Murder in Notting Hill PT 1
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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 today? I'm doing well. How about you? I am hanging in there. I want to jump into talking about a main character in the case that we're going to talk about. And it's a pathologist named Bernard Spilsbury, who I'm sure has resonated with you because he's a pathologist.

He was in two of our cases. So he was in the Crumbles Beach case and he was in the Dr. Crippen case. So Spillsbury has come up and I've said that he's just been incredibly respected. Do you remember him and kind of hearing his name?

Yeah, you know, the name's very familiar. I do vaguely remember his role in most notably the Crippen case. However, in terms of his career, everything he's done, I really am at a loss. That's okay. You know, he was well-known in his time, and I'm sure he pops up for pathologists in history when they're studying pathology. My question to you is, you know, when you first started to explore the idea of being in law enforcement investigation, forensics, all of that stuff,

Did you veer towards pathology or what was your biggest interest at first when you started thinking, oh, this is a field I'd like to go into? Oh, you really don't know, do you? No. Why am I supposed to know? Is everybody going to say, how come you don't know this about Paul?

No, you know, so when I was young, there was a TV show called Quincy. And, you know, Quincy M.D., he was a forensic pathologist down in Los Angeles. He had his superhero pathology assistant sidekick, Sam. And

And Quincy was not just a pathologist. He was a crime scene investigator. He was a forensic scientist. He was an investigator. He was everything rolled into one character, which we know today doesn't really exist. But watching that show, that inspired me. I really thought when I was going through school, I was studying biochemistry, but at UC Davis, I ended up going and taking human anatomy as well as having access to the UC Davis Medical Library.

And I ended up spending more time looking at forensic pathology books than actually studying my biochemistry major textbooks. But needless to say, I didn't go to med school. And thank God I didn't because once I started my career and having to go to the morgue and seeing what forensic pathologists do day in and day out, it's a job I would not have enjoyed.

But I really did study both at the college level, but most notably after I got working, I studied forensic pathology. And it's so critically important to understand what can be discerned from the violence, the injuries to the victim, and how that correlates to the crime scene evidence, as well as what it could potentially indicate as to who the offender might be. There's a lot of information that can be discerned.

from what we would consider this discipline of forensic pathology. And it's all thanks to Quincy, MD. Well, and in many ways, even though I said he had all these roles that don't exist in real law enforcement, well, I kind of made it exist. So I kind of, you know, being inspired by Quincy, took it upon myself not just to stay in my lane, but get into other people's lanes.

You know, I've noticed that, that you are in other people's lanes. Thank goodness. I need you to be in everybody's lane for these stories. So it's funny that you were inspired by a TV show because I was too. Oh. You want to know the reason I went into journalism that became really excited about journalism? Oh, do tell. I'm trying to, right now, I'm trying to scroll through some shows I watched when I was younger to see if there was one in which there was a

a journalist that would have inspired you, but nothing is coming to mind. Was Mary Tyler Moore a journalist? Listen, I know you think I'm old, but I'm not. Well, maybe I just revealed my age now. Okay. Okay. Think a blonde woman, big mouth, loud, outspoken, Washington, D.C., and she was a television journalist. Can you think about who I'm talking about?

Murphy Brown? Yes. Oh, I got it. Now you know I watch The Real Housewives, specifically of New Jersey, and I used to watch Murphy Brown, and I watched the revival of Murphy Brown, too. And it was, it was inspiring. I really loved seeing, you know, whatever your opinion was about the character, I loved seeing a woman who was really outspoken and together and, you know, had personal problems, but that was really inspiring to me that she was just such a go-getter in every aspect of her life.

