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- [00:02]
Kate Winkler Dawson
This is exactly right.
- [00:09]
Liberty Mutual Advertiser
And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.
- [00:18]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Hey, everyone. Check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date? Oh, no.
- [00:22]
Liberty Mutual Advertiser
We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Together were married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
- [00:28]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
- [00:30]
Liberty Mutual Advertiser
Anyways, only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty.
- [00:34]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who spent the last 25 years writing about true crime.
- [00:46]
Paul Holes
And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
- [00:53]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Each week I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.
- [00:58]
Paul Holes
And I weigh in. Using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.
- [01:03]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens.
- [01:11]
Paul Holes
Some are solved and some are cold. Very cold.
- [01:15]
Kate Winkler Dawson
This is buried bones. Hey, Paul.
- [01:39]
Paul Holes
Hey, Kate. How are you?
- [01:40]
Kate Winkler Dawson
I'm doing well. You know, we've been answering listener and viewers questions, which I love. They always have the most creative questions for us and they have a good one today. You ready to hear it?
- [01:53]
Paul Holes
Sure.
- [01:54]
Kate Winkler Dawson
It's not going to make you squirm or. It's not. It's actually a good question. And I don't know if I know the answers to this or not, but we'll see. Okay, so someone wants to know what is our favorite takeout food or snacks? Pause. Paul. Unhealthy. So she says. The person says, nobody wants. Nobody wants to know about celery, which. She's talking about you.
- [02:19]
Paul Holes
Oh, geez. Yeah, And I don't eat celery now. Favorite takeout or snacks?
- [02:28]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Some. They want to know. Kind of your guilty pleasure, I think, is what we're getting at here.
- [02:33]
Paul Holes
Well, I would say my all time favorite food, and if you want to call it takeout, is a meat pizza.
- [02:39]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Oh, oh, Carnivore pizza. Well, this is on brand. This is on brand for you though, isn't it?
- [02:45]
Paul Holes
Yeah, well, yeah, you know, I. Well, I like meat on my pizza. I am not a pineapple pineapple person. I'm sorry. For those people out there that want pineapple, they. To me, pizza needs to be savory. No sweet at all. And there it has to be a pretty healthy serving of a variety of different meats. That's what I really enjoy this conversation's
- [03:01]
Kate Winkler Dawson
coming back to me now because I said, I do like pineapple on my pizza. I like pineapple and jalapeno. So now you've got to go back and pick another one because I think people know that one. So what's your second tier snack bad for you? Snack?
- [03:16]
Paul Holes
Oh, well, I would say, you know, let's say just like a snack. We've talked about this a little bit. I do like Doritos, you know, but it's the cool ranch Doritos flavor that I really enjoy.
- [03:29]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Cool American, as one of the listeners emailed me in Australia. It's cool American.
- [03:35]
Paul Holes
Yeah.
- [03:35]
Kate Winkler Dawson
I'm trying to think of what my favorites. I mean, I have a big mix. I would say I'm not a massive sweet fan, but I do like a really good dark chocolate. Love good dark chocolate. And I like chocolate covered strawberries. So, you know, there's that.
- [03:51]
Paul Holes
See, I'd rather have beef jerky than chocolate.
- [03:53]
Kate Winkler Dawson
I like dark chocolate and I like queso with no meat in it. Like chili con queso that you would order here.
- [04:00]
Paul Holes
That's good, no, for sure.
- [04:01]
Kate Winkler Dawson
That's my favorite. And I will get that anytime, basically any time of the day. And when I make it, it's never very good, but when other people make it, it's almost always delicious. So.
- [04:12]
Paul Holes
Yeah, well, you can't, you know, you can't go wrong at a good Mexican restaurant with chips and, you know, a salsa and a guacamole or a queso, you know, that is good.
- [04:21]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Well, today we are traveling to New England, very far back, as in guilty pleasures, which would not be on my list, like salted cod and things like that.
- [04:33]
Paul Holes
Yeah.
- [04:34]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Which maybe some people think it's delicious and it might be, but it's not for me. But we're going pretty far back. We haven't gone this far back in a very, very, very long time. So this is another example for me of, you know, finding characters, finding these people in history who do bad things and then we recognize those people now. And, you know, that's one of the great things I think about this show is you pick up on all of that. You hear about somebody who committed a crime or who was a. A forensic expert who really did something well in one of the murder cases from the 1700s or the 1800s, and you say, I know a guy who did that, or this sounds very familiar to me. I think this is one of those cases. And so it'll be good to see what you come up with this one.
- [05:24]
Paul Holes
All right, we're looking Forward to it as always.
