359: The Manhattan Well Murder w/ Gavin Whitehead
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Welcome all to another episode of the Most Notorious Podcast. I'm Eric Riveness. Well, summer is officially over. Hope everyone had a tolerable one, at a minimum, with some joyous moments interspersed within.

Thank you for staying subscribed, by the way. I am very excited to have Gavin Whitehead back. He is the creator, writer, and narrator extraordinaire of the Art of Crime podcast and was my guest back in February, episode 331, to talk about the Bermondsey Horror. And he is back again with another riveting historical true crime story.

Awesome to talk with you again, Gavin. How are things at the Art of Crime podcast these days? I am doing so well. Thanks for having me back on. And things are going well at the Art of Crime. You know, I'm gearing up for a new season, which will begin in the middle of October. And each season of my podcast is structured around a different theme. And the theme of the forthcoming season is crimes of old New York. So I cover a lot of historical crimes that for

for one reason or another, could only have happened in the Big Apple. And we will be talking about a New York crime today. Yes, very excited to do that. So you're going to talk to us today about the Manhattan Well murder case, which was the first recorded murder trial in American history, right? Yes.

Correct. The trial that we are going to discuss became the first fully recorded homicide trial in history. And that is only one reason to become a

obsessively fascinated with this case. Yeah. So maybe I'll say a few words about the Manhattan Well first. So the Manhattan Well actually exists to this day. If you go to Soho in New York and you, say, get off the subway and make your way to 129 Spring Street, you will find a COS store. COS designs and sells clothes.

contemporary minimalist apparel. So if that's what you're into, you can pick up some new clothes while you're there. But for all our purposes, I will concentrate on what is in the basement showroom at this COS location. If you go downstairs and look around, you're going to see some pretty minimalist decor around you, kind of all white walls, but then suddenly something is going to leap right out of you. And that is a roughly six foot tall, ancient,

brick structure, which is the Manhattan Well. And it is still there because it was considered so historically significant by various owners that have had businesses at this property on Spring Street. And if you ask employees at COS, they might just tell you ghost stories about this well, because some claim that it is haunted because of its association with a bonafide murder mystery, which is what we're going to talk about.

So, New York in the year 1799, it's hard to imagine, right? It was vastly different than it is now, of course. Could you tell us about the area where these events took place? Absolutely. And we're starting in 1799, partly because that was the year the Manhattan Well was constructed in. So it's 225 years old at this point. And then the murder will also take place at the end of this year. But yes, 1799,

So New York, it is vastly different from the teeming metropolis we know it as today. If I say New York to you right now, the first thing you're going to think of probably is skyscrapers, right? Those did not exist at all in 1799. The average structure in New York would have stood between

between two and three stories. Of course, there were one-story structures as well, but they were much smaller. And this was not yet a metropolis. It was big. So New York was home to about 60,000 residents at the very end of the 18th century. And those residents were largely concentrated in what today we know as Lower Manhattan. So they were kind of cramped all together down there on the southwestern tip of the island.

Another important aspect of New York at this time was that it looked kind of like a Midwestern market town might today. So there were lots of pastures, there was meadowland, and there were lakes. And you would have seen this. So there was definitely a lot more nature that was visible to residents of New York.

So there is plenty of drama and tragedy centered around the well. But before the well even enters the picture, much of this story takes place at a Quaker boarding house. Where was this house and who were its inhabitants?

Absolutely. So this boarding house stands at 208 Greenwich Street. Greenwich Street is kind of a bustling commercial and residential street. You would have found the shops and homes of a bunch of different artisans and merchants along there. It was about two blocks over from the Hudson River, and it ran parallel to it, and it was called Greenwich.

Greenwich Street, partly because it led to Greenwich Village, which was farther north. Now today, we think of Greenwich Village as part of Manhattan, but back in 1799, it was sort of a locality unto itself. It was separated from Manhattan by a lot of meadowland. So a lot of our action is going to take place at 208 Greenwich Street. And we do have

Kind of a big cast of characters for this story. So I'm really going to take some time and go through each one of them one by one because the victim of the Manhattan Well murder and all the primary suspects live together under one roof. So let's start with Elias Ring. Elias Ring presides over this boarding house. He is a Quaker known for his plain Quaker dress would have favored Quakers.

browns and grays, colors like that. Upstanding guy, peppered his speech with these and those. He had come down to New York from upstate New York. And when he was still living upstate, he had co-founded a flour mill, which unfortunately ended in disaster, but he was known as something of an aspiring engineer. After that,

disaster, he moves down to New York because even at this time, New York was a place that hummed with opportunity. You felt like you could really have a fresh start there and great things could happen if you relocated there. So that is what Elias Ring did. He takes control of this boarding house at 208 Greenwich and he runs a dry goods store on the first floor.

Again, this was pretty common at this time in history. A lot of people lived where they also ran their businesses. So, okay, we have Elias Ring. Elias Ring is married to Catherine Ring. She is also a Quaker. She moves from upstate New York down to 208 Greenwich with Elias. Catherine actually also runs a business at 208 Greenwich. That is a millinery shop.

There's quite a bit of going on, right? And it's a really full house and there's a lot of business just unfolding all the time in this building. Catherine employs as many as 20 staff members. So she's got quite a bit of responsibility and quite a bit of power. And between her and Elias, they make a pretty decent living. So in addition to Elias and Catherine Ring, they have four children.

Catherine also moves down to New York with her sister, Hope Sands. Hope Sands pitches in around the house. You know, she would have helped out at the millinery shop. She would have helped out in preparing meals, done things like that. Elma Sands is another resident at the boarding house. She is a cousin of Hope and Catherine. So Elma Sands is the daughter of a single mother.

