The House Next Door | 1

Summary

Ghost Story: Episode 1 - The House Next Door Hosted by Tristan Redman | Released on October 23, 2023

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Introduction to the Mystery

00:38 – 02:08

"Ghost Story," a compelling blend of ghostly apparitions, murder mystery, and family drama, is helmed by Tristan Redman, a seasoned journalist with a skeptical view of the supernatural. The story begins with Tristan recounting his unsettling teenage years spent in an old Victorian house on Queens Road, London. As a 16-year-old, he experienced inexplicable occurrences in his bedroom—objects moving on their own, flickering lights, and an eerie coldness that pervaded the house.

"When I go to bed, it'd be on the mantelpiece, and then in the morning I'd find it on the desk. I'd put it back, and the next morning I'd find it somewhere else." (01:12)

Despite these strange happenings, Tristan dismissed them as typical teenage anxieties until a neighbor’s account reignited his curiosity.

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The Neighbor's Revelation

02:08 – 05:18

Years after moving out, Charles Pinellitz, an old neighbor, approached Tristan with information about the same house on Queens Road. Charles recounted a conversation with the house's current occupant—a mother whose daughter reported sightings of a faceless woman haunting the top floor.

"You now have three completely unconnected families who have had some sort of strange, inexplicable experience in the top floor of that house." (05:34)

This revelation troubled Tristan, especially when coupled with another unsettling coincidence: Tristan's wife, Kate Redman's great grandmother, Naomi Dancy, was brutally murdered in the house next door in 1937.

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Unveiling the Family Connection

05:18 – 12:33

Tristan delves into his wife's illustrious family history, uncovering a lineage marked by prominence and tragedy. Kate introduces her family's patriarch, Jonathan Dancy, a renowned philosopher known for his views on moral particularism.

"She was very close to her grandfather, so my folks asked if he'd join us." (06:16)

The family tree includes Hugh Dancy, a Hollywood actor, and other notable members who have made significant impacts in various fields. However, beneath this veneer of success lies the haunting legacy of Naomi Dancy's murder.

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The Murder of Naomi Dancy

12:33 – 20:42

Jonathan Dancy recounts the tragic event: In November 1937, Naomi Dancy, a pioneering female doctor, was murdered by her brother Morris Tribe in their home. The night was marked by violence and betrayal, as Morris, suffering from severe wartime trauma, attacked Naomi and later took his own life.

"Naomi was at home and suddenly Morris came into the room and shot her in both eyes." (14:07)

The police report highlighted Morris's deteriorating mental state and hinted at unanswered questions. Years later, an archivist's blog post suggested alternative theories, implicating Jonathan himself in the murders—a claim that sends shockwaves through the family.

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Investigating the Past

20:42 – 36:57

Determined to uncover the truth, Tristan teams up with his wife Kate and retired detective Jackie Moulton to sift through the original police files. Jackie, drawing from her nearly 30-year career, provides expert analysis of the case files.

"At this point, some anonymous letters had started to come in, urging the cops to look into the husband." (31:04)

These letters cast doubt on the initial verdict, suggesting that Jonathan might have had motives previously unexplored. As Tristan connects the dots between the haunting experiences in his childhood home and the unresolved murder, the lines between past and present blur.

"Did your great grandfather get away with murder? Is your great grandmother the faceless woman haunting my teenage bedroom?" (34:05)

The investigation reveals a tangled web of family secrets, suppressed truths, and possible supernatural influences that challenge Tristan's skepticism.

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Linking Ghosts to Unsolved Crimes

36:57 – End

The episode culminates in Tristan grappling with the unsettling possibility that the ghostly presence in his former bedroom might be connected to Naomi's unresolved murder. The intertwining of paranormal phenomena and historical crime sets the stage for deeper exploration in future episodes.

"I don't actually believe Kate's great grandmother was there in the room with us that night, manipulating us for our own purposes. I'm not totally nuts, but has the thought crossed my mind since I started this project? Yes." (33:23)

As Tristan continues his quest for answers, he navigates familial loyalties, ethical dilemmas, and the eerie whispers of the past, inviting listeners to join him in unraveling a century-old mystery.

