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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, Kate. How are you doing? I'm well. How are you, Paul? I am doing very good. What's been going on with you? I've been watching a lot of TV. You know, for someone who has about seven jobs and two kids and parents and friends, I watch an incredible amount of television, usually at four or five in the morning. Oh, wow. And I watch, dun-dun-dun-dun, true crime. I watch a lot of true crime. And I

I like grifters. I watch murder. You know, the whole thing, which is how my career started, is I wanted to write books about war for a very long time, Civil War, American Revolutionary War. And a friend of mine finally just said, you watch true crime. Why don't you just write about true crime? And I thought, maybe I should do that.

And I know that's a different way to get into it. Yours is a much more natural transition, I think, you know, because of your job into our genre. Do you watch TV or listen to shows at all? You know, when I was younger, I did watch, you know, some true crime shows. It's hard to explain, but I've got my own cases.

So it's tough for me to sit down and consume another case that's just for entertainment purposes. And it's not like I haven't. I watched the Night Stalker series in terms of the investigation into catching Richard Ramirez. And I thought it was fairly well done. And I know those two detectives. In fact, Gil Carrillo and I have become somewhat

buds over the past year with some of the events that we've been at together. But to sit down, because I have people hitting me up all the time about all these true crime cases and what I think about them. And I just don't have that mental energy to sit down and consume that content at the

save that mental energy for when I am working a case, whether it is for a show, for a podcast, or where I'm still consulting with law enforcement. I don't even read novels right now. It's something I need to get back into doing because I enjoy them, but I just got to where it just was too taxing in terms of splitting my attention between the cases and reading. I just decided, well, I'll focus in and

and read the case files. I do quite a bit of reading, but some stories, certainly, of course, we have to do a lot of research and I have to do a lot of reading for our show. I do like to read a lot about the latest forensic things that are happening or the latest techniques or, in this case, what we have coming up is about false confessions. I've read a lot about false confessions. I find it really interesting and there are a lot of shows out there, true crime shows, that are committed completely

to false confessions. How much do false confessions come up for you? Well, you know, at least within the cases that I worked, because I focused in on unsolved cases. And there are instances in some of these unsolved cases in which

Somebody's coming in and making a false confession or an associate of that person is pointing the finger saying he told me he's responsible for her death, right? And that the details and the investigation showed that that's just factually wrong. But I can say like legitimately right now, I am involved in a false confession case. It's an innocence project case. And I do believe that it is a false confession. And through an assessment of the crime scene,

I can show how that is a false confession, and it's lacking the necessary details that the killer would naturally divulge in order to be able to say, I committed this crime, and that the interviewers should have pursued during the initial interviews because it's obvious stuff.

that this guy should know about this, and they failed to do it. Well, when we talk about false confessions in this case, we'll see if it lines up with your idea of how you can tell approximately whether this is a false confession in one of your cases or not. So this story takes place in 1895 in Virginia. So let's go ahead and set the scene.

Let's be atmospheric, because I love being atmospheric. It's just before dusk in the summertime, 1895, in rural Lunenburg County, Virginia, which I've never been to. And I'm going to just take a wild guess. Right.

And say you have also never been to Lunenburg County, Virginia. Is that right? I've never heard of it. If I was there, it was a place I passed through and didn't know where I was at. Okay. Well, I love Virginia. I think it is a wonderful place to be.

and I've done several stories in Virginia. So I like to set the scene just because I think it's such a beautiful area, and this is summertime, which I'm sure is lovely. It's June 14th, right before dusk, as I said. And this is a story where we talk about false confessions, but race also matters. It's an unusual time period after the Civil War, and this is a time period where this area of Virginia is actually a lot more integrated than you might think.

It will not be at some point later in the future. But for right now, when there's a crime that occurs, you will oftentimes have white residents and black residents try to come to the rescue at the same time. They're supporting each other's neighbors and friends. So it feels like this very unusual time period. But when you hear more about it, you'll see what I mean. There are a lot of people who try to help in this situation.

It is almost nighttime in the summertime in Virginia, and we are on a farmhouse where I feel like we find ourselves in the 1800s an awful lot in farmhouses or on rural property. I think because these are cases that are, they feel very unusual, like a violation of

of innocence in the countryside, of the quiet. And I've told you that, you know, I grew up in a farmhouse and I was just scared to death of the countryside at night. It was so quiet. It

nothing but moonlight and stars and really creepy, which I loved, but creepy for me. And so I think that's why I gravitate towards these kinds of stories that just feel like we're not in a big city. It just feels so startling, like a huge violation. It dawns on me from just, you think about the volume of crimes in a big city, any one crime just kind of gets lost in the numbers versus you have,

In this rural location, you have one crime. And if it's unusual, I'm sure it just stands out to the residents and there's a lot of concern. But here you're painting almost what sounds like this idyllic picture being on, you know, in a farmhouse in the middle of the night and the stars. And you're getting creeped out by that. You're afraid of the boogeyman or the monster coming out of the shadows, aren't you? Absolutely. I am. And my stepmother was no help when I lived out there.

She would just spook me constantly about how, you know, I talk about that in the ghost club and how haunted our farmhouse was. And one Halloween, she took the chain off of her chainsaw and started the chainsaw outside my window. It's endearing now, but I don't think it was when I was 12. Yeah.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Yeah, literally. So I also think that the idea of the countryside in the 1800s where, you know, a man's handshake was all you really needed. You also have people in the countryside we think of as not high-risk victims versus people in Manhattan, New York, or Chicago in this time period. And we do have one non-high-risk victim in this case. When you think about...

Being an offender out in a rural location, you don't have the population to blend into. In addition, this type of location,

The victim pool, because they are, as you said, they're somewhat isolated. You know, they're creeped out at night. You know, the boogeyman's going to come in the middle of the night. I imagine most, if not everybody living in this community probably has the shotgun by the front door. Yeah. You know, so that elevates the risk to

But I can also tell you the front door is unlocked. There's no lock on the door. I grew up with no lock on the door in the countryside. And in the 1800s, they wouldn't have either. But you're right. They probably would have had a gun. So this is nighttime and we're on the Pollard's farm.

