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The Real Scarlet Letter

The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told

Tue Jul 22 2025

Summary

The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told: "The Real Scarlet Letter"

Podcast Information:

Title: The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told
Host: Mary Kay McBrayer
Episode: The Real Scarlet Letter
Release Date: July 22, 2025
Description: An anthology of the most layered and engrossing true crime stories, focusing on female killers, cops, scientists, lawyers, scammers, activists, and more. Hosted by true crime writer Mary Kay McBrayer, the series explores stories at the intersection of society, justice, and the human psyche.

1. Introduction to Sarah Cornell’s Case

Mary Kay McBrayer opens the episode by recounting the discovery of Sarah Cornell’s body on December 21, 1832, in Fall River, Massachusetts. [02:32] Sarah was found hanging from a haystack, dressed and appearing at peace despite the grim scene. Mary sets the stage for exploring whether Sarah’s death was a suicide or a murder, drawing parallels to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fictional character Hester Prynne from "The Scarlet Letter."

2. Initial Discovery and Investigation

Upon finding Sarah’s body, John Durfee, a justice of the peace and farmer, immediately recognized her and became a key witness. [05:45] Dr. Thomas Wilbur, Sarah’s physician, initially suspected suicide, noting her mental distress and pregnancy. The coroner’s jury, composed of local men without medical expertise, concurred with the suicide verdict [16:22], influenced by societal norms and the desire to preserve reputations.

3. Uncovering Key Evidence

As the respected village matrons prepared Sarah’s body for burial, they discovered troubling evidence that contradicted the initial suicide theory:

Bruises and Scratches: Indications of a struggle (e.g., "bad bruises on her back and knees scratched with grass") [05:45].
Violent Indicators: Blood and fecal matter in her undergarments suggested possible sexual assault [05:45].
Suspicious Clothing: The hanging cord was embedded deeply in her neck, and her shoes were neatly placed aside, conflicting with typical suicide behavior [20:18].

4. The Mysterious Note and Letters

John Durfee found a crucial piece of evidence—a four-inch soiled note signed “SMC” directing inquiry to Reverend Ephraim Avery [29:21]. Additionally, letters revealed Sarah’s desire to separate from the Methodist community and hints at tumultuous interactions with Reverend Avery [20:18].

5. Suspect Identification: Reverend Ephraim Avery

Dr. Wilbur suspected that Ephraim Avery, a married Methodist minister, was involved in Sarah’s death. Sarah had confided in him about being raped by Avery, linking her pregnancy directly to him [31:24]. Despite mounting evidence, Ephraim Avery was acquitted due to the coroner’s jury’s reliance on the initial suicide verdict [58:41].

6. The Trial and Its Aftermath

Ephraim Avery’s trial highlighted the limitations of the 19th-century justice system, where societal pressures and lack of forensic expertise often led to flawed verdicts. The jury, influenced by societal norms and insufficient evidence, acquitted Avery despite credible suspicions [62:31].

7. Literary Connections: "The Scarlet Letter"

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s "The Scarlet Letter" drew inspiration from Sarah Cornell’s case. However, while Hester Prynne faces ostracization for her child out of wedlock without the violence of murder, Sarah’s story is far darker and more disturbing [62:31]. Mary Kay McBrayer explores how Hawthorne sanitized the brutal reality of Sarah’s fate to craft a compelling literary character.

8. Interview with Kate Winkler Dawson

In an insightful interview, author Kate Winkler Dawson delves deeper into the case, discussing her research process and the complexities of interpreting historical evidence [50:21]. Key points from the interview include:

Research Challenges: Dawson emphasizes the importance of primary sources, such as trial transcripts and firsthand accounts, while acknowledging the biases present in secondary sources like Catherine Williams’s book [50:38].
Bias and Objectivity: Dawson critiques Williams’s portrayal of Ephraim Avery, noting her desire to frame him as guilty despite conflicting evidence [54:44].
Modern Forensic Insights: Contemporary forensic experts support the theory of murder over suicide, reinforcing the suspicions raised by the matrons’ findings [54:12].