- [05:26]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Okay, down to New England. Let's set the scene. Okay, so we start with a trigger warning like we always try to do. This involves the death of children. We are digging into a case that I'm not sure is really well known, but interesting enough for somebody to write a dissertation about it. So the author's name is David Thompson and he wrote a really good source for us. So it's the Anxious Atlantic. And I'll tell you a little bit more about the story. So we don't ruin it from the title, but it was a great source for us. Okay. Like I said, very, very old case. These are my favorite. I know they're frustrating because we lack forensics and things like that, but I still think we learn a lot, especially about people and the way people lived and the time periods, which, you know, is the most exciting for me. So, so we're going to 1782, New England, and we're in Connecticut. So it's December 11th. Very, very, very cold. And in this time period, New England is still reeling from the economic and social upheav, American Revolutionary War. And you know, I've written about this time period before and the years right before it where basically the colonists had all lived on borrowed money and everyone was in tremendous debt, including the government. And so we're still in that even more so now where the trickle down effect of corruption and certainly what war did you know? I mean, this is war, obviously in the country. All of the homesteads at wrecked. I mean, all of the people who died. This is really settling in, in 1782 and it's affecting everyone. So there is a family that has been prosperous for years, the Beadle family. And they were very well off for years. The patriarch is a guy named William Beadle. He's 52. He was originally from England. He grew up in London and then he moved to the colonies and then he was very much on the side of, you know, what they would call the patriots, very much on the side of what would become the Americans. So eventually he moves his family when he gets married to Wethersfield, Connecticut, and they have gone from very, very prosperous down to near poverty because of the war. So the family, in total, there's six of them. So there's William and then his wife Lydia, who is 32, so 20 years his junior, which, you know, in this time period certainly was not unusual. And then they have four kids that range from 11 to six. So there's three girls and a boy. And then they have enough money for what they used to call a servant girl, who would normally be a young teenager who would live in the house. Now I'll refer to her as a housemaid. And she's unnamed. They don't even name her in this. But servant girls, when they would say they use that phrase, that was like indentured servant in a way. And they were paid very, very little. It was very difficult work. A lot of them would start at a really young age. Most of the time I've read like 12 to 14. So this is a young girl who is living with this family. So they are still trying to maintain somewhat of their lifestyle. So we're going to start with the night of what happens, this incident. So December 11th. And it's early, early in the morning, about 6am or so, and there two locals who were coming to the house for a welfare check because there was like a sense that something was happening with this family. And they just had a dinner party the night before this family at their house. So the two people reporting are Joseph Farnsworth, who is a local doctor, and Stephen Mitchell. And then there's another man who will pop up at some point. And these are just really close friends of William. And they show up and this is a two story house. It's very quiet and there are doors and windows that are locked. And the neighbors had gotten up very early to chop wood. And they say that the house has been very peaceful all night long. But these men have a concern, so no one answers when they knock. And they have the housemate outside who was also concerned she had left the house and then she came back in and they hoist her through the back of the house to get her in because everything is locked. And she unlocks the front door and they come in. So the housemaid is concerned about the little kids, little, little kids. And they're all sleeping in the same room in this two bedroom house. So she is concerned that these loud men are going to wake these kids up. So she runs upstairs and the two men search the bottom level. And they're not expecting to find anything except a sleeping family. But people who lived outside of major cities, they would be up very, very early. And so that was always a signal to people. I mean, we've learned that, that if they're not up and they're not working, then something is wrong. So at the top of the stairs, the two men hear a noise. They know the housemaid's up there. They say that she has come out of the children's room and she has fainted and she has fainted and tumbled down the stairs and she is in total shock. I don't know much about fainting. I mean, I guess that's a possibility, right, that you can just be in such shock that you'll just lose control of your body and fall.
- [11:10]
Paul Holes
Some people are like that, you know, and even, I mean, like my oldest daughter, it's the idea of getting a shot and she's fainted in the doctor's office just because she's so nervous about getting a shot. So I do think that's a real thing that has never happened to me. You know, I don't faint as like that at all. I've only fainted once and once in my life, and that was after surgery, you know, getting up to use the restroom. And next thing I know, my wife is screaming my name, trying to wake me up.
- [11:46]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Wow. Do they still use smelling salts to wake people up or is it something different, do you think, when someone faints?
- [11:53]
Paul Holes
Well, I think, you know, the smelling salts, you see those used on the sidelines for the athletes and that's to just kind of open up, up, you know, that whole respiratory system and give them that charge. I wouldn't know how smelling salts would work with somebody who's fainted, you know, maybe, maybe they do.
- [12:11]
Kate Winkler Dawson
So Dr. Farnsworth steps over the girl. They're trying to figure out if she's okay. They leave her downstairs because obviously she's had a big fright. They go up the stairs to the children's room. And this is the way they're describing it, right? So the bed is soaked in blood. And we have four kids that were in this bed. And the housemaid slept upstairs, either in an adjoining room or on a cot in the room. You know, her purpose was to take care of the kids. And they find the body of the only boy who was the oldest, 11 year old Ansel, and he is hanging over the side of the bed. It is clear that the kids had gone to sleep. And they're wearing their sleep clothes and everything. He sort of slumped over the side of the bed. The men then look down on the floor and remember, I mean, this is early in the morning. We always think, oh, you go flip on a light. They're holding candles most likely. So they're searching around and they say there are three girls on the floor. So these are the other three kids. There's a 10 year old named Elizabeth, an 8 year old named Lydia who is named after her mother, and there's a six year old named Mary. And they're Laying side by side, their bodies have been covered by a blanket. And he can see under, you know, them poking out from the blanket and that they're side by side. And when Dr. Farnsworth peels the blanket back, he says that they have each been savagely bludgeoned on the side of the head with an axe. He also says that their throats are slit ear to ear with a carving knife. So my question is, how do we know it's an ax initially? Do they. Or do they just say blunt object? Nor would they just assume there's no axe in this room?
- [14:02]
Paul Holes
Well, I would say, you know, it's interesting to use the term bludgeoned with an axe. If the sharp edge of the ax was used, I guess technically it would be considered a bludgeoning. But from the, the types of injuries that the sharp edge would leave, that would give them some insight as to, yes, this appears to be an ax or a hatchet versus a blunt object. Get, you know, have a completely different look to the type of laceration and the, the wounding. Now maybe the, you know, the backside of the axe head was used, and then that's going to look more like, you know, a irregularly shaped sledgehammer, you know, and that would be a, a devastating type of injury to a human head. And then the, the throats are cut. So there is intent here that, I mean, this person comes in with an ax and, you know, kills at least three girls with the ax and cuts their throat. Do we know what happened to the boy that's still up on the bed or hanging off the bed?
- [15:10]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Well, they had said that he was killed in the same way. They had each been bludgeoned on the side of the head with an axe. So I think you're right. They're talking about the blunt end. And their throats are slit ear to ear with a carving knife.