They had also come from upstate New York. Her father sort of abandoned the family and moved down to South Carolina. All of these people so far are in their 20s. Elma and Hope are in their early to mid 20s. Elias is a little bit older, but I think he's around 26, 27, 28, sort of in that range.

So let's just recap the Ring Sands clan really quickly. We have Elias Ring, who presides over the boarding house. We have Catherine Ring, his wife. We have Hope Sands, Catherine's sister. And we have Elma Sands, who is a cousin of Hope and Catherine. So in addition to this family, we have a few boarders who are living in this house. And of course, they're paying to stay there.

One of them is a carpenter named Levi Weeks, also in his early 20s, really hardworking guy. He works for his brother, Ezra Weeks, who is a prominent and extremely well-connected architect in New York. He's a bit of a power player. And Levi will typically go into work at the lumberyard that belongs to Ezra Weeks, where he will do his carpenter thing,

fashioning doors, all kinds of other things. In addition to that, Levi lives at 208 Greenwich Street with a young apprentice named William Anderson. And those are some of our key residents. There's one more resident that we need to talk about, however, and that is Richard Croucher.

He had moved to the boarding house in 1799. He was born in England and he is a cloth merchant. So he is known to walk up and down the streets and basically peddle linens and other kinds of textiles.

So again, just to recap all of our boarders, we have Levi Weeks, who works for his brother, Ezra Weeks. Ezra actually does not live at the boarding house, but he's an important figure in this story. We have William Anderson, Levi's apprentice. And then finally, we have Richard Croucher, who is a cloth merchant who also lives at 208 Greenwich. And that is our cast of characters. Yeah.

It's quite a cast of characters. So Levi gets along well, right with the family. But Richard Croucher is more distant. He doesn't really engage with people around him too much. But Levi Weeks really becomes a member of the family. Yes, he grows quite close with the family, with

with the rings and the sands. So on his days off, he'll hang out with Hope Sands and Elma Sands. There's actually a wonderful account of how they went over to Baker's Museum in July. Baker's Museum was this really cool place where you could go and look at an assortment of just cool stuff. Like,

A live bald eagle was there at one point. Enormous lobster claws. Wax models of famous pugilists. You know, there are lots of cool things to go over and look at at Baker's Museum, which was just a few blocks away on Wall Street. And Levi...

also shows a lot of care, I would say, for various members of the Ring Sands clan. So, Elma is sort of depressive and also often quite sickly. So sometimes she might help Hope Sands pitch in at the millinery shop or do other household chores, but in some cases, Elma is actually too unwell to do these things, and so she stays up in bed.

And when she's kind of confined to bed, Levi was known to look in on her and make sure that she had everything that she needed.

So there are lots of friendships that form in the boarding house, right? At the same time, as you mentioned, there are also some kind of frictions and Richard Croucher does not mesh with the rings or the sands. And in fact, he is known to have quarreled with Elma Sands at one point. It's unclear what exactly happened, but it seems like they were passing each other either in a hallway or on the stairs. And it,

It seems like Richard Croucher may have groped Elma. It seems like some sort of unwanted touching was involved in this exchange. But Elma cried out and a fight ensued. And then Levi eventually confronted Richard Croucher about it and said that his conduct was not OK. And so there was always a little bit of tension between Richard Croucher, Elma and Levi.

Oh, poor, poor Elma. Bad things seem to happen to her. And we should probably add that there was an outbreak of yellow fever that summer as well in New York.

Uh-huh. And you mentioned that a lot of bad things happen to Elma. It's true, partly because she's kind of sickly so often. And so that makes it hard for her to get out of the house and do things with Hope and Levi. So there's actually one example where Levi and Hope go to attend this charitable event at a church nearby. And Elma isn't asked to go along, partly because she's known to kind of stay at home.

But yes, to your question about yellow fever. So once the Manhattan well murder takes place and has captured the imagination of New Yorkers, a lot of people begin to suspect that all of it stretches back to what went down at the end of summer, beginning of autumn of 1799. And what happened was there was a seasonal visitation of yellow fever.

For those who don't know, yellow fever is a mosquito-borne illness, and it is nasty. You never want to have it, especially not in 1799. But basically what would happen is that people would start to contract yellow fever in the summer months, and there would basically be a kind of epidemic that would rage until October or so. So once things cooled off, the illness would recede.

But basically, once you contracted yellow fever, you would, of course, experience fever, but your eyes would turn yellow with jaundice. You would vomit up what looked like coffee grounds. It was just extremely painful and an all-around horrendous way to die. So partly because the symptoms were so ghastly, a lot of New Yorkers would just get out of town if they can, like,

what better way not to catch yellow fever than just to run away, right? So if you had money, you could afford to go north to either Greenwich Village. So you might remember a few minutes ago, I said that Greenwich Village was separated from Manhattan by meadow and pasture.

That was one place where yellow fever was not as much a scourge as it was farther south. And then others could even go farther up into the countryside. So they would go farther north if they could. That option, of course, was not available to everyone.

But it is available to certain members of the Ring's Sans clan. So in September, things are really heating up and Catherine Ring decides that it is time to get out of Dodge and go north into the countryside and escape Yellow Fever. So she goes, she takes her four children with her and Hope eventually accompanies her as well. So Elma Sans left.

Catherine and Hope have gone. The children are gone. The other male boarders, so Elias, Levi, Richard Croucher, and several others that I haven't talked about, stay in New York. And Elias is extremely happy on the one hand that his family has gotten out.

out of this, you know, has kind of escaped the plague, if you will, by heading north. But of course, he's kind of sad to see both his wife and children go. So anyway, this is an incredibly stressful period of time. And part of why people are talking about this period of time when the Manhattan murder takes place is because some sexual indiscretion,

starts going down at 208 Greenwich Street. And it happens late at night. Various residents hear someone, they don't know who it is, tiptoe out of his or perhaps her room and into another room. And then whoever is making love is really not concerned about, you know, waking the neighbors or any of the residents in the boarding house. It's apparently quite loud what's happening. Everyone knows what's going on.

