The Unsolved Murder of Hall and Mills

Summary

Stuff You Should Know

Episode Summary: The Unsolved Murder of Hall and Mills

Air Date: August 19, 2025
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the infamous, unsolved Hall-Mills double homicide of 1922—one of America’s first true "trials of the century." Josh and Chuck unravel the twists, sensational media coverage, major suspects, and lasting cultural echoes of the still-unsolved murders of Reverend Edward Hall and choir singer Eleanor Mills in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Throughout, they reflect on the botched investigation, the powerful families involved, and the case’s rippling effect on American popular culture—even possibly inspiring The Great Gatsby.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How the Case Came to SYSK's Attention

• Chuck and Josh banter about whether coverage in People magazine (June 26, 2025) brought the case to their attention.
  • "[People] said that it, it inspired the Great Gatsby." – Josh (03:46)
• They note the case's comparability to later media sensations and the fascination with unsolved crimes.

2. Setting the Scene: The Victims & Their Relationships

• Reverend Edward Hall:
  • Pastor at St. John’s Episcopal, beloved yet controversial in the community.
  • Married to Frances Hall, a wealthy heiress, but openly having an affair with Eleanor Mills, a choir singer, and church member.
• Eleanor Mills:
  • Married to school janitor James Mills.
  • Acted as Hall’s assistant, furthering the intimacy of their relationship.
• Both families were known to be aware of the affair.
  • "Her [Frances Hall's] first public response was GWA." – Josh (09:28, a humorous aside).

3. The Murders: Discovery and Gruesome Details

• On September 14, 1922, the bodies are found by 15-year-old Pearl Bomber and boyfriend Raymond Schneider.
• Lovers' Lane setting; posed under a crabapple tree, bodies arranged as if cuddling.
• Hall shot once in the temple, Mills was mutilated—shot three times and nearly decapitated. Her tongue and vocal cords were later discovered cut out.
• Love letters from Mills to Hall strewn around the bodies:
  • "This. This was a highly staged crime scene." – Josh (12:34)

4. Crime Scene Chaos: Media Sensation and Lost Evidence

• Crime scene overrun by gawkers, souvenir hunters, and even vendors selling popcorn and "grim" keepsakes like dirt from the site.
  • "They were showing up at a rate of 1000 cars a day... Vendors selling popcorn and balloons, and the dirt they were selling for 25 cents a bag." – Chuck (14:10)
• Massive contamination, making forensics nearly impossible.

5. Botched Police Investigation & Early Theories

• Confusion between Middlesex and Somerset counties over jurisdiction.
• Multiple, clashing investigations, lack of cooperation.
• Early theory from Frances Hall that this was a robbery (Hall's watch and wallet missing), but skepticism abounds due to the nature of the crime scene.
  • "A robbery gone wrong... But the question was, was that really the motive behind this murder, where Eleanor Mills's throat had been cut to the backbone?" – Josh (21:00)
• Wild theories: KKK involvement, mysterious “Italians,” incompetent or panicked attempts to find scapegoats.

6. Scapegoats and False Confessions

• Authorities try pinning it on the couple who found the bodies, alongside local teens. They endured long interrogations, leading to dubious confessions and retractions.
  • "None of this really makes much sense..." – Chuck (25:13)
• Key point: No plausible way for teens, robbers, or third parties to plant private love letters at the scene.

7. Suspicions Shift to Frances Hall and Family

• Public pressure mounts on authorities to investigate Hall's wealthy widow, Frances, her brothers Willie and Henry, and cousin Henry.
• Initial questioning is deferential, but public scrutiny persists.
• Alibis appear suspicious and inconsistent; evidence mounts against the Hall family.

8. Grand Jury, Indictments, and Star Witnesses

• First grand jury (1922) declines to indict; Frances Hall leaves for Europe.
• In 1926, sparked by maid Louise Geist's mention in a divorce case that she was paid to stay silent, the case reopens.
• New Jersey governor demands action; renewed grand jury indicts Frances, her brothers, and her cousin.

9. Dramatic Testimony and the Pig Woman

• Jane Gibson, "the Pig Woman," gives key eyewitness testimony, dramatically delivered from a stretcher while she is dying of cancer.
  • Recalls hearing/seeing the Halls under the crime’s crabapple tree and hearing gunshots, but her credibility is widely contested—even by her own mother in court!
• Sensational coverage: 12 million+ words written during the 1926 trial; the public obsessed with reading the aired love letters.

10. Love Letters and Public Humiliation

• Love notes (signature lines: "Darling Wonderheart" and "Babykins," with German sign-off DTL—"thy true lover") read in open court to national amusement and embarrassment for Frances Hall.
  • Memorable Moment:
    "Darling Wonderheart, I just want to crush you for two hours..." (48:25)
    • Chuck delivers this passage as Charles Bronson, to Josh’s delight.

11. Trial Outcome and Aftermath

• Frances Hall, brothers, and cousin acquitted after Willie’s unexpectedly strong testimony—he holds up under examination, undermining prosecution hopes.
• Defendants sue The Mirror for libel, cases settle quietly.
• Frances continues church charity work, lives privately until her death in 1942.
• The case never returns to court.

12. Cultural Legacy & The Great Gatsby

• Some speculate the sensational trial inspired aspects of The Great Gatsby, particularly themes of class disparity and the public’s focus on high-society scandal over working-class tragedy.
  • "Her death [Eleanor Mills] does not...people did not pay much attention to that. It was all about this wealthy woman and her wealthy husband." – Josh (54:55)

13. Final Reflections and Notable Resources

• The case remains officially unsolved; most modern observers consider the Hall family responsible.
• Notable sources: Yale Review (Harold Schechter), Local History Project, and SYSK contributor Livia.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On the media frenzy:
  "They were showing up at a rate of 1000 cars a day...vendors selling popcorn and balloons, and dirt they were selling for 25 cents a bag."
  — Chuck (14:10)

• On the love letters as key evidence:
  "So much so that I'm quite certain that the people who killed this couple were like, oh, that was so stupid afterward, like, why did you put the letters down?"
  — Josh (27:16)

• The infamous love letter, read by Chuck as Charles Bronson:
  "Darling Wonderheart, I just want to crush you for two hours..."
  — Chuck (48:33)

• On the social divide:
  "[Eleanor Mills'] death...was ignored because she's not upper class...the wealthy people got to go on with their lives while the dead working-class victim is just largely forgotten."
  — Josh (54:55)

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Important Timestamps

• 04:12–06:25: Introduction of Edward Hall, Frances Hall, and Eleanor Mills.
• 09:35–13:02: Details of the murders and the staged, gruesome crime scene.
• 14:10–15:26: Public/media circus and destruction of crime scene evidence.
• 18:55–24:04: Botched investigations, scapegoating, and failed robbery/outsider theories.
• 27:33–29:03: The police blundering and focus on irrelevant suspects.
• 34:34–35:44: The Pig Woman’s testimony and its impact.
• 43:38–45:45: The reopening of the case, new evidence, and lost witnesses.
• 48:25: Public reading of the infamous love letters.
• 52:13–53:13: The Iron Widow’s testimony and the strong defense by the Hall family.
• 54:26–54:55: Connection to The Great Gatsby.