9. Conclusion: Revisiting the Verdict

Mary Kay McBrayer concludes by reflecting on the enduring relevance of Sarah Cornell’s story. The case underscores the vulnerabilities faced by women, both in the 19th century and today, highlighting systemic issues in justice and societal support [66:35]. The episode emphasizes the importance of re-examining historical cases with modern perspectives to seek justice and understanding.

Notable Quotes:

Mary Kay McBrayer [20:18]: "When the matrons did that, with Sarah Cornell preparing her for a quick burial the next day, there's no embalming involved in the early 1800s. So this had to be pretty quick, which was a challenge, I'm sure."
Kate Winkler Dawson [54:44]: "Katherine was so sure. And I teach a true crime podcast class and, you know, I always talk to them about the intent. Don't just listen to what the story is. Why am I telling the story in this way?"
Mary Kay McBrayer [66:35]: "The reason that people kill, the reason that people are victims is no different in 1832 than it is now. It's the same people."

Key Takeaways:

Historical Injustice: Sarah Cornell’s case exemplifies how societal norms and lack of forensic knowledge can lead to miscarriages of justice.
Literary Influence: The true crime elements of Sarah’s story influenced a major literary work, highlighting the interplay between real events and fiction.
Ongoing Relevance: The episode draws parallels between historical and contemporary issues, emphasizing the timeless nature of certain societal challenges.
Critical Analysis: Through expert interviews, the podcast showcases the importance of scrutinizing historical narratives to uncover hidden truths.

Final Thoughts: "The Real Scarlet Letter" masterfully intertwines history, literature, and true crime to shed light on a forgotten yet significant case. Mary Kay McBrayer’s meticulous storytelling, combined with Kate Winkler Dawson’s scholarly insights, offers listeners a compelling exploration of justice, societal expectations, and the enduring quest for truth.

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Transcript

Mary Kay McBrayer (0:00)

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Diversion Audio (2:28)

Diversion Audio.

Ryan Reynolds (2:32)