And it is kind of cause for scandal, right? Because Elias and Catherine Ring are the only two married people in this boarding house. And it can't be Elias and Catherine Ring because Catherine has left for Greenwich Village and then gone farther north. So who is having this sex? It seems to be that it has to be taken out of wedlock. And so there's a bit of a scandal there.

And a lot of speculation as to the identity of these midnight lovemakers will surface in the wake of the discovery of a body in the Manhattan well. Yes, yes. December 22nd, 1799 is an important day in this case. The events that unfold that day result in the death of one of the people living at the boarding house, right? Can you explain in further detail what happened?

Absolutely. So you're right. Everything is set in motion on December 22nd. So at this point, actually, George Washington has died just about a week earlier. And so a lot of New York is in mourning and many New Yorkers are in church at special services honoring his legacy and mourning his loss.

Levi Weeks is not. And it's really important to follow Levi Weeks' activities on this day. So he goes into work at the lumberyard because, right, Levi Weeks is this carpenter. He's designing some doors for a merchant who lives on Broadway. While at work, he injures himself, gashes his knee really bad, and then he goes home to the boarding house.

There, in kind of a nice role reversal, Elma Sands nurses him back to health. She plasters his knee, makes sure he has everything he needs. And she says, Levi, you really shouldn't go into work because you've really banged yourself up. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no. These doors aren't going to build themselves. I have to go. So he goes out later.

And then at about eight o'clock, a little after 8 p.m., Levi comes home. And there are a lot of comings and goings, and we have to keep track of where everyone is here. So Elias Ring and Hope Sands are both at Quaker meetings. They're out of the house. Richard Croucher is also out of the house. He was the English-born cloth merchant that we talked about. He's

At a coffee house. And then he is believed to have stopped by a birthday party afterwards. So Levi comes home at a little after 8 p.m.

And he lets Catherine Ring know, and Elma is also aware of this, that his plan is basically to go back over to the lumber yard and back over to his brother's house. Remember, Levi works for his brother, Ezra, who is an architect. And generally the way it works is that whenever Levi and Ezra are collaborating on a project,

Levi will go over to Ezra's place and talk through the next day's work the night before. And then he'll go back to the boarding house and catch some shut-eye.

So that's what he wanted to do tonight. But unfortunately, Ezra Weeks was entertaining company. So he comes home a little after eight and his plan is to hang out there for 15, 30 minutes, something like that, and then go back out to Ezra's house so that he can talk about the next day's project. Meanwhile, Elma Sands is also busy.

getting ready for a night out. And this is kind of uncommon, remember, because as I mentioned before, she's often a little bit sickly. It's often hard for her to go out on her own because of her ill health. But she's getting dressed. Catherine Ring is helping her do so. She helps her pick out a calico gown while she's getting dressed.

And while she is putting on her clothes, Elma Sands realizes that she is missing a key article of clothing, which is a muff, which is sort of like, it's like almost like a pillow that you can kind of use to keep your hands warm when it's cold outside. So Elma Sands pops over to a next door neighbor and asks to borrow a muff. She returns a few minutes later with that muff.

So at about 830 or so, Catherine Ring is downstairs. At this time, Elias Ring has come home from the Quaker meeting, which is where he was. Hope Sands, however, is still out of the house, presumably at a Quaker meeting. So it's about 830 and Catherine is downstairs and she suddenly hears whispers from

Out near the front door to the boarding house. And for whatever reason, her curiosity is piqued. And she goes to investigate as quietly as she can. And she thinks she hears footsteps coming down the stairs. And she's like, no, I can definitely hear someone is whispering out there. And she assumes that it is both Elma and Levi because she knew that Elma wanted to go out that night. And Levi had also said that he was going out that night.

She hears the door to the boarding house close, and she also hears the latch fall. And she's like, okay, why all the whispering? That's sort of strange, but, you know, she sort of carries on. So Levi Weeks returns at about 10 p.m.,

So he's gone and he's come back about an hour and a half or two hours have passed. And when he comes back, he asks if Elma has come home and he hears from Catherine that Elma has not come home. Again, very unusual because he was thinking that, you know, if she has come home, then he can go say goodnight to her in her bedroom or something like that. So he says, okay, that's weird. But he hits the hay after that.

along with his apprentice. So that is what happens on December 22nd. The next day, Hope is at the dining table for breakfast, but Elma is not. Elma's unaccounted for. Levi asks after her, but you know what? Elma is

It's thought to have gone out last night. Catherine's pretty sure she went out last night, but she's not sure if she came home. But it's also at this point, no cause for concern because sometimes when Alma isn't feeling well, she just kind of stays in bed in the morning. And that's that. So Levi starts to worry. A few hours later, he comes home from lunch. Alma still hasn't shown her face at the boarding house.

And he again asked Catherine, like, what's going on? Where's Alma? And Catherine's like, I thought she was upstairs. Levi runs upstairs, looks in her room. She's nowhere to be found. And so at this point, this is very uncommon. Alma has never really done this before. And anxiety starts to mount from this point forward. It looks like Alma has disappeared. We will be back in just a moment.

