Transcript
Nexpo (0:00)
Wondery subscribers can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad free right now. Join Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Kristen Thorne (0:11)
Lamont Jones is shattered when his cousin dies just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. Wondery presents Death County Penns A chilling true story of corruption and cover ups. Follow Death County Pa on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Nexpo (0:31)
This interrogation is going nowhere. The suspect is seated across from you, arms folded, head cocked in smug defiance. He thinks you have nothing on him, and in a way, he's right. So now you try something else. The only option you have left. You begin describing specific details about the crime, but none of what you're saying is from the case file. This isn't the sort of evidence that police are able to obtain. You watch it happen in real time. The bravado drains from the suspect's face. His eyes widen. His breathing quickens. The expression on his face turns quizzical. What he wants to know is how? Because the details of the murder you're describing no living person could possibly know. Saturday, August 8, 1987 in the small town of Belvedere, New Jersey. The late afternoon sun beats down. It's almost dinner time, and it's still close to 90 degrees. Kids run through sprinklers in their backyards. The smell of hamburgers on a grill wafts through the air. Inside the Belvedere Police Department, an old metal desk fan rattles. It's stuffy. It's one of those long, hot summer days that seems to have no end. It's then that the phone rings. Belvedere PD doesn't get many calls. The town is simply too small and too safe. And when they do, the calls are never like the one they get today. Dispatch answers. There's a male voice on the other end of the line. He's hysterical. It's hard to understand him at first, so dispatch tells him to take a deep breath. The man does so, and then says, it's his girlfriend. Please come quick. He's found her in her apartment, and she's dead. Minutes later, Officer Kent Sweigert arrives at the Blair House apartment complex in Belvedere. Like the rest of the town, it's quiet here, unassuming. Still, though he prepares for the worst. He draws his service weapon and enters the first floor apartment in question. Inside, the man who called the police, Paul McCarran, is standing alone in the living room. He appears shocked Dazed, even, Swigert looks around and sees no one else. Nothing seems to be out of place. But when he moves to the apartment's bedroom, he makes a horrific discovery. Everywhere around him, there's blood. It's splattered on all four walls as well as the ceiling. It's pooled in dark patches on the floor. And a massive amount of blood blankets the body of a woman. She lies lifeless on the bed. She's face up. Her arms are tied behind her back with an extension cord. Her nightshirt is pulled around her head. With this much blood. Sweigert assumes that she's been shot. But he's about to find out that what happened to this woman is even more barbaric than he can imagine. The woman is 42 year old Elizabeth Cornish, a nurse and divorced mother of five adult daughters. She recently moved back to Belvedere to be closer to her family and had resided at the Blair House Apartments for about a year. When her parents are notified of her death later that evening, they're told as Officer Swigert assumed that she was shot. But upon closer inspection, the Belvedere police realized that they were mistaken. There are no bullet wounds on Cornish's body and no evidence of a firearm. The autopsy quickly reveals that Cornish died of blunt force injuries. At least 21 hits to the head with the hammer and even worse, the claw end of it. Cornish was beaten so badly that her skull was punctured and bone was exposed. There is also evidence that she was sexually assaulted and that the time of death was midnight. Swigert and the Belvedere Police Department are in over their heads. They never get cases this gruesome, this violent. This is the first murder in their town in nearly 100 years. To help them wrap their heads around this case, they call in the team from the Warren County Prosecutor's Office, led by a Captain Dave Heder. Heder drives his car from the prosecutor's office over to the apartment complex on Prospect Street. It's a quiet neighborhood, shockingly so. He parks and ducks under the crime scene tape, striding across the lawn with the confidence of a man who's investigated his fair share of murder cases. And yet, when he glances into the apartment, the sheer amount of blood catches him slightly by surprise. He asks an officer already on the scene whether the murder weapon has been found. The answer comes back no. They haven't found a hammer or anything of the sort. Heder and his officers make the rounds to other tenants in the apartment complex. No one can remember hearing any screams or disturbances around midnight on August 8th. These people seem sincere and honest, but just to be sure, Heder gives them all polygraph tests. And everyone, as expected, passes. Following this, Heater turns his eye towards Cornish's boyfriend, Paul McCarron, the man who initially called 911. McCarron claims that he was out fishing all day Saturday and found Cornish's body that afternoon when he came back. As soon as McCarron mentions fishing, heater perks up. Because on the grass just beneath Cornish's bedroom window, they had just found a pair of clippers used by fishermen to trim their lines. And that's not all they found either. Cornish's bedroom window had been removed and was leaning against the exterior wall of the building. At first glance, it would seem that the killer removed the window in order to access