colonel's orders, it sounds like are the ones perpetrated.
probably killing James Wells. So the colonel gets out of the house. He runs towards the cabin. He gets inside the cabin where Bob Briscoe is asleep, is woken up. And this is where we start the beginning of the story, where they've kind of barricaded themselves in the cabin. He's firing through the cabin door, trying to hit whoever it is. And then these two men ultimately end up dead. And this is how George...
ends up in the barn. You know, at the beginning of the story, we were really seeing it from
the witness's point of view, Elsie Ross. And he knew that there was a surviving ranch hand in the barn when all of this was over, George came out. So, you know, now we have, I think, a very clear picture of what happened. And then the police, the investigators are saying, let's go find this guy because this is someone who has slaughtered an entire family and left behind Paul a really interesting clue.
And I want to know, this comes out of thin air for me, so you tell me what you think about this. They go upstairs and they go to Hattie's room, which she shared with James, and they see a note. And the note says, Please say goodbye for me to my dear mother, brother, and stepfather. Period. Hattie. Period. Oh. Right. Is it going to crack the case? We don't know. But...
The sheriff is trying to figure out, was this written because Hattie knew her husband was going ballistic and maybe felt like she was in danger? Maybe he was threatening her? Was it written under duress or did James write it? I don't know. I mean, now that you know the sequence of events where I think it started with Hattie
And then everybody else was like collateral, honestly. But what do you think about this note? And I have a picture of the note. Please say goodbye for me to my dear mother, who would be dead shortly, brother and stepfather, Hattie. My initial thoughts on this is that James wrote this
And either this was an attempt at a suicide letter or he was going to make Hattie disappear and have people think that she had run off. Yeah, and I think that most of the experts at the time agree with you. Here's the note.
And someone said, it looks like a nervous hand wrote it, which I think no matter who wrote it, probably would be the case. And I think most people do think that this is a forgery. So if that's true, if we go with that theory that he wrote the note,
What was the plan? Because this does not seem like the kind of note that supports the crime scene, which is just a massacre of this entire family. And he's not trying to cover any of it up. Did something change to change his plans? Yeah, what changed was the dynamics of committing the crime.
You know, we know we have his statements to this lawyer, which would suggest that he possibly had been scheming up to this point to eliminate these primary individuals who would be beneficiaries of the will. However, there's always the possibility that he had different intentions and possibly he thought maybe I could, while everybody's gone, when I say everybody, the men are gone,
He would be able to kill Hattie and either hide her, make her disappear. And then during the commission of killing her, he's now being confronted by the servant of
And things are starting to spiral out of control. He now has to go in and kill the stepmom and gets into a fight with the stepson. So this is what happens is sometimes offenders think, I'm going to do this, this, and this. And then during the act, due to the resistance of the victims or other variables, things go differently. And so now James is in a scramble, you know, and this is where he is eliminating everybody, right?
And this is now a cluster in his life to try to get this done and to get out of town. So I think that that note is very important. Now, was he going to kill her in a way to make it look like a suicide note?
And she fought back to a point where her neck gets broken and he strangles her. Well, there's just no way that would be believable as a suicide. So I think he was probably intending to kill her and make her disappear. And she had left a note behind. Yeah, and it's a huge property. So he could have stashed her anywhere or gone somewhere else.
This is an odd little note. He was an avid cyclist, so he knew, aside from the horse and cart, he could certainly go places quickly and go in sort of rugged area. So once the police have these theories, they start looking for him, and they find a couple of different things. First, they put up a reward list.
The governor says, I'll put up $1,000 for the bounty of him, and that's about $36,000 now. Various rewards go up, and this motivates people to find him. People start wanting to know more.
What he has with him, what are his resources? So people who know James believe that he might be traveling with $15,000 to $20,000 in cash, which is a huge amount of money. That's more than half a million dollars now.
It doesn't all appear to be coming from the family, but, you know, we're not really sure where some of that money came from. It sounds like James was pretty shady in general. They find a bicycle and some brush near the ranch, and they look and they look and they look...
And they never find him. Oh, really? Nope. Oh, he got away with it. He got away with it. An awful crime like that. And you've got to assume he's covered in blood. I'm sure he had a change of clothing. He thought about this. They look everywhere. The mountains, the gulches. There were people who said, you know, he probably made it all the way to Mexico or he took his own life in the mountains. Yeah.