- [15:25]
Paul Holes
Okay.
- [15:25]
Kate Winkler Dawson
And he puts them on the bed, or whoever this person is, he puts the girls on the ground and he keeps Ansel on the bed.
- [15:33]
Paul Holes
Well, it sounds like the four kids are asleep. And, you know, in essence, the offender or offenders come in and kill the kids while they're asleep, sleep up on the bed. And then for some reason, the offender chooses to move the three girls side by side onto the floor. And the blood patterns would show that movement with those types of injuries. And anytime the offender does something that is unnecessary to commit the crime, you have to pay attention to it. So the movement of the girls is significant. Covering the girls up is significant. That may give insight as to who the Offender is and or the offender's motives.
- [16:13]
Kate Winkler Dawson
They don't say anything about Ansel being covered up in any way. The boy, the 11 year old boy, but he's still on the bed and he's sort of like hung off the bed. He doesn't look like he's been placed anywhere. So I just had thought about what the difference is that a girls versus boys thing or what would that be?
- [16:32]
Paul Holes
Well, it could be, you know, and this is where it's a matter of as, you know, the story develops and we start taking a look at who the offender is and the relationship the offender has or the psychology the offender has, then we can start to kind of tease out why did he move the girls onto the floor? I would say Ansel, the boy, the way you described him hanging off the bed, that's probably a result of the girl's bodies being drug off the bed. Oh, versus, you know, he wasn't placed that way, he wasn't killed in that position. You know, that's my sense, based off of, you know, the verbal description.
- [17:09]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Okay. So the men are very upset. Of course, they're still searching around because we're missing the parents. They go to an adjoining primary bedroom and the doctor discovers William's wife, Lydia. So she is just like Ansel, the boy. She is lying draped over the side of the bed. There is a handkerchief that covers her face. So draped over the side, covering her face, she must be on her back, flipped over on her back. Right. Because otherwise there would be no handkerchief, I have to assume.
- [17:45]
Paul Holes
Well, unless the handkerchief is sticking to her face because of blood.
- [17:50]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Her head had been cleaved two times with an axe is how they're describing it. And her throat has been cut. There is a bowl placed on the floor underneath her head that catches the blood as it drains from her neck. They also find bloody footsteps leading from the top of the staircase down to the bottom to the ground floor kitchen area.
- [18:13]
Paul Holes
And they're describing it as footsteps versus shoe. Bloody shoe prints.
- [18:18]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yes.
- [18:19]
Paul Holes
Okay.
- [18:20]
Kate Winkler Dawson
And I'll say that the researchers know the difference, so they're looking out for that too. So they say footsteps.
- [18:28]
Paul Holes
Got it.
- [18:29]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Okay, so now we just have William unaccounted for. So they go downstairs, they follow the footsteps, probably stepping in them. I have no idea what they're doing. I don't think they. They are thinking of, you know, pattern matching in 1782, but who knows? They find William. He is sitting nearly erect at the hearth, the fireplace, he's on the corner and he is supported against the fire. Front of the Windsor chair. So I'm picturing him sitting on the hearth kind of with his back maybe toward the hearth. Sits nearly erect at the hearth on the corner of the fireplace, supported against the window. So he's got his back, it sounds like to me, against the Windsor chair. Does that sound right to you?
- [19:27]
Paul Holes
I'm envisioning he's sitting on the hearth, probably leaning over. He's probably leaning back. So he's supported by the fireplace, whatever structure is surrounding the fireplace and then possibly to the side where the chair possibly is. So he's being supported by two directions. So he's leaning back to one side or the other is how I'm envisioning it.
- [19:56]
Liberty Mutual Advertiser
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- [20:05]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this your first date? Oh no.
- [20:09]
Liberty Mutual Advertiser
We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
- [20:15]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
- [20:17]
Liberty Mutual Advertiser
Anyways, only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty.
- [20:21]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Well, hopefully we get this right. Let me keep going. So they find a bloody knife and an axe resting on the table next to him. And the men find a pair of what they call small seven band pistols. It looks to them like he has been shot through both temples. But these weapons are just laying there near him. And I think I might have mentioned this before, but the neighbors say they haven't heard any screams or nothing.
- [20:54]
Paul Holes
You said he was shot two times through both temples. Do we have a sense for the caliber in 1782? These could be black powder. In fact, they probably are. Right.
- [21:09]
Kate Winkler Dawson
These weapons are described as small. It was a seven barreled.52 caliber smoothbore flintlock that was adopted by the British Royal Navy for close quarters fighting. And they were saying like to clear the enemy decks when they're boarding and trying to take over an enemy vessel. So you know, these are small guns. And can you imagine a.52 caliber pistol being small? I don't even know. What would that be? No. Is it big?
- [21:42]
Paul Holes
That is, yeah. That's from a caliber standpoint. So you know, in essence. So looking at modern firearms, you know, common calibers are like the 38.38 or 0.38 inches. So almost 4/10 of an inch in diameter. The you get into the larger weapons like a.44 or 45, you know, that's 0.44, 0.45 inches. Now when you start talking about 50 caliber, that's larger than these very powerful, large caliber modern weapons. So this is a large projectile that is coming out of the gun. And you know, it looks like it's a flintlock gun that has a rotating drum. So in essence they could load each barrel, each like a cylinder from a revolver and then repeatedly pull the trigger to make it somewhat, I hate to use the term semiautomatic because that's not accurate. It's, in essence, it's like a, it's like a current day revolver just with a different type of firing mechanism. But this is not a small caliber. I don't know what kind of, you know, velocity these rounds would, would have, but most certainly, you know, this would be damaging. I can't recall, you know, like the, the caliber that was shot by John Wilkes Booth to kill Abraham Lincoln. It was a large caliber, but it was, it was a slower velocity round. So you don't have all the gases, you don't have the velocity of the round. And so this large caliber round stayed within Lincoln's head. That's kind of what I'm envisioning is happening to, to William. It's interesting, you know, I, because right off the bat, you know, the scenario is as we've had in other episodes. Are we dealing with a family annihilator, you know, murder, suicide. But I, you know, gives me pause when he shot with such a large caliber round in both temples, you know, so that's where, okay, we have to start taking a look and dig deeper to try to determine is that something possible that he could have done to himself, you know, or does that suggest that they separated him out, you know, and, and killed him downstairs and killed his family? And, and it is a true homicide.