So, you know, I never ever, when I have students come to me and say, oh, I really used to watch this TV show and this is what inspired me to go into Mindhunters and this is why I want to go into criminal profiling. I never dismiss that because you and I both came from that. We are, you are inspired by the art, you know, by Hollywood sometimes. So whatever gets you to where you are sitting across from me,

telling me facts about cases. That's all I care about. Yeah, you know, and everybody, and we've talked about this before and how this true crime genre we're in is just so huge, you know, and the reality is, is that, well, the genre has always been there, even though Quincy technically wouldn't be true crime. You know, it's a fictional show, but the

crime stories, that's the ultimate human drama. And of course, that's what people watch and they always have and they always will. Yep. Well, now that we have our inspirations made public, I want to get into this case because really Bernard Spilsbury is just a rock star of a pathologist. Even though he worked in the 30s and 40s and 50s, he worked on the John Reginald Christie case, which my first book was about.

You know, I'm familiar with his work. He did some really serious work on this case coming up. And this is such a big case that it's a two-parter and it's all...

That's also unsolved. And there's forensics everywhere. And you have to tell me what makes sense. This is 1931 London. You have to tell me what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. But I think you'll be impressed with some of the stuff that he did. I think it's pretty interesting. And we're going to learn a lot from this story. Okay. Well, I'm looking forward to it. Anytime there's an unsolved case, you've got my attention.

So the good news is we're in London in 1931, which is for me a wonderful time period to explore, especially in London. My first book took place in 1952, which was very dreary London. And 1931 is, to me, such an electric time period. The bad news is that this is involving a 10-year-old girl. You know, I hate the stories about children, but I picked them specifically because they're

They're important. They show us a lot about history, and we learn a lot. So as I've said a million times, this is not haphazard how we choose these cases. You know, I'm doing it specifically for a reason. So I just wanted to warn the audience and you up top that this is a really brutal crime involving a 10-year-old girl. Okay. You know, and this is just something where even though I'm in the true crime space, and I've said this over and over, I come out of real crime. And unfortunately, real crime does occur.

with children. And I've worked plenty of cases involving kids in real life, and they are tough, for sure. Yeah. This is a hard one. And Bernard Spilsbury does an excellent job outlining what happens in this case in his book.

So we went to him to figure out what the area was like. This is in Notting Hill, and Notting Hill is also the centerpiece of my first book in Death in the Air. Not a similar case, but the same sort of feeling, which is sort of this shabby, genteel, not wealthy people, but people who had some means who are merging into what is quickly becoming more of a slum area.

Notting Hill now in London is beautiful. I love it, love it, love it. But in the 30s, 40s and 50s, it was harder. It was a harder time, particularly after the war. So, you know, we are in an area that would be predominantly working class, lots of shops around. But, you know, you picture London and I know you've been there enough. You know, we're in an area where there's sort of row houses, these old Victorian houses that are stacked right close to each other, sharing a wall space.

Oftentimes, there's gardens out front. This is a congested, tight-spaced area, which I would think is not the easiest place to commit a crime in privacy unless you are in your own flat. Right.

Yeah, you know, I had a family vacation a few months ago, and that's when I really started to get much more familiar with the layout of London. And though I didn't spend any time in the Notting Hill area, I do recall riding the Underground and seeing the Notting Hill station, you know, just kind of – and I'm just passing through. I never got off the Underground –

But it appeared that there was a lot of professionals today that were getting off and on at that station as if this was their residence. And they were commuting from the Notting Hill area into downtown or out of Notting Hill. Is that accurate for today? Yeah. I mean, I think...

Back then, there were a lot of people who were working locally. And I think you're right. There's people, you know, who are commuting out and in of Notting Hill all the time now. This is, like I said, predominantly a working class area. The crime rate is, I would say, like at a medium. This is not a high, high crime rate area. But there are a lot of people and we are close to a shopping district.

where there are people, as you said, coming in and out. And this is about a week and a half-ish before Christmas. So now you're talking about even more people who are in the area who are shopping.

So let's talk about the family first. It begins with a family called the Pages, and they live on the ground floor flat at 22 Blenheim Crescent Street. And this is a multifamily working class house in the area of Notting Hill. They haven't been there very long. It's been about a year or so, and there are five people who are there.

