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- [00:01]
Carter Roy
Hi, listeners. Before we dive into today's episode of Murder True Crime Stories, I want to take a brief moment to tell you about a show from Crime House's sister studio, Rewind, that I know you'll love. It's called Government that Doesn't Suck, hosted by Professors Lindsey Cormack and Greg Jackson from History that Doesn't Suck. Ever wonder how the weather forecast on your phone is so accurate? Or how your mail still gets across the country for less than a dollar? Or who actually built the highway you drove on this morning? Each episode tells the surprising story of an American institution that you'll never look at the same way again. Listen to and follow Government that Doesn't Suck every other Monday on Apple podcasts and Spotify, or watch video episodes on YouTube. This is crime house. In a small enough town, people notice everything. They notice when a marriage seems strained. They notice when two people sit a little too close at the church potluck. They notice when the new priest seems to spend more time at one parishioner's house than any of the others. They just don't always say what they notice out loud. In 1922, everybody in New Brunswick, New Jersey knew that the Reverend Edward hall was having an affair with a singer in his church choir named Eleanor Mills. The congregation knew. The neighbors knew. The people who sat three pews back and pretended not to notice, they knew, too. It was the worst kept secret in the city. And yet nobody said a word. Not to Edward, not to Eleanor, not to their spouses. Life continued the way it always had. Sunday services, church fairs, picnics by the lake. Everyone seemed to agree that a polite collective silence was the best way to go. Then two people turned up dead under a crab apple tree and suddenly the whole country wanted to talk about it. People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle, and end and end. But you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon. And we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy and this is True Crime Stories, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, with Friday's episodes covering the cases that deserve a deeper look. Thank you for being part of the Crime House community. Please rate, review and follow the show and and for early ad free access to every episode. Subscribe to Crime House. Plus you'll get part one and part two at the same time, plus exclusive bonus content. To join go to crimehouseplus.com or tap try free on the Murder True Crime Stories show page on Apple Podcasts. This is the first of two episodes on the murders of Edward hall and Eleanor Mills, an Episcopal priest and a singer in his church choir. They were killed in New Jersey in 1922, and almost right away their deaths became a nationwide obsession. Today I'll introduce you to Edward and Eleanor, who they were, how they found each other, the cracks in both of their marriages, and the affair that the whole congregation could see but nobody would confront. And I'll tell you what happened on the September night that ended both of their lives. Next time, I'll walk you through how early mistakes in the investigation sent the case off the rails. It would go cold for years until a tabloid magazine dug up new evidence and dragged it back into the spotlight. Within weeks, reporters from all over the country were descending on a quiet New Jersey town, turning it into the center of a national circus. But despite all that attention, no one would ever know for sure who killed Edward hall and Eleanor Mills. All that and more coming up. Look, we all hit points in life where anxiety, depression or ADHD feel like a lot more than just a rough patch. I have been there, and honestly, sometimes standard self help tools or talk therapy aren't the total, total answer. We need a little more. If you need a deeper level of care, Talk Iatry connects you with real virtual psychiatry. This isn't a therapy app. It's a 100% online psychiatry practice providing comprehensive evaluations, diagnoses and ongoing medication management for conditions like adhd, anxiety, and more. You're actually seeing a medical provider who takes the time to understand what you're going through and build a personalized treatment plan. Plus, they accept major insurers, meaning you can use your existing insurance instead of paying massive out of network costs. Getting started is incredibly simple. You just complete a short online assessment, get matched with clinicians who fit your specific needs, and schedule your first virtual visit in days rather than months. Head to tokyotry.com mtcs to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's talkiotry.com MTCs to get match matched
- [06:12]
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- [06:49]
Carter Roy