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If you enjoy Bizarre True Stories, then the Useless Information Podcast is the podcast for you. For example, did you know that author Robert Louis Stevenson gave his birthday away? Or that there was a football team that played for six years before someone realized that the school never, ever existed? Or that a dog in upstate New York was once placed on trial for murder? Well, to hear these and hundreds of additional fascinating true stories from the flipside history,

be sure to check out the Useless Information Podcast. That's the Useless Information Podcast, podcasting worldwide since 2008 and available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening right now. Be sure to check it out. And we have returned from our break. So do investigators initially think that foul play is involved? You mentioned she was depressed. Do they believe that she committed suicide at the beginning of their investigation?

The answer to your question is both. At first, people start to worry that Elma might have taken her own life because, as you mentioned, she was known for a depressive disposition. She had, in fact, contemplated taking her own life. She had sort of made remarks about how she would overdose on laudanum.

So they sort of assume the worst on that front. And a little over a week after she vanishes on December 30th, Elias Ring actually dredges part of the Hudson River to see if they can find her and they turn up nothing. So there's just this big question mark about what happened. But yes, to your question about foul play, people do suspect foul play and very soon they have a suspect and that is Lita.

Levi weeks. So a couple days shortly after Alma goes missing, Catherine ring confronts him out of nowhere and says, Levi, stop. This has gotten serious enough. Like I know, I know what you and Alma were planning to do. And Levi's like, whoa, what? So on December 22nd, the night of Alma's disappearance, Levi,

Elma is said to have told Catherine that she and Levi were going to marry in secret. So Catherine Ring reveals this to Levi. He immediately goes pale and starts shaking. And he's like, oh my God, she has to be found so that she can clear my name.

Later on, Levi's apprentice, who also lives at the boarding house, seems to add some degree of credibility to the idea that Levi and Alma were having a relationship. At the very least, he tells an eyebrow-raising story later on. So if you remember...

Back at the height of the yellow fever season, there was all of this furtive copulation going on. Actually, there was nothing furtive about it. There's a lot of raucous copulation going on in the boarding house. And it's believed that that was Elma and Levi. And his apprentice, William Anderson, testifies that one night he...

was lying in bed. Levi came in and believed that William was asleep. And so Levi apparently got undressed and was just wearing his shirt and then left and did not return until morning. So that looks definitely suspicious. Like maybe there was something going on there with another resident at the boarding house.

Things only start to look worse for Levi. So at about the same time that Catherine confronts him about this incident,

plan to elope with Alma, Levi goes to Hope Sands. Because remember, Levi was pretty close to both Hope Sands and Alma. Hope, of course, is Alma's cousin and Catherine's sister. And he's like, Hope, you're one of my best friends in this boarding house. Please, you need to do whatever you can to get me out of this situation. I want you to go to the aldermen's right now and sign a statement asserting that I had shown...

No particular affection toward Alma. You know, she was just like any of the other women in this boarding house to me. There was nothing going on between us. And Hope refuses to do it because she had seen signs that a romance was burgeoning between them at one point.

The three of them were in Alma's room and Alma was said to have given a hint to hope that she needed to make herself scarce. And she did. So, again, these kind of instances that maybe point towards some some kind of romantic relationship. So Levi Weeks is definitely panicking because he is considered a prime suspect at this point.

Absolutely. So who finds Alma's body? What is its condition? And how does the public respond to the discovery? Sure. So I mentioned that Alma has been gone for over a week, and then we're getting close to two weeks. And it is not until January 2nd, 1800, that Elias Ring learns of a pivotal clue. And this is sort of where the Manhattan Well enters the picture.

So the Manhattan Well stands in what was then Lisbonard's Meadow. This is one of those meadows that kind of separates Manhattan from Greenwich Village to the north. And Lisbonard's Meadow was great for sledding and hunting, all kinds of recreational activity in the winter. But the Manhattan Well was located there.

So there was a family, the Blancs, who lived on the edge of Lisbonard's Meadow. And on Christmas Eve, their boy was playing near the Manhattan Well. And the Manhattan Well was actually a disused well. It had been built earlier that year, but it was deemed insufficient for what it was built for. So they just kind of boarded it over.

almost as soon as they had finished it. But anyway, this boy is playing near the well and notices that one of the planks that had been laying across it had been moved. So he looks into the water and what does he find? But a woman's muff. So as you might remember, Alma Sands went next door to borrow a muff on the night of her disappearance.

So he finds this muff and actually gives it to his mother as a Christmas present. And then a few days pass. And then suddenly Mrs. Blanc hears tell of this woman who has gone missing. And she learns that she had borrowed this muff on the night of her vanishing. And she's like, Oh my God, is this the muff? So,

All of this is communicated to Elias Ring and he gets together with a next door neighbor and a few others from the community and goes to check it out because this is the first clue they've had in, again, almost two weeks. And even though there's all this suspicion mounting, like they want answers. They want to know what happened to Elma. So they go over to the Bronx and then from there they go to the well.

And you can just imagine the kind of trepidation building in them as they peer down into this well, again, disused well. It's just like looking into the abyss. They look down in there. There's nothing but dark, still water. Eventually one of the party gets a pull, sticks it down in there, moves it around and they feel some kind of mass that is unmoving down there. So their hearts all drop and,

And now they need to find out how they can get that out of the well. Eventually, they're able to get a few coils of hemp and fashion a crude net. They lower the net in and they pull upwards. And what do they see? They see a calico gown at first. And Elma Sands was known to have dressed in a calico gown the night of her disappearance.

They keep pulling it up. Sure enough, it's Elma Sands. So they have found her. The body has been in the well for a long time and it's not in great condition. Maybe we'll talk a little bit about what the body looks like at the trial because that will become pivotal to both the prosecution and the defense. But Elma Sands has finally been discovered. Again, this is January 2nd. Soon an inquest is held.