And the Pollards were a couple that was not particularly unusual. There was an age difference between them. Edward, who was the husband, was 72, and his wife was 56. Her name was Lucy. Let me tell you how she was found, because Lucy is our victim in this case. She's been slain halfway between the house and the chicken coop, which is just a short walk away. And

Edward is the one who was the one who discovered her. He was working at a nearby farm as a farmer, and he does not see his wife being attacked. He doesn't hear a call for help. He probably would have been able to hear that, you know, if it were some blood-curdling scream. He wasn't that far away. But he is the one who discovers her body right before nighttime, and he sees her. He sees all of this blood.

And I'll tell you about injuries in a minute. He runs inside the house. He does a quick scan to see if there's anything out of place or if there's somebody in the house. What's happening? Why is my wife dead between the house and the chicken coop?

And then he does something that I love bringing up little historical markers here. He runs to a bell. And it's the kind of bell that I had growing up on my farm where, you know, it's the dinner bell or to call the kids in. He rings the bell frantically. To people in the countryside in the 1800s, everybody knew what that meant. There was like a Morse code sort of with bells. There was the bell. You kids need to get back inside. There's the bell. It's dinnertime. And the frantic bell is and it's an emergency.

And so everyone comes running.

And I thought that that was really interesting just to bring up that there were ways of alerting people just so that everyone knew there's obviously no phones or anything like that. And if you scream, you might not be heard. But if you bring one of those big bells long enough and hard enough, everybody's going to hear. So what do you think about that emergency tactic? Yeah, no, well, that's fascinating. I didn't know about this bell system. But think about today.

You know, now with home security systems, let's say the house alarm goes off. How many people pay attention to that and go running to the house with the house alarm going off? Nobody does, right? So obviously there was greater community involvement at that point in time because they recognized that that was something that somebody had to manually be doing that versus inadvertently tripping because you set your alarm and you accidentally opened the front door. Yep.

And boy, there is a pretty big response. So when the neighbors come running, there are a lot of people who report to the scene, black neighbors, white neighbors who all come together. And, you know, this seems like a big emergency. When they arrive, they find Edward. He's described as gray eyed and stricken. He's in shock.

and reportedly he lies down beside his wife's body, which is just steps from their front door, all through the night until dawn. Do you judge people who could be suspects at the scene of the crime? How much credence do you put into, boy, he's not behaving the way a grieving husband should behave, or he's overreacting, or that 911 call sounded really overdramatic? Do you believe in any of that? I definitely pay attention to it. Now,

We know, and I've seen this, you know, where people respond to trauma differently, you know, whether be very grief stricken and screaming and, you know, collapsing. I've seen that level of response, but then also individuals that seem, oh, this person seems a little too calm for what I would expect. Yeah.

It's just something to pay attention to. And sometimes it ends up being, oh, the reason they're so calm is, well, this wasn't a big traumatic event for them. And we've had cases that we've talked about where sometimes the actual killer plays up, acts grief-stricken when they, in fact, are the ones that have been involved in the death of a loved one or whatever. So, yeah.

But the laying down next to his wife's body, though, that's an interesting behavior. I know of some cases out of my jurisdiction, not cases that I've been involved with, but I know about, in which the family member or associate of the person killed did a similar act. Not for that long, but that was part of their emotional kind of behavior.

Last connection with this person. Yeah. Another odd thing that I want to pick your brain about a little bit here is when Lucy is found, she's just a few steps from her house and her feet, they say, this is odd pointing towards the Northeast corner of the house. That's not the odd part. That detail was weird to me, but that's not the odd part. The odd part is that her eyes are wide open and

Now, she has been killed with an axe. Do those two things tally? I have no idea why somebody is found with their eyes closed or with their eyes wide open. Is that like a muscle thing when they die or what happens? Yeah.

You know, I actually don't know what the phenomena is, but I've seen it both ways. I've seen many, many dead bodies whose eyes are wide open. And I would say that's more typical, but I've also seen the dead bodies with the eyes completely closed. And maybe a pathologist would be able to answer, you know, what is going on there, but I don't have an answer for it.

Okay, well, it strikes the media in the 1800s as very creepy that her eyes are wide open and there's, of course, blood everywhere. So there's a historian named Suzanne Lebsack who wrote a book called A Murder in Virginia that's very comprehensive about this story. She describes a very gory and gruesome scene. So this is what she writes in the book. There are three predominant pools of blood in the yard. Each

Each one is 18 inches from the other. The largest pool, of course, is underneath Lucy's resting body. She has defensive wounds, which are multiple gashes also on the left side of her face and her head, cuts on her arms. Left ear was almost chopped off. And it's reported that her glasses are knocked sideways with one of the lenses punched out.

And there are several broken eggs strewn about the yard. So we're assuming she made it all the way to the chicken coop, gathered some eggs, and then was attacked on her way from the chicken coop just almost into the house when she's attacked. This is a scene 18 inches apart, three pools of blood. They find the axe, which is the family's axe. It's the Pollard's axe.

So she's hit multiple times with this ax and she's moving. Is that why there are three pools of blood in the yard? Yes, the moving. Now, when you have the pools of blood, this is where you have a bleeding source at that location for a period of time to cause the blood to pool there.

Now, I can't tell you how long that is because you don't know how fast the blood is actually flowing, if you will, at any particular location. Now, part of the evaluation of these pools of blood is are they distinct? Are there dripped patterns in between leading from one to another where now you can sequence? Okay, this pool of blood is where she was first to the second one to the third one. It also indicates that there is a upwards flow

elevation of whatever the bleeding source is between pools of blood. Now, is this because the victim herself was able to move or is the offender moving the victim? That's part of assessing. I mean, many people dismiss pools of blood, but they can be very, very important to help

establish sequence of events and offenders actions at the scene. Now she has defensive wounds. You know, she is warding off being attacked. So this is she's at least early on in the attack, recognizing she's under threat and is trying to protect herself. But at

a certain point, she is completely either overpowered or the injuries cause her to be able to not defend herself any further, which sometimes could be due to loss of consciousness with a device like an axe that

It's just like with a gunshot. Sometimes there's injuries that are so devastating that the victim, who's still conscious, but can no longer move her limbs or other parts of the body just due to the types of injuries. Well, let's talk about limbs because that's an interesting point.