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Tone & Style

The episode is classic SYSK: conversational, wry, with gentle humor ("I'm not going to stop until I'm successful. So just look out, buddy, because you're in my crosshairs now." – Josh, 04:04), moments of pop-culture riffing, and a clear preference for humanizing even scandalous figures. They maintain a focus on evidence and critical thinking, gently lampooning the outlandishness of the era’s public and the authorities.

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In Summary

This episode offers an engrossing, skeptical, and at times darkly funny tour of the Hall-Mills murder, revealing how media, wealth, and social status shaped one of America’s earliest true crime sensations. While no one was ever convicted, the hosts leave little doubt as to the public’s—and history’s—suspicions. For true crime fans, historians, or even Gatsby devotees, this is a can’t-miss caper.

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Transcript

[Narrator/Announcer]

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[Gretchen Whitmer]

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[Narrator/Announcer]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh. And there's Chuck. And this is another edition of Stuff youf Should Know's ongoing low key True crime suite.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's been a while.

[Josh Clark]

I feel like I'm trying think of the last one. Yeah, I mean, clearly it has been if I can't think of the last one. But yeah, I like it. Every once in a while we just kind of add to it and it's just this kind of thing because they're, they're interesting, especially if you're not looking at them like a total gawker, you know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Agreed.

[Josh Clark]

So we're talking today about one I hadn't heard of. Let me ask you this before we get started.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Did you get your idea from People magazine? No, because People magazine ran an article on this very murder on June 26, 2025.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, really?

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Like, where did you get this idea?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I know it wasn't People, because, you know, I just, I didn't read People. I'm not against it if I'm like, you know, waiting for the doctor or something.

[Josh Clark]

Well, you're really digging yourself into a hole here.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'LL pick up a People magazine. That's fine. I'm wondering now if this was a listener suggestion that I need to look up.

[Josh Clark]

I searched it and I did not see anything about it. That's why I was like, holy cow, People magazine. He really got it from there?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know, maybe. I mean, sometimes I might go so low as to search for, you know, unsolved crimes or something. I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. There's nothing wrong with that. Looking for ideas. Well, the crazy thing about this is it's, I've seen it described as like the first truly sensationalized trial of the century in the United States or that it was like their first big trial of the century, something like that. And it was definitely up there. I've seen it compared with some other ones. Yeah, that came later, closely on the heels. But I had never heard any of this. I've never heard of any of these people. And yet some other people say, hey, this might have even inspired the Great Gatsby.

[Chuck Bryant]

In some ways, I have a feeling that's how it came to me. And now I'm wondering if that was the search term that I should have used for listener suggestion.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, Great Gatsby. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't search for that either. We're, we'll have to get to the bottom of this like a couple of true detectives because.

[Chuck Bryant]

Feel like we're letting someone down.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, we probably are. But we, we do need to get their name. But I wonder if, if this thing is sent post June 26, 2025.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Bet they got it from People. Okay. Because the People magazine article, like in the headline, it said that it, it inspired the Great Gatsby.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, I definitely remember. That's what drew my attention to it. But if you're trying to root me out as a People magazine reader, you're going to fail.

[Josh Clark]

I'm not going to stop. I'm not going to stop until I'm successful. So just look out, buddy, because you're in my crosshairs now.

[Chuck Bryant]

Who knows?

[Josh Clark]

So let's talk about this crime. This, in short. There was a reverend, well known reverend in New Brunswick, New Jersey, home of Rutgers. And this reverend was having an affair with one of his church members, a woman named Eleanor Mills. The reverend's name was Edward Hall. He was about seven years her senior, from what I understand. And one night, or one morning, I should say, they turned up murdered, brutally murdered. And it became, like I said, a very sensational story. Not just in New Brunswick, not just in nearby New York, but everywhere across the country. I would guess probably out of the country as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

Who knows?

[Josh Clark]

How would you ever find something like that out?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

People magazine, probably.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, probably People International. So, yeah, Ed hall was in his early 40s, 41 years old at the time of his death. And he was a pastor, like you said, at St. John's Episcopal, about 20 miles from where I lived in New Jersey. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. And his wife's name was Frances Hall. She was seven years older than him, interestingly, because I guess his mistress, Eleanor Mills, was seven years younger. Anything to that?

[Josh Clark]

I think it's just a fluke of nature.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think so, too. But. And this is kind of key here. She, his wife had come from a, you know, it seems like a pretty wealthy, well to do, well connected family in the area because he was just a pastor and, you know, they didn't make a lot of dough yet. They lived in a really fancy house. They had a chauffeur, they had a staff. They had maids that worked there, which will come into play in this story. And they had been married about 11 years. His mistress, who was also brutally murdered, she was a homemaker married to a school janitor named James, who also kind of helped take care of the church. They had a couple of kids. She sang in the choir. And this is also key. She acted as sort of a very close personal assistant to the reverend, like, very closely assisted him, if you know what I'm saying.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I do know what you're saying. So one other thing about Edward hall and his wife Frances's fortune, he apparently, when he first got to take over the church, the St. John's Episcopal Church, it was a hostile takeover. He started courting a lovely parishioner, but she didn't really have any money. He dropped her and put his sights on Francis Stevens, who would become Francis hall his wife. And from what I've read, there's not a lot of note or there wasn't a lot of note about Francis Stevens, aside from her wealth. And she was wealthy. She shared a. What would be worth today a $40 million fortune between herself and her two other brothers. So she was definitely wealthy. And so in addition to running around on her, he also seemed to just have been after her money. And let's not forget, he's an Episcopal reverend leading an entire church. So that to me, when I put all those things together, I was like, I don't really like this guy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, fair enough. So it was not a Secret among the church. You know, it was kind of one of those things, you know, back in 1922, where people, it might have been pretty clear and even probably in a modern day church that somebody was having an affair, but you didn't really talk about that kind of thing. And so it was basically an open secret. After the sermons and after Sunday would end, they would spend a lot of time together in his study, apparently, they would leave love notes. And that will come into play in the story for each other with a little secret system where they would put it in a book on his shelf and trade notes that way.