So there is a husband named Charles, a wife named Isabel, and then they have only one child, who's a 10-year-old, who's at the center of this, named Vera Page. This became one of Spillsbury's more publicized cases because of Vera, because this is our victim. She was 10 years old. Also in the house, Isabel has a niece.

and the niece lives with the boyfriend. So the niece has a boyfriend who lives with them. So there are five of them in this working-class building, and again, they're on the ground floor. And then you've got one other family, and they're an elderly couple named Arthur and Annie Rush.

And they live on the top floor, and they've been there for 20 years. So long-term couple, friendly with the Page family. Everything seems to be fine. The time period that we're talking about is Monday, December 14th of 1931. In the house, about 4.30 p.m., Vera, the 10-year-old, asks her mother if she can walk to Aunt Minnie's house.

So, you know, her aunt lives nearby, 10 or 15 minute walk. Vera had gotten two swimming certificates that she was very proud of, but she showed them to Aunt Minnie and then left them behind the day before. So she wanted to go back. Vera's mom said, OK, but because it was wintertime, she said, you know, you need to put on these heavy layers. So she put on a coat and she grabbed a red beret. You know, this would be kind of a key clue, unfortunately, later on.

So she was walking 15 minutes away. You know, I like now I am nervous if my kids are 13 or 15 minutes away and I can't see them the whole time. But this was a different time. And I'm sure Vera had made this trip before, but it sort of informs the independence that she felt even at age 10. Yeah.

And I'm the same way. You know, today when I see young children and I'm not seeing an adult anywhere around, you know, I immediately, I'm looking. I'm saying, okay, where is the parent or where is the guardian, you know, and

almost always I am seeing, okay, there's this adult that's protecting that child. But every now and then I get really hinked up when I see a young kid out there riding their bike or just walking because even though it's rare, it's such a high risk situation for somebody driving by who's a bad character to see a victim of opportunity.

When we are thinking about history, when did the child snatching thrown into the van, when did that sort of panic set in in this country? Is there one case that you know of in the 70s or the 80s where it just became kind of like the satanic panic or some of the other trends, you know, when women started going missing when they were hitchhiking? I feel like there are decades kind of assigned to that awareness.

When did we really start seeing kids be snatched off the street in a highly publicized way? Yeah, you know, that's actually a very interesting question because there have been different eras when it comes to the victimology, you know, and how offenders are gaining access to the victims.

I can't speak for across the nation. I can only speak for the cases that I got involved with out in the East Bay, California. In the 1960s, there were abductions and abduction homicides of children. And it would make the headlines in the local newspaper for a few days. And then it would just, you know, disappear. And it didn't seem like those cases really caused a cultural shift right away.

And that seemed to continue through the 70s. I would say it was more into the 80s in my jurisdiction where now people realized our kids are vulnerable when they're outside playing or they're at the park or they're out of view of the parent or the guardian. And just like you mentioned, you know, it was with the coeds, the women that were hitchhiking in the late 60s and early 70s. And the predators were picking them up.

And, you know, today it's very rare to see a woman by herself hitchhiking just because it is such a dangerous activity for them to do. With the child abduction cases occurring through the 80s, that's when I think you started to see more protection. Instead of the kids just go, hey, go play at the park by yourselves with the other neighborhood kids. Now you see all the parents, you know, sitting on the park benches, watching their kids at the park.

And that's persisted to this day. And what's happened is because now you have these guardians at the parks or wherever the kids kind of congregate, you know, where predators used to go. Now the predators are having to shift their tactics.

And now it's the online space where they can anonymize. And their ultimate goal is to lure these children to some location away from the house, away from their guardian, so they can now do what they want with them physically.