Homicide is cited as the cause of death. And what happens next is truly remarkable. So it was customary among Quakers to lay out the bodies of the recently deceased in maybe a parlor, for example, so that friends and family members could pay their last respects. That was common among the Quaker community. But at this point,

Especially now that people knew Elma Sands had been recovered and had apparently been murdered, according to the inquest, they were furious. People were absolutely furious about this senseless murder, and even more so because they felt like they probably had a suspect in Levi Weeks.

So because of all the public interest in Elma's fate, the rings take this virtually unprecedented step and display the body outside on the street in public. So hundreds, perhaps even thousands of New Yorkers come to view it where it lies in state for two full days. And that, again, you can imagine seeing the body of this poor woman who suffered this

horrendous fate, like right before your eyes. It only intensified the anger, the sadness, the desire for revenge, the desire for justice. So the whole city is just worked up about all of this and they are looking forward to what will become a truly history-making trial.

Right, right. And of course, the obvious suspect is Levi Weeks. The motive is that Levi had murdered Alma so he could get out of marrying her. But he doesn't help his case when he asks the police while they're questioning him whether she had been found in the Manhattan well.

Oh my gosh, yes. I'm so glad you brought that up because this is, it's part of the story. Things just look worse and worse for Levi and he keeps making all of these really suspicious statements. So yes, so after Alma's body is finally hoisted out of the well, again, rumors have spread of Levi's guilt at this point. So the body has been recovered and

And one of these rumors reaches the ear of a police constable. And he goes to find Levi, who is at work. He comes in, taps him on the shoulder. Levi spins around, sees this police officer walking.

who clearly means business from the look on his face and words do not even have to pass between them. Levi knows why this police officer has come to see him right now. And he just intuits, he immediately grasps that Elma's body has been found and that the police officer is there to put him under arrest. He's like, I cannot believe you would do this. He stops mid-sentence, puts his head down,

And then he says, so is it in the Manhattan well she was found? The police officer has not said a word about the Manhattan well up until this point. So how on earth could Levi Weeks have known that the body was in the Manhattan well unless he's the guy who put her there? So after that, police officer takes Levi to the body and basically says, Levi Weeks, do you know the woman who lies there a corpse?

Levi dodges the question and says, I know the gown. And the police officer is like, that's not what I asked you. Do you know that woman that lies there a corpse? And he admits that he does. And within a few hours, he's in jail. Right. So things are looking grim for Levi. But fortunately for him, he has his brother, his

by his side and his brother will assemble what might be one of the greatest legal teams in American history

If you happen to measure greatness by star studded power. Oh my gosh. This is another element of the case where you're like, no, this did not happen, but it did happen. So as I mentioned, Ezra, of course, is this well-connected architect. He's got money and he has got clout. So he lines up three of the best business,

damn attorneys you can find in New York at this time. One of them is this guy named Brockholz Livingston. You may not be familiar with him, but who are the other two attorneys? They are none other than Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. So we now have two founding fathers have entered the chat, everyone. And they are known for being extremely competent lawyers. Of course, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr are famously rivals.

Burr would kill Hamilton in a duel in 1804. And there had always existed a great amount of tension between the two of them. But there was a limited number of lawyers practicing in New York at this time. So, and they were both lawyers, obviously. So it was sort of inevitable that they would wind up working with each other on a small number of cases. And when they did, they were a dynamic duo. Like you did not want to be arguing against them because they were smart,

So they immediately set to work preparing their case in defense of Levi. Prosecution is doing the same. Several months pass, and then on March 31st, 1800, the trial commences. One of the questions that would arise during the trial is,

and you've already talked about it, but it would become highlighted again in the courtroom, is that Alma had been known to have suffered from depression. And did that depression lead to suicide? Yes. So she was known to be sort of depressive. And the prosecution really wanted to prove that she had been murdered and had not committed suicide. And to this end, the prosecutor, Cadwallader Colden,

calls several medical experts to the stand, several people who can offer testimony. And one of them, I'll just focus in on one of them, the one who is maybe kind of the expert, the star witness in terms of the medical testimony.

His name was David Hozak. He was a Columbia University guy, although he was the chair of what we might think of as a pharmacology department nowadays. So very prestigious. He had examined Elma's body while it lay in state. So remember I said that they laid out the body for two days. That's what the family decided to do. He was one of the hundreds, if not thousands of New Yorkers who came to look at the body and he examined it at that point.

time. And he noticed scratches, which may have been defensive wounds. So it was believed that Levi took Elma to the Manhattan well, a struggle ensued, and then he killed her and cast her body into the well. So he saw some kind of scratches. He also noticed these blemishes around Elma's

collarbone. And it was suggested that these might be evidence of strangulation. And Colden, the prosecutor, really pressed Hosack on this issue. He was like, is there any way she could have inflicted these injuries on herself? And Dr. David Hosack says, I don't think she could have. So to him, it looks like these were inflicted on her by an attacker.

One of the interesting moments of the trial happens early on when the prosecution is making its case. And one of the defense attorneys on a cross-examination asks questions about a wall partition. And he's basically setting a trap, right, for later on. Yeah. So the prosecution has to establish that there was some kind of romance between Elma and Levi, right? And to that end, Colden...

questions, almost everyone who lived at 208 Greenwich Street. So we get Elias Ring, Catherine Ring, Hope Sands, Richard Croucher, the cloth merchant. They all testify and seem to suggest that there was something romantic going on between Elma and Levi. And it's when Elias Ring is testifying that these questions come up. So

seemingly out of nowhere, one of the defense attorneys, perhaps Alexander Hamilton, asks Elias about the partition between the boarding house and the house that is right next door. And everyone's kind of like, where is this coming from? And Alexander Hamilton's like, what is it made of? And Elias Frank says that it's plaster and lathe. And Hamilton is like,

do you think you could hear like the sound of children playing next door, for example? And Elias Ring is like, okay, not sure. He's like, no, I don't think so. I don't think I ever recalled hearing that. And then everyone's like, why is this relevant? And then finally,

Hamilton asks about Elias Ring's next door neighbor, who is Joseph Watkins. He's a blacksmith who lives right next door and operates his blacksmith next door as well. He says, is Joseph Watkins a clever man and a good neighbor? And Elias Ring is like, yeah, he's a great guy. Again, why are we talking about this? And Alexander's Hamilton is sort of like, no further questions, leaves it at that.