She has all of these injuries all over her body, ear almost chopped off, glasses knocked around everywhere, broken eggs all over the yard. So ambushed on her way back home, as we said. Here's what's weird.

She's on her back, her eyes are open, and her hands are neatly laid on her breast, presumably by the killer. Not in a sexual way, in just a neatly composed way. Edward, the husband, and the neighbors who respond, no one says we did it. They found her like that.

So we're presuming that this happened before rigor mortis sets in. The killer had to have done it, right? Or would she have ever naturally done that herself? No. It's weird. This is a form of posing. Why is the killer doing that? There can be a variety of reasons. Sometimes...

This type of posing is a form of taunting, you know, in terms of I have, you know, accomplished this. And now I am, you know, manipulating the body in order to be able to basically show that I have control here. And whoever's fighting the body and law enforcement, you don't. There is in terms of this type of posing, you know,

With the way that she is being laid out, almost as if it's like she's in a coffin, sounds like, you know, is that the message that the offender is trying to pass on is, you know, I have taken her life and this is how she's going to be. Or is this a rest in peace type of scenario where the offender is in some ways demonstrating a level of regret that

and respect to the victim. So this is part of evaluating now, okay, what is the offender's true motive by taking this unnecessary action? He doesn't need to pose or to accomplish the crime. This is significant to the offender. Why is he doing it? And if it's the latter, then

then that tells me that he has some, and I'm saying he generally right now, I'm just going to assume male offender. I should say that the offender has some sort of connection and cares about the victim. We see this when the offender will cover the victim.

In terms of hiding the victim from his view, because he doesn't like what he's done to the victim and doesn't want to see it, right? This posing right now, I don't know what motive the offender has, but it's hugely significant that

Once a suspect is identified, then you start to see a domino effect in terms of explaining what the suspect was thinking and feeling during the commission and after. The post-defense behavior in terms of what the offender was feeling after this crime. Well, a couple of interesting things. I mean, first of all, I'm keeping my eye on Edward because he's the most obvious suspect. He's farming nearby, but there's no real alibi there. He's out in there in the middle of nowhere. He

if you remember, ran inside the house after he saw Lucy on the ground. He ran inside the house to see if there was anything gone. There was something gone. $800. Wow.

which in 1895 was a huge amount of money. It's about $28,000 now. It's their whole life savings. And he hid it. I know you want to know where this money is because, yes, it's important to see if the offender went in and snatched this because they knew where it was. It was in a liquor cabinet, which is unusual. So somebody knew where this money was. I just think it's weird that Edward's first instinct before he even rang the bell was

was to go in and look to see where that money is. I think, you know, so Edward, he's a 72-year-old farmer, right? Yep. My first thought is that this is somebody who has seen a lot of death of animals. And so he probably very quickly recognized that Lucy was dead.

And then the next thought, of course, was this life savings inside his house. You know, this is why she was killed. One of the details I need to know is did the offender ransack as of searching or did they go straight to the liquor cabinet and grab this cash?

This is what's missing. Investigators, after interviewing Edward, after he had calmed down, right, and Lucy was taken away, they say, tell us what's gone. And he said, $800 in $20 bills, which was unusual. I can't really think of what, I mean, $100 bills now are not that unusual. Some obscure denomination of bills that would be unusual now, $20 bills were very unusual in the 1800s.

He kept $800 in $20 bills. He had about $70 worth of gold. He had a $100 bond, you know, certificate. He had some jewelry. These were all things that were missing. And he also thought that some of Lucy's dresses could be missing from her closet.

Now, Edward is also not 100% sure how many dresses his wife actually owns, but he thought maybe. So this is a significant amount. It's all in the same place in the liquor cabinet. So either the person who broke in got really, really lucky, or they know more about the farmhouse than the average person would. Right. And so this is where, you know, at least one of the suspect pools is going to be, you

about where these valuables were hidden inside the house. And right now, for me, that's Edward. We don't know anything else except this is a guy who claims that he found his wife dead and that he has money missing. There were insurance policies. This could be insurance fraud coupled with murder at this point. We don't know. I mean, that's a great way to get rid of your wife and cash in on some insurance. Right.

Well, and this is where now it's really evaluating Edward in terms of his statements. You know, you mentioned that he didn't have an alibi because he was out, you know, farming. But of course, were there witnesses that saw him out farming? Can you start tracking down to be able to correlate that and assess that based on evidence?

when he's saying he's out there versus, you know, what does the evidence show and how long Lucy likely had been dead. Mm-hmm. Well, let's talk a little bit more about their relationship because then we can kind of get into victimology a little bit. So Edward seems to be a good husband. They seem to have gotten along well. They had both been married previously and had then found each other later in life after losing their previous spouses to natural causes. And so,

And, you know, you had mentioned that Edward, at this time period, he would have seen a lot of death of animals and certainly of people. People did not live particularly long in this time period. I mean, into their 40s, maybe. So you're right. I still think it's weird that he I mean, it's almost like checking on your safety deposit box or your safe before you pick up the phone and call 911. That's how it feels to me.

But I also try not to judge too much the way people react in an emergency because I've never had that kind of an emergency before. So I don't know how I would react. I would hope I would ring the bell first.

And then I would check on the money. But yeah, I don't you know, it is maybe a little bit concerning. However, right now, I'm not putting too much weight on that sequence. OK. You know, just without having more context in terms of the facts of the case and background and stuff. OK. Yeah.

So Edward has a reputation of marrying up. Nothing wrong with that. But with every wife, he's been married three times. With each wife, he has acquired more assets. So Lucy was the daughter of a planter, which was in Virginia would have been a lot of money, probably tobacco. And when they married, he was

really elevated to high society. So this could be another reason, you know, that being said, they only have a, it looks like a little over $1,000 maybe worth of cash. So they're not millionaires by any means in 1895, but it would not be surprising. I know I keep coming back to Edward, but it wouldn't be surprising if that was somehow a motive. But...

When the police interview all of their friends and family, they said, we've never heard one word about abuse. We've never heard one word about acrimony between the two of them. He is a curmudgeon and he is cantankerous and he's not always well-liked by his peers. He loans people money and then, of course, is kind of a jerk about getting the money back.