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Notable Quotes

• Tristan Redman [01:12]: "When I go to bed, it'd be on the mantelpiece, and then in the morning I'd find it on the desk. I'd put it back, and the next morning I'd find it somewhere else."

• Charles Pinellitz [05:34]: "You now have three completely unconnected families who have had some sort of strange, inexplicable experience in the top floor of that house."

• Kate Redman [34:10]: "It was totally wacko."

• Jackie Moulton [31:09]: "The final documents in the file are two anonymous letters sent to the police by members of the public in the aftermath of the murder."

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Conclusion

"The House Next Door" sets the foundation for a riveting investigation that weaves together personal experiences, historical tragedies, and the enduring mysteries that linger within family legacies. As Tristan Redman delves deeper, listeners are left pondering the thin veil between the living and the dead, and whether some questions are best left unanswered—or perhaps, just waiting to be solved.

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For more gripping stories and to continue following Tristan's investigation, subscribe to "Ghost Story" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the Wondry app.

Transcript

[Tristan Redman]

Winner of Best Documentary podcast at the 2024Ambies Best True Crime British Podcast Awards 2024 nominee and Apple podcast series Essential Wondry plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Ghost Story exclusively and ad free. Start your free trial on the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts or Spot I want to tell you a story. Well, it's really three stories all wrapped around each other. It's a ghost story, it's a murder mystery, and it's a family drama, by.

[Kate Redman]

Which I mean it's about my wife's family, her family's history. And there's a chance they'll disown me for doing this.

[Jackie Moulton]

If you come out with a piece that says he was a murderer, then I will be sorry that we ever said we would contribute to it.

[Kate Redman]

But before we get into any of that, let's start at the beginning, with the thing that set all of this in motion.

[Tristan Redman]

When I was 16, back in the 90s, my family moved to an old Victorian house in London on a street called Queens Road. I slept in a bedroom tucked into the creaky top floor, and weird things would happen up there. I'd wake up and objects would have moved across the room, specifically this one vase. When I go to bed, it'd be on the mantelpiece, and then in the morning I'd find it on the desk. I'd put it back, and the next morning I'd find it somewhere else. Lights would flash on and off on their own, and I'd get this uncomfortable, cold feeling whenever I was alone in the house.

[Kate Redman]

It freaked me out at the time, but the truth is, I didn't really think much of it. I was a teenager. I had other things on my mind. Every now and then I'd ask my sister if she was messing with me, but she always swore she wasn't.

[Tristan Redman]

I grew up, left home, and became a journalist for Al Jazeera. I cover things like French labor strikes and the war in Ukraine. I don't believe in ghosts. So when my family moved out of the house on Queens Road, I completely forgot about the weird stuff that happened in there.

[Kate Redman]

Until, that is. A few years ago, a man reached out, an old neighbor of ours, with a story about that very room.

[Charles Pinellitz]

I mean, it's quite a story.

[Tristan Redman]

His name is Charles Pinellitz, and he knows everything about this neighborhood. You could say he's a bit of.

[Kate Redman]

A gossip, but you probably shouldn't.

[Charles Pinellitz]

Slanderous gives completely the wrong impression.

[Tristan Redman]

Anyway, this is what he told me. Charles was walking around my old neighborhood one day, going Door to door, collecting donations for the local museum. I was there rattling a tin and definitely not gossiping.

[Charles Pinellitz]

Well, I mean, it was just so and so still there. And so and so has moved out and they've had a divorce and all that sort of business.

[Tristan Redman]

Eventually, he gets to my old house and knocks on the door. A woman answers. She's the mother of the house. After chatting for a bit, she invites him inside and she tells him a story unlike anything he's ever heard before.

[Charles Pinellitz]

The story goes, the American swans up with a hello.

[Tristan Redman]

And here's what she tells him. One day, the woman is at home in my old house. She looks out of the window and she sees a man standing on the driveway.

[Charles Pinellitz]

So the mother of the house opens the door.