I remember in the 80s, you know, when I was Vera's age, it would have been 84, 85. And I remember playing in our neighborhood, riding my bike. But I also remember my mom driving up every once in a while. I was about a block away in a cul-de-sac, maybe. And there were parents all around us.

So I think you're right. I think it really was in the 80s where people started to become a lot more alert. And I started hearing about the white van and stranger danger and things like that. But we're in the 30s. And her parents, Vera's parents say, OK, go on ahead.

And she walks out the door and she ends up actually going and making it all the way to Minnie's house. She gets the certificates within a 15-minute period and then she leaves. And then she isn't seen alive again. Okay. So she makes, she actually is successful in the first leg of the trip. Yep.

But then the second leg, which as far as we know, her intent was to go right back home. Exactly. That's what she told her parents. I'm going to go get these certificates and I'll come right back home. And we have to presume that this is a trip that she's made before and they felt very safe. And it's 430 in the afternoon and it's daylight and it hasn't gotten dark yet, even though it's December. So Vera's parents are waiting and waiting. They are expecting her to be home soon.

by probably 5, 5.15 at the latest. And at dinnertime, which was 6 o'clock, they become very concerned. Her father walks over to Aunt Minnie's house to investigate, and he finds out from Aunt Minnie that Vera, as I said, made it there. She grabbed her swimming certificates and then turned around and left at 4.45. So 15 minutes, as predicted.

This is not a good sign, right? Between 4.45 and now 6 p.m., we have no idea where this little girl is. Charles starts knocking on doors of nearby friends and relatives. No one has seen Vera. I don't know if he's thinking she might have popped in or gotten hurt and looked for help.

But later that evening, when this 10-year-old is still not home, he and his wife go to the Notting Hill police station and report her missing. So later in the evening, it's probably 7 or 8 o'clock,

I'm not sure what's going on with them. And I don't want to judge what parents do in that way. But later in the evening, for a teenager, maybe, but for a 10-year-old, after dark to be gone, and they waited to go to the police. That is kind of tough to assess considering the anxiety that today a parent would have for such a young child to not be where they need to be, you know, and

I do have an observation and a question, though. So, Dad, it sounds like about an hour and 15 minutes, roughly, after Vera left her aunt's house, he walks the same path as his daughter, and he doesn't see anything. Nope. And now the question that I have is these streets that he's walking along in 1931, are

Is this mostly automobiles that would be on these streets? Would this be horse carriage or just, you know, people walking, pedestrians? It would be mostly walking. Cars did not become a really popular industry.

in London until the mid to late 1930s. And this is 1931. So it's not like anybody would own a car. You'd have to be pretty wealthy to own a car. And so this is, you know, still walking potentially. If you're a worker, you're using a wheelbarrow an awful lot. You might have carriages, but predominantly people are walking in this part. It's mixed residential and commercial, this area.

Okay. Part of the threat are the residents along the path that Vera walked.

You see somebody who's looking out the window or out front and sees this little girl by herself, and it's very easy to grab the girl and bring her inside. So that's something that I would be considering. And the father did the right thing, knocking on doors. But also you have these pedestrians. It's just that, you know, if this was a really busy street with a lot of people walking, if somebody doesn't have a shelter to pull the victim into right away...

really takes a risk that there would be witnesses. You're right. And no car, of course. I mean, it's really risky. But she is gone. Nobody has an idea about what happened to her. The police start immediately looking for Vera, a 10-year-old girl. This doesn't happen all the time.

The pages don't receive any updates that night, so let's just say 8 p.m., in the next day either. So not at all Monday night and not at all Tuesday night. This has to be absolutely horrible for her family. How do police know how much...

They need to update the family when it is clear that this little girl has either been drawn away by someone or has gotten hurt. This is most likely not a runaway situation. How do the police balance keeping the family updated if they really don't know what's going on? I would think they're going crazy.