- [24:05]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yeah. And what do you think about the fact that these weapons were just laid there? Would it be unusual for a killer to come in, do what he did, and then leave the weapons laying next to the person? I guess if everybody's dead, it doesn't really matter, right?
- [24:20]
Paul Holes
Well, it doesn't matter. And we're in the days where, you know, the offender is not thinking physical evidence, he's not thinking his fingerprints are being left on, you know, the axe or, you know, the knife, et cetera. So, you know, even in modern day, sometimes we see the weapons being left behind, but oftentimes the offender will take weapons with them because they don't want to leave physical evidence behind at the crime scene. That might identify them.
- [24:43]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Let's just talk about the family real quick because, you know, now you have everybody dead. And you mentioned the family annihilator part of it. But I think it's important to talk about what their background is. And I've already mentioned that they're having money trouble, which I think is, you know, another check mark towards family annihilator story. But there's a lot happening. So the Beatles were very well respected in this area of Connecticut. And, you know, as I had said, William had grown up outside of London. He lived in Barbados and he decided to move to the colonies to become a merchant. And he became a very wealthy merchant. He married Lydia and then they had the kids starting in 1771. So this is, you know, 11 years later they got married. You know, probably right before they had ansel, who was 11. So they opened a general store and he was considered as a businessman. William was considered to be extraordinarily good. I mean, there were people who were gouging, you know, the locals taking advantage of the fact that the war had wreaked havoc everywhere. And so they were taking advantage. And the locals said that William just never did that. He was always a really good person. He was a very affectionate family man. And they threw a party the night before. So the night of the 10th. So the house was filled with a lot of luxuries. I mean, it's a big house, it's a nice house. And they had silver plates and, you know, people noticed that there was a really nice watch laying there. So there are a lot of things laying around that had not been bought recently that he had clearly bought before everything went to hell with the war. So that night, people were there going in. He had a stock cellar. I mean, he had, you know, they were admiring his livestock. He had horses and fowls and he had pigs. And people were there until about 9:00' clock that night. And when these two men report the next morning to the house, it's probably in the 6am range. There is a lot of opportunity for somebody to come in and see how much stuff is there. But does this feel like a robbery? There's no one there to say right now what is missing and what isn't. What does it seem like the motivation is in this case? Just at first blush?
- [27:11]
Paul Holes
Well, at first blush, I think the significant aspects are all the females that were killed have their faces covered or the face or their bodies covered. So there is something significant about the females in this house to the offender. This does not seem to be a behavior that somebody who is financially motivated is going to take the time to do. Not to say that it's impossible, just generally financially motivated offenders, if they resort to homicide, that's to eliminate witnesses. They want to get in, get out, and have the loot with them. So to take the time to position the girls bodies on the floor, cover the girl's bodies, put the handkerchief on Lydia's face, suggests to me that there's an interpersonal aspect between the offender and the females in the family. So I'm thinking that the family is killed more as an execution than a different type of motive. And it gets down to, are we dealing with a murder suicide with William? Are we dealing with an outside offender that has some sort of connection to the females? And it may be as simple as being ashamed that he took the lives of the women in the house and is more accepting of killing the males and not showing this almost a sense of remorse to the males that are killed. One of the things I wanted to ask earlier is there's a reason why the two men went to do a welfare check at 6 o' clock in the morning. There must have been an observation that was of concern. And you know, during this time frame, it's not like you call the local police and say, hey, you know, there's a funny smell at my neighbor's house and I haven't seen him for a few days, you know, so there has to be a clue in terms of how they got information and what that information was for. The reason to actually go in and check on the family. And maybe that stemmed from that party the night before.
- [29:32]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yep. Well, let's go back, because when we have a neighbor who comes, several neighbors who come, because now they see activity in the house and people are out, you know, doing their thing on their property that early in the morning, they say to Dr. Farnsworth and to Stephen Mitchell, why are you here? And they say that the housemaid showed up at Dr. Farnsworth's house and hands him a note and the notice from William. And William had told the housemaid, Lydia is very sick and I need you to send a note to Dr. Farnsworth. So she hands this note, and it's definitely from William. And he says, myself and family will enter into a much happier state before you are done reading this.
- [30:28]
Paul Holes
So the family annihilator once again.
- [30:31]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yeah.
- [30:31]
Paul Holes
Do you have. I mean, everything is obviously lining up with murder suicide, but do you have autopsy results for William? You know, I would just want to verify, you know, because it is. It is unusual to see, you know, shots and suicide to both temples, but it's not impossible. You know, we have suicides where, you know, the person is. Shoots themselves multiple times in the head and still doesn't die. So.
- [31:01]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yeah, let me tell you, this is good information for you too. Now this is just the observations from Dr. Farnsworth and from Stephen Mitchell. So what they say is when they had come downstairs and they found him sitting, so I'll remind you, and then maybe this will help. He's sitting nearly erect at the hearth at the corner of the fireplace, supported against the front of a Windsor chair. Okay. And then the weapons, blah, blah. On the, on the ground, Farnsworth says he finds a pair of small seven band pistols. What Farnsworth thinks happened is that William was resting his elbows on the Windsor chair's arms, and that's how he was able to shoot himself in both temples at the same time.