[Tristan Redman]

It's someone who used to live in the house, an American man who'd lived there with his wife and two children. The American says to her, I'm so sorry to bother you, but I just have to know, do you still have.

[Charles Pinellitz]

That ghost in the top bedroom? Straight like that?

[Tristan Redman]

What? The American man proceeds to tell her the things his family experienced on the top floor. It makes her go completely white because this isn't the first time she's heard of something going on up there. She just never believed it before this.

[Charles Pinellitz]

Struck a chord, since the daughter had always insisted that there was a ghost in her bedroom, which would manifest itself on occasions and sit on her bed.

[Tristan Redman]

The woman's daughter, starting when she was around 10, began complaining about a ghost visiting her room at night. Specifically the ghost of a faceless woman.

[Charles Pinellitz]

She said to me, oh, yes, my daughter told me about some goings on, some sort of faceless woman who comes and sits on my bed. And she said, I always batted them away on the basis that we don't believe in that sort of thing. So I rang your father and he said, that was Tristan's room. So I imagine he phoned you and the cat was out of the bag.

[Kate Redman]

I promise you, and I hope you believe me, that I don't normally find myself having conversations like this or even.

[Tristan Redman]

Entertaining these sorts of ideas. But it's kind of weird, right?

[Charles Pinellitz]

You now have three completely unconnected families who have had some sort of strange, inexplicable experience in the top floor of that house. I think it's wonderful.

[Kate Redman]

It was definitely intriguing, but it probably wouldn't have been anything more than a story I'd tell my friends in the pub, except I couldn't stop thinking about this faceless woman. And that's because there's another coincidence. Something I hadn't thought about in years.

[Kate Dancy]

So I guess Tristan and I just started going out and they invited my parents around to his house to come and say hi.

[Kate Redman]

I first learned about it when my wife Kate and I had just started dating about 20 years ago. My family still lived in the house on Queens Road, the one with the supposed ghost. And Kate was staying with us.

[Kate Dancy]

And my granddad was in London, so they invited him over, too.

[Tristan Redman]

She was very close to her grandfather, so my folks asked if he'd join us.

[Kate Dancy]

So Grandad arrived. He's got nice rosy cheeks, Granddad. Like all the men in my family, he wore a beret every day to keep his bald head warm. And then my granddad walked into the house, and before he said anything else, he said, my mother was murdered in the house next door. And I don't think we had ever put two and two together between where Tris lived and this big murder that happened in the family.

[Tristan Redman]

To be clear, I'd never heard about this murder before. In fact, Kate didn't know a lot about it either, just that her great grandmother had been killed decades before.

[Kate Redman]

She had no idea that it happened here. Neither of us had any clue at the time that my new girlfriend's family had any connection to this neighborhood, let alone the house next door. But the details of the murder make the coincidence even stranger. Because just next door to my house, the house supposedly haunted by a faceless woman, Kate's great grandmother, was killed by two gunshots to the face.

[Tristan Redman]

From wandering Pineapple Street Studios, this is Ghost Story. I'm Tristan Redman. Episode 1 the House Next Door.

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[Tristan Redman]

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[Narrator]

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[Tristan Redman]

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[Narrator]

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[Tristan Redman]

On the latest episodes without the ads. We've now come to the murder story. But before I tell it, I want to tell you a bit about my wife's family, the Dansies. Because the murder didn't happen in my family, it happened in theirs. And the Dansies are a pretty impressive bunch. I'm going to take you through a tiny family tree. I'll start with the bald guy in the beret, or a beret to you Americans. He's my wife's grandfather. He was the one who announced that his mother had been murdered in the house next door. He was a well known headmaster of elite private schools in England, including the one Kate Middleton went to. Then there's his son, my father in law, Jonathan Dancy, who's also bald and wears a beret. He's a pretty famous philosopher. What if lying is ethical in this situation? What if certain actions aren't universally good or bad like Jonathan Dancy says, so much so that he's name dropped in an episode of the Good Place. Jonathan Dancy.

[Narrator]

Are you talking about moral particularism?

[Jackie Moulton]

We.

[Narrator]

We never even covered that.