[Josh Clark]

What book do you think it was?

[Chuck Bryant]

The Great Gatsby.

[Josh Clark]

They traveled in time.

[Chuck Bryant]

They did. The day that the news broke, though, the New York Times came out and said, and this is how they would have to put this kind of thing back then. They said they had long been friendly.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So, yeah, like you said, this is an open secret. Apparently their spouses knew James Mills and Francis hall. Both seem to have known about the affair for one, when they turned up missing that first day. Apparently Frances hall, the first time she spoke to James Mill, his. Her husband's mistress's husband, James said, do you think they eloped? That was his response when he found out that they were both missing. And apparently also this is important too. Frances hall had a informal network of spies among the congregation who kept tabs on those two and informed her of their doings, essentially. So both of them knew full well what was going on, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

They knew, but they didn't project that publicly. Publicly. They both said, like, my head didn't know this was going on. And as we'll see later in court, she even testified that, you know, her marriage was perfect and those. These supposed love notes are fake and they were not having an affair.

[Josh Clark]

No, for sure. I think her first public response was GWA.

[Chuck Bryant]

So on the day of the murder, this was Thursday, September 14th, they each, you know, left their respective houses and another couple reported to seeing them meeting up on a bridge nearby. And then a couple of days later, another couple came forward. This woman named, well, woman, she was 15 years old. She was a young girl named Pearl Bomber. Yet she was in a relationship, because this was in 1922, with a guy who was anywhere from 19 to 23, who can tell. His name was Raymond Schneider. They came upon the bodies a couple of days later on old Phillips Farm. This is the other side of the Raritan river there. And this is about 10:30 in the morning. They went to the closest house, had the owner call the cops. And the cops showed up pretty quickly.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And the bodies, it was pretty disturbing. So they'd been left on a path off of derussy's Lane. This is a dirt road, I think, in Somerset County. And it was a well known lover's lane. Like, this is the kind of time where you had to go out to a lover's lane to either have an affair or have premarital sex or both. This is where their bodies were found, on a path off of this lover's lane, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

A Reverend hall had been shot once through the temple and exited the opposite temple, and that was it for him. But Eleanor Mills, his mistress, she had really been worked over, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. She was shot three times in the head, and her neck was cut so severely that she was close to being decapitated. His shot was point blank, sort of, you know, what we'd call execution style, with the.32 caliber pistol. And the bodies were posed together after that. They were under a crab apple tree, kind of posed as cuddling lovers. Her head was placed on his arm, not separate from her body, just laid against him. And a scarf was draped over her cutthroat. And he had a hat, a Panama hat, kind of partially covering his face. So, you know, from 20 yards away or whatever, it looked like a couple just sort of laying there cuddling, maybe taking a nap under a tree.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So that's how. That's how they were found. But apparently, as Pearl and Raymond were coming upon them, they saw very quickly that they were dead. There was one other thing that wasn't noted at the time when the bodies were found in 1922, but it would be noted when the case was reignited four years later in 1926, that. That Eleanor Mills tongue and vocal cords had been cut out and removed. That had been missed in the first autopsy, but a subsequent autopsy found that. So this was the state that these bodies were found in. I think also the Reverend Hall's business card was found propped up against his foot. I think that's the only other thing we left out. Oh, no, there's one other thing. This is really important, too. This is the clue to me. You ready, Chuck?

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm ready.

[Josh Clark]

There were love letters that Eleanor Mills had written to Edward hall, the Reverend hall, and they had been placed all around them. So this. This was a highly staged crime scene. Not just the bodies were staged, but there were actual, like, props involved among an executed and a mutilated body left out in. In public, essentially to be found almost immediately after they were killed.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, the business card almost feels like, hey, if anyone stumbles upon this who's not from around here, this is who this is.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, what else could that be?

[Josh Clark]

I don't know. I mean, they're sending some sort of message. If that's not it, there's something else that they're sending. Like, it's a. That's pretty in your face, you know?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. So the bodies were found. Locals, you know, word gets around a little bit, locals start showing up. Then once the new newspapers get a hold of it, like you said earlier, it became a big deal. And I guess this was such a sensational thing at a time where this kind of thing didn't happen much that, like, people really started coming to this town to, like, just see what happened. They wanted to walk on the grounds of that road and near that farm, and they wanted to, like, literally take pieces of that tree and dig up dirt around there as a keepsake. Apparently. They said they were showing up at a rate of 1000 cars a day. Sounds a little overblown maybe, but there were vendors selling popcorn and balloons, and the dirt they were selling for 25 cents a bag. It was really out of hand very quickly.

[Josh Clark]

You know, what it reminded me of was, like, the circus atmosphere that grew up when Floyd Collins was trapped in sand cave. Yeah, around. It was around the same time. So people were just looking for something to do. Yeah, pretty bored, apparently.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, it was a big deal. And there was a huge problem with all of those people showing up combined with incompetent. An incompetent police investigation, and that was that these people trod all over the crime scene. They apparently messed with the scarf. They took samples from the tree. Apparently the tree was stripped of everything except its trunk. After everyone was done with it, there's the guy selling the dirt. This stuff was really important. Like, for example, the dirt was important because that's how they would establish whether those two had been murdered in the spot they were found in or murdered somewhere else and transported. Because the blood they found trickled into the dirt, which is a sure sign that they had. Had been killed there on the. On the spot. But with people stealing dirt from that, there goes all of that evidence, too. So the crime scene was completely useless. And this is at a time when people knew, like, no, you really need to preserve crime scenes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. I think that's a good spot for a break, eh?

[Josh Clark]

A.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, well, since Josh said a, we're going to take a little break and come back with more of this grisly murder right after this.

[Emily Tish Sussman]

What do you think makes the perfect snack?

[Josh Clark]

Hmm.

[Gretchen Whitmer]

It's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.

[Emily Tish Sussman]

Could you be more specific?

[Gretchen Whitmer]

When it's cray venient.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Gretchen Whitmer]

Like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right down the street at am, pm. Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at am, pm.

[Josh Clark]

I'm seeing a pattern here.

[Gretchen Whitmer]

Well, yeah, we're talking about what I.

[Emily Tish Sussman]

Crave, which is anything from am, pm.

[Josh Clark]

What more could you want?

[Chuck Bryant]

Stop by AM pm where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient.

[Josh Clark]

That's Cravenians ampm.

[Chuck Bryant]

Too much good stuff.