- [31:50]
Paul Holes
So in essence, he's doing this. He has two guns, right? And he simultaneously pulls the trigger. And then that would account, you know, for that. I haven't seen that before, but that's most certainly something that's very possible.
- [32:09]
Liberty Mutual Advertiser
And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual, even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.
- [32:19]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date? Oh, no.
- [32:23]
Liberty Mutual Advertiser
We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
- [32:29]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league anyways.
- [32:31]
Liberty Mutual Advertiser
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty.
- [32:35]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. So I know that this is probably a confusing episode so far for you. Like we're halfway through. Why are we, you know, talking about this? What's unique about this scenario is that William wrote about this a lot before this happens. And he kind of lays out. They find his diary, journal and his will, and he kind of lays out what's happening with him throughout this, which is really interesting. And so this feels like, to me, you know, when we talked about the St. Alban street murders, which we know we're done with an ax, the whole family and the patriarch of the family is sitting in a totally different room downstairs with his head cut off and there's a photo of his dead child laying there. But we didn't have a definitive answer, and people still don't and never will about whether or not we think. Think Benny Evangelist, whether he was responsible or not this in a weird way. And you. And I think that he probably was or he got somebody to do this. And we know that Benny was part of sort of the leader of a cult. And, you know, he had some specific beliefs. In some ways, this feels like the end of that story. Like not an explanation, but for maybe what could have occurred at St. Aubin. But just kind of going into that mindset. And I think it'll probably conjure up some things for you that will remind you of cases that you've either read about or have been involved with. Because I've just never seen this detailed of a, like, thought process for somebody. And it doesn't to me mean putting too much attention on it. He clearly had some pretty big issues happening. But it to me is sort of like what that. What that idea was and how he. How he was trying to rationalize things. And I actually really thought the diary was interesting.
- [34:33]
Paul Holes
Well, yeah, I think that will be very interesting because I want to try to correlate his thought process with what he did at the crime scene. You know, oftentimes, you know, with suicide, the person will leave a suicide note and maybe address some of the issues they had were struggling with. Oftentimes there is no note, you know, and I can think of one case where an anesthesiologist who worked for a very prestigious hospital in the Bay Area went through the house and turned all the pictures of his wife down. You know, he ultimately uses his own chemical cocktail to take his own life and is laying there in bed with this huge apparatus that he could just, you know, plunge the. The drugs into him. But his behavior of taking the time to turn the photos down of his wife speaks volumes. Now, we don't know exactly what's going on, you know, but that's where you know, paying attention to those. Those behaviors. And again, whether it be homicide, suicide, the.
- [35:40]
Kate Winkler Dawson
The.
- [35:41]
Paul Holes
What does the offender or the victim do that is unnecessary to commit the act? And so that's where now, you know, hearing about William, you know, from his diary, that's gold from my perspective, to help me get a better understanding of the psychology of William.
- [35:59]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Well, let's get into it. So when the housemaid delivered this note to Dr. Weatherford, she also was addressing two friends of his. And one was Stephen Mitchell who came. And the other person that he was addressing this to was a man who just thought he's being silly. Like, I mean, he's being overly dramatic with this. You know, we will be moving on from life sort of thing. And so there Is a. It's a Colonel John Chester. He just doesn't come. He is not going to get alarmed by this when he sees this note. But one of the friends doesn't show up. And it's just Stephen MITCHELL and it's Dr. Farnsworth. And once they've seen all of the victims, they look in the kitchen and on the table there is a pack of things, and one is William's will and one is a pack of letters addressed to two of his close friends. And then the diary. And this is where some people might have heard this story because the diary was like I said it was. It was fairly in depth. So let's get into it and then, you know, I'll just stop and see what your reaction is. And again, like if, like what you were just saying before. If there's an example, more modern example of this, you can tell me. So he had become very bitter that the American Revolutionary War had ruined his family. And he felt like he was a stand up person, like he was not ripping off his neighbors, he was a good father, he was a good provider, and that he was not a profiteer. And he says in here, if a man who has once lived well, meant well and done well, falls by unavoidable accident into poverty and then submits to be laughed at, despised and trampled on by a set of wretches as far below him as the moon is below the sun, I say if such a man submits, he must become meaner than meanness itself. So what does that say to you?
- [38:09]
Paul Holes
Well, there is something. You know, of course, the, the loss of the quality of life due to the change in the financial status appears to be bugging him. But there seems to be something that he's very bitter about. There's people in his life that he's very bitter about. Like they shouldn't be above me, you know, they're making my life miserable. So who, who is that?
- [38:29]
Kate Winkler Dawson
I don't have any information on that. Maybe it'll pop up in a little bit. But I also wonder if it's a little paranoia of people talking around him because then he has a party that he can't afford the night before he does this.
- [38:45]
Paul Holes
But he doesn't have to worry about affording it because if he has debt to throw the party, nobody's going to be around to pay that debt. He knew he's going to be taking his family that night.
- [38:57]
Kate Winkler Dawson
And it's a very, I would say fairly sizable house. And they said it was just packed to the gills. So he is having a big party. Incidentally, the person who wrote the dissertation on this case believes, and I don't know what he cited for this, but he believes that William likely gave Lydia and the children opiates that night at the dinner party, the huge party they were having, so that they would go to sleep and sort of be knocked out when all of this happens. That's a theory that wouldn't surprise me either way. I mean, what about you?