Well, yeah, most certainly, you know, the parents have just got to be, you know, besides themselves, not being able to sleep, not being able to eat, you know, just absolute fear as to, you know, where their daughter's at and still maintaining hope that she's going to show up or she's going to be found.

and be okay. You know, in terms of law enforcement, you know, of course, today there's more formalized child abduction protocols. And of course, when law enforcement responds, you know, the first people that are contacted are the residents inside the house where the child has gone missing out of. And of course, they are being interviewed. The house is being searched. Oftentimes, the kids have, you know, hidden themselves, you know, inside the house. In this situation, you

you have this young girl that is walked away from the house. And so now law enforcement is going to be doing a canvas of the area

Today, we likely would have a dedicated officer who is the point person to contact the parents. Sometimes, you know, would be staying with the parents at their residence or would be routinely, you know, dropping in and saying, you know, we're still looking. This is where we're at. But back in 1931, I bet they weren't even thinking about sort of this caretaking role that they need to take on with the parents themselves. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, her parents are beside themselves. They're not getting any updates. But very quickly, there is a very, very sad update. So Monday night, when she goes missing, no word. Tuesday, no word. Wednesday morning, around 9.30, someone discovers Vera's body. Now the timeline is

And the distance and all of these details, because we have a lot of witnesses and we've got some forensics, various things happening, become important. So 9.50 in the morning, there is a milkman who goes to the front garden of a house at 89 Addison Road.

And this is about a mile, maybe a little touch more away from Vera's house, this place where she's found. So he finds her in the garden and he said that she was under some bushes. She's fully clothed. There's no red beret and there's no swimming certificates, which the aunt had confirmed she had both of those things when she came and then left.

So this could be a, what do you call it, mementos? This could be a memento situation. Does that sound like it could be? There's a possibility. We use the term souvenir. Some people will throw out the term trophy or memento, but technically when we have an offender who is keeping an item of the victim's to relive, to fantasize down the road about this victim, that's what we call a souvenir. So this red cap potentially means

certificates potentially, but also those could have been discarded because these are loose items. And now, you know, through the abduction process, maybe they fall off, maybe it's in his residence or wherever he took her body, or he's just tossing them as he's in this transportation stage of getting rid of her body. Okay, so I guess we're going to find out. 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.

Let me tell you what the milkman says. We do have a pathology report from Dr. Spilsbury in a little bit. But as a police officer on the scene, I just want to get your impressions on what the milkman says he saw. He came. He said,

and the lapel of her coat almost covered her face. I told the cook of the house and then went out and found a policeman. She looked as if she were lying asleep under the bushes, except that her face was like marble. What does that mean? White?

That's how I'm interpreting it, you know? And so she no longer has blood flowing through her body. She's deceased. You know, you do see this pallor, if you will, with the lack of blood. And so that would look whitish. But it's also telling to me that he's not saying, "I'm seeing brown spots," or, "I'm not seeing veins starting to show up like the decompositional process has kicked in."

And this is, we're talking December timeframe in London. So I imagine the outdoor temperatures are fairly cool, right? Mm-hmm. Except that Dr. Spilsbury has a pretty strong opinion about where she died and when she died. And it's different. His description can seem a little misleading. So let me get to the timeline first because the milkman has come around this area before. So let's do the timeline real quick. Okay.

Police start to try to piece this together. The same guy, the same milkman, made a delivery that morning to that same block, and he walked by the house. It was 5:30 in the morning. The milkman says, "I didn't see anything weird, but it was dark outside."

The night before, so Tuesday night, she goes missing Monday night, Tuesday night, and then the next morning, someone living at 89 Addison had walked past the garden and didn't see anything unusual. And, you know, these gardens were right on the sidewalk. They were right there. So you would walk past and you would be able to see everything in the garden.

So the police are saying between this homeowner who lived, you know, around the block next door and the milkman, they would not have missed this little girl's body in this garden right on the sidewalk. And they know she wasn't there at 1020 the night before she was discovered, but

Yeah, so it is a relatively narrow window of time.