[Gretchen Whitmer]

When I became a journalist, I was the first Latina in the newsrooms where I worked. I'm Maria Hinojosa. I dreamt of having a place where voices that have been historically sidelined would instead be centered. For over 30 years now, Latino USA has been that place. This is Latino USA, the radio journal of News and Cultura. As the longest running Latino news and culture show in the United States, Latino USA delivers the stories that truly matter to all of us. From sharp and deep analysis of the.

[Emily Tish Sussman]

Most pressing news, they're creating this narrative that immigrants are criminals.

[Josh Clark]

This is about everyone's freedom of speech.

[Gretchen Whitmer]

Nobody expected two popes from the American continent to stories about our cultures and our identities.

[Josh Clark]

When you do get a trans character like Emilia Perez, the trans community is going to push back on that colorism. All of these things, like, exist in.

[Gretchen Whitmer]

Mexican culture and Latino culture. You'll hear from people like Congresswoman aoc.

[Emily Tish Sussman]

I don't want to give them my fear. I'm not going to give them my fear.

[Gretchen Whitmer]

Listen to Latino USA as part of the Mike Cultura Podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Hi everyone, it's Janae, AKA Cheekies from Cheekies and Chill Podcast, and I'm launching an all new mini podcast series called Sincere Cereali. Janae. Sure, I'm a singer, author, businesswoman and podcaster, but at the end of the day, I am human. And that's why I'm sharing my ups and downs with you guys. Hi guys. I was sitting here recording episodes of Dear Cheekies and Cheekies and Chill and I just had to take a time out and purge my thoughts and feelings here on Sincerely Janae because I've been so emotional lately, you guys. Whether I'm in my feels I've just had a breakthrough with my therapist, or I've just had a really deep conversation with my siblings, or I'm in glam getting ready for an award show. I'm sharing my most intimate thoughts with you on the podcast. You guys know I always keep it real with you guys, but this time I'm taking it to the next level. Listen to Cheekies and chill on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so we're back. When we last left you, Josh, was sort of detailing the problems with the crime scene and people trotting about and messing that up. And you mentioned something about the police work wasn't so good. One of the issues was, and this is something. It seems like it happens a lot, if you believe TV and movies at least, is that there were various jurisdictions kind of battling for this case. They lived in Middlesex County. The old Phillips farm was in Somerset county, like you mentioned. And initially, like you said, they didn't even knew where the murders took place. They later found out that they were alive when they got to the farm. So they finally found that out. But at the beginning, you had Middlesex county and Somerset county both saying, like, no, this is my case. This is my case. And for a while, it seems like for a pretty great while, they had two sort of separate investigations going on, which never, at least in the movies, seems to be a good idea.

[Josh Clark]

No, not at all. Apparently, the governor had to get involved and be like, you guys need to. To join forces. And they eventually did. But, I mean, this is. This happened for. I don't know exactly how long, but long enough for it to be significant enough to mention. And this is a really important time during an investigation. The first several hours, 48. You might even say, yeah, that's what they say. So there was a statement that was issued that. That Mrs. Hall issued essentially to back up a theory that had been posed that this was a robbery. It was a robbery gone wrong. And a woman named Sally peters acted as Mrs. Hall's spokeswoman, apparently for. For most of this. This time, because Mrs. Hall didn't really want to be seen in public. So her good friend stepped up, and essentially they pointed out that Mrs. Hall's husband, the Reverend hall, he walked around with a gold watch, and in his wallet, he typically carried about $50, which is like $1,000 today. That's what he walked around a jerk.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's $1,000 of cash in their wallet.

[Josh Clark]

A guy who. Who marries a woman for her money, and then Runs around on her almost publicly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, probably so.

[Josh Clark]

And that those things were missing when they were found. So they had been robbed. Right. But the question was, was that really the motive behind this murder, where Eleanor Mills's throat had been cut to the backbone and they'd been staged in some really weird ways, Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. So this is the Middlesex assistant prosecutor at first. Cause again, they were conducting separate investigations. This guy's name was John Toolen. And he came out and said, hey, wait a minute. Basically. I mean, he couldn't come right out and accuse her, but he was basically like, hey, there's no information to back this up. Kind of listen to our statements, and maybe not the ones from the deceased's family.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm sure he had to couch that because she was from a wealthy family. But he basically said, hey, there's no evidence to back this up. And we think that. And this, to me, is a little hinky, but he said if it was a robber, he wouldn't have been using a.32. He would have been using a larger caliber, which to me doesn't really make much sense.

[Josh Clark]

He would have been using a.44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world.

[Chuck Bryant]

Do you feel lucky?

[Josh Clark]

So there was another theory, too, that I hadn't heard of, but kind of makes sense. Apparently the Klan had recently become highly active in the area around that time, and they were known for severely punishing moral transgressions. Like affairs.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But not their own.

[Josh Clark]

No, of course not. So if they had come upon or had targeted these two, because, I mean, if this is an open secret and this guy's a prominent member of the community, they could have been a target for the clan to punish, somebody like that. So that. That was a decent theory, but it didn't really go too far, at least at first.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. And we mentioned this next one just because it was. Has been mentioned, but it really also went nowhere. But very briefly, there were apparently there were two Italians who had showed up in New Brunswick and they had revolvers. Like that was known that there were these two Italian guys who no one knew, and they had guns. But that was just a very quick sort of. They had nothing to do with it kind of deal.

[Josh Clark]

For sure. That's just what you did in 1922 when somebody turned up murder. How many Italians came into town?

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly.

[Josh Clark]

So the cops were like, okay, like, we can't possibly, like, train our sights on. On the wealthy widow and her family. Let's see who else we can blame to just basically make the public let us make this go away, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

They were just looking for somebody to pin it on. And they turned their attention to the, the two people, Pearl Ballmer and Ray Schneider, who had run over to a farmhouse and told a woman, we just found some bodies, call the police.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

When they found the bodies, they were like, that seems a little fishy. We're going to start looking at you guys because you're probably just providing your own alibis who would possibly call in finding the bodies of a murder they just committed.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. So they discovered like, hey, they were also on the farm that night because this was, remember two days later in the morning when they, when they called it in, but they said, hey, they were also there that night, a couple of weeks after that, those two. And then a couple of other friends of theirs that were also with them that night. A guy named Clifford Hayes and a 15 year old kid named Leon Kaufman. They were all four brought in for what sounds like a straight 24 hours of questioning, which is always very suspicious, you know, when you try and get someone to their weakest point so they sign some weird false confession. So they wore them out questioning for a full day and night. And at the end of this, Ray Schneider, the original guy who reported it with his young girlfriend, signed a statement that said, hey, around midnight that night, me and Clifford Hayes, my buddy, came across a couple of people sitting on the ground near that farmhouse. I thought it was my girlfriend and her father and I had been looking for her. I was pretty jealous. And so Hayes shot both of them. And it sounds like it might have been like a favor to him. None of this really adds up because it wasn't like he had found her with some other guy and he was angry and his friends, like, I'll get even for you, none of this really makes much sense to me at least.