- [39:35]
Paul Holes
No, I, I could see that happening and it wouldn't just be the. I could see it would be, you know, his wife and all his kids, you know, including the 11 year old boy, you know, and that makes, I would say that there's two primary reasons he, William, would do that to his family from a, you know, a sedation standpoint. One is that they're completely oblivious of what's happening to them. And so in many ways in his mind it's, it's reducing their potential suffering, but it also is making it much easier for him to kill everybody in the house. You know, you have four kids that are in the same room and if he's just now, you know, trying to go down the line and hit each one in the head with an axe, if that's what he does initially, some of the kids could wake up, they could be screaming. And now he's got, you know, a little more of a challenge on his hands.
- [40:31]
Kate Winkler Dawson
And I want to say this, this is obviously very personal to him because he sends the housemaid away with this note. So he is not killing her, he is killing his family. So it'll be, you know, for, for me, when I think of the family annihilator, sometimes it's somebody like Chris Watts who has a secret life and he's scared of losing everything. And then sometimes it is sort of a John List type person who has a religious fanaticism about them. But there's probably many other options than that.
- [41:07]
Paul Holes
Sure. And with William, my guess is it's more the religious. In some ways. It's my wife and kids were going to be in heaven, they'll be in a better place and where we are at now on earth.
- [41:22]
Kate Winkler Dawson
So now we know just that first thought from him that he is very bitter and he has given himself permission to rain hell on whoever kind of gets in his way and just feels like he has made sacrifices that other people haven't had to make because of the war. And look what's happened. They're going to be destitute at any moment. That's what he feels okay. So although two of the girls, Lydia and Mary, had been baptized, this is turning into a crisis of faith for William, which is what you had suspected at some point in the late 1770s. And when this happens in 1782, he denounces Christianity and he becomes what is called a proper deist. So I didn't know very much about deists, and hopefully I don't get this wrong. He has a twist on it, I'll tell you. So the deists embrace the idea of what they called a watchmaker God. I have never heard that phrase before, that God was the one who established the natural laws according to which, you know, all events unfold. But that this is not a God who intervenes in things. He's not going to save somebody's life. He's not going to, you know, prevent your crops from being eaten by locusts or something like that. Now, what William says, he starts to believe is that that means there is no such thing as sin because there is no God intervening. And that means that he has no moral responsibility for actions as is he believes all humans have no moral responsibility for their actions. And then he says, without the fear of hellfire, he is starting to wonder if he and his family would be better off dead. That if his transformation into their murderer had in fact already been determined by God's natural law. So that is where he stands. What do you think about that? I mean, he's giving himself full permission to do whatever he wants, it sounds like.
- [43:30]
Paul Holes
Well, in some ways, yeah. He's adopting a mindset that in essence gives him permission to move on from this life. I'm not hearing that. He is thinking of we'll be reincarnated. You know, I've got a case where that was the person who died. That was their primary hope, is they'd be reincarnated in this evil spirit that was inside of the person, wouldn't follow them to the next life. I'm not hearing that from William. I'm hearing him. He is so miserable. Having come from prosperity and losing it all to now, he is not happy with his quality of life. And he's coming up with a permutation on a religious faith that gives him permission to move on from this life and to take his entire family with him. In some ways, it's just kind of convenient that he decides, well, this is what I believe.
- [44:33]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Right, exactly. And so that's what I want to know. How reliable of a source William's diaries are.
- [44:39]
Paul Holes
Well, it just dawned on me is that he has his diary, his will and everything else in plain view on the kitchen table. If I remember right, he knew and he wanted his diary to be read. And so if he's in the planning stages of taking out his, his family, he's writing and knowing that those writings are going to be seen by people close to him. Right. And so in some ways this is now a form of messaging to his friends. So that in other way he's minimizing the atrocity that he's committed because he's basically doing it because he's expressing, I have this faith that gives me permission to do this. So I think he's been planning this for a long time.
- [45:32]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Sending the message also, I think, to people that maybe not just circumstances, but people we don't know who have driven him to this point. I mean, I've read a lot of cases where people are leaving audiotapes or videotapes or notes or something that are really saying you are asking for this. This is the horror scene you're walking into because of the society that everybody but me helped create. I don't know if that's true or not.
- [46:03]
Paul Holes
You know, it's something that you see with, with these types of cases. I can think of a case that was a horrific case for me to go into with 15 year old girl whose father came up to her and shot her in the head with a 357, stepped out into the hallway and then killed himself. And as I'm walking into the house, initially on the TV in the family room was a VHS tape and a urine jar, you know, like for, for drug testing. Well, on the VHS tape, dad left a message why he was going to kill himself and why he had to take his daughter's life with him because he couldn't imagine her living in this evil world. And there's that religious fanaticism that ultimately took the 15 year old girl's life. Just tragic case. But he's leaving that message. Just like William, he is leaving a message and he's trying to, you know, message, this is why I'm doing this atrocity.
- [47:00]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Well, listen to this because again, this is the mind process I have just not read about. And for it to come from somebody from 1782 is really enlightening to me. So he says that in the months leading up to the murders he began sleeping with an axe. And he had been planning this for months. After years of struggling with his conscience about this because he loves his family, he came to believe that God himself, he says, prompts and directs me to kill. And then Lydia Starts having nightmares. And this is where I want to know if we think that William has a reason to lie about any of this at this point, because he's going to describe some of Lydia's nightmares, which sound awful if it's true, but he's the source.
- [47:49]
Paul Holes
I still think a lot of what William is messaging right there is to minimize, you know, he's, you know, and it's interesting to me. It's. He's now starting to sleep with an ax. Is this part of, in some ways conditioning Lydia to be accepting that he's got an ax right next to him, that that's just normal, you know. And I'd like to know what William's justification was to have an ax versus, well, why not during that era? Why not a musket hanging, you know, by the door or by, you know, mounted by the door? So, you know, it's an unusual thing to sleep with. I don't know. William is setting this up and is spending a lot of time to get up to this night where he takes his family out.