And yeah, there's definitely this kind of puzzlement that hangs in the air. But also, if you have followed Alexander Hamilton in the courtroom, as many had, you know that he is one hell of a strategist. And it's very possible that he is laying a trap right now. So what about Levi Weeks's alibi?

He was supposed to be working at that time, right? Did the prosecution attempt to poke holes in his alibi?

Absolutely. They try to reconstruct a timeline. So here's what they say. So again, and I mentioned this a few minutes ago. So Levi Weeks is at 2-8 Greenwich a little after 8 p.m. He leaves sometime in the vicinity of 8-15, 8-30, something like that. And then he's seen again at 2-8 Greenwich at 10 p.m., right? Because he comes home, briefly talks to Catherine Ring, and then goes up to bed.

So the argument that from the side of the prosecution is that in that window, Levi Weeks went over to Ezra Weeks' lumberyard with Elma in his company. At the lumberyard, he is believed to have taken a horse-drawn sleigh

And this supposition is based on the testimony of a witness who lived across the street from the lumberyard. She says that she saw a mysterious sleigh rider on the night of the disappearance. And this sleigh rider was exiting the lumberyard. And what was more mysterious still, people would ride around on horse-drawn sleighs at this time, right? Especially if there was snow on the ground, that was the easiest way to get around.

But if you're doing that, it was kind of nice to affix some sleigh bells to the sleigh so that people could hear you coming because it wouldn't be awesome if you were just trying to walk home from church or something. And then you got run over by a horse drawn sleigh. But what was strange about this sleigh rider who was leaving Ezra's lumber yard was that they had not attached sleigh bells to the sleigh. And so that immediately set off alarm bells for this witness, Susanna Broad. So, um,

Levi is theorized to have been this surreptitious sleigh rider. He gets on the sleigh with Alma. They go to the Manhattan well. A struggle ensues. He kills her, throws her in the well, and then goes back to 208 Greenwich Street circa 10, 10.15 p.m. So that is sort of the timeline that the prosecution has proposed.

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So with much of the testimony from medical experts suggesting that she had in fact been murdered, Levi Weeks' defense team really needed to find an alternative suspect, right? Who do they focus on? Right. So let's talk about the defense. So I just mentioned the prosecution's timeline for Levi leaving the boarding house at 8 or so, getting back at 10.

So when the defense gets up there, and you actually talked a little bit about alibi a minute ago. So the defense actually had to prove that the prosecution had sort of misled the court when it came to Levi's actions. So yes, he left the boarding house at a little past 8.15. But Ezra Weeks, his brother, comes in and

provides Levi with pretty much a cast iron alibi saying that he was at his house from about 8.30 till 10 o'clock. In other words,

he went straight from Ezra Weeks' house back to the boarding house. So when you factor that in, it basically looks virtually impossible for Levi Weeks to have gone and made off with a horse-drawn sleigh in the middle of the night and then committed a murder and then gotten that horse-drawn sleigh back and then gone into Ezra Weeks' house to talk with him about fashioning doors without showing any sign of physical exertion. So the defense really establishes a pretty

strong alibi for Levi. And again, a lot of people who had come to this trial already believed that Levi was guilty. So hearing this alibi reconstructed was shocking and it was kind of devastating to the prosecution's timeline. So that was a big part of what the defense wanted to establish. Like Levi had an alibi. It seems impossible for him to have carried out this murder.

But what is even more sensational is that when the defense gets ready to make its case, Aaron Burr stands up and just holds forth. We are talking like the most rousing courtroom oratory you can imagine. He's like, the public sentiment has been inflamed about this case. Everyone has jumped to conclusions. We're going to prove to you that not only is Levi not guilty, but...

but we think we know who might have committed this murder. And at the very least, he looks really suspicious. And so that somebody is Richard Croucher. So why is Richard Croucher the suspect? Well,

This is a pretty complicated theory and it will take a minute to unpack. So keep that in your brain. Richard Croucher is a suspect. Here's why. So one of the witnesses that the defense calls is Joseph Watkins. He's the guy who lives right next door to 208 Burnett Street. He's the blacksmith. And Alexander Hamilton is thought to have led the charge in questioning him. And so out of nowhere...

He goes, Joseph Watkins, did you ever notice anything in the conduct of Elias Ring that led you to believe that there was some sort of improper relationship between him and Elma? Everyone is silent in the courtroom. Where's this line of questioning coming from? It comes out from Joseph Watkins that actually the partition between his house and the room where Elma slept was so tight

thin that he could hear all of that midnight lovemaking we were talking about earlier. And he knew who was involved in that definitively. No one else knew. One of them was definitely Elma. And then he says to the court, the other guy was not Levi. It was Elias Ring. Actually, he could recognize his voice through the wall. And of course, this is like

A bomb has just been dropped. Elias Ring is this Quaker and the head of a reputable boarding house, right? And now he's committing adultery and that's all getting aired in the middle of court. So this would absolutely destroy Elias's reputation, right? If this came out as it just has.

And Hamilton says, wow, like this is pretty serious. Did you tell anyone else about this? Did anyone else know that Elias Ring was actually the guy who was visiting Elma's bed during the yellow fever season? And Joseph Watkins, the guy in the stand says, why, yes, I did tell someone else. And it was Richard Croucher. Remember, Richard Croucher is the guy who quarreled with both Elma and Levi Weeks.