[Josh Clark]

Well, the only thing I saw was that I saw somewhere somebody said that they believed that Pearl was being molested by her father. That still doesn't make sense why she would be shot as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, it's all very hinky, but Ray Schneider basically in the statement at least said, we realized it was not them. We ran away. And so my girlfriend and this other kid, Leon Kaufman also said, yeah, parts of this are true. And Schneider did have a gun. He also had a pocket knife. And so in the end they arrested Clifford Hayes and charged him with the murders.

[Josh Clark]

They did. And immediately the press who was really paying attention to this and the public who were reading these stories were like, Are you guys dumb? Like, are you kidding? This is who you've come up with? There is it didn't take into account again. So does that mean that Clifford Hayes, after his friend Ray Schneider ran off his friend, who he'd taken it upon himself to execute the man's girlfriend and her father, that he went over and was like, well, I better almost cut this woman's head off and stage these bodies like this. But every single theory is just dumb because they can't take into account the most important clue in this whole murder.

[Chuck Bryant]

Love letters.

[Josh Clark]

The love letters.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

How would this guy, Clifford Hayes, have any access to the love letters between those two from Mills to Hall? How would they have had access to that? How would the Klan have had access to that? How would somebody who was robbing them and the robbery went wrong, how would they have access to that? Those are the clues. So much so that I'm quite certain that the people who killed this couple were like, oh, that was so stupid afterward, like, why did you put the letters down? They luckily got away with it, but that was. To me, that's just. There you go, there's your answer right there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, it's all just so fishy and ludicrous that they arrested this kid. So there was real backlash back then. Even like you said, everybody like no one really believed what was going on and the story had all these holes in it. There were a couple of other sort of weird details that came out of the subplot that didn't really lend itself to solving it. But the press basically uncovered some stuff that Schneider, who was dating the 15 year old pearl, he was actually married Clifford Hayes, who they arrested for the murder. Supposedly he had dated Pearl at one point, but again, none of this made any kind of sense at all. Within a few days, Ray Schneider was like, oh yeah, you know what, that's not true. So they sentenced him to a term at a reformatory for making false statements. And then young Pearl was sent to the House of the Good shepherd for Wayward Girls in Newark, which I'm sure was just a great place.

[Josh Clark]

I'm sure too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sarcasm.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. And then Ray Schneider being sentenced for his false statement. So he had a coerced statement beaten out of him and then he gets sentenced for giving it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Oh, was he beaten?

[Josh Clark]

I'm sure he was. We're talking 1922 and the police are trying to get a confession over a 24 hour period of questioning out of this guy who signs a false confession. I would say he Might.

[Chuck Bryant]

I just want to make sure no family members of those cops comes forward.

[Josh Clark]

And sues you for sure. But you saw as well as I did in People magazine that they said it, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, shall we go on, or should we take another break? Maybe go on a little more?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, let's go on a little more.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, Take it away.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. So finally, the public. It's just the police who are studiously avoiding looking at Frances hall, her two brothers, and eventually her cousin, all of whom would be implicated in this crime. It was just the cops and the prosecutors who were trying not to look at them. The rest of the public was like, I'm pretty sure we have. We know who did this. Why don't you start looking at them? And eventually, the public pressure about it couldn't. Couldn't just be ignored. So the cops finally started looking at Mrs. Hall, and they brought her in for questioning once. Apparently, it was very gentle line of questioning. They were very deferential. Very naturally, people also started looking at James Mills. He was the other jilted lover in this. In this case, he had a pretty good alibi. Apparently, either one of his hobbies or his side gig was woodworking. He was seen around the time of the murders at home. And then for the next couple hours during the time when this pair was definitely murdered. So he had a pretty good alibi. Multiple neighbors saying, yeah, he was at home, woodworking at the time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And that's in the TV show when they're at the end, when they're recounting how it was done. This is when you see the shot of, like, the buzz saw going in an empty room.

[Josh Clark]

Right. It's like a mannequin rigged, like, pushing.

[Chuck Bryant]

It so it actually sounds like it's cutting.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. That's like the 1922 version of somebody pre recording the security camera footage so that you can't see what they're doing when they commit the crime.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. The data's somehow scrambled.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But I'll tell you what. Even that couldn't fool Jessica Fletcher. There's at least one episode where that was used.

[Chuck Bryant]

Who was that again?

[Josh Clark]

Murder she Wrote.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that's right.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, you want to hear something awful?

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

So I was watching Murder She Wrote on Over the Air Antenna. It's to be expected. There's a lot of ads, and they're usually pretty crummy ads. But remember I was complaining about that stupid Burger King ad?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Well, I finally moved away from the over the air antenna viewing and just Started watching, I think, on Amazon.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love that you joined the 21st century.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. But for a while, I was like, great. I left the Burger King ad behind. Nope. It very recently popped up again on Amazon.

[Chuck Bryant]

I haven't heard it in a while.

[Josh Clark]

I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna recount it for you.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I'll tell you what I'm not doing is watching Murder, She Wrote.

[Josh Clark]

If that's the trigger, yeah, it's pretty bad. But that's how much I like Murder, She Wrote. I'm willing to suck it up, you know? Jessica Fletcher, solving crimes. Stop. Dude, that's pretty catchy. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. All right, so where were we?

[Josh Clark]

They started looking at Mrs. Hall. She didn't have an alibi, it turns out.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. So they brought her in, like you said, for some pretty gentle questioning. She said that on Friday morning, she was worried because her husband wasn't home. So she got together with her brother Willie, and they started looking for him. They visited the church at first to look for him, and then later they went to her house. Well, not her house, but the victim's house. They went to the Mills house. Nobody was there either. And they said. Yeah, initially they said we went there because, you know, we thought he might have been visiting with someone who was ill. And then later on, that story changed to, oh, no. We went by there because we knew that the church keys were there as well. So her story is already changing out of the gate.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And, I mean, if an entire prosecutor's offices office times two. Two different counties, prosecutors and police departments are being deferential to you and not investigating you because you're wealthy, at least have the decency to keep your story straight, to not make them look that ridiculous. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, agreed.