And this is a mile away from where Vera's aunt's house was at, right? Little more than a mile, just slightly more than a mile. He's got comfort to know that at that time of day in this neighborhood, he would be able to discard this child's body without being seen.

So that's telling to me a little bit about the offender. Now, if law enforcement is also making this assessment, because I'm looking at what I'm assuming is this neighborhood now. You're saying it was like 89 Addison. Uh-huh. 89 Addison. I will say also the police said she was only partially concealed. It's not like he put her under the bush and you had to look. She was partially visible. So anybody would have seen her walking by. You wouldn't have been able to miss her, it seems like. Yeah. And so this was a quick disposal. Yeah.

He is, if you want to say, in and out. I would use this term, and it may sound a little crude when we talk about disposing a child's body, but this is a dump and run. Versus spending time to secret her body, as you mentioned, behind bushes or to try to bury the body in some way or cover the body up. He's not taking the time to do that.

So in part, he's recognizing I've got a limited time to take this child's body from wherever he's secreted it or however he's transported it to this location.

and put that body and get rid of the body and get away without risk of somebody coming out of the houses, the neighbors coming out just as they're going to work or something. So he's just doing a real quick body dump and then is running off. The question will be, how did he get her there? Yeah. They interviewed everybody at 89 Addison Road. This was not anybody on their radar that came from this house. So it's not like he came from a basement apartment.

flat and just placed her under there. He definitely brought her there. And it was 36 hours after she went missing. So the question, I mean, did he do it immediately and kill her immediately? Or did he keep her alive and then kill her? Right now, you know, the possibilities are wide open. But imagine this is, let's say he bumps into her and

As she's walking home, the initial vision is, is he grabs this child and the child is kicking and screaming and, you know, there's a big commotion. However, imagine an adult male coming up to a 10-year-old girl and saying, you're coming with me. And literally, he's holding her hand and walking her possibly to this Addison location. Maybe he lives along the street and he takes her inside his residence.

And any witnesses just see a man with a young girl out for a walk. You know, that type of scenario is entirely possible. And is it possible that he knows her, that this isn't a stranger thing at all? Obviously, that's possible. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Now, this is where victimology is huge. You know, we need to talk to the parents. Who else does, you know, Vera know? Who does she trust?

you know, whether it be relatives, whether it be friends, parents of some of the kids that she's friends with, you know, so it's gathering all that information and going and interviewing them, you

So let's bring in Dr. Spilsbury, who is a little bit of a saving grace. He has some great information and, frankly, gives us a lot of historical context that I had not heard of. So I'll be interested in hearing what you think. The real basics. He says she was likely killed inside, not outside, and certainly not at the garden at 89 Addison. And it's because, thank goodness it rained.

I know that we talk about rain and water can be terrible for forensic investigators, but because it rained, he saw her clothes and basically the back part of her coat was damp and that was it. So the rest of her is not wet and filthy and dirty. And it had rained an awful lot from 3 p.m. until 9 p.m.,

On Wednesday, I think he made a mistake by choosing, you know, this time to do it. I guess he probably I'm sure he wasn't thinking about this aspect of it. But Spillsbury said she was definitely killed inside. There's no indicator that she was killed outside, which gives him a clue.

No, that is a clue. And also, this may be a very practical aspect for the offender. He may have wanted to get rid of her body in the middle of the night, but didn't want to go out in the rain. And so he waited for the rain to end to dispose of her body. Interesting. Okay. So let's talk about cause of death and what...

what else happened. So Spillsbury examines Vera. He concludes she has been sexually assaulted. He found evidence of semen. He also says she was strangled to death.

by someone's bare hands, but she also, this is what's interesting, she also had ligature marks on her neck that he says seemed to be made post-mortem. Is that because of the way that the blood coagulated or how would he know post-mortem versus before she died? Well, that has to do with the way that the tissues are responding. So if a ligature is tied around the neck tight enough...