So almost immediately after Alma Sands went missing, Croucher started telling everyone he could that Levi Weeks was the guy who was responsible. In fact, at one point in the proceedings, there's this really bizarre interval where someone accuses him of publishing handbills about goblins and ghosts that haunt the Manhattan well. But anyway, at every opportunity, he is heaping guilt on Croucher.

And the theory goes, one can infer from what comes out during this part of the trial, that when Richard Croucher found out about Elias Ring's infidelity, he blackmailed the Rings and Catherine, so Elias and Catherine, into incriminating Levi.

And the evidence for this was that actually one or two days after Elma's disappearance, Catherine had nothing but nice things to say to Joseph Watkins, this blacksmith, this neighbor, this guy who's on a stand about Levi. He'd always shown all this care for Elma, the family members and everything. And then suddenly it's a few days later where Catherine changes her story and suddenly Elma

We hear about this love affair between Levi and Alma, and everyone is casting suspicion on him. So Croucher is definitely suspicious.

who is holding a megaphone to his lips, essentially, and proclaiming Levi's guilt to the world. And it's suggested that maybe he was doing that as a way to take revenge on Levi because they had had this disagreement earlier because he bore a grudge against Levi. And it has also been theorized that perhaps Richard Croucher was doing this to frame Levi

Levi for the crime that he, Richard Croucher, had actually committed. And Croucher did have a criminal record and went on to commit violent crimes. So he has been listed named as a suspect in this case.

Yeah, what a twist. My gosh. It was. It all unfolded right in the courtroom. And this was day two of proceedings, too. So you have to understand, trials did not go much longer than a day at this point in history. It was extremely uncommon. And you have Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr on the defense. You've got this sensational murder. You're there at day two of a trial that was already sensational.

Was this the testimony that would ultimately, well, I might as well say it.

lead to Levi's acquittal? He's acquitted! Yes, say it. Say it with pride. Say it with joy. Yes, Levi is acquitted. It's actually kind of a funny story here. I should also mention that the defense attacks some of the medical testimony from the prosecution, and they're able to show that

There's at least a chance that Alma committed suicide. So again, it's another way for them to weaken the prosecution's case. But yeah, there's this amazing story. So on day one, it goes until after 1 a.m. Everyone goes home exhausted. The jurors literally sleep at City Hall, which is where the trial is unfolding in the picture room.

because there's nowhere for them to go and it's cold and just miserable. So day two rolls around again, midnight comes and goes. The trial still isn't over. They get to the part where they should make closing arguments and actually the

The prosecutor is like, I am exhausted. I cannot continue right now. And if the defense is going to make a closing argument right now, I need time to prepare. We need to adjourn again and come back for day three. And out of nowhere, and in a pretty daring move, the defense is like, we don't need closing statements. We've already established our client's innocence. We don't need any of that. And so the judge grants it. And the judge is like,

we're not adjourning because it's past, you know, it's like 1am again, the jurors do not, not, not want to spend the night in the picture room again. I guess apparently like there was nowhere to sequester juries in 1800. That's one of the many morals we can draw from this story, but everyone was just exhausted. So there are just no closing arguments. The jurors file out,

Minutes later, minutes later, they return. So again, we've gone for two days, which is unheard of in terms of how much testimony we've heard. They go out for a few minutes. They come back in. Levi is found not guilty. So it is a complete 180. So many people went to this trial convinced of Levi's guilt and he leaves City Hall a free man. And it was just another reason why

Again, it was just another element to this case that made it so sensational. Right, right. Yeah. And, you know, being a resident of this area of New York in 1799, you know, it's the middle of winter. Life was difficult. But following this trial must have been insanely interesting for people. A giant break from the monotony, the dreariness of regular everyday life.

And they've been seething because her body was discovered in early January, right? And the trial takes place on March 31st and April 1st. So they've just been seething and they've been waiting for months to get some closure here. And yeah, it's the middle of winter. So yeah, I mean, what a time to have lived in New York. I mean, it sounds wild.

Right. And a major success, of course, for Burr and Hamilton. And the third attorney, you mentioned his name already, he ended up serving on the U.S. Supreme Court. Yes. So definitely a dream team. And once this trial is over, certain people want to capitalize on the public's interest. And they end up writing pamphlets, right? Right.

This is another part of why I was so interested in this case, because, you know, my podcast is called The Art of Crime. It's a history podcast about the unlikely collisions between true crime and the arts. So this is part of where the arts angle comes in, because there's really a race to the printing press to see who can publish the account of this highly sensational trial first. So there's definitely a lot of competition that unfolds in the publishing world, and

So a printer named John Furman decided that he wanted to publish a full account of this trial. He enlists the clerk of the court, William Coleman, to do so. And it's publicized. They're like, we're planning to come out with this. It's going to be the most authoritative transcript of this trial. But of course, they don't realize that this is actually a competition. They are in a race to the printing press and they're actually beaten to the punch by several publishers.

And they are absolutely furious about this. But, you know, I mentioned at the very beginning of this episode that this produced the first fully recorded transcript of a homicide trial. And that is what John Furman and William Coleman together produced.

their other two competitors basically just came out with summaries of the trial with quotations here and there, but they were not able to provide a full transcript. And William Coleman was because William Coleman had mastered the art of stenography. We sort of take this for granted nowadays, I think. We know that there's a record in the courtroom, but that was not always the case. And actually it was in the mid 18th century that William

stenography became standardized and people started studying it in a methodical way. And William Coleman had done that

And that's part of how he was able to take down such detailed notes of all the proceedings. It's really nearly verbatim. And he ascribes every statement to either the defense or the prosecution or whichever witness was on the stand. And it was priced at 37 and a half cents. And it was extremely popular. People wanted to read about this. And arguably this was kind of a new genre of crime writing. And, um,

And yeah, people just gobbled it up. And if, you know, as your listeners might know, it sort of set a trend, you could say, because by around the mid 19th century, it was pretty common for newspapers to print more or less verbatim transcripts of sensational trials. Yeah.