Before we get to the bodies under the crabapple tree and the trial that fascinated the nation, we need to go back more than a decade. Because the story of Edward hall and Eleanor Mills didn't begin in that lonely field after outside New Brunswick. It began with two couples who couldn't have been more different from each other and who all eventually ended up inside the same church. Let's start with Edward. We don't know a ton about his earliest years, what his parents did for work, whether he had siblings, what life at home looked like day to day. What we do know is that he was born on June 12, 1881 into a middle class household in Brooklyn, New York. His parents weren't wealthy, but they were solid, respectable people and they poured everything they had into their son. From a young age it was obvious he had a gift not for numbers or science, but for words. So his parents sent him to the best schools they could manage. First, Manhattan's Grace Church School for Boys, then Brooklyn's Polytechnic Preparatory School where he was the president of the Interscholastic Debate League and Vice president of the Literary and Debating Society. This was a kid who could hold a room. He could make a case, he could make people listen. It was a quality that would define his entire life, for better or for worse. After high school, Edward went upstate to Geneva, New York, where he attended Hobart College. Supposedly he was a bit of a wild youth there, although pledging a fraternity seemed to be the most scandalous thing he got up to. Other than that, he was a really good student. He won several academic prizes and graduated cum laude. Edward had been around religion ever since he was a kid, but it's not clear if he always planned to go into the clergy or if it was a decision he made later. Either way, after Hobart, he attended Manhattan's General Theological Seminary. At the time it was one of the most prestigious Episcopal institutions in the country. In 1903, at the age of 22, he was ordained. He spent a few years serving in churches around New York before crossing the river into New Jersey. There he worked as a curate, basically an assistant priest. He was good at it, and the higher ups took notice. In the summer of 1909, a priest position opened up at St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in New Brunswick. It would mean leading his own congregation. One that many prominent families were part of. Edward obviously said yes. One gloomy morning in June 1909, 27 year old Edward gave his first sermon. Over 100 parishioners sat in the pews waiting to see how he would do as the new head of their congregation. Edward thanked them for their warm welcome. Then he started talking about consequences and sin. And once he got going, the congregation was enthralled. He was young, vibrant and incredibly charming. He had a clear, resonant voice that filled the sanctuary and a smile that landed easily on whoever he was talking to. Everyone loved him, but especially the women. Church attendance spiked after he became the preacher. Edward didn't seem to notice. Or maybe he just ignored it. He had a lot to keep him busy in those first six months and he threw himself into his new life. He wrote sermons, met with parishioners and officiated weddings and funerals. He updated the church's records and spruced up the property in whatever free time he had. He attended charity events and started a boy scout troop. He spent time with the kids playing basketball and riding bikes. And as the holiday season approached, Edward decided to throw his first annual Christmas fair. He hired an acrobatic troupe. He convinced the men of the church to participate in a talent show. There were booths set up for people to sell food and small wares. At one of those Booths was a 35 year old woman named Frances Stevens. And she couldn't take her eyes off Edward. Frances was at a crossroads in her life. She was unmarried at 35, in an era when most women were wives and mothers by their early twenties. By the standards of the day, she was heading toward what people called spinsterhood. And she was desperate to avoid that fate. And then Edward had walked into the pulpit. He was everything she could want in a husband. Educated, charming. A man of God. Yes, he was seven years younger than her, but he was still entirely respectable. Someone whose social standing could only elevate her own. Someone who could save her from a life alone. Frances knew the reality of her situation. She wasn't considered beautiful by the standards of her day. She wasn't young or particularly fun. What she was was proper, demure and private. She taught Sunday school and was devoted to her charities. Oh, and she was incredibly rich. Frances came from New Jersey royalty. The Stevens family on one side, the carpenters on the other. Her great grandfather on the Stevens side had thrown tea into Boston harbor and marched with the Continental Army. Her grandfather on the Carpenter side was an early member of the New York Stock Exchange. Through a web of Marriages and business arrangements. The family had ties to some of the most powerful names in American commerce. Including the founders of Johnson and Johnson. In New Brunswick, the carpenters were everywhere. And you couldn't turn a corner without running into the estate of some aunt, uncle or cousin. Frances House was a three story Victorian mansion on Nicoll Avenue with a wraparound porch, leaded glass windows and a footprint that took up a full city block. Inside, the house ran on a schedule. Maids kept it spotless and nobody talked about anything unpleasant. At the time, Frances was reportedly worth the equivalent of nearly $30 million in today's money. She could have pretty much anything she wanted. And what she wanted was Edward. There had apparently been another woman in the congregation who Edward had his eye on. Someone closer to his age. But for whatever reason, it fizzled out before it became anything serious. After that, Edward's attention shifted to Frances. And Frances got exactly what she wanted. On July 20, 1911, 30 year old Edward and 37 year old Frances got married. Frances walked down the aisle in her mother's wedding gown. The pews were packed with New Brunswick high society. And there were probably more than a few whispers going around. Was this really a marriage of love or just a marriage of convenience? The truth was, it was probably a