[Tristan Redman]

And then there's his son, Hugh Dancy, my brother in law. First positions please. Roll the camera. That's him in the latest Downton Abbey movie. And action. I'm coming down the stairs, not expecting to find him there waiting for you. Hugh is Hollywood famous, he's not bald and frankly, he doesn't look great in a beret. He's been in a bunch of movies and TV shows, but Black Hawk Down, Hannibal, and my personal favorite, obviously Ella Enchanted. You're the first maiden I've met who.

[Charles Pinellitz]

Hasn'T swooned at the sight of me.

[Tristan Redman]

Then maybe I've done you some good. And then there's my wife, Kate. We met at university. These days she works for the United Nations. Before that she was a diplomat. And as if she couldn't be more impressive, she literally used to save children.

[Kate Redman]

For Save the children.

[Tristan Redman]

Let's go straight to the expert on.

[Jackie Moulton]

The un, Kate Redman.

[Tristan Redman]

Kate, what can you tell us about the decision?

[Kate Dancy]

So I work at UNESCO, which is one of the UN agencies. It works on education.

[Tristan Redman]

I'm not a Dancey, but I'm also pretty bald these days. And when I married Kate, the Danceys gave me a beret of my own so I could fit in.

[Kate Redman]

When you first meet the Dancees, they can be a bit intimidating, but they're also warm and funny. And after 20 years of hanging around them, they've become my family too. But in all that time, I hardly ever heard anyone talk about the murder. It wasn't a secret. But aside from that lunch with Kate's grandfather, it just never really came up in conversation until I started asking questions about it.

[Tristan Redman]

What story did your dad tell you when you were 18?

[Jonathan Dancy]

That his mother had been murdered?

[Tristan Redman]

Not until you were 18. This is my father in law. I call him Johnny. He's the Good place philosopher. He seems to be the only family member who was told about the murder on purpose.

[Kate Redman]

So he has the closest to the.

[Tristan Redman]

Official version of it.

[Jonathan Dancy]

He was driving me back from Oxford. I must have been an undergraduate there. And we were just going over the Ridgeway and he just started telling me this story. Perhaps he started off by saying something. I was younger than you when my mother died. And your grandmother didn't die a natural death. But I should tell you how it happened.

[Kate Redman]

The woman who was killed was Johnny's grandmother and my wife's great grandmother, named Naomi Dancy. The year was 1937, and Naomi was a pioneering doctor in London. She and her husband lived in the house on Queen's Road, just next door to where I grew up.

[Jonathan Dancy]

So my grandmother's brother was living in the house, Morris. He was sort of disturbed because he was being damaged in the war.

[Kate Redman]

Naomi's brother Morris, was struggling with shell shock after World War I. He'd come home with a piece of shrapnel in his brain, having lost an eye. I don't know where this detail originated from, but it would later be reported that Naomi had particularly beautiful eyes. And as Morris lost sight in his own, he developed a deep jealousy of them.

[Jonathan Dancy]

Anyhow, one night Naomi was in bed. She'd gone to bed early. And Morris came into the room and shot her in both eyes. And then he went into the upstairs loo and cut his throat. That's a story, really? Yeah, that's the story.

[Kate Redman]

This is why, when I learned about the faceless woman in my childhood bedroom, I thought about Naomi I wanted to know more about her and what happened that night.

[Tristan Redman]

Who was Naomi?

[Jonathan Dancy]

Well, that is a very good question. I know nothing.

[Kate Dancy]

I didn't even know her name until you started working on this.

[Tristan Redman]

Did you know anything else about her?

[Kate Dancy]

Nope.

[Tristan Redman]

Except no one seems to know much about her.

[Jonathan Dancy]

I mean, as far as the family goes, there is nothing.

[Kate Dancy]

Is it Naomi? Am I saying the name right?

[Tristan Redman]

And in fact, as the story has been passed down through the generations, it's become less about Naomi and more about the man who survived to tell the tale. The critical narrative part was feather jumped.

[Kate Redman]

Off the stairs, like to dodge a.