So this remains a mystery. Possible suspects, Levi Weeks, Richard Croucher. But Elias Ring, could he have been in on this too, in some way? Yes. Elias, I will say, the more I look at the material about this case, the more puzzled I am, the more mystified I am. I have no idea what happened. It's hard for me to believe that Elma Sands committed suicide.

Because if she wanted to drown herself, you know, she could have thrown her into the Hudson River. It's just it's hard for me to believe that she would go to a well to drown herself. Also, another one of the witnesses testified to hearing the cries of a woman coming from the Manhattan well at about 9 p.m. on the night of her disappearance. Do we know if that woman was Elma Sands? Not necessarily. But, you know, it's just hard for me to believe that she committed suicide.

Richard Croucher has been named as a suspect. An author named Paul Collins wrote a book about this case, and he points the finger at Richard Croucher, makes a pretty compelling case for his guilt. You know, he's not a bad suspect, I've got to say. He actually raped a teenage girl in

the boarding house on Greenwich Street the same year as this whole sensational trial played out. So he was violent, that is for sure. As far as I know, no one has ever cast suspicion on Elias Ring, which is curious to me because he was having an affair with Elma. But he does certain things that make him look like

either he was genuinely concerned for her or he was an extremely compelling performer, right? Because he dredges the Hudson River to try and look for her body, assuming that she had drowned herself. He's also the guy who helps fish her out of the well. I mean, he facilitates the discovery of the body in that key way. So it's hard for me to imagine that he did it. And then, you know, some people actually maintain that Levi Weeks did commit the murder. And

If I were on the jury, I definitely could not have convicted him because there just was not a compelling case against him. But I will say the more I've puzzled over this case, I do have one lingering question about him and Elma. So his apprentice claims that on one night, Levi supposedly left under cover of darkness, wearing only his shirt and that,

clearly going somewhere else in the boarding house and then returned in the morning. So I have to wonder if it was possible if both Elias ring and Levi weeks for having some kind of relationship, like end up like separate relationships with Alma Sands, because you imagine if, if Levi weeks were having a relationship with Alma Sands in secret, and then she did go missing, it would explain why he panicked so much after her vanishing, because he would know that,

suspicion would fall on him. So I don't know. I think you're right that the three suspects are Elias Ring, Levi Weeks, and Richard Croucher. And that's assuming she wasn't murdered by some stranger on the night she went out. But I honestly, I have no idea. I wish I could solve this case for you and your listeners, but I cannot.

Right. And this case is just one of the many stories you'll be covering on your new season of the Art of the Crime podcast. So I've got a question for you about your upcoming season. Are you presenting these crimes of old New York in chronological fashion? Yes, actually. For the most part, we move through chronologically. So this is episode one.

We start in 1800 and we're going to go all the way into the 1960s or 70s. And I'm really excited about this season because in the past, I've done a lot of artist biographies. So my first season was

was called The Unusual Suspects, artists accused of being Jack the Ripper. It profiles six artists who were accused of committing the infamous Whitechapel murders of 1888. And then my second season was called Assassins. Each episode is about a different artist who was in some way involved in an assassination or an attempted assassination. But this season is going to work differently

very differently. And you can sort of tell that based on this story because there's such a huge cast of characters and there isn't one central artist. And I think that a lot of these stories are more tangentially linked to the art world. So in this case, it's sort of about the publishing industry, mastering the art of shorthand and all of that. That's something that I explore at length in the episode. But to give you another few examples,

I think you just had Margalit Fox on not too long ago, right? Yeah, we had her back. It was her third appearance on the show. To talk about Frederica Mandelbaum? Yep, exactly. So there's an episode about George L. Leslie, who was a bank robber who worked for Mandelbaum.

And he styled himself as a trained architect. There are big question marks hovering over whether or not he actually studied architecture. But part of the persona that Leslie cultivated was that he was able to draw on his training as an architect to plan some of the most intricate bank heists of the 19th century. And so that's a way in which, you know, the arts, the study of architecture enters that episode. But in that same episode,

There's a guy named Piano Charlie, who was another one of Mandelbaum's minions and an associate of Leslie's. Piano Charlie was an incredible piano player. You know, his fingers could just fly along the keyboard, but his fingers were so nimble that he was also considered one of the best safe crackers at the time. So there are all these ways in which artistic training places criminals in a position to commit their crimes. So, yeah.

There's an episode about the theft of one of Edgar Allan Poe's books, Al Arrof. This was in the 1930s. At the time, this book was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in modern day currency. So we cover a lot of different crimes from thefts to actually there's a libel episode and murder, of course, is one of them as well. So there's a lot of different kinds of crimes represented. And I think there are kind of more specific

interesting tangential relationships to the arts. Very clever how you put this all together. Very exciting. So for people who haven't checked out your podcast yet, you've got bingeable seasons under your belt. This will give interested listeners a chance to catch up on the old stuff in anticipation of the latest season. And subscribing, of course, will get the new season delivered right to your phone. Exactly.

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, as we like to say. Exactly. Wherever fine podcasts are sold. Yes, absolutely. Well, thanks again, Gavin. It's been fun, as usual. I had such a great time coming back. Thanks again for having me. Again, I have been speaking to Gavin Whitehead. He is the creator, writer, and narrator of the Art of Crime podcast.

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