little bit of both. Like most marriages, it was complicated. And it only got more complicated when a 23 year old parishioner named Eleanor Mills entered the picture. Eleanor couldn't have been more different from Edward and Frances. Where the Halls lived in that sprawling Victorian mansion, Eleanor and her husband shared the second floor apartment of a run down house nearby. One that had no plumbing and a leaky roof. In a place like New Brunswick, those few blocks between them made them feel like different countries. New Brunswick in the 1910s was a manufacturing town. Textile mills, shoe factories, the Johnson and Johnson plant. And the social lines between the wealthy old families and the people working in those factories were clearly drawn. Edward and Frances lived on one side, Eleanor and Jim lived on the other. Eleanor had grown up in the area and married young after getting pregnant at 17. Her husband, James Mills, who went by Jim, was a decade older than her. Their daughter Charlotte was born seven months after the wedding. Their son Daniel came four years later. Life wasn't easy for the Mills. Jim never made more than $38 a week as a shoemaker. But Eleanor made the best of the situation. She crocheted clothes for herself and the kids. She cooked German recipes passed down through her family. And she got up before dawn every day to start on all the housework. She did it all without complaining. But she felt trapped in their marriage. Jim had made his peace with a constant struggle, but she hadn't. She dreamed of something bigger, something more romantic, more adventurous than the life she'd ended up with. She'd grown up reading novels, picturing a different kind of life. The kind where the heroine wasn't a shoemaker's wife in a leaky apartment. The kind where someone might actually sweep her off her feet. Their different worldviews led to lots of arguments. Money was always a stressor. And as the years went on, Eleanor and Jim got meaner to each other. Eventually, they stopped even sleeping in the same room. Eleanor shared a room with her daughter, and Jim shared one with their son. For a while, it seemed like that was just how things would always be. Eleanor stretched Jim's $38 a week salary as far as it could go. And she found her pleasures elsewhere, in romantic novels and in church. She went to St. John's almost every day. Rain, snow, didn't matter. She found a way to get there. Eleanor had been in the church choir since she was a teenager, and it was one of the things she loved most. She had a beautiful soprano singing voice. At least one person compared her to a nightingale. When she sang in church, people listened for a few minutes every Sunday. She wasn't just the shoemaker's wife in the rundown apartment. She was someone worth paying attention to. But soon, the choir wasn't the only reason she showed up to church every day. We don't know when she and Edward first really crossed paths, but it would have been pretty immediate. They were in each other's orbit. And over the years, that orbits grew tighter until they became each other's worlds.
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- [20:28]
Carter Roy
Quinns.com crimesof Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun.
- [20:36]
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An army hung on her every word.
- [20:39]
Carter Roy
My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. Twas a lovely suv, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it. Tonight we feast. An offer you can feast on. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. By 1911, Edward and Francis hall were married, and for a while, at least on the surface, their life looked exactly the way it was supposed to. Edward was an admired priest with a devoted congregation. Francis was the clergyman's wife she'd always wanted to be presiding over charity functions, attending Sunday services. The Halls lived in their sprawling Victorian mansion a few blocks away. Eleanor and Jim Mills crowded into their cramped second floor apartments with no plumbing and a leaky roof. Two households, same church, very different worlds. By the mid-1910s, the church was pulling the Halls in the Mills toward one another as Edward's wife, Frances, was always at St. John the Evangelist, and Eleanor, as as a devoted parishioner, was right there alongside her. Eleanor helped with everything from sewing to clerical tasks. In addition to the choir, she was a member of the Ladies Auxiliary, a group of women who fundraised for the church and pitched in however else they could. For Eleanor, the church had become the most important part of her life, besides her children. So when the shoe factory Jim worked at relocated to Brooklyn, Eleanor told him he was welcome to follow it. But she wasn't going. Her whole life was in New Brunswick and with Edward, although she didn't say that part out loud. In the end, Jim stayed and looked for work elsewhere. Sometime in the mid-1910s, Eleanor and Edward became romantically involved. The exact moment is impossible to pin down. No one has ever been able to say with any certainty how it started, but by 1917 their closeness was undeniable. That year When Eleanor was hospitalized with appendicitis, Edward sat by her bedside for hours. He told her she needed to get well for his sake, that he couldn't bear the thought of losing her in public. Edward and Eleanor kept pretending like they were nothing more than a devoted minister and a loyal parishioner. Kindred spirits bound by faith. The congregation didn't buy it. The rumors started making the rounds, and before long, the whispers