So it wouldn't be surprising if you have somebody who's in debt to him and doesn't want to pay the debt back to send a message or maybe we have the wrong victim and Edward was the one who was targeted. Lucy seems well-liked, Edward not so much. So we could have not a mistaken identity case, but a wrong victim case on our hands here, too.

Right now, you know, one of the things I'm wondering about is at what time, what was Lucy's routine when she would go to the hen house in order to get the eggs? You know, is this, oh, dark 30? It's very dark out.

Would an offender be able to plainly see her under the whatever conditions are, whether, you know, full moon or if there's any type of lighting or whatever they're doing? Yeah. But also, if Edward was the victim, I would think even under these dark conditions that would be obvious. You know, Edward being a man versus Lucy would be obvious to the offender.

So it seems like if the offender was targeting a victim, it was likely a female victim. And then if it's mistaken identity, it would have been another female. But then why on this particular property? Right. These properties are so spaced out. It seems like it'd be far stretch for the offender to go to the wrong location. Right. What I was thinking was, OK, it's almost dusk.

Anyone who knows anything about farming knows that probably Edward's heading back if he's out farming. You know, people are coming back in for supper and to light the candles and kind of get ready for the evening. So he's sort of taking a chance if it's a male. And that's a big question in this case. Yeah. And that's where I think earlier I said, even though I was saying he has an offender, it's just, you know, that's just by almost nomenclature versus forming an opinion as to who the offender is. Yep.

You said the axe was found, the murder weapon was found. Where was it found? Well, that's also something that's a little nugget of information that's interesting. So they find the axe where it always is, which is leaning up against a tree. It's bloody. I'll give you a silly little note that the investigators say is that the axe is bloody. But they said, boy, but we matched the blade just to make sure. We matched the blade to Lucy's wounds and it matched perfectly. I thought...

okay, 19th century forensics, I guess they just took the axe and laid it into her wound and figured out this must be it, even though it's stripping blood. And that's probably not very funny to everybody, but I just thought, okay, well, at least you're trying to cover your bases out there in rural Virginia in 1895. Right. You know, obviously we don't want to see that type of contamination, but that is something is, you know, this axe with, I'm assuming it's the blade end, you know, is that something

consistent with whatever they're seeing. Obviously, that blade end can produce a wide variety of different types of wounds and lengths of wounds. But if they have full-length wounds

wound, you know, like the head of the axe was buried into her skull. Now you get somewhat of a, you know, an idea on the length of this blade. And they must have seen that and said, yes, this length of blade on the victim's own residence is consistent with what is being done with the types of wounds we're seeing to her head or to her whatever part of her body. And another note,

So, you know, I have a little column in my head for Edward and against Edward as a suspect here, the 72-year-old husband. In the, this could be Edward column, this is his acts.

So if this is a stranger or somebody coming with ill intent, they're using a weapon on the property. They're not bringing their own weapon to this. And then they leave it behind. And of course, no fingerprints that they're able to pick up. And it's somebody who knows where the money and all of these valuables are in the liquor cabinet. So again, I keep circling back to this feels like

a husband, but that's not where this investigation goes. What do you think about using an ax that's on the property and just assuming that there's something there that's available, even though it's always kept there, that is consistent, it's always there? No, you know, in many instances, offenders rely upon whatever is present within the victim's residence or on the victim's property in order to commit crimes. D'Angelo did in Golden State Killer case. He would...

Of course, he brought his own gun, but he frequently would grab knives out of the victim's own kitchen drawers in order to use those to threaten the victims. Many offenders do that. They use shoelaces from the DeAngelo did this to use shoelaces from the victim's own shoes as bindings.

Let's say this offender is going to the victim's property with the intent to kill. Then the offender is relying upon their own devices to find something on the property.

And this is a farmhouse. There's probably so many different types of implements related to caring for the animals or related to farming the land that the offender is confident that they will have something in order to be able to use with violence. And they walk on the property and there's an ax leaning up against a tree. So I don't put really any weight on this aspect, the offender using the victim's own ax to assess violence.

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OK, well, let's talk about the people who respond. You have both black people and white people responding to the frantic bell ringing of Edward that evening. There's a 47 year old black woman named Mary Abernathy. There is a 23 year old woman named Pokey Barnes.

And we have a middle-aged black woman whose also name is Mary. Her name is Mary Barnes. And Mary Barnes and Pokey Barnes are mother and daughter. And this will all become a little clearer later on. Just know that you've got three women who are responding. They're all black.

And they all have worked around the Pollard property. So the 47-year-old woman, Mary Abernathy, had been in the Pollards' home the day of Lucy's murder, earlier that day. And aside from whoever killed her, it seems like Mary Abernathy is the last person to see Lucy alive. You know, she did some work around the house and then left and said goodbye and that's it.

And then you've got, you know, Pokey Barnes and her mother. And Pokey had been walking near the property that day. She's 23. And then Mary, her mother, had been working at the home also in the garden area that day. So these are three women who have all been on the property in the last day or so.

But nobody's a suspect right now. Yeah. Does Mary Abernathy say when she last saw Lucy? Way before she was murdered. But, you know, also, Edwards says he's been gone all day long on the farm. So we're left with Lucy home much of the day, either alone or in the company of women working in the garden or in the house. So it's kind of a busy time.

Another person who showed up is a white man, and his name is Herbert Thompson. His mother is a very good friend of the Pollards, and that...

The mother is actually related to Lucy through someone's previous marriage. And when Lucy's body was found by Edward, Edward wanted Martha Thompson, the family friend, to come. And she said she couldn't. When Martha can't come, instead she sends her oldest son, Bill Petras, and he comes in her place. And we just have various people who are all responding to this bell ringing. So the investigators come.

And there are not very many clues, as we've talked about. You've got an axe that's really bloody. You've got Lucy laying on the ground with her arms crossed over her chest, her eyes open, lots of open wounds, pools of blood in two or three different places.

They find two sets of shoe prints, which begin at a nearby spring and stop about 75 yards from where Lucy was killed. I still get confused by this fact. So 75 yards from where Lucy was killed. What happened the rest of the way? Why are these shoe prints stopping? And to me, that just means it's useless. What's the point of...

shoe prints that aren't standing over this woman's body, right? Or am I totally misguided here? Well, what's likely happening is that from this spring area, there was sufficient soil exposed for the shoe impressions to be left in.