- [48:35]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yep. In his diaries, he says that in the months leading up to the murder, Lydia starts having these nightmares. I alluded to in the months leading up to her murder. And on November 17, which is about a month before it happened, she dreamt that William had written about her on blood spotted paper. She said she saw blood gurgling from different parts of a man's body. The man seemed to her past recovery, so he was, you know, going to die. And then a few weeks after that, she dreamt that three of their girls were dead and frozen, quote, unquote. And then a few nights later, Lydia said that she felt like she was suddenly seized and liable to great punishment, but afterwards got free and was happy. So you're saying that he's motivated to either make this up or alter this or. At what point do we just say, well, I mean, why would he lie Again?
- [49:38]
Paul Holes
You know, I don't buy this for a second. This is, you know, the context is this is in William's diary. He's the one saying Lydia told him these dreams. Right. And it's like, no, he is the one that's basically putting words in Lydia's mouth, so to speak, because he already understands what's going to be happening, you know, downstream. He is building up to that point, you know, is this to somehow put some focus on Lydia, that one of the reasons William ends up taking her life is because she is now having the. These types of dreams? You know, and that first dream almost sounded like that could be William that she's seeing gurgling like, oh, no, I'm in fear for my own life. And so he's kind of shifting blame, you know, from himself to my wife. Lydia is having these horrific dreams, which includes possibly me being dead in one of the dreams, the girls being dead in another dream. And. And to me, it's just like. No, he's. He is. Is creating that just for effect.
- [50:48]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Well, let's keep going. Because Lydia, he says, almost didn't die. So he says November 7th. So a few weeks before these two pivotal dreams, she went on a short trip to Fairfield. And William, he says, believes that this is a sign from God, that God intended her to live because he was planning to murder them on December 18th before Lydia was going to return. That was the plan. So when Lydia comes back 10 days early, William says he realized that God, in fact wanted her to go with us, is what he says. He reasoned that Lydia would be too distraught. I mean, how many times have we heard this over the centuries with these people? He said that she would be too distraught to find her family murdered and that it would therefore be more humane to kill her along with the rest of them. He says in the diary it would be unmerciful to leave her behind, to languish in misery and wretchesness, which must be the consequence of the surprising death of the rest of the family, since they had shared the frowns and smiles of fortune together. It would be cruelty to her to be divided from them in death. I mean, that is like Family Annihilator 101. To say something like that, I'm doing it. I'm doing it to help everybody, you know.
- [52:21]
Paul Holes
Well, you know, when I train law enforcement, just like when I mentioned earlier, when you see the offender do something that is unnecessary to commit the crime, pay attention to it. Also when you see contradiction, pay attention to that. Earlier in the diary, William is talking about how God doesn't intervene. Now he's talking about, oh, you know, Lydia going away. Well, God must have wanted her to also be taken, you know, so he altered his plan. He was going to kill the family that night. But then Lydia is out of town and he's trying to kind of point the finger at God who supposedly doesn't intervene, but now he's intervening, meaning that's contradiction in his religious belief structure. This just tells me he's making all of this up. This diary is a form of what I would say is written staging. He is trying to justify why he killed his family and have the justification be more acceptable to the people who are reading this diary. It's a form of minimization.
- [53:31]
Kate Winkler Dawson
So on the night of the 18th, when Lydia comes back and he says, okay, this is meant to be, he says, I mean, to close the eyes of six persons. That's what he wrote on that night in his diary. After a dinner of oysters, he sends the young housemaid out on an errand. And you know, because he didn't think she should be involved with this, but she comes back too early. And so he doesn't do it. Then he has a rehearsal is kind of what he's describing. This is on the morning of December 6th. This is not the day that it happens. He rehearses the murders. He says that he crept into the kids room and stood over their bodies with an axe and a large carving knife. He said he felt no remorse at the thought of their execution. And then he says in the diary, I really believe that the true God supports me. I shall perform it as deliberately and as steadily as I would go to supper or to bed.
- [54:31]
Paul Holes
In some ways, I'm questioning his mental health.
- [54:35]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yeah, I would say so. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
- [54:38]
Paul Holes
And Most certainly he's 52. That seems to be pretty old for some sort of schizophrenia to develop. But it'd be interesting to get a forensic psychiatrist to kind of read this diary and interpret the symptoms that are being demonstrated by will him. The fact that he, you know, he's rehearsing. You know, this is. Imagine if this was a. An actual, let's say a chargeable offense, murder. Right? Now, all this pre planning, this is what we call malice, a forethought. You know, he's taking steps so he can be, you know, smooth when he actually does commit. You know, he's. He's practiced to be. So now it goes very well for him when he does go and kill his family, you know, but the lack of even having any remorse of standing over his kids holding an axe and a knife, it's just like, wow, you know, there is something really off inside of William.