became open congregation conversation. Other parishioners resented Eleanor's spot in Edward's inner circle. They complained that she was too forward, too sure of herself. She'd go on about church affairs that hadn't even been announced yet, subtly bragging that she knew more than anyone else. Or she'd rearrange the list of hymns after they'd already been agreed on because she knew Edward would would back her up, which he always did. The congregation saw right through them, and they didn't approve. But that didn't stop the affair. By the end of 1919, Edward was visiting the Mills household almost every day. He could explain away the visits easily enough. House calls were just part of a priest's duties, especially to a family as involved in the church as the Mills were. Sometimes Edward would arrive in the evenings and join the family around their old upright piano while they played songs together. One time, he gave Eleanor's daughter Charlotte a book of sheet music as a gift for Eleanor. He brought a Bible written in German, which she absolutely treasured. For his part, Jim Mills didn't seem to mind the visits. He liked the halls well enough, and he had good reason to. When his old factory had relocated to Brooklyn, Edward had helped Jim land a new job as the church custodian. Jim owed the man. We don't really know if Jim knew about the affair and decided to look the other way, or if he genuinely had no idea. You have to imagine he wouldn't let Edward in the house if he knew. But Jim and Eleanor's marriage was so far gone at that point, maybe he just didn't care. What is clear is that Eleanor was happier than she'd been in years. She smiled and laughed and sang more. She always seemed to come most alive after her visits with Edward. She started spending more and more time at St. John's doing any little task that gave her an excuse to be closer to him. She restocked the flowers in his study. She delivered freshly baked apple cake. She took on whatever errand needed doing. She made herself indispensable, and she made no secret of enjoying every moment of it. But eventually, her devotion became another sticking point in her marriage. Jim pointed out that no other married woman was hanging around the church as much as she was. He reminded her that the Halls came from a different world than theirs, that no matter how close she got to them, she would never really belong in their circle. Eleanor ignored him. By the start of 1922, the two households had become genuinely entangled, not just emotionally, but financially. When Eleanor needed a kidney removed and the Mills couldn't afford it, the hall stepped in. Edward and Francis arranged a $300 loan from the church, which Jim could pay back in $10 monthly installments. The Hall's involvement in the Mills lives didn't stop there. Frances, who knew Eleanor loved flowers, regularly invited her to walk the mansion's gardens and greenhouses. She'd send Eleanor home with armfuls of vegetables. She gave Eleanor monogrammed towels and fine fabrics to sew into blouses, small tokens of what looked like genuine affection. Eleanor returned the favor with embroidered pieces she'd made by hand, gifts for Frances birthday and holidays. From the outside, it looked like friendship. It may have even felt like one sometimes. But underneath it all was a secret that only grew more obvious as the months went on. That summer, Edward and Frances took their annual vacation to an island off the coast of Maine. They hired Jim to house sit for them. He spent three weeks sleeping under their roof while they were away. Meanwhile, Eleanor was at home writing love letters. She and Edward had decided to keep diaries for each other during those weeks, apart from not single letters, full diaries. They wrote to each other every day, sometimes more than once, filling notebooks with intimate updates about their lives. Edwards entries were intense, unguarded, nothing like the composed, restrained man his congregation knew from the pulpit. He wrote about wanting to hold her close, to keep her warm and safe. He told her they had been made for each other's arms. He told her that wherever she was, that was home. And he told her that every moment away from her was excruciating. This was the sight of Edward that only Eleanor saw. Eleanor's diary was just as full in her letters. She called him her true priest, her dearest darling boy, her babykins. He signed his own letters dtl, which he told her was a German abbreviation for your faithful love. In one of their final letters, they made plans to meet. On the Friday Edward returned to New Brunswick. They mentioned one of their favorite meetup spots, a bench in Buccleuch Park, a secluded area outside of town. It was near the old Phillips farm, close to a dirt road called Derussy's Lane. The locals had a nickname for it. Lovers Lane. Edward wrote that he wanted two hours alone with her, unrestrained, out by their road. They almost certainly met there when he got back to town. And it wouldn't be the last time. By September, the affair had been going on for years. The Halls and the Mills were still pretending to themselves, to each other, to the congregation, that nothing was happening. But Edward and Eleanor weren't making it easy. The closeness between them was obvious to anyone who spent more than five minutes in the same room with them that month, Eleanor needed medical attention again. This time it was a tooth extraction. When she couldn't find a local dentist to see her, the Halls referred her to someone in Newark. But instead of Jim taking her to the appointment, Edward stepped in. That's how brazen things