But then as they got closer to the property, you know, maybe there's grass, there's a lawn, there's it's rockier. And now you don't get the distinct shoe impressions or it's it's something that it's it's fundamentally the surface is just not recording that information. Now, obviously, shoe impressions right there by Mary's body are much more significant and

But if there is shoe impressions that seem to be unusual, I'm sure this farmland or this property, there's going to be all sorts of tracks, if you will, to just a normal activity that occurs on this property. But if somebody's saying, well, these isolated two sets of shoe impressions leading from the spring that are heading straight to the victim,

You know what? That looks unusual. It is something that you have to pay attention to. But because of the 75 yards of blankness, you know, you can't say for sure that they're related to her homicide case. It's just something that is recorded. It's documented. It's noted. And there may be investigative leads that could be pursued as a result of noticing those. But then they just kind of peter out. And then you end up focusing on other things more important.

Right. And that's what happens with these shoe prints. They just sort of, as a lead, peter out because there's a big tip that comes in. They think it's a big tip, at least. About 20 miles away from the Pollard's farmhouse, there is a man who is looking to buy an inexpensive breakfast. He's a black man named Solomon Marabell.

And this is where racism comes in. And then we'll talk about sexism because they both are all over this story. And the racism part comes when Solomon Marble has a $20 bill, which we said is, I guess, like an $1,000 bill. Is that even a bill now? I don't know what an unusual bill would be, but he is laying down a $20 bill to buy a breakfast.

And it is not only because he's black that white investigators think this is unusual. It's because he looks very unkempt. And the transaction catches the attention of a lot of people. So when the news reports come out that say that

Edward Pollard is missing $800 worth of $20 bills. Investigators put two and two together, and they don't arrest Solomon immediately, but they absolutely take a look at him because they say, what is this man doing with this unusual denomination?

which he should probably not have to begin with, it's 20 miles away. When you think about, I mean, we're talking about, we have $800 missing and $20 bills. That's really just 40 bills. Yeah. I mean, this is something that's...

It's very easy to have taken and walked off with it. It really comes down to was this an appropriate lead to follow? Well, it really comes down to is this that unusual, you know, because of course, when money is stolen, you know,

And now you have bills being spent in an unusual manner. To this day, that's going to be something that law enforcement is going to pay attention to. But how much weight can you put on it? Well, you have to interview this guy. What's his background? Why do you have this $20 bill? Do you have other $20 bills on your person right now? Was this that same day? Was this the next morning?

Did he have a residence nearby where he could have, if he was the one that stole the $800, you know, could he have hid the rest of the cash within his property? You know, so there's so many things about how they would have to pursue this and the distance 20 miles away. You know, what is his access to various forms of transportation that were used back then? You know, could he have covered that distance relatively quickly? Yeah.

Here are some answers. I'm trying to keep track of everything you asked. Okay, number one, there's a railway that connects these two areas that he could have hopped on and off very easily and affordably. Does he have a record? Yes, he does. It seems it was reported that two years earlier he had been put on trial in

in North Carolina for the rape and the murder of a young girl, but he was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing, which is a little surprising for a Black man in 1895 in North Carolina. So there must have really not been any evidence.

I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm just saying for presumably a white jury or for a white prosecutor to just say we don't have enough evidence, there must have been no evidence. After that happened, he and his wife got the hell out of North Carolina and came to Virginia for a fresh start. But now Solomon is in trouble because he is a man who seems to be down on his luck.

with a $20 bill, and here's another answer to your question, four days after the murder. So not months. This is four days on a railway. He sounds like, if Solomon is the guy, sounds like he committed the crime, he pocketed the money, he hopped on the train, got as far away as he could, is hungry, and is using this really suspect $20 bill to buy a cheap breakfast. Yeah.

But it's weak circumstances at best, right? I'm sure the Pollards didn't record the serial numbers on their cash that they had. So there's just no way to say this is a $20 bill out of the victim's residence. This is where they just have to show more. They have to do more in order to determine whether or not he's involved in Lucy's homicide or not.

The police are now looking at two different sets of suspects. Well, there's Solomon, which is the man who has the $20 bill when he shouldn't have it, according to investigators. But then they start thinking about this. And this is, in my opinion, very bad profiling. The police officers and all their sexism look at this and say, she has been hit too many times with an act.

a man would have been able to kill her much more quickly. It must have been at least one woman who did this because there are dresses that are missing and they must have taken the dresses and the money and hit her so many times because they are the weaker sex. And I just thought, boy, you don't know the women I know who could have taken care of someone with one whack. I could take

care someone with one whack. So now you know where I'm going. We have three women who are Black who showed up at the property when the bell rang, and they become suspects too.

Yeah. Now, I will say, you know, part of evaluating a case, you know, looking at the victim is, is there any information that can discern and show that there is great disparity between these two combatants? Right. So, you know, if absent any weapons.

If I have great physical difference between the offender and the victim, that offender often is able to so physically dominate the victim that it becomes obvious. Versus if I have two equal combatants, then...

The struggle takes longer, and there can be a lot more, you know, the crime scene itself, in terms of where the struggle is occurring, demonstrates that this offender really struggled to control the victim. Now, you introduce a weapon like an axe, right?

And now it's more evaluating, well, where are these injuries? Was Lucy struggling? Is she moving around? Because she's not just laying there taking the blows. She's obviously got defensive injuries, but she's also moving around. This is going to also mitigate the effectiveness of many of the blows.

However, to correlate in this particular set of circumstances, to correlate it to the physical dominance of the offender over the victim is negating the advantage that this type of weapon gives the offender. Yeah.

And most certainly, even though I will assess, try to discern, do I have differences in terms of the physical capabilities of the offender versus the victim based on what's going on?

to be able to now correlate it to the actual gender of the victim starts getting very sketchy. Well, and I think it's a combination of too many hits to be a man. A man would have been much more efficient. These dresses that Edward Pollard can't even really confirm are missing. He's just sort of saying, yeah, maybe. And the need of the offender to be familiar with the property in order to know where they kept the money.