[Tristan Redman]

Bullet or something like this. Because there was someone else in the house that night. Naomi's husband, John Dancy, my wife's great grandfather, known in the family as Father. The way I've always told it was that Feyther not only switched off the lights, but also flung himself backwards down the stairs. The name Feyther is a sort of play on the word father. Father Feyther. Anyway, the story goes that the brother, Morris, tried to kill Feyther that night, too, but Feyther dodged the bullet and narrowly escaped. It was an action story. Great. Granddad had done, like, a really cool James jumping over the banisters, shooting out the light, do one of those rolls that commandos do. And then. And then shot the guy. What are you doing with your hands? I'm doing the guns, like.

[Kate Redman]

Well, like a gun slinger.

[Tristan Redman]

All details of Naomi have fallen away, and what remains is admiration for Feyther and his daring escape. Is that like. Did that make him a hero?

[Jackie Moulton]

Yes.

[Kate Redman]

And this makes some sense. Feyther has sort of an outsized influence on the family. They say it was Feyther who established an obsession with education that the Dancies retain to this day. Even outside of the family, his presence is larger than life. There's a BBC documentary about the guy. His portrait once hung in the Royal Academy of Arts. He's the family patriarch. And one of the reasons we're calling him father here is that there are so many John Dancys in this family. Is one with his name in every generation. Which brings us to the third story, the family drama. Because just two days after I heard from my old neighbor about the ghost in my teenage bedroom, my wife discovered something. Something that totally called into question this heroic image of father and the family's story of the murder.

[Tristan Redman]

Can you remember the story of how you ended up finding that article? Was it like a sort of Google wormhole you were basically in?

[Kate Dancy]

I go down so many Google wormholes.

[Jackie Moulton]

Yeah.

[Tristan Redman]

Kate's helping her dad with an obituary for her grandfather, the one that was headmaster at Kate Middleton School. She's poking around online to see what's out there, and she remembers him telling us about his mother's murder in the house next door.

[Kate Dancy]

And I looked up something like dancy murder Richmond, not expecting really to find anything, and I did. I came across this crazy article on the National Archives website, and I had no idea why it was there.

[Kate Redman]

It was written by an archivist who happened to stumble upon the file from Naomi's murder. Apparently, most murder files are kept in one building in London in the National Archives. And out of thousands of cases, this murder stood out to her. She found the police files so strange that she decided to write about it. She gives the broad strokes of the murder story, but then she raises some serious questions about what happened that night.

[Kate Dancy]

So I think it says murder, suicide or double murder, question mark. It was mind blowing for me because the article questioned who was the guilty party and suggested that potentially it was my great granddad and not the brother. And that was the first I'd considered the idea or even read any suggestion that the case was not sort of closed and clean and that the right guilty party had been found.

[Tristan Redman]

Kate forwards the article to her family.

[Kate Redman]

To see if this could be true.

[Tristan Redman]

And none of them had heard anything like it before. It was hard to tell how seriously to take the article, but at the very least, we now realized that there was a different version of the story floating around. And it was totally unlike the official Dancy family story.

[Jonathan Dancy]

I mean, obviously the question was, did father do it? Kill them both?

[Tristan Redman]

Kate's family decides this blog post is no big deal. Nothing to take seriously. Better to just keep moving and let it be. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. So I did some reporting, went back to the source, and got my hands on the original police file. Let's do it.

[Jackie Moulton]

Yeah, let's go.

[Tristan Redman]

Let's go.

[Jackie Moulton]

Let's do it.

[Tristan Redman]

And because I'm no murder detective, I called one up to help me understand it. Really anxious to hear what you make.

[Kate Redman]

Of all this, Jackie.

[Jackie Moulton]

Oh, I find the story fascinating. The hair stood on the back of my neck when I read it.

[Tristan Redman]

And once I started reading it, my little curiosity project took on much bigger proportions.

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[Tristan Redman]

So cute. Here on an Autumn Day in 2022, my producer colleague Annie Brown and I are standing outside a little cottage in a quaint village in Surrey, waiting to meet a retired senior police officer from Scotland Yard. I think we've the police file in your back. Yeah.

[Jackie Moulton]

Good morning.