You know, this is trauma to the tissues. And when the victim is alive or what we call this perimortem state in which the tissues are still functioning, even though the victim may technically be dead, there is an inflammatory response. There could be, if the heart is still pumping, there could be hemorrhage.

you know, in the furrows of this tight ligature. This is not an unusual sequence for offenders to manually strangle and then to apply a ligature afterwards. They do this in part, they are naive killers. So they do the manual strangulation, but they're not sure, is she really dead?

So what they do is they'll tie a ligature around the neck to ensure that the victim is dead. Now, in this case, it sounds like a ligature was applied post-mortem, but then that ligature was removed. And I'm assuming it wasn't recovered at the crime scene. No. Okay.

Okay, here's the historical context that I find absolutely fascinating. Spillsbury looks at Vera and says she has soot and coal on her face and clothing. Another reason why he thought this happened, you know, inside in a coal cellar and not outside. There are also small dabs of candle grease and paraffin wax on her coat.

So Spillsbury says she was in a coal cellar. This all must have happened in a coal cellar because of two things, Paul, and this kind of relates to a case you and I just talked about.

One was that coal cellars almost never had electricity in the 1930s, so they were all lit with candles. And people used paraffin wax as a way to clean things. And they would have used paraffin wax perhaps in a coal cellar to clean things. Neither of the candles or the wax ever occurred to me in any way, but that's what they lived with in 1931. Right.

Yeah, no, that is, you know, tremendous cultural insight. I would say that great observations by Dr. Spilsbury. Now, is it conclusive? No, you know, but it is a clue, you know. So now investigators, when they are going to potential, you know, crime scene locations, suspect houses, you

And it's like, I want to see your coal cellar and see, oh, paraffin wax, candles, you know, yes. Okay. I see disturbances. I see other items of physical evidence that could relate to the crime. Spillsbury's observations does give investigators at least some focus, but you can't just rely on it because there could potentially be other explanations for the paraffin, the candle wax. But it's, I think that's great. That's great information to provide the investigators. Yeah.

How would paraffin been used as a common cleaning agent? Maybe I don't know enough about paraffin. Can you picture how that would have been the case?

Yeah, you know, this is a thing, you know, I'm seeing it just with a quick search, you know, paraffin wax cleaners and, you know, paraffin, you know, of course, this is a it's a solid substance that you could heat up and it will melt. Water based cleaners will be able to clean substances that are soluble in water.

Whereas some substances, such as maybe waxes, maybe the coal, some of the soot aspect, wouldn't be as readily soluble in water or water mixed with detergent. And so now paraffin could be something that could help get these other substances.

non-water-soluble substances, or it may just be a physical type of cleaning where now you, like the soot, the paraffin wax just kind of grabs onto it, and then you can remove it from the surface you don't want soot on. You know, something like that is what's coming to mind for me. Okay. Well, moving forward, Dr. Spilsbury is trying to figure out when she was killed and what happened to her because decomposition.

It sounds like the milkman made a very cursory examination of Vera when he saw her, and he made that observation that she looked like marble, white, you know, kind of drained of blood. What Spillsbury says is he...

He thinks she was killed very shortly after she was kidnapped. He thinks she was killed in the coal cellar, but she was not kept there very long because mid-December it would have been freezing in the coal cellar. And he said she had an advanced state of decomposition and she was probably kept in a warm, heated room forever.

before she was left in the garden 36 hours later. So he thought she was somewhere for 30, either her body or her alive in a heated room for 36 hours before she was dumped. So advanced state of decomposition, I've had bodies that have, I can think of one girl who was outside in November in the East Bay for seven days. And it was cool to

She had, when we initially recovered her body, she did not look very decomposed. But then the next day in the morgue, literally the decompositional process had just absolutely sped up.