had become. Whether Frances hall knew about the affair at that point is a question that would haunt the the investigation for years. Above all else, Frances cared about propriety. It's entirely possible that she'd seen the signs and chosen to look away, that she preferred a polite fiction to a public scandal. She was married. Her husband was a respected man of God. That was the version of her life she wanted to maintain. But by some accounts, Eleanor had convinced herself that Edward would eventually leave his wife. She thought what they had was more important than anything else. That was where Eleanor's head was as the summer of 1922 wound down. On September 13, 1922, Eleanor spent the afternoon with the Halls. She and another devoted churchwoman, Minnie Clark, joined Edward and Frances for a picnic at a lake in northwestern New Jersey. It was a tradition the Halls had started as a way to thank the women who kept St. John's running. Of the five people who held keys to the church, Eleanor and Minnie were two of them. That's how integral they were. That afternoon, the group took a boat out on the lake. When Eleanor and Minnie jumped into the water, Francis joined them. They swam together while Edward watched from the shore. Later, they all sat down for the picnic Francis had packed. If you'd seen them out on the lake that afternoon, Edward laughing on the shore, Francis and Eleanor swimming side by side, you'd have thought everything was fine. It wasn't. And a little more than 24 hours later, two of the four people on that lake would be dead.
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Hi listeners, it's Vanessa Richardson on a special four episode Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes series. I'm taking you to four kinds of dream getaways that went from paradise to deadly A woman vanishes while snorkeling off Aruba. Two backpackers murdered on a moonlit beach in Thailand. An NBA champion who disappears off his own catamaran in the South Pacific. These were supposed to be the trips of a lifetime. Listen to our special Deadly Destination series every Sunday on conspiracy theories, cults and crimes. Or if you don't want to wait, all four episodes are available right now ad free on Crime House Plus. To join Crime House plus, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or@primehouseplus.com.
- [35:51]
Carter Roy
By the evening of September 14, 1922, 41 year old Edward hall and 34 year old Eleanor Mills were in the middle of a years long affair. Their spouses, Francis hall and Jim Mills, may or may not have known about it, but the Rest of the congregation absolutely did. That evening, Edward and Frances were both at home. But given the size of their Victorian mansion, they could have easily gone hours without crossing paths. Their maid, a 20 year old woman named Louise Geist, was going about her work when the phone rang. She answered. A woman was on the line asking for the reverend from another room. Edward called out to ask if the phone was for him. Louise confirmed it was. She handed off the call and went back to work. She wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but Edward wasn't exactly being quiet. He made plans to meet someone at 8:15 that night. Not long after, Edward went downstairs, grabbed his coat and told Francis he was making a call he'd be back soon. Then he headed for the door. Luis was in the kitchen. When he passed through, he stepped onto the back stoop and paused there for a moment, looking up at the sky. Isn't this a lovely evening? He said. Luis watched him head down the street and disappear into the dusk. Just after 7 the next morning, Louise was in her room when she heard shutters being drawn on the first floor. It was a sound that usually meant Edward was up early to catch a train into New York. She got dressed and headed to the kitchen to start breakfast. Before he left, she walked into the dining room, but instead of finding Edward at the table, it was Willie Stevens sitting there alone. He was Francis older brother and lived in the house, but Willie was almost always the last one down for breakfast, not the first. Louise asked what he was doing up so early. Willie didn't give her a straight answer. He just said he'd rather have Frances tell her. That seemed like an odd response to Louise, but she didn't know what to make of it, so she let it go and went about her chores. While she worked, she passed the coat rack in the hallway and noticed that Edward's hat wasn't hanging in its usual spot. He must have never come home the night before, she told herself. There had to be a perfectly good explanation. Edward had late night, sometimes a sick call, a parishioner in need, someone who required him to stay out. He always had a good reason. Yes, Louise told herself, that had to be it. Frances came down for breakfast about 20 minutes later. She sat at the table and barely touched her food. She was quiet in a way Louise had never seen before. She didn't even bother to correct Louise for forgetting to put out the Reverend Silver water pitcher. That was the kind of thing Frances always noticed. Louise couldn't take it any longer. She decided to play dumb and pretend she didn't know Edward was out. She asked Frances if Edward wanted his breakfast in bed that morning. Frances didn't hedge. She told Louise that Edward had not come home the night before and she didn't know where he was. Louise was surprised by how directly Frances answered. She suggested there must have been an accident. Had Frances called the police? Frances had. She'd called around 7 that morning. But here's where things get strange. When