A Note this episode contains mature content and quite graphic descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners. Please take care in listening the morning of December 21, 1832 was frigid and windy. John Durfee was 36 years old. He was a justice of the peace, a town councilman, and he was a profitable farmer on his father's property. John took his team from home down the hill full of gopher holes to the river. About, quote, 60 rods from the house was a haystack. The haystack was supported with four metal stakes wedged into its middle at about a 45 degree angle, and each stake was driven into the ground to keep the stack from toppling over. Over the top of it all, a burlap cover protected the hay from moisture. Although this was a clear morning, no rain or snow, when John Durfee came upon this haystack, he gasped. Hanging from one of the stakes was the frozen body of a young woman. Her short black hair was frozen to her face and covered in frost. Her long black cloak was buttoned to her throat, her bonnet was drawn around her chin, and her shoes lay neatly on the ground beside her. In the dim sunrise light, John Durfee saw that this woman's knees dangled four or five inches from the ground. Her feet dragged behind her. He watched her body sway for just a moment in disbelief before he yelled for help. Three men responded, and together they started taking the body down. Welcome to the greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, author of the true crime book Madame the Life and Crimes of Harlem's Underground Racketeer, Stephanie Sinclair. Today's episode we're calling the real Scarlet Letter. It's the story of Sarah Cornell, a young Methodist textile worker who was the inspiration for Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's book the Scarlet Letter. The difference, of course, is that Hester Prynne wasn't murdered and she certainly didn't kill herself. I'll tell you all about it after this quick break. It probably won't surprise you, listener, to know that I was always in honors and advanced placement English classes. I was that nerd who always got the bookit pizza. Jasmine Williams might have beaten me in every other subject, but I was the accelerated reader. What I mean is, I never didn't do the assigned reading. I tell you, I read every single word of the Odyssey and I did not understand a damn thing. I mean, I understood the phrases sing in me, Muse. And when dawn with her rose red fingers and how it was really just the bard buying time, basically ancient Greek for what had happened was. But how was a 9th grader supposed to understand that the only reason Athena, goddess of wisdom, could get the warrior Odysseus off of Circe, the Sex Witch's island is because Uncle Poseidon was blackout drunk in Ethiopia, accepting sacrifices at his own festival. Yes, that is how the Odyssey actually opens, y'. All. Until I had to teach it in university World Literature, I didn't even know that. And I also did not understand the gravitas of another required ninth grade reading. That is, of course, Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel the Scarlet Letter. I remember scraps. One thing I remember is that in order for me to slog through the diction, I kept a tally of how many times he used the adjective ignominious. I remember that Hester Prynne was ostracized for having a child out of wedlock. And I remember that she would not out her baby's daddy and that everyone admired her for it. They did not, however, admire her enough to accept her back into the community. And I remember our teacher having to really spell out for us that the ugly reverend was the father. And my brain would not comprehend that the reason Hester didn't want to tell anyone was because it would ruin the minister's reputation. Even at 14, I remember thinking, well, it sounds like the minister ruined the minister's reputation. And while that is true, and we've come a long way as a society since, even then I didn't know just how nuanced that situation could be. And I definitely didn't know that Nathaniel Hawthorne was an avid news reader. Hawthorne was effectively a true crime junkie. His son called it a quote, pathetic craving. Six years after Sarah Cornell's death, Hawthorne wrote in his journal about visiting a wax display of Sarah Cornell. That's right. Nathaniel Hawthorne heard the story I'm about to tell you at a traveling wax museum. To be featured in Madame Tussauds today, one has to be pretty famous. Same then in her book the Sinners All Bow, which I referenced for this episode very thoroughly, Kate Winkler Dawson says that quote being featured in a wax exhibit indicated that the person had achieved a certain level of fame or notoriety or infamy. And this case absolutely achieved that certain level. By the way, at the end of this episode, I get to interview Kate Winkler Dawson herself. So make sure you stick around. It's really a good talk. I should also mention while we're having this sidebar that Kate Winkler Dawson credits a co author to her book the Sinners All Bow. Katherine