[Kate Redman]

Jackie Moulton spent nearly 30 years in the job and became one of the only female detective chief inspectors at a time when men dominated these jobs. There's a hit TV show in the UK that's based on her called Prime Suspect. Helen Mirren plays Jackie.

[Jackie Moulton]

I was a career detective. That's all I ever wanted to but he was a detective. We dealt with murders, rapes, domestic violence. I was a hostage negotiator, fraud cases, the whole gambit of crime.

[Tristan Redman]

After my wife Kate found that article raising questions about who might have actually killed Naomi, I wanted to have an expert walk us through the original police file to help us understand it. Okay, can you explain to me what you're looking at?

[Jackie Moulton]

So in front of me I have the fire relating to the murder that was in the national archives. Well, it's the record of the crime and what happened. It's a storybook really. The narrative of the criminal incident witnessed from different points of view. In this case we have the most important statement from John Duncy.

[Tristan Redman]

By the way, I should say that in my wife's family there are a lot of people called John Dancy.

[Jackie Moulton]

So what should we call him? Dr. Nancy?

[Tristan Redman]

We call him. We call him in what he's called in a family, which is Feyther.

[Jackie Moulton]

Oh, I can't say that. I can't say that because there's no evidence.

[Kate Redman]

Sure.

[Tristan Redman]

But if you don't mind, I'll call him Feyther just because it's so confusing.

[Kate Redman]

For people listening to the story.

[Tristan Redman]

But if I don't, if I'm not consistent. But from you it's totally fine. We're gonna spend much more time with Jackie and Feyther's statement later. But for now I want to walk through the night of the murder from father's point of view. His account is the most detailed version of what happened that night as told to the cops directly after the murder.

[Jackie Moulton]

So this is a statement of John Horace Dantz, aged 46, a medical practitioner who saith, I am a medical practitioner and at the moment semi retired. My wife Naomi Dance, she was assistant medical officer of health at Hammersmith where she has worked for 16 years. We had three children.

[Tristan Redman]

The statement's rather long so we'll just be reading parts of it right now. In these first opening sentences, Feather is outlining the main characters in this story. We've got Feather himself, his wife Naomi Dancy and her brother Morris Tribe.

[Jackie Moulton]

Maurice tribe, aged 44, an army officer pensioned with severe head wounds and with loss of an eye was my brother in law.

[Tristan Redman]

Remember Morris Tribe came back from World War I with a piece of shrapnel lodged in his brain, Having lost an eye. Feather tells us that Morris mental health has been deteriorating. He's been drinking more and more and he's staying with the dancies on Queen's Road so they can look after him. And now let's pick up with the night of the murder. Father's statement starts the clock at around midnight. Naomi Dancy had arrived home late from a lecture she was giving across town. Father tells us what happens next.

[Jackie Moulton]

I sent my wife to bed and went and peeled an orange for her and Told her to go to sleep as she was tired and I would write to the children and get it off tonight. Then I went to my study on the first floor and started to type letters to the children.

[Kate Redman]

Just after midnight, with Naomi in bed, Feather settles in to write to his three kids at boarding school, sending them updates from home.

[Tristan Redman]

Maurice is also still awake.

[Jackie Moulton]

I could hear Morris, who was in the next room, moving about. I left my door a little ajar so that I could hear what he was doing.

[Kate Redman]

Father is listening for Morris's movements because he says he's already nervous about what Morris is capable of. He explained earlier in the statement that Morris has recently been threatening Naomi, even specifically threatening to shoot her eyes out.

[Jackie Moulton]

About 1:10am I gauged the time because I rang the ambulance up. 20 minutes afterwards. I heard him go to the lavatory and lock the door. And shortly afterwards I heard shots. I thought it was three. I went to the door and saw Morris advancing towards me. I said, Morris, what have you done? He was advancing towards me with the revolver in his hand pointed at my head. I tried to reason with him, but he kept coming towards me, saying nothing. I pretended to lean against the door and I realized he meant to shoot me. I switched the light out and dropped flat to the floor. He shot as I fell and the bullet whizzed by my ear and went through the back window. I laid quite still and pretended that I was hit. He then went into the lavatory and closed the door behind him.