And, you know, somebody said that they heard a shot of a gun in the mountains, but there's no proof. He just vanished, gone in the wind. After all of that, gone in the wind. Well, and it would be easy for him just to stay in the United States and move a distance away and start living his life. Yep. I know I think there was another case...
kind of similar that we talked about. It would be interesting to see if any of his descendants are still alive, because there's a possibility. If there are some relatives of James from back in the day that we can identify the descendants, could we identify, I think at this time, probably great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren of James, you know, to show, yeah, he survived and
you know, remarried, figure out his identity. I mean, that's where we have this genealogy tool that could be exploited to figure that out and maybe get an answer just to see, you know, what happened to this guy. Yeah, it's a pretty incredible story and so tragic that there's no justice for this family, or if there is, it was self-inflicted. We don't talk about the spree killer, and I know this wasn't a spree killer, but this was so out of control to me
It was just like this rampage, and we don't get a lot of rampages on this show. So I wanted to see the pattern, and that's why I laid it out for you in this way. I wanted to see the pattern of how somebody's character sort of devolves over time, and it just falls apart, and there are all these little clues on the way, and you would never blame the victims, but you can see clearly that
that this was someone who was never a good person to begin with and all of it falls apart. And to have the capability to kill all of these people in
in such a terrible fashion. My goodness. You know, his earlier behaviors that we talked about, you know, showed that he had this type of potential for violence. You know, that's what I was saying about the killing of the chickens. And then he's that schemer, he's that scammer. And possibly if he has that much money that he's living off of and he's not getting it from the colonel,
or his family, he may have been committing many other types of financially motivated crimes where he's profiting and just squirreling that away. I don't see...
In this case where it's, this is not like a spree type killing. I see he had a targeted, a set of targeted victims inside the house. The colonel, probably stepmom, his wife,
And then the servant and the ranch hands, this is where things spiraled out of control on him. And I believe that this is where he's just taking the steps to eliminate witnesses for self-preservation. He's obviously, at least on the fly, he's thinking ahead a little bit by going and trying to snatch up all the photos of him.
I bet that wasn't planned. I bet that was just, oh, I need to do this. I have to escape. And they can take those photos, as you mentioned, and start passing them around. Hey, have you seen this guy? Have you seen this guy? Because during this timeframe, it's not like there's a whole bunch of photos of him spread throughout social media that people could download and start distributing. So he showed some
on-the-fly forethought under this very intense crime. So he's reasonably bright, even though he is an underperformer and a failure-to-launch type personality.
This was just violent massacre that one man could be responsible for all of this. I'm sure it just horrified his own mother, who told the story about the chickens. And then he's gone. And if he did die in the mountains, it was on his own terms, which is too bad.
So I hate to end on a sad note. It made me really appreciate my own family. You know, you think of your home as a place of refuge, as a place, I do at least, as a place where you're protected. And to think that somebody could come in and do all of this, it just, I don't know. And they had guns everywhere. There were guns all over the place in that house. So none of it helped. None of it helped anybody.
So I definitely thought about my own family when all of this happened and made me appreciate all of that. So it's a sad story, but I thought it was really interesting criminal pathology thinking about the way that this person's getting in his head. There most certainly is a pathology. There's an aspect to how he is approaching this. I would not be surprised if there's some psychopathy that is going on. But yeah, I have a feeling he got away with this and probably lived...
You know, for a period of time afterwards, wouldn't be surprised if he committed other violent acts as he moved around. You know, we always want to put the victims at the forefront here. But I do think it's interesting to talk about that aspect of it in history. How, again, you know, you've worked all of these present day cases and I know older cases, too, but present day cases, when you look at this and you think, man,
man, this guy reminds me of people that I just investigated less than a decade ago. People have not changed fundamentally. They just haven't, you know? And to see it and just say, oh, I can relate to Hattie. This guy was a loser and he was not nice and she was thinking of divorce and she was writing in her journal about how terrible he was and look at what happened. You know, it just feels like,
Oh, my gosh. This could have happened in any time period. So anyway, thank you for listening to this terrible story. I know there was a lot of violence in here, but I think your insight was great here. Okay. Thanks for taking the time to present it again. And I'm looking forward to the next case. I'll see you next week. Sounds good.
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.
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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.