Williams wrote what might have been the first true crime book ever about this case, just one year after the crime itself. That's how we have so many direct quotes from court testimonies, of course, but also from interviews that Catherine conducted shortly after the proceedings. This is a component I will definitely ask Kate about in our interview. And the fact that Catherine was not a man writing about this story is definitely relevant, but I'll talk about that more later. Now back to the story. At the top of the episode, I explained how John Durfee found Sarah Cornell and took in everything that he saw, which was fortunate because he became not only a key witness in the case, but also a key investigator. John Durfee called for help when he saw her frozen body. He clocked that her cloak was buttoned up, her head was uncovered, and her shoes were neat at her side. John Durfee's 75 year old father was the first to arrive at the scene. Richard owned the property even though John managed it day to day. John tried to free Sarah Cornell's body from the cord by, quote, lifting her up and slipping the line. But he couldn't. His father told him to cut her down, so he did. He later noticed that the reason why he couldn't undo the noose was because the cord was embedded almost half an inch into her neck. Once her body was freedom lying on the ground, John Durfee went to fetch the coroner. A little later in the morning, and just a few blocks away from the Durfee farm, Dr. Thomas Wilbur was about to have breakfast with his family. He saw from the window that people ran up and down the street and he felt uneasy. He didn't smell fire, which he thought was the most likely reason for panic, but he was determined not to get involved. That is, until a concerned neighbor summoned him. By the time Thomas arrived on the scene, a crowd had gathered around the body. No one had yet identified her. A local Methodist minister named Ira Bidwell said when asked, she is a respectable young woman and a member of my church. John Smith also recognized her. He was the overseer of a weaving room where Sarah worked, and Dr. Thomas Wilbur recognized her too. She was one of his patients. He knew her well, and her death clearly shook him emotionally. He removed the cord from inside her neck with difficulty. Her face was distorted, her tongue protruded through her teeth, and there was a deep indentation on her cheek. Thomas had been treating Sarah for months. He said he was concerned about her mental health. Thomas believed that she had completed suicide. John Durfee asked the elderly coroner, Elihu Hicks, if he could move her body to his farmhouse. Elihu agreed. They laid her in a horse wagon wrapped in a blanket with hay under her, and they drove the horses slowly up the smooth road to the house. This was later important to note because any marks upon her person would have definitely happened prior to her discovery. Soon after, the coroner summoned a jury. I didn't realize this, but for a lot of American history, coroners summoned juries to rule a cause of death. Dr. Wilbur suspected suicide, but the coroner's jury would determine if that was official. The men on the coroner's jury, and it would have been all men, would have had little or no medical knowledge, just good standing in the community. You might remember from some of our former episodes that even coroners didn't need medical degrees because they were just as often appointed as they were elected. The coroner's jury was scheduled to meet the following morning, about 24 hours after the body's discovery to determine the cause of death. They all agreed that it was most likely suicide, though, especially because they refused to examine her body without her clothes for the sake of propriety. But before that, on the day of her death, the body had to be prepared for examination and subsequent burial. And the people who did that were a group of five or six respectable matrons from the village who often volunteered for this abhorrent task. When they began the preparation, they all assumed that Sarah had died by suicide. It seems like they all pitied her and assumed that some hard fortune had driven her to take her own life. Then they removed her cloak, her dress and her undergarments. And then they changed their minds. They later told Catherine Williams there were bad bruises on the back and the knees scratched and stained with grass, as though they had been on the ground during some struggle. And it got much more intense than that. One matron had the opinion that Sarah had been violated, which was the 19th century term for sexually assaulted. She thought so, based on the blood and fecal matter in her undergarments. There were also bruise marks on her abdomen, on the lower part of her belly that fitted large hands. The thumbprints were inside each hip bone and the fingers spread over the hips. There was froth tinged with blood from her mouth and nose as well. It was certain that her cause of death had been strangulation by hanging. What was not certain was who had hanged her.