[Kate Redman]

So Feather is lying on the floor of the landing pretending to be injured. His wife Naomi is in their bedroom to his right and his brother in law, Morris has just disappeared into the lavatory off the landing.

[Jackie Moulton]

I went to the lavatory door and tried to force it. I found it was locked from inside and I called on him to come out and give me the gun. He said, stand away from those panels or I'll shoot you like a dog.

[Kate Redman]

I should warn you, the last section of his statement gets pretty graphic.

[Jackie Moulton]

I then went into the bedroom. I saw my wife in bed. She had been shot through both eyes and blood was spurting from one of her eyes. Eventually, after a struggle, I forced the door at the lavatory with my shoulder. I found Morris in a somewhat sitting position with his head bent forward. A razor fell from his hand as I pushed the door open. I felt for his pulse and found him pulseless. I left him and went into the bedroom to look at my wife. After a lapse of a few minutes, I telephoned the ambulance and later the police signed John Dancy. At 9.30am on 23rd November 1937.

[Tristan Redman]

The story of the murder was picked up by newspapers all over the world, from Tennessee to Dublin, Wisconsin to Liverpool. There was something about it that seemed to grip people. Maybe because women doctors were so rare in the first place, or the gruesome specifics of the crime the headlines read, envied his sister's eyes so killed her Or Brilliant woman doctor shot dead. But it was also Feather's escape that fascinated readers. Nearly every article included a dramatic firsthand account of his standoff with Morris and the gory cinematic details that Fader shared with the press. But this statement is just the first document in the police report.

[Jackie Moulton]

And the more that you read, the more questions that you have to ask yourself. And I would have done this investigation a lot differently.

[Tristan Redman]

As Jackie, Annie and I make our way through the file, we get to a point in the story that the archivist noted in her blog post.

[Jackie Moulton]

At this point, some anonymous letters had started to come in.

[Kate Redman]

The final documents in the file are two anonymous letters sent to the police by members of the public in the aftermath of the murder. They're barely legible, but both letters urge the cops to look into the husband.

[Tristan Redman]

One says, quote, believe me, I am not the only person over here who thinks he murdered his wife and brother in law himself. So if you get one of these letters, what are you thinking?

[Jackie Moulton]

Well, I wouldn't have investigated it like it's been investigated in the first place, but if I received anonymous letter, that would give me a nagging doubt that I had missed something. And what the police do in this is just minimize it and ignore it. I mean, it can all be true. Let's face it, it can all be true. But these are the unanswered questions.

[Kate Redman]

Okay, at this point, here's where I am. There's a ghost in my teenage bedroom. A faceless woman. Somehow I've married a woman whose ancestors just happened to live in the house next door and one of them had her eyes shot out. And now it seems like there's a suspect in her family that no one has ever looked into. And let me throw in one more wrench. That bedroom, the one with the faceless woman in the moving vase, it's where my wife and I first got together.

[Kate Dancy]

It was actually in this house in Richmond. That was when we sort of might have realized that there was something maybe more than just being flatmates.

[Kate Redman]

Remember, Kate and I met at university and the first few years we were really just friends, even though we shared an apartment. Nothing ever happened between us. But then the summer before our final.

[Tristan Redman]

Year, Kate came to visit me at my parents house on Queen's Road in Tristan's bedroom.

[Kate Dancy]

I'm sure his parents will be delighted to hear that that's where we actually got together concretely. I'm too British to say it any other way.

[Kate Redman]

The night that we got together concretely was a big turning point for us. We went from being friends to dating to married five years later. Maybe it was random, maybe it was fate, but could it have been some sort of paranormal intervention? Listen, I don't actually believe Kate's great grandmother was there in the room with us that night, manipulating us for our own purposes. I'm not totally nuts, but has the thought crossed my mind since I started this project? Yes. Yes it has.

[Kate Dancy]

You think you're going to come across as like the wacko ghost believer in the family?