And all three of these women had been on the property that day. We oftentimes in society are in disbelief that a woman could commit this kind of violent act.

So for rural police investigators to just say, oh, yeah, totally a black woman could pick up an axe and butcher someone. It's a little shocking for the 1800s, but they must have just thought they were there. They were some of the last people to see her. Dresses might be missing. They're familiar with the property. And they put them all under arrest. All three, two Marys and a pokey were all under arrest.

Yeah. They just did a roundup. Yeah. But even though they're on the property, that doesn't mean they know where the valuables are. Right. You know, so, of course, Edward. OK, Edward, who would have known where these valuables are? He said he doesn't know because his wife was in charge of all the domestic stuff. So he's not sure. I believe he's not sure who knows what.

But he knows that they were on the property, and they certainly had more knowledge than the average guy who's coming in and trying to rob a rural farm. And we know that, that, you know, compared to New York City, and you kick in a door and can assume that any flat that you find in New York in the 1800s will have something in there to steal. In the farmhouse, you're really taking a big chance that you're not going to have a large man with a big shotgun facing you when you open up the door. Right.

Solomon is in a bad position. He cannot explain where this $20 bill comes from. And this is where we start wondering the tactics that the police are using in questioning.

Because Solomon is not ratting anybody out as far as the police by saying, oh, I've been pressured. But boy, does he have a lot of confessions and changes and implications. He says, after some discussion with the police officers, he says that he saw both Mary's and Pokey, the three women, the day that Lucy was murdered.

And they said to him that they had something good in store happening, which means they've got a plan that they're cooking up to get some money. Now, the women are not owning up to the fact that they know Solomon at all. And Solomon can't really say that he knows them. He's just sort of saying...

Oh, yeah, I saw them in passing. We are vague acquaintances. And they just said, oh, I've got something good cooking up here. And then he said that he saw them later that same night with their hands and clothing covered in blood. And for whatever reason, they

One of the women handed him a $20 bill, I'm presuming to stay quiet about seeing all of this blood. He says, I have nothing to do with the murder, but he's implicating these three women in a very vague way. So then comes to me, is this because the police are pressuring him or he's telling the truth? Or is he just trying to get the heat off of him in any way possible? Well, you know, part of the concern is,

that I'm immediately having, how does he know about these three women to begin with? You know, there's no connection between him and these three women. And now he's bringing up these three women. He's been fed information. Yep. And then start evaluating the details. Later on, he's now saying that these three women have their hands and clothing covered in blood. I will tell you that the killer walked away from the homicide from Lucy, unless that killer is laying down on top of Lucy.

interacting with her after she's been axed, which is unlikely. This killer walked away with very minimal blood on them. What? Really? Most people assume you see a bloody scene that the offender is covered in blood. Sometimes, yes, but oftentimes, no. You know, and you think about a homicide with an ax. An ax allows you to strike fatal injuries on the victim from a distance. Hmm.

And, you know, of course, with multiple blows, you have potential cast off from the axe, but that might produce a few blood droplets dropping down on the offender. If the offender is standing over Lucy and hitting her multiple times with the axe, you know, there's a chance that you could have some spatter low down. But there's no reason this offender is going to have super bloody hands or blood covering their clothing.

You know, and that's where when I'm assessing Solomon's statement and saying these three women were covered in blood, I was like, no, that doesn't make sense. The way that I'm understanding this crime scene and why all three women like today, all three jump on top of Lucy after she had been axed. That seems very unlikely.

So this is where now I'm evaluating, just with the little bit that you've told me, the veracity of the information that Solomon is providing the investigators. And I'm kind of going, this is BS. There is no physical evidence connecting the women. They are all arrested along with Solomon. Solomon, I think, thinks he's doing himself a favor by fingering these women. And it doesn't matter. All four of them are under arrest. They're trying to connect all four of them. There are no real suspects who are white. And...

And the investigators are really trained pretty heavily on these four black suspects. They go on trial. No attorneys will represent them, which is not at all surprising to me in 1895.

in rural Virginia. So Pokey, who is one of the defendants, one of the women, she's a 23-year-old, Pokey Barnes, she has some really good legal savvy, and she manages to solidify her alibi in court by bringing in friends who say, "She was with us," and she is able to have it verified where it seems believable.

Still, the prosecution is going after them by coming back and saying, well, this is what Solomon says. And we have this witness who says he saw blood. We believe that part, but we also think that Solomon participated in this. So they start bringing up incidences that have happened between the women and Lucy Pollard. It sounds like Pokey had some bad blood.

According to courtroom summaries in the August before the murder, so that was the year before, Lucy had chastised Pokey from coming back onto her property because she thought that Pokey was stealing her vegetables. And Pokey had said to someone that if she ever saw Lucy Pollard in the road, she'd shoot her.

Now, this is 10 months before the murder happens. That being said, there are people who saw Pokey on the property when obviously Lucy had told her, I don't want you on the property. So this is just something to consider when people issue threats. I'm not saying that Pokey did any of this or these three women did this, but doesn't it to you add a little bit more of like a hmm to this situation if she has made these threats?

Yeah, if Lucy is telling Pokey, stay off my property, and Pokey had made the statement that's indicating that she does not like Lucy, it's probably just a statement to emphasize how much she doesn't like Lucy. If I see her out, I'm going to shoot her.

But it establishes that there is a contentious relationship between these two. And if Pokey is on Lucy's property the day of her homicide, of course you're going to pay attention to that. You have to. Solomon is having some pretty big issues. These three women went on, had different trials. And he testifies at each woman's trial. And his story changes at every trial. So at Mary Abernathy's trial, he says that the women actually told him a week in advance.

that they were going to kill Lucy. And then at a different trial, he says that he actually held down Lucy while the women murdered her. So he's putting himself at the scene. I have no clue what Solomon's doing. I have to either assume that he is having some mental health issues and doesn't know what he's saying,

or that the police are pressuring him or the district attorneys are pressuring him to change up his story depending on who he's testifying against.