Ryan Reynolds (20:18)

Before the break, I mentioned several key observations that the six matrons observed on Sarah's corpse. She had bad bruises on her back and hand, shaped bruises over both hips. Her knees were scraped up. The cord used to hang her was embedded deep in her undergarments. The matrons found blood and fecal matter. Dr. Thomas Wilbur described her face as distorted with her tongue sticking out. An indentation appeared on her cheek. Bloody froth came from her mouth and nose. Her hair was frozen to her face and the doctor knew from previous visits as his patient that she was pregnant. The cause of her death was definitely strangulation and it seemed that she had suffered violence. Some of the injuries to her body might have happened during a suicide, but others, like the bruises shaped like hands around her hips, it was clear that someone else had inflicted. Still, Kate Winkler Dawson reminds us in her book the Sinners All Bow Just because Sarah suffered violence at the hands of someone else before she died doesn't mean she was murdered. Even though it seems like those two things have to go together, they don't necessarily. It only matters what can be proved in court. The matrons asked John Durfee to locate burial clothes for Sarah, and they wanted him to find letters to or from her family and friends so that they could notify her people of her Death. So John had Sarah's landlady bring over her belongings. They arrived in a locked bandbox. Her landlady said the key was probably in Sarah's pocket, since she always carried it with her. One of the matrons had indeed found the small key in her pocket. And when John opened the box, he realized Sarah had written many letters. He retrieved four letters that seemed of interest. Two of them were to Reverend Ira Bidwell, the same Methodist minister who had attested to her good character. When her body was discovered, one of them, unposted, unopened and undated, said that she wanted to separate herself completely from the Methodist society. She said, I have not seen a well or happy day since I left the Thompson campground. The meeting at the Thompson campground was at the end of August, which is important. What happened there would determine the course of her trial. The other three letters were all unsigned but directed to Sarah. One mentioned two days of meeting, depending on weather. Another ended with Write soon. Say nothing to no one. They weren't threatening, not overtly, at least. John found more evidence in her trunk. One was a vial of oil of tansy. John Durfee mentioned it in the presence of Dr. Wilbur, and it gnawed at him. Sarah had asked Dr. Wilbur about it in one of her patient visits. He did not prescribe it to her. Rather, he cautioned her against using. Might have been used for suicide, but in the 19th century it was also used to terminate pregnancy to varying results. Oil of tansy was definitely dangerous, regardless of its intended use. When Dr. Wilbur learned of its presence in her trunk is when he divulged her secret. He knew Sarah to be pregnant. He also felt that he knew at this point the cause of Sarah's supposed suicide. He caught Reverend Ira Bidwell and said that his brother, a fellow Methodist minister named Ephraim Avery, had made Sarah so unhappy. He had been manipulative and cruel. And Dr. Bidwell said to the whole party that despite ruling this death a suicide, he thought she deserved a Christian burial. Sarah Cornell was one of Reverend Ira Bidwell's most favored disciples. Ira left quickly and promised to return with information about the burial and funds with which to do it. But Dr. Wilbur felt that something was off. Dr. Thomas Wilbur told the coroner's jury that he suspected a married man had sexually assaulted Sarah, humiliated her, and left her destitute. Still, in observation of the suicide verdict, John Durfee had a farmhand dig her grave on his own property. The matrons moved along with their plans. That is, until later on, when they rummaged around in Sarah's trunk. The two matrons, who happened to be John Durfee's sisters, were hoping to find others to contact regarding Sarah's burial service. What they found was a key clue. It was a 4 inch long piece of soiled paper. Signed SMC it read, if I am missing, inquire of the Rev. E.K. aver. The verdict of suicide came and went without acknowledgment of this note. Both Catherine and Kate figured that the coroner's jury did not hear about the evidence before the burial because they still did not suspect murder just a few hours before the service. That's when the matrons turned the letter over to John Durfee. He read it multiple times and he stayed quiet about it. But he did think it was suspicious that not a single Methodist minister was at the funeral service. There was other confusing evidence at hand too. Sarah's cloak was buttoned all the way up. Her shoes were neat and placed beside her. Her gloves were not dirty. The strings of her bonnet were underneath the cord used to hang her. The string was a very specific kind called marline twine. But it was not common in any laborer's toolkit, though it was not present in the mill where Sarah worked. And then her knees were just a few inches above the ground. He also uncovered a few more pieces of evidence. One was a broken comb. When he asked her landlady about the piece found on his farm, she confirmed it was Sarah's. She identified it because of its unique pattern. And then there was the oil of tansy John Durfee molded over none of it ruled out a suicide definitively. It made suicide more unlikely, but it didn't rule it out. Ira Bidwell also returned with the news that the meeting would not hear of a Christian burial for Sarah as a suicide. John Durfee thought something was amiss. Just yesterday, Ira had vouched for Sarah's character. Now something had changed. Then John Durfee's brother Williams, a former mariner, brought something to light. The cord was wrapped around her neck twice and it was tied in an uncommon knot called a clove hitch. Knot. He said that to tighten a clove hitch, it had to be pulled at both ends. He claimed that it wouldn't have pulled tightly enough to strangle her if she had tied it herself. That was the piece of evidence that at the time of the trial, changed things the day after the coroner examined her exhumed corpse again. Now there was reason to believe it could have been murder. Listeners. Kate Winkler Dawson did this really cool thing where she took this evidence from 200 years ago and she asked forensic investigator Paul Holz about it and he said no. None of this evidence rules out a suicide completely. She could have gotten the twine, she could have tied the knot. And it was actually more common that suicides hanged low rather than dropping from a height like at a gallows. Sarah could have hanged herself without dirtying her gloves over her bonnet's ribbon with both hands under her cloak. She could have positioned her shoes. She could have broken her comb. She could have written the note specifically to frame Ephraim Avery for her murder out of revenge. She could have. She could have done all that. But why would she have more after the break.