[Tristan Redman]

Yeah, I hope not. I realize that at best, at best, opening up a 90 year old murder case involving your family, Katie, and wondering if there's any link between the murder and a ghost in my teenage bedroom is totally ridiculous. And at worst, it's a very bad idea as a son in law to be doing this.

[Kate Dancy]

I mean, it is totally wacko.

[Tristan Redman]

But is it a terrible idea?

[Kate Dancy]

In many ways, yes.

[Tristan Redman]

But here are the questions I need to answer. Right. Did your great grandfather get away with murder? Is your great grandmother the faceless woman haunting my teenage bedroom? And while we're at it, did we end up married because this ghost wants me to solve a murder that everyone's been getting wrong for a century?

[Kate Dancy]

I mean, it sounds like so far fetched, but it's like you've kind of opened many doors and you've kind of got to work out where they're gonna go.

[Tristan Redman]

You don't have to be diplomatic. Do I have your blessing to pursue this story?

[Kate Dancy]

Oh yeah, you do. You do. You do have my blessing. And then at the same time, I sort of have this sort of strange gut reaction that's like, God, I hope this is done the right way. Shit.

[Tristan Redman]

This season on Ghost Story.

[Charles Pinellitz]

Everything has possibility, doesn't it? In murder, my dad would never have killed my mom.

[Tristan Redman]

He loved her.

[Carl]

There's a legal term for phrases like that. This is all.

[Jackie Moulton]

What is the actual evidence?

[Kate Redman]

I feel deeply disturbed by that experience.

[Kate Dancy]

Yeah, we're going to be more traumatized by this podcast than we were about the murder.

[Tristan Redman]

I'll tell say that you are deconstructing.

[Jackie Moulton]

An age old story that a family has told itself. You're not going to get to the truth. There is going to be blowback.

[Tristan Redman]

Follow Ghost Story on the Wondry app. You can binge the entire series exclusively and ad free right now by joining Wondary in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Before you go, tell us about yourself and why you listen by completing a short [e-mail] survey.

[Kate Redman]

Ghost story is a production of Wandery and Pineapple Street Studios hosted by me, Tristan Redmond. Our lead producer is Annie Brown and senior producers are Chloe Prasinos and Jess Hackl. Our producers are Zandra, Ellen and Emerald O'Brien and our associate producer is Natalie Peart. Our editor is Joel Lovell with fact checking by Maximo Anderson. The theme song and music by Daryl Griffith supplied by APM Music. There's mixing and original music by Hannes Brown. Pineapple's head of sound and engineering is Raj Makhija with assistant engineers Sharon Bardales and Jade Brooks. The senior audio engineer for Ghost Story is Davey Sumner and the senior producer of development for the show is Jess Hackl. The artwork is by Brian Kluge. Legal services for Pineapple street by Rachel Strom and Sam Kate Gumpert from Davis Wright Tremaine, David Hirst from 5RB and Crystal Tupia at Odyssey. The senior producer for Wanderie is Michelle Martin with producers Brian Taylor White and Grant Rutter. The managing producer for Wandery is Rachel Sibley and the coordinating producer is Sarah Mathis. Our executive producers at Pineapple street are.

[Tristan Redman]

Maddie Sprungkaiser, Max Lynske and Jenna Weiss Berman.

[Kate Redman]

Our executive producers for Wandery are Morgan.

[Tristan Redman]

Jones, Rich Knight, Marshall, Louis and Jessica Radbir.

[Kate Redman]

Special thanks to Jonah Hull, Ed and Chloe Caesar, Alison Vermeulen, Jonathan Oates, Eleanor Johnson, Ward, Barney Lee and Chris Jan, Sophie and Justine Redman. This episode contains public sector information licensed under the Open government license version 3.0. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little known British territory called Pit can and it harbored a deep dark scandal.

[Charles Pinellitz]

There wouldn't be a girl on Pit once they reach the age of 10 that would still averge. It just happens to all of them.

[Kate Redman]

I'm journalist Luke Jones and for almost two years I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn.

[Jackie Moulton]

When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with.

[Kate Redman]

In the Pitcairn trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery. Join Wondery plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.