Here, I agree. For this girl, 36 hours later, to have advanced state of decomposition, her body is in a warm environment. No question about it. So yes, I do agree with Dr. Spilsbury there. Okay. So he's 10 for 10 right now, Spilsbury. Usually, I'm very critical of your favorite experts. Not this guy. Okay.

Only the ones from the 1700s. You start warming up into the late 1800s. And then the 1900s, they really know what they're doing. Well, we'll see. There's a lot more to come here.

So they do a comparison. They want to see if the candle wax and the paraffin wax on Vera's coat might have come from her own home, which is I'm sure something you would have done. So I did not know this, that candle wax, I know everybody's going to think I'm an idiot here, but I didn't know there were different kinds of candle wax. I mean, I know there's beeswax, but they looked at all the candles and all the paraffin in Vera's home and the stuff on her jacket and on her body did not come from

from her home. They compared it and it didn't match. I did not know that. I'm sure that this has been done a million times by police. Well, anytime you have a foreign substance, you know, this is just part of, you know, assessing, you know, first it is, is this something that was on the victim's body prior to the crime committing? And what would the source of that substance be? And can I differentiate that substance?

And it's not just the wax. You think about these candles and they're different colors. There's different scents put in. When we used to be allowed to do these types of kind of novel forensic investigations, scientific investigations,

during the era that I worked, we had the advanced instrumentation to really drill down to differentiate, as an example, different fibers from one to the other based on the dyes within the fibers. They may visually look the same, but they're from two different sources because they have two different dyes to give them that color.

So with the waxes, you know, back in the day, I'm not entirely sure, you know, from a forensic standpoint, what they would have been able to do. I imagine what they're doing is they're doing a visual observation to say, okay, is there anything within Vera's house that looks just like what's on her clothing? But also the witness, the aunt, the parents. Right now, I don't have any understanding as to how much of this wax is on her.

But that would be part of the question. If there was a lot on her that's very visible on the front of her coat or whatever it is, ask the parents, was that on her when she left? Ask the aunt, was that on her when she showed up? You know, the soot, did she have soot on her? So you can rely on witness statements to help determine, yes, this is related to the crime and not there isn't an innocent explanation for these substances on her.

So Spillsbury says small dabs of candle and paraffin wax. So it might have gone unnoticed. Who knows? But...

Soot and coal on her face and clothing would have been noticed. So this seems like this happened after she disappeared, after she went to Aunt Minnie's house, is what it sounds like to me. But we'll see. Yeah, no, for sure. So let's do a real quick recap here. We have this 10-year-old girl, Vera Page. She goes to her aunt's house. It's supposed to take 15 minutes. It does. She gets there. She grabs these swimming certificates in her red beret, and she vanishes.

Her parents called police. 36 hours later, her body is discovered about a mile away. No one knows how her body got there. The pathologist, Bernard Spilsbury, suspects that she was killed in a coal cellar based on material that he finds on her body and then kept somewhere warm. He thinks based on everything he's seen that she was killed immediately and then it sounds like held warm.

until the killer could figure out where to dump her body. Will it ever stop raining in London? Does that sound right to you? You did a great job summarizing the story. Okay, so now I'm going to throw a tiny, tiny wrench...

in our whole story here. The police continue, continue, continue to interview witnesses. I mean, they just do an excellent canvas here. And there are people who have spotted Vera. You know, as I said, many said she left. But now we're starting to find people who saw Vera alive. And Vera's

And Vera did something without her parents' permission. She went somewhere without asking them. And now that opens up another list of suspects because she no longer has a predictable schedule. And you'll probably have a little stroke when I tell you what she did, but it's going to have to wait until next week. Remember I told you, I warned you this was a two-parter.

Come on. I'm sitting on pins and needles here. Where did she end up? You're going to have to wait. That's what kids do, right? You know, that's a variable. And yes, I am looking forward to hearing the rest of this because I want to know what happened to her. Okay. I'll see you soon. Sounds good.

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbonessources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren 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.