Ryan Reynolds (33:45)

I didn't know this about 19th century Methodists, but it was kind of a wild denomination at the time. That might sound diametrically opposed to the Methodist faith now, but in the 1830s it was the trendy new thing. Becoming a minister in the faith did not require any official training. And the denomination was known for its tent revivals in the woods. They were parties that preached to the common man, both inspiring the crowd and controlling it. The revivals were concerning because they lasted for days. They caused physical and emotional fatigue, and they had of course, a charismatic leader. Religious sects still use these tactics today because the exhaustion yields a kind of lightheaded hysteria that can feel sort of divine. And if these tactics sound cultish, that's because this group of Methodists held several characteristics of a cult. In Sarah's own words, she was seeking a home church when she arrived in Fall River, Massachusetts, and she found one in the local Methodists. In one of her letters to her sister, she mentioned donating the contemporary equivalent of about $200 toward a Methodist meeting house. That was a lot of money for a 30 year old working woman, and it showed her devotion to the faith. I feel like I should go into detail about what Sarah's work was like too. She was a textile worker. Women were especially well suited to millwork because they tended to work hard without complaint. They also drank infrequently, mostly because they were tightly supervised in their boarding houses. Mill workers were husbandless, childless and untethered to parents, so they could work long hours without the need to tend to a family. And these women were, as a rule, compliant. Otherwise they were made to move on. And Sarah had moved on from many other jobs. Throughout her 20s, she had jumped between villages in New England. She even had a little bit of a bad girl past involving theft in her youth, which she was trying to escape. And she longed for community. She was the perfect pray for a trendy new religious sect. According to some accounts, Sarah held a job within Ephraim Avery's house until Avery's son came home and told someone Pa kissed Sarah Maria Cornell. After that, Ephraim Avery had expelled her from the church. Ephraim Avery denied that Sarah had ever been inside his house, let alone work there. And the reason why Reverend Ira Bidwell was not at Sarah Cornell's funeral service was that he was busy. He was on his way to tip off Reverend Ephraim Avery, who promptly fled. He said later that he feared for his safety at the hands of a vigilante mob, and that could be true. But let's talk more about Ephraim Avery before we judge him for fleeing. The Avery family book said that Ephraim Avery, quote, did not wish to become a farmer, which was his father's occupation. He studied to become a doctor, but did not complete his education. He then worked at a general store, became a school teacher, went into the ministry. After his son's observation, Sarah was expelled from the Methodist community in Fall River. She secured a job in Lowell's textile mill. But because her Methodist overseer learned the rumors about her, he said she had to confess her sins to her former minister in order to keep her job. I am not sure how to explain that this situation is bananas, so I'm going to keep moving. But listeners, you can be sure that it is bananas. Rather than issue Sarah a certificate of good standing, which was another bananas thing, the minister made her confess to fornication so that she would again be expelled. But Sarah declined to her friends that she had ever had sex before. Sarah left Lowell for New Hampshire, but then the Methodist minister in her new town asked Reverend Ephraim Avery for a character reference. And Ephraim said that Sarah was guilty of fornication, theft, and lying. Sarah then confronted Avery and Lowell. He agreed to sign a certificate of forgiveness, another existent banana. But then he immediately revoked it. That humiliated Sarah, but she tried one more time. They talked again. In late summer of 1832, at a camp meeting, when she returned to her sister's house, Sarah told her sister that she had tried to get away from Ephraim, but he had raped her. So Sarah could have framed Ephraim. But I have my doubts. She had told a friend before that she'd never had sex. What she likely meant was that she had never had consensual sex. She had written letters to her friends about local suicides and how she abhorred the act, which makes it unlikely