[Josh Clark]

The upshot is this. Mrs. Hall's alibi is her brother Willie, who lived with Mrs. Hall and Reverend Hall. And he was a suspect, too. So if your alibi is another suspect, that's not a very good alibi. And they were also prowling around about 2:30am and no one could corroborate that they were out looking for Reverend hall at 2:30am about the time the murders took place.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly. So again, she was still insistent that they had a great marriage. These love letters are fake. The cops start sniffing her other brother off the case, who doesn't live with them. This guy's name was Henry, and he was like, no, no, I got an alibi. I was fishing in lavalette. It's about 50 miles away. There's no way I could have been there. And you know what? I was even fishing with the mayor of Lavalette. And the mayor stepped forward and said, correct.

[Josh Clark]

He was holding a briefcase with money coming out of the. It seems.

[Chuck Bryant]

So he has an alibi, like a stated alibi. I'm not sure if that's the legal term, but I didn't see that there was any other proof that he was out fishing. But he said, I was fishing and there was a witness with me. There were a few witnesses. And it seems like the key witness to this all is the woman who actually witnessed the murder, as it turns out.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. A woman named Jane Gibson, who had come to be known as the Pig Woman. That's just what the press call her across the board because she was a pig farmer in the area of the road where the bodies were found.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And she had caused to be awake at 2:30am apparently there had been some thefts of her crops, probably cops who'd come and try to snatch her crops. And so she was awake waiting essentially for the thieves to come back. She said that while she was lying in wait, she heard a sound. She went to investigate, and that she saw Mrs. Hall, her two brothers, and Mrs. Hall's cousin Henry, another Henry, carrying out these murders.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, like she said, I saw this happen. But the prosecutors are like, nah. Her story keeps kind of changing, too. And they all have alibis, stated alibis. So a grand jury convenes in November of that year. Like, what should we do here about indicting this family? And I say we tackle that question, or answer rather, right after another break. Eh?

[Josh Clark]

Eh.

[Gretchen Whitmer]

When I became a journalist, I was the first Latina in the newsrooms where I worked. I'm Maria Hinojosa. I dreamt of having a place where voices that have been historically sidelined would instead be centered. For over 30 years now, Latino USA has been that place. This is Latino USA, the radio journal of News and Cultura. As the longest running Latino news and culture show in the United States, Latino USA delivers the stories that truly matter to all of us. From sharp and deep analysis of the.

[Emily Tish Sussman]

Most pressing news, they're creating this narrative that immigrants are criminals.

[Josh Clark]

This is about everyone's freedom of speech.

[Gretchen Whitmer]

Nobody expected two copes from the American continent to stories about our cultures and our identities.

[Josh Clark]

When you do get a trans character like Emilia Perez, the trans community's gonna push back on that colorism. All of these things, like, exist in.

[Gretchen Whitmer]

Mexican culture and Latino cult. Hear from people like Congresswoman aoc.

[Emily Tish Sussman]

I don't want to give them My fear. I'm not going to give them my fear.

[Gretchen Whitmer]

Listen to Latino USA as part of the My Cultura Podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josh Clark]

We all know, right?

[Emily Tish Sussman]

Genius is evenly distributed, opportunity is not.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's Black Business Month and black tech green money is tapping in. I'm Will Lucas, spotlighting black founders, investors and innovators building the future. One idea at ahead of time. Let's talk legacy tech and generational wealth.

[Big Three Championship Announcer (Alternate)]

I don't think any person of any gender, race, ethnicity should alter who they are, especially on an intellectual level or a talent level, to make someone else feel comfortable just because they are the majority in this situation and they need employment. So for me, I'm always going to be honest in saying that we need to be unapologetically ourselves. If that makes me a vocal CEO and people consider that rocking the boat, so be it.

[Chuck Bryant]

To hear this and more on the power of black innovation and ownership, listen to black tech green money from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio.

[Josh Clark]

App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Hi everyone, it's Janae, AKA Cheekies from Cheekies and Chill Podcast. And I'm launching an all new mini podcast series called Sincerely Janae. Sure, I'm a singer, author, businesswoman and podcaster, but at the end of the day, I am human. And that's why I'm sharing my ups and downs with you guys. Hi guys. I was sitting here recording episodes of Dear Cheekies and Cheekies and Chill and I just had to take a timeout and purge my thoughts and feelings here on Sincerely Jana because I've been so emotional lately, you guys. Whether I'm in my feels, I've just had a breakthrough with my therapist, or I've just had a really deep conversation with my siblings, or I'm in glam getting ready for an award show. I'm sharing my most intimate thoughts with you on the podcast. You guys know I always keep it real with you guys, but this time I'm taking it to the next level. Listen to Cheekies and chill on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Josh Clark]

So, Chuck, where we left off, you had said that a grand jury had been convened, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

And it turned out that the grand jury, I think they took five days before they said, no, we're not going to hand down any indictments. So it seemed that the probably the likeliest suspects, Frances hall, her two brothers and her cousin were now off the hook. And we should say also one of the things about her brother that's going to come into play, one of her brothers, Willie, he lived at home, like we said, with the Reverend hall and Mrs. Hall. And the reason why, it seems, is because he was at least understood at the time is kind of slow, as they would put it. Sometimes you see in modern retellings of it that he's considered developmentally disabled. That does not seem, seemed to be the case. It seems like he probably was neurodiverse in some way, shape or form. But he was also quite sharp too. He was known to read books on like metallurgy. He was quite sociable. He would be high functioning. You would, you would say today. But at the time he seemed to be. If this was a group of murderers, his family murderers, he would be targeted as like the weak link that you would go after. But regardless, it didn't matter because 1922 went out with these four let off the hook because the grand jury didn't indict. How about that?

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And right after that happened, the good Mrs. Hall left for Italy. So nothing at all suspicious about that, about getting on a plane to Europe.

[Josh Clark]

I think you can make a case either way that, you know, she just wanted to get away from the whole thing too.

[Chuck Bryant]

I said plane. Would that have been just a notion liner at the time?

[Josh Clark]

Okay, way to go, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

So save your emails everybody. I'm speaking to modern parlance. So in December they said, basically, now that all the gawkers are out of here and all the attention's dying down, we can get down to some real investigating and figure out who did this. A year later, the New York Times followed up on the anniversary. We're like, yeah, so you got down to business, what'd you find out? And they were like, what?