Right. But this again, now here, if you have Solomon who is putting himself at the scene at the time of the homicide, this is where it's like, OK, tell us step by step what happened to Lucy and what did these women do? And then the investigators have to evaluate all of those statements against Solomon.

the physical evidence, the crime scene reconstructive aspects to say, yes, this is adding up. We've got to account for the three blood pools. Okay. Is Solomon indicating that there was this movement of Lucy, either herself or

or by the offenders, by these women, to account for the different locations where Lucy is leading. You know, also the defensive injuries. How many times was the axe used? Who's using the axe? Where were they standing while they're striking Lucy with the axe? How did they initially approach Lucy? Did they sneak up behind her, initially hit her with the axe?

And then all that has to be correlated with Lucy's injuries, the blood patterns, you know, all of that. Yeah, he is really complicating things because then his story changes again. He says at Pokey Barnes's trial, actually, the women had nothing to do with this. I'm going to take partial responsibility, but it wasn't them. It was a white man who made me do this.

And he's actually consistent with this one story. He's inconsistent when he talks about the three women, but he's consistent when he talks about this mysterious white man. So let me lay out everything and you tell me if it makes sense, because I will give you a little preview here. The historian who wrote about this says...

If there is a version to be believed, she believes this version. Not that the women did it, not that Solomon did it on his own, but that there was someone else who was familiar with the property who instigated all of this. This is what Solomon said really happened, had nothing to do with the women. He testifies, "'This white man stopped me while I was on my way to the sawmill near Fort Mitchell, and he held a pistol to my face, threatening to kill me if I didn't go with him.'"

He asked me if I knew anybody in that part of the country, and specifically Mr. Pollard. I told him I didn't know hardly anybody. He then told me to come with him that he, the white man, had a grudge against Mr. Pollard and that he was planning to kill Mr. or Mrs. Pollard.

Okay. So that's the buildup to this. And remember, Pollard is kind of a jerk and he's loaned out money to people and has, you know, said, I need my money back. And he just seems like an unpleasant person.

Solomon says that he was scared, of course, and he follows the white man as instructed. He remembers that they soon arrived at the spring. Now, I don't believe the police had ever released that information. Remember the footprints at the spring? Yep, yep. He turned toward the Pollard farm once they got to the spring, and once outside the farmhouse, Solomon said the white man confronted Mrs. Pollard outside and told Solomon to restrain her.

He, the white man, mysterious white man, grabs an axe and he says, I held her until the white man came and he took an axe and he hit her over the head with the handle of the axe and then hit her with the back of the axe and with the blade and killed her. Solomon said that after Lucy was dead, the white man forced him to go inside the house and the man found a key, unlocks some kind of container or box.

Solomon says, I don't know anything about this house. I've never been inside of it. I think that's what it was. And he retrieved the money. He handed Solomon two $20 bills and he threatened Solomon's life if he ever told anyone what happened. And then the white man said, here are the names of three people to blame if you need to implicate somebody, if you're caught in any way. I know it's a crazy story, though. I mean, what do you think? Yeah.

Well, it's obviously, you know, this unnamed white man. It's a stupid thing to include somebody you don't know, can't trust, nor control in the future.

to be involved in a homicide. But let's say this guy was stupid enough to do that. What, of course, is catching my attention is Solomon mentioning basically a reason for the trails of two shoe impressions leading from the spring to the house. And if this was not something made public, and if it was not something fed to him by law enforcement, then that's hugely significant. Now, he's

Also, you know, he's giving details in terms of how the homicide occurred. And again, it's it's like, OK, I want to make sure that the details of what he's saying about the violence inflicted on Lucy adds up with the physical evidence. But the other significant thing is he's saying, I've never been inside that house until I went in there because this man had me go in there. Now, the interviewer needs to be going, OK, Solomon, I know you're not familiar with the house.

but tell me what you did see. And if Solomon is providing details, well, there was a sofa, a red colored sofa over to my right. And there was this cabinet that the guy went into and it was described like this. You make him recount as much details that he can remember. And if it adds up to the inside of the Pollard's residence, that is significant. And that's when now I say, okay, now Solomon is telling the truth.

Well, the way this unfolds is fascinating for me because this is so convoluted and all of the different scenarios are so confusing, mostly because of Solomon. And the way this lays out is once this new version of the white man making him do this comes out into the press, both black and white Virginia say, hell no, this is so stupid. The women should not be on trial. There's a kind of a, in some

ways a general agreement that there is not enough evidence against these three black women. Now that there's this new story out, how can you believe Solomon about anything? So it doesn't matter. They still put the women on trial. They have better defense attorneys this time around. And they have various different outcomes. Two are acquitted, one turned some time. And ultimately, Solomon is put on trial. And

Eventually, he is executed. Now, I don't know if there's enough real evidence against Solomon. This $20 thing is weird, but I don't think he would be convicted now, do you? Because there really is no evidence other than the $20 bill that he did anything at this point except make up a bunch of stories.

It really does, you know, come down to this last statement related to this unknown white male. That is where the investigation has to try to corroborate or refute everything he is saying in that and actually locating, trying to locate physical evidence.

Now, if what he is saying is the truth and he is holding Lucy while she's being hit with the axe, he is a participant in her homicide. I mean, that's so obviously he would be criminally charged.

But with just the possession of the $20 bill, and I think with these statements, in this day and age, I would say they need to do more in order to make a case against him. But in essence, he's making him a suspect in a homicide. But they also need to identify this white male. I kind of wonder, was this white male Edward?

So did Edward hire somebody, you know, this black man in order to try to throw law enforcement off from him? But how does he avoid this Solomon, you know, picking him out and saying, well, that's the guy that, you know, hired me. And then the interview of Edward has to be, OK, there's a white man who is so mad at you over debt that he is the one that there's possible allegations that that's the reason Lucy was killed. Who could that be? That white man should be reelected.

Incredibly, you know, somebody that Edward would go, that's somebody who doesn't like me because of X, Y and Z. You know, so did they ever identify this white man? Well, sort of.