Cornish's apartment. However, upon inspection, Keeter's men find a fingerprint on the inside of the window pane. Because of this, heater draws the conclusion that the killer must have taken the window out after Cornish was murdered. He further concludes that this was done to trick the police into thinking that a stranger came in from the outside, when in fact it was someone Cornish knew who entered her apartment through the front door. At least that's the theory Heder's working with. And so, with that window, with the fingerprint on the inside, with those fisherman's clippers, Heater zeroes in on the obvious suspect, the boyfriend, Paul McCarron. The lab will take about a week or so to analyze the print. In the meantime, McCarron's brought in for questioning at the Belvedere Police Department. He indulges Heder and the detectives for a few minutes and then has a change of heart. He's done talking. He wants a lawyer. Heder isn't surprised that McCarron has clammed up. He's seen this before, the sudden vow of silence that is, in fact, an indication of guilt. He goes to give the family members of the deceased the promising news. It seems that they've found their man. But the family's reaction is not at all what Captain Heder expects, because they don't believe him. They tell him to his face that he's got the wrong man. They know McCarron well. He's a great guy. He loved Elizabeth. There is absolutely no way that he could have done this. The family and Heder leave the meeting with differing agendas. Heder, who knows all too well that it's almost always the boyfriend, heads off to prove his theory correct. Meanwhile, Elizabeth's family members, especially her sister Peggy Goble leave the meeting concerned that an innocent man is about to be accused of murder. Goble firmly believes that there's another explanation for what happened to her sister, something the police just aren't seeing. And if standard police procedures aren't working, it means that she'll have to try something else, something unorthodox to uncover the Truth. It's August 16th. Elizabeth Cornish has been dead for just over a week. 20 miles away in Flanders, New Jersey, a phone rings. Maybe it's everyday intuition, or maybe it's something more. But before she even answers it, Nancy Weber has a sense that this is no ordinary call. She picks up a woman's voice, introduces herself as Peggy Goble. She believes Weber might be able to help solve a mystery currently unfolding in Belvedere. Believe it or not, this kind of call is not unusual for Weber to receive. For several years, she's been making a name for herself among law enforcement circles as something of a psychic detective. Weber is intrigued. She can hear. She can sense the unspeakable pain and anxiety in Goble's voice. She agrees to talk, but it needs to be in person. Proximity is very important to her work. It's also absolutely crucial that Goebel tells her nothing more. No details about the situation whatsoever. Webber's done this enough times to know that she must piece together the mystery in her own mind and not be clouded by outside information. She can't explain exactly how she does it. It's something that Weber's been able to do for as long as she can recall. Her first vision came to her when she was only two and a half years old. She looked through the belly of one of her mother's friends and saw something inside. And then thereafter, a voice told her baby. Her mother's friend had not told anyone that she was pregnant yet, not even her husband. But Weber saw and heard the truth on her very own. As a kid, Weber didn't think that she was any different from anyone else. It was only when she got older that she realized that she had a talent. And so, as word got out about her abilities, people began coming out of the woodwork to ask her for help. And the most desperate of these people were the family members of killed and missing persons. It was here that Weber found her niche. She found it endlessly rewarding to help these people find closure and justice. By this time, she'd already aided a number of grieving families and police investigations, including a particularly high profile case in 1982 involving the abduction and murder of two young women for from the area. When the police's trail ran cold, they reached out to Weber, who had a full time psychic medium and medical intuitive practice. With her strange abilities, Weber was able to envision things that the police could have otherwise never discovered, including a green sedan with the name James. Two clues that would ultimately lead the police straight to the murderer, James J. Kodatek, who drove a green Chevy sedan. When inspected, the interior of the vehicle contained damning physical evidence linking him to both murders. Whatever closure or justice Peggy Goble is seeking today, Weber hopes that she'll be able to provide it. She gives Goble her address, come by and together they'll see what can be done. When Goble arrives, Webber ushers her inside. She reminds Goble that she should tell her no details because they would only interfere with her work. Goble abides. The two women sit across the kitchen table from each other. Webber focuses on the aura surrounding Goble and she can sense an overwhelming feeling of grief. She can tell that there's been a great loss. Webber then closes her eyes. And there in her mind, she sees a woman. The woman is tied up in her bed. She's covered in blood. Webber opens her eyes and asks Goebel if this woman is her sister. Goebel nods, the tears streaming down her face. Yes, it's her sister, Elizabeth Cornish. Webber asks if the boyfriend is the chief suspect in her case. Case Again, Goble nods. And that's when Weber looks Goble directly in her eyes and states, he is not the killer.