she called the authorities, Frances hadn't given her name and she hadn't said that Edward was missing. She'd simply asked whether there had been any casualties in the area overnight. Not accidents, casualties. And after that one call, she hadn't phoned a single hospital. She hadn't reached out to any friends or family. For a woman whose husband had been missing all night, Frances was strangely patient. But as the day wore on, that calm started to crack. Frances gripped a set of car keys in her hand and wouldn't let go, jingling them nervously. Every time a car slowed down outside, she was at the window. It was the opposite of her usual calm, collected demeanor. Then, around 11 that night, Frances made a phone call. Once again, Louise overheard parts of it. At one point, Frances made a comment that didn't quite make sense to Louise in the moment but would haunt her later. Frances said no, there was nobody else. He was friendly with her. She's in the choir. The next morning, September 16, now 36 hours since Edward had gone missing, Frances called her cousin and asked him to come over. When he arrived, she told him she feared the worst. If Edward were alive, why hadn't he come home? Why hadn't he called? She told him she was almost crazy with worry. It was a fair question. Her cousin didn't have an answer for her. He told her to stay calm, that there had to be a logical explanation. There was no use jumping to conclusions until they knew more. He couldn't have been more wrong. That same morning, two locals met up for a rendezvous of their own. 23 year old Raymond Schneider and his underage girlfriend, 15 year old Pearl Bomber. The two of them planned to walk over to Bucklew park, about a mile from where they met up. More specifically, they were headed to Derussy's Lane, the dirt road on the edge of the park that had earned the name Lover's Lane. They were about halfway down the lane when they spotted two figures lying beneath a crab apple tree. They looked like they were caressing each other, snuggled up in one another's arms. The man was in a gray suit with a white shirt and a tie. His Panama hat was laid over his face, shielding him from the sun. The woman at his side wore a polka dotted blue dress that went past her knees with a brown silk scarf around her neck. Her legs were crossed. Her head rested on his arm. Her left hand sat on his knee. Raymond and Pearl assumed they were sleeping. They tiptoed past, not wanting to wake them. But when Raymond and Pearl came back from their own rendezvous, Pearl noticed something. The couple hadn't moved at all. She got a feeling in her stomach that something was wrong. She told Raymond to go check on them. Raymond went. Pearl stayed a few steps behind him, curious but cautious. As they got closer, the truth was impossible to ignore. The man and woman weren't sleeping. They were dead. As Raymond peered closer, he could see see what looked like bullet wounds. The man had been shot once, the woman three times. And Raymond realized the scarf around the woman's neck wasn't there to keep her warm. It was covering something. Her throat had been slit. It was so deep that she was nearly decapitated. And scattered around their bodies, as if placed there deliberately, were torn up pieces of paper. Love letters. Pearl started to scream. Raymond grabbed her and pulled her back from the bodies. They needed to get away from that crab apple tree. They needed to find a phone. They needed to tell somebody what they had just seen. They ran down to Rusi's Lane, away from the field, back toward town. They flagged down the first person they could find. And before noon, the local police were on their way to the scene. When Raymond Schneider came across the couple. He didn't know who the victims were. He had no idea what had been going on between them. And he had no idea that the case he'd just stumbled into would dominate American newspapers for the next four. Four years. But even he could tell that whoever had done this hadn't just wanted them dead. They'd wanted to make a statement. To tell the world that these two people deserved each other. Within hours, word would spread about the priest and the choir singer. About the love letters. About the brutal way they'd been killed and posed like lovers under that crab apple tree. The quiet town of New Brunswick was about to be torn wide open. And it would never be the same again. So much for listening. I'm Carter Roy and this is True Crime Stories. Come back next time for part two on the murders of Edward hall and Eleanor Mills and all the people it affected. True Crime Stories is a Crime House original. Powered by Pave Studios Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media, Rimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your Murder True Crime Stories listening experience, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get both parts of every story dropped on Tuesday completely ad free. No waiting for part two plus ad free and early access to every show across Crime House and bonus episodes every month. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap try free at the top of the Murder True Crime Stories page. We'll be back on Thursday. True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy and is a Crime House original. Powered by Pave Studios, this episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Crime Stories team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Natalie Pertofsky, Alyssa Fox, Terrell Wells, Cassidy Dillon and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening.
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