[Josh Clark]

No progress whatsoever, right? Yeah. So that's how it went for four more years. And then out of nowhere, in a completely unrelated divorce case, the husband of a woman named Louise Geist, who had been a maid at the Hall's home during the time of the murders in the, in the divorce proceedings, he was assassinating his, his ex wife or soon to be ex wife's character, saying that she had been involved in the Hall Mills murder and had been paid 5,000 smackaroos to keep quiet by Mrs. Hall and her brothers and that she knew all about it. And somehow I guess that got out to the press and William Randolph Hearst's Daily Mirror assigned a reporter to look back into the case. And it just blew it right back onto the front pages of papers across the. Across the country.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Such that the state of New Jersey could no longer just keep ignoring this. So Governor A. Harry Moore said. Oh, God. All right, let's reopen this case. I'm too old to grand jury. Yeah, exactly. At this point, the grand jury does come back and indict Frances hall, her brothers Willie and Henry, and her cousin Henry. They were all four arrested. Mrs. Hall, for her part, was released on bail. 15 grand. A lot of dough at the time. That's still a lot of dough. I always say that. The men were held without bail. And at this point, this is four years later. They don't take care of evidence like they do now. A lot of the evidence was gone. But they did find some new clues. There was another adulterous couple in the church. There were probably dozens of them, because that's just how that kind of thing goes. But this one other adulterous couple. There was a guy named Ralph Gorsliin and a woman named Kathryn Rostell. And they were on Lubber's Lane that night. A private detective came forward and said, hey, Ralph admitted that he heard these shots and saw, I think, cousin Henry. Or was this Brother Henry?

[Josh Clark]

That was Brother Henry.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. Brother Henry. Who apparently swore him to secrecy. Ralph Gorstlein later came out and denied having accused Brother Henry. But he did confirm that he and his mistress, Catherine Rastell, had heard these four gunshots, heard some low voices and a woman screaming. And the reason that I didn't come out before was. Cause obviously I didn't wanna, like, have my affair busted. But in 1926, four years later, she had talked. His mistress had talked. So he was like, well, I guess the cat's out of the bag, so I'm gonna say what happened too. And his wife said, great, let's get a divorce.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And again, he had gone to this private detective in 1922. Because his conscience had gotten to him. But I think he was basically saying. He was saying stuff that he eventually said in 1926. To get the detective to go to the cops and say, hey, this anonymous source did this. But it didn't pan out like that. But 1926, they were just uncovering stuff left and right. Remember I said that they exhumed Mrs. Mills and did another autopsy. And that's when they found that her tongue and vocal cords had been cut out. So, like, this was a serious investigation that was launched again in 1926. Probably a lot more serious than the one that was carried out in 1922. And another, another clue that turned up or another source that turned up was a guy named Paul Hamborski. He was a minister also in New Brunswick. And he was friendly with Reverend Hall. And Paul Amborski came forward and said, hey, I, I actually had a conversation with Reverend hall basically a month before he was murdered. And in it he said that my wife has gotten really cool lately and has turned into a different woman. And quote, I am very much afraid that she will do me bodily harm. And he explained it was because of this affair and that he had no intention of giving up Eleanor Mills and that they would probably run off together pretty soon. This was a month before Edward hall was murdered that a minister came forward and said, this is what he said to me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And he also said that her brother Henry threatened me because everyone knew about this affair. And so he comes out with this very, you know, sort of key evidence. And right before the 1926 trial started, this Paul Hamborski guy just sort of disappeared. He left town. He didn't disappear like disappear disappear, but he left town pretty quickly. And there was a state senator named Alexander Simpson who was acting as special prosecutor for the case. And he said this Homborski guy's loans dried up at the bank. And the banker said, you've been a fool to get mixed up in this Hall's Mill case.

[Josh Clark]

The banker was Charles Bronson.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, that would have been. You've been the fool to get mixed up in this Hall's Mill case.

[Josh Clark]

Very nice too. I just said that. Cause I really wanted to hear you redo it. It's Charles Bronson.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's just all dirty dealing, basically. It's really clear.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I mean, this family was more than wealthy and powerful. To ruin a person, make sure that they didn't have any line of income or just, just make life miserable for them to where they did want to just get out of town before they could testify. So this, this, this trial happens. Like they finally have enough evidence that a grand jury this time pretty quickly handed off indictments. And so Frances and her two brothers and cousin are indicted for murder. And right when word got out that they were about to be tried again, all the journalists came back. I saw an estimate that they filed 12 million plus words. Cumulatively, it wasn't just one guy during the 23 day trial. That's how many words were written on this. It was everywhere.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, just hundreds and hundreds of people all of a sudden in town. And the public, of course, is like hey, you know what we care the most about is, like, reading these love letters. Like, Josh Clark will one day say that's the key piece of evidence. And like, what was in these things? And one of them. And this is great. Who helped us? Livia. With this. Yeah, she dug up some of these letters. Darling Wonderheart, I just want to crush you for two hours. I want to see you Friday night alone by our road where we can let out unrestrained that universe of joy and happiness we call ours. And he signed it DTL for Dina Treuer liebhabe, which is German for thy true lover. And Mills called him Babykins. So this is my only joke about this is I want to see the sitcom Wonderheart and Babykins, like, very soon on my television.

[Josh Clark]

Do me a favor, will you? Read that quote as Charles Bronson. Really? Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Darling Wonderheart, I just want to crush you for two hours. I want to see you Friday night alone by our road where we can let out unrestrained that the universe of joy and happiness that we call ours.

[Josh Clark]

Beautiful, Chuck. Bravo.

[Chuck Bryant]

If it's a little more sinister somehow.

[Josh Clark]

If it wouldn't make the. The levels go into the red, I would clap loudly for you right now. So, yes, this is the kind of humiliation that Frances hall is enduring. She's sitting in court because again, she's on trial. People are reading. That was just one. They were reading a bunch of different love letters in open court. And there were more witnesses that came forward. They were like they were poking holes in people's alibis from the year back. So they brought in new witnesses to undermine the truthfulness of their original witnesses and so on and so forth. And the maid, Louise Geist, she was brought to the stand and she said, no, my ex husband's a big fat liar. But I'll tell you what, Willie, who lived with the Halls and whose servant I was as well, he told me the day after the murder, but the day before the bodies were discovered, that something terrible happened last night. So Willie shouldn't have known anything about something terrible happening last night. Unless it was that his sister had lost at Solitaire, which was the one alibi that Louise Geist could give Frances hall for that night. Solitaire was her alibi.

[Chuck Bryant]

So was this. Louise Geist was involved and probably got paid off, and she was trying to just pin it on Willie, this possibly neurodivergent, you know, younger brother.

[Josh Clark]

That certainly seems the case to me. Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. That's how I took it.