- [55:43]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yep. A few days later, after the rehearsal, what he called it, he took his two pistols to a gunsmith to be cleaned and oiled. And the day before the murders, he gets his knife sharpened, the carving knife that we talked about. And then the murders happen. I mean, by the end of it, that's when he is, you know, he's had basically, I think the night before had written, this is when it's going to happen. And it did. His friends are completely appalled by the diary entries. And they really are specifically appalled that he renounced God, Christian God. So a mob comes later that day. It's like revolutionary soldiers and sailors and farmers and you know, everybody that you could think of in this community, they get outside of the house, they come to the outside of the house and they examine the body. There's a 12 man coroner's jury, I suppose, that examines the body and within 24 hours of this inquest, they say, of course it's murder. They find William guilty and they find him sane. So this is an interesting part of what happens both in America and England, because I've written about this where dead people are still put on trial and convicted. So I mean, and this has happened in another case that I'm writing about right now where they are outraged and it's an eye for an eye. And so this mob demands that his body be impaled on a stake. And this is at a crossroads, which I am writing about this case right now, where somebody is buried at a crossroads so that if their spirit rises, it won't know which direction to go in. And that's why they're at a crossroads. So in the, late in the afternoon, they deny him a Christian burial. Of course, they toss the corpse out the window, bind a bloody knife to its chest, and they lay the body on a horse drawn sled and turn the horse loose so it can drag the corpse around town. Then they dig a hole near the bank of the Connecticut river, close to the ferry and they tumble his body into a hole like they said, like the carcass of a beast. And then you have people who come to this hole and they exhume the body a few days later and they move it to a more obscure spot. But then children discover the grave. It's reburied again in a secret location. A year later, this area floods. His bones wash up and morbid New Englanders, you know, recover the bones and break them into shards and keep them or sell them as souvenirs.
- [58:43]
Paul Holes
That's just crazy.
- [58:45]
Kate Winkler Dawson
I mean, you know, I mean, I know that people buy stuff online that I think is really odd, you know, souvenirs of serial killers. But this was definitely next level. We've, we've definitely, I've told stories about like quote unquote, murder houses where people will take the, take the bricks or they will steal evidence. But I think the bones, that was a first for me. So the, the crime and the brutality of this whole thing, you know, comes down to a cautionary tale as a lot of these Old stories like to push forward and kind of drag through the ages that this is what. The reason this happened is that William Beedle abandoned God and this is what will happen to you. This was a scary tale to tell. There are poems that retell the story. And you know, at the end, his estate was worthless. It was left to his mother in law. It was worthless. And you know, they take Lydia and the kids and they bury them at a cemetery in the town, right next to the most elite members of this town. So, you know, his whole kind of the beginning of this was everything's been taken away from me. He murders his family and then they end up, you know, in this incredible cemetery out of, you know, the generosity of the people there. So there's so much to this story.
- [60:18]
Paul Holes
Yeah. That moral of the story is because William abandoned God, you know, it's criminal intent at its utmost. He's spending months planning this. His friends are completely oblivious to what William's intent is going to be as William is writing diaries and putting all the mechanisms in motion in order to be able to carry this out. So, you know, from my perspective, he's just like the worst of the worst types of murderers. And his religious side, it doesn't matter. He probably would have done this even if he had stayed within the belief structure of Christianity.
- [61:07]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yeah. And I mean, I think the irony, of course, is that he valued reputation more than anything. And then look what happens. He thinks putting this message out, out there, controlling the narrative when Lydia and the kids can't, is going to frame him in a way that he doesn't intend. Instead, it's a. You renounced God and you're the perfect example of why people need to go to church and, you know, all of that. So I think that the lesson learned was not what William Beedle intended to be learned. Whether we think that lesson's right or wrong, I just. This was not his intention. So. So again, I think the diary I've read through, actually as much as I could find. And it's interesting just the way that his mind works. But also we don't believe a lot of it. We really can believe. It's a lot of manipulation.
- [61:55]
Paul Holes
Absolutely. He's minimizing. He wants people to think better of him after killing his family and after he's dead and it kind of backfired on him.
- [62:05]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yep. So anytime people talk about like a Chris Watts or somebody like that who, you know, that it feels like this is a first. I can't even believe this happened. This happens all the way through History. This is the same person as many other family annihilators who I've written about. Eugene Burt. I mean, this is like over and over again, what happens. So less forensics than usual, but no forensics, frankly. Maybe a little gun positioning, but that's it. But I know you like the profiling stuff too, so for sure, you know,
- [62:41]
Paul Holes
and you know, the crime scene reconstruction with even though limited information that still provides insight. You know, you got the, as you mentioned, the criminal profiling. Why is the offender covering the girls and mom's face and not the boy? We don't have an answer to that. But obviously before I knew about William taking his own life, it was like. Like this is usually an interpersonal crime. And that's exactly what it turned out to be.
- [63:09]
Kate Winkler Dawson
So that's nice because when I lie to you about the information we have, you can then turn around and justify it on my behalf. I appreciate that. Thank you.
- [63:20]
Paul Holes
Okay. Yeah. You never lie, Kate. You never mislead me.
- [63:23]
Kate Winkler Dawson
No. You notice I don't lie. I either omit things or I move them around a lot.
- [63:31]
Paul Holes
Yes, yes.
- [63:33]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Every time I see. Sometimes there's like, well, you know, I'll have this great prep document because our researchers are amazing. And sometimes I'll go, I'm going to move this. I'm going to move just this little bit around a little bit.
- [63:43]
Paul Holes
Got to keep the suspense going. That's a good storyteller.
- [63:46]
Kate Winkler Dawson
You got it. Okay. Another good story next week.
- [63:49]
Paul Holes
Awesome. Looking forward to it.
- [63:55]
Kate Winkler Dawson
This has been an exactly right production.
- [63:58]
Paul Holes
For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com buriedbones sources.
- [64:04]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi, research
- [64:07]
Paul Holes
by Alison Trouble and Kate Winkler Dawson.
- [64:09]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
- [64:12]
Paul Holes
Our theme song is by Tom Breivogel.
- [64:15]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac, executive
- [64:17]
Paul Holes
produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.
- [64:21]
Kate Winkler Dawson
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram, Instagram and Facebook.
- [64:25]
Paul Holes
BuriedBonesPod, Kate's most recent book, all that is a Gilded Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind, is available now.
- [64:33]
Kate Winkler Dawson
And Paul's best selling memoir, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.
- [64:40]
Paul Holes
Listen to Barry bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.