So Solomon, before he was executed, identified this man as a man named David James Thompson. The thing with David James Thompson is that he had an alibi. He was at work. Four other men corroborated the alibi. It doesn't seem like he's likely. There are other people around. For instance, the historian who wrote the book that we talked about, she wonders about Martha Thompson, the friend, Lucy's friend's sister.

son who showed up. He would have known about the layout of the farmhouse. She thinks, the historian thinks it's really weird that Martha would not have come, but sent her son instead. And, you know, there is this sort of mystique around him, like, you know, is he a ne'er-do-well? We don't know anything about him except he's

He is a white guy who would have known about the space inside the house. It was weird that his mom didn't come, who was one of her closest friends, and that he came instead. That seems incredibly weak. But again, we don't know. There's just not enough information either way. Yeah. And this really, I mean, again, it comes down that this is where the crime scene is so informative about...

you know, who the offender might be. And if this offender is going into this house and going straight to the liquor cabinet, it's not like drawers are being pulled out and they're searching. If literally they go straight to where the cash and the valuables are and walk out of that house,

That person has knowledge. Yep. And then it's how does that person have knowledge? Who did the Pollards entrust with that knowledge? Whether it be Lucy or Edward, that's a suspect pool. Did they have people that would come in to clean this location? Is there family that could potentially have knowledge there?

And who could have obtained maybe secondhand knowledge? Because that's sometimes what happens is that somebody is talking and saying, oh, the Pollards, they have a ton of cash in the liquor cabinet. Right. And then somebody goes, well, I'm going to go get that. And they run across Lucy in the process of going and getting that. You know, right now, this man, what was his name? The white man? There's two Thompsons that are important. David James Thompson and his brother Herbert Thompson. And here's what's interesting about them. They're both in debt.

And they're in debt to Edward Pollard to a certain extent. They also are just in debt in general. And David James took out a 24-hour loan on the exact day that Lucy was murdered, that he had to pay back the next day. But he's the one that has an alibi, right? But his brother didn't. The brother was the one who responded.

So here's the thing that's confusing. Solomon points to David James Thompson and says he's the one who did it. David James says, I've got an alibi. But the historian wonders if Solomon mixed up the brothers because the police never pursued Herbert. But these two guys are in debt, a lot of debt, more than just the $800. But $800 would have helped.

You know, the historian found out, Lebsock is her name, she found out that Edward Pollard was among the many people who had loaned Herbert Thompson the money. So actually, one of the things that I think is important with this story is consistency.

And let me give you the stats that Maren had looked at that I thought was really interesting. When we have Solomon with all of these false confessions telling these stories over and over and over again, Solomon implicated these three women eight times over a period of five weeks. But the testimony was inconsistent every time he told the story about the three black women.

But the story about the white man, who could be one of the Thompsons, probably Herbert Thompson, was consistent all the way through nine versions of that white man's story were recorded over a period of 11 months. And most of them were after these trials, after the women got off or served a little bit of time, and that was it. And before he was executed. So he was consistent with the white man's story. He was inconsistent with the black

women's story. He's inconsistent just in general because he keeps recanting. But if we're going to believe something, two brothers in debt who are in debt to Edward Pollard, who know probably the layout of the inside of the farmhouse,

who know there's an ax there seem like pretty good suspects. And I know it seems crazy to think one of them would just pick up this stranger, this black man on the road and say, you have to do this. But boy, just 20 or 30 years after the Civil War, it wouldn't shock me at all that he was just simply viewed as property. Like, you're going to do what I say because that is what happened for so long. So that wouldn't surprise me at all. And that they could sufficiently scare him to be quiet. RISA GOLUBOFFA

Sure. You know, I think the important aspect is in Solomon's statement related to the circumstances of how he and the white man approached the house, how Lucy was killed, how the white man and Solomon went into the house and grabbed the valuables. The details seem to add up with the factual aspects of the case.

So that's where, obviously, prior to those statements, he's trying to implicate these three women. And law enforcement had focused on those three women. So that's where it seems like there probably was some undue influence by the investigators to get Solomon to point the finger at the three women. And his inconsistency is showing that he's not right.

remembering details, he's made details up or has been told details that he's now forgetting and is trying to substitute each time he has to tell this version of events. If

If Solomon's statements are right and he is involved withholding Lucy while she is being hit with the axe, if he's going in to rob the Pollard residence during the commission of a homicide, then he is absolutely culpable for the crime. Yeah. But there is still an outstanding offender involved.

a white male that law enforcement is absolutely obligated to identify and if they can and build a case to charge with this crime. And it doesn't sound like that happened.

Yep. And you have Herbert Thompson, who died not long after all of this happened at age 31. We don't know why. He was in debt. His brother James was in debt. I mean, it was all a big mess. Pokey and her mother kind of disappeared after the trials, after they were released. But Mary Abernathy went on to live a long life. She died in the 1920s. Edward, this is what's sad, Edward Pollard died a year after his wife died. Oh.

of what sounds like colon cancer. So this is a really sad story. I'm sure that he was incredibly frustrated. I mean, this dragged on and on and on over an 11th month period. So if you do the math, I think Edward died just a couple of months after Solomon was executed.

So inconsistencies with witnesses, with offenders, with suspects, all of that is a challenge for our legal system. And to find out what the truth is, I think you're right. It wasn't just Solomon. Somebody got away with murder. And I think the historian's probably right. It has to do with these two brothers. But we'll never know. But this is something that I, you know, when I talk about cases...

I always, always, whether it be investigators, crime scene investigators, if there is an inconsistency, if there's something that doesn't seem to be adding up, that's when you have to step back and try to figure out why.

You know, if I go into a crime scene and I've been told this is what happened, you know, by patrol, right? Because and oftentimes patrol doesn't have accurate information. They've just got what they know at that moment in time. And I'm evaluating the crime scene. I'm going, oh, no, this is very different. That's hugely important. That's where, you know, I'm communicating with the investigators saying, no, no, no, this is not what the crime scene is saying happened. There's a different version of the story.

and a more correct version of the story based on the physical evidence. And in this case, we have inconsistencies all across the board, you know, up until the point that Solomon is fingering the white man. Now I need a break.

And I will say, and there's plenty of examples, that women are very, very capable of killing other people with an axe. Yep. It's happened. With everything possible, yep. Yes. Well, we'll talk about another case. Thanks for joining me on this one, Paul. No, this was fascinating. Thanks a ton, Kate. Thank you.

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashen and Kate Winkler-Dawson. Our mixing engineer is Liana Squilacci. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogle. Our

artwork is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Daniel Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones Pod. Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now. ...