[Josh Clark]

That's pretty whole. Scratch that. Her ex husband comes up with in Divorce court, you know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So again, though, the star witness was Jane Gibson, the pig woman, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah. She. And this is super dramatic, she came forward, she was in late stages of cancer, and they brought her in on a stretcher into court. She's speaking in a whisper, basically, like just hanging in there to get this testimony out. So her story was after 9 o' clock on that day, her dog started barking again. She was worried about thieves stealing her crop. So she gets on her mule, Jenny, rides out to the field, sees people fighting under that crabapple tree, hears a woman yell, don't, don't, Don't, Henry. She hears a shot, a gunshot. One of the men fall, she flees. She gets the heck out of there, of course. And then on her way out of there, like running, she hears a woman screaming again, three more gunshots. And they were like, can you point out, are those people in the courtroom today, basically? And she said, yes. And she pointed at Mrs. Hall, her two brothers and her cousin. And they said, oh, well, you know what? She's the big lady. Like, don't believe what she says, basically.

[Josh Clark]

Well, supposedly her own mother, Jane Gibson's own mother, was in the courtroom apparently wringing her handkerchief, watching her daughter give testimony, saying, she's lying, she's lying. So she. People didn't put much stock into Jane Gibson's testimony.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe she said she's dying, maybe.

[Josh Clark]

So this is essentially the prosecution's case. They presented Jane Gibson again. She basically said, I saw those four murder these two people, at least in silhouette. And then I saw the four clearly. Then it was time for the accused to start taking the stand. And apparently Mrs. Hall was. Was so composed on. During her time on the stand giving testimony that the papers dubbed her the Iron Widow.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And she still said, I never suspected my husband of infidelity. And I was really nervous when he disappeared. That's why my brother and I went out that very night to look for him. And again, she's in part probably saving face. But now at this point, she's trying to not give anyone a motive that she might have had for killing him, which would clearly be in such a passionate murder, something like infidelity, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

But despite her, I think everybody kind of expected her to be good on the stand. You remember I said that they had kind of supposed that Willie was going to be the wink. Weak link. The prosecutors were just chomping at the bit to get to him. They were just going to work him over on the stand. And apparently Willie held his own, like nobody's business and did so well on the stand that essentially he got himself and his siblings and cousin off. That's how well he did on the stand. He was the one who basically got him acquitted.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, so there it is. They got acquitted on December 3, 1926. After that, the defendants, minus brother Henry, sued the Mirror for libel. It was settled out of court. And we don't know how much money was exchanged hands, if any. Seems like there probably was some. And it was never brought to trial again. It never came before a criminal court again. Mrs. Hall went back to doing her thing. She's doing charity work at the church. Did not, aside from that, didn't really socialize a lot. Died in 1942. And we look back now, it seems fairly obvious to us what happened. Even though famous civil rights attorney William Kunstler wrote a book in 1964 called the Minister and the Choir Singer where he supposes that it was the kkk. But there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence about that at all.

[Josh Clark]

No. He even says this is all circumstantial. And apparently there's no account of anyone actually being murdered when they were punished by the KKK for something like having an affair. So it's pretty. Pretty.

[Chuck Bryant]

Just spankings.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. So what about the Great Gatsby? Chuck, we all know that you read that article as well as I did in People.

[Chuck Bryant]

People wonder if this was one of the stories that inspired the Great Gatsby. It was in 1922, I think Gatsby came out in 25. So before the actual trial. But F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda, we do know that they follow that case. They were pretty interested in it and there's a lot of differences. So, I mean, I think it may have just been one of those sort of launching off points where he was like, oh, this is a cool idea, and then just. Really, just went with it in a fictional sense.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Well, People magazine pointed out something that I thought was a good connection between the two in the story. The working class woman who's having an affair with. I can't remember his name. Gatsby's rival. Her death is essentially like, ignored because she's not upper class, she's working class. The same thing happened to Eleanor Mills. Like, her death does not, aside from the grisly state of her body. People did not pay much attention to that. It was all about this. This wealthy woman and her wealthy husband. And in the end, the wealthy people got to go on with their lives while the dead working class victim is just Largely forgotten.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

Well, that's it for the Hall Mills murder. Chuck, good pick. However, we got it. Also, just want to shout out the Yale Review. Howard, Harold Schechter's article, Mr. Local History Project. Mary S. Hartman wrote a paper. And then also our own Livia, who helped us with this too. And since I just rattled off some sources, as everyone knows, I just triggered listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is about smoking. We did one on the cigarette. And this is from sue in Melbourne, Australia. Hey, guys, I really dislike smoking here in Melbourne, Australia. A pack of 20 cigarettes. And that is individual cigarettes, not 20 packs. Like a pack of cigarettes.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, 20.

[Chuck Bryant]

Lucy's cost 58.99.

[Josh Clark]

I know, I saw that. And it's just. I'm still astounded by it.

[Chuck Bryant]

A pack of 25 costs $62.99 and a carton of 10 packs is $469. If a smoker smokes a pack of 20 per day, the cost per week is $371. Per week or per annum. Close to 20 grand. Add a cup, a cup of coffee from a shop Monday to Friday at 5 a day per annum. 1300 bucks. Victoria has the most expensive cigarettes in the world, guys. Yet there is always a crowd of puffing smokers outside every building. Instead of sucking filth into the lungs, a person saves the money. An overseas holiday every year would be possible. Yes. I was a bookkeeper. Love the show. That is from Soup.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And you might be out there saying, well, the Australian dollar is less than the US dollar. I just calculated it. $469 carton of cigarettes in Australia. Still a $300 carton of cigarettes in the US so that's amazing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That's a lot of dough to actively die earlier.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Thanks a lot. Who was that again?

[Chuck Bryant]

Sue.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks a lot, Sue. And if you want to be like sue, you can send us an email. Send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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[Emily Tish Sussman]

Have you ever wished for a change but weren't sure how to make it? Maybe you felt stuck in a job, a place or even a relationship. I'm Emily Tish Sussman and on she Pivots I dive into the inspiring pivots of women who have taken big leaps in their lives and careers.

[Gretchen Whitmer]

I'm Gretchen Whitmer.

[Emily Tish Sussman]

Jody Sweetie, Monica Patton, Elaine Welteroth. Learn how to get comfortable pivoting because your life is going to be full of them. Listen to these women and more on she Pivots now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Gretchen Whitmer]

There's stuff they don't want you to know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Every Monday, we break down the news, make connections and reveal stuff they don't want you to know. A secret deal between members of Mexican cartels and the United States government. Residents are reporting sightings of exploding birds.

[Gretchen Whitmer]

Listen to stuff they don't want you.

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To know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you find your favorite shows.

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