that she would have done it. But the thing for me is she didn't want to out the minister. She only told Dr. Wilbur after he asked many times, and after he encouraged her to demand the father to support her and the child financially, whether she spoke his name or not. I have to say I'm so glad he told her that. I feel like not everyone would have said that back then or now. Anyway. Sarah thanked him, and then she asked about the oil of Tansy that Ephraim gave her. Ephraim Told her to take 30 drops of it. Dr. Wilbur said that four drops was considered a large dose. 30 drops would be violently fatal. I should remind you, Ephraim Avery was a former medical student. He would have known that Ephraim had tried to kill her already. Or more specifically, he had tried to kill her in a way that looked like suicide already. And the thing that really made me doubt that Sarah's death was a suicide was this. After the conversation about the oil of Tansy, Dr. Wilbur told her that if she wanted to terminate the pregnancy, she would have to go to a different doctor. Sarah said she didn't want to. She was excited to raise the child. And she told him that soon she would meet with the baby's father again. The second inspection of Sarah's corpse was a more appropriate autopsy. Both Dr. Thomas Wilbur and a new Dr. Foster Hoper inspected her. They confirmed irregular indentations on her face. One side of her abdomen was severely discolored, but he attributed it to decomposition, not a bruise from trauma. The left side of her abdomen, though, also had a large contusion. He then confirmed through an incision to her belly that Sarah was, in fact, pregnant. It was a girl about half grown. That meant that the child was conceived. When Sarah told Dr. Wilbur, he had apparently pressed her for the name of the father's child. When Sarah told him that the married man would not help to support her, at long last, she disclosed that it was the Methodist minister, Ephraim Avery. She actually had asked early on if it was safe to take the Olaf Tansy to miscarry. He told her it was not, not at all. That it would endanger her life, and if she lived through it, her health would suffer. And just like that, she decided against it. The age of the fetus aligned with the time Sarah had been alone with Ephraim Avery at the Thompson Campground. Dr. Wilbur recognized that this illegitimate pregnancy could very well be the motive for murder. But the other men on the coroner's jury did not look at this evidence again. She was denied a proper exam for the sake of respectability. Dr. Wilbur looked for signs of attempted pregnancy termination, but he did not find any. By the way, in the 1830s, abortions were not illegal, but the drugs used for them were. And those drugs were often fatal. When Reverend Ira Bidwell met up with Ephraim Avery and told him the facts, Ephraim seemed panicked. And then he went into hiding. Harvey Harndon went with a warrant in hand to collect him. He found him hiding at the family home of another Methodist shortly After two judges remanded Ephraim for trial for murder listeners, I said at the beginning that the government had to prove Sarah's death was not suicide beyond a reasonable doubt. The opening statement of Richard Randolph demanded, if the jury doubted whether this was murder or suicide, they need go no further. They must acquit the prisoner. Long story. Less long. They did acquit Reverend Ephraim Avery. They had the same information that we do now. And it could have been a suicide. She could have physically done it. When Kate Winkler Dawson asked him, even contemporary forensic investigator Paul Holes conceded that she could have physically done it. Kate also spoke with legal experts who say that the jury in the criminal trial was correct in their verdict. The jury determined based on evidence that Ephraim was not guilty, not that he was innocent. He was burned in effigy six times in total. And ultimately he was dropped from the church and shunned. He became a farmer after all. And when Kate Winkler Dawson interviewed his surviving family, they agreed that Ephraim Avery killed Sarah Cornell. Paul Holes agreed too. She might have tied that complicated knot by herself, but it wasn't likely. And Avery had already tried to convince Sarah to take poison. No one else had a motive and she was not psychologically at risk of suicide. But the thing that sealed the deal for our contemporary expert was the testimony of the matrons. The matrons were familiar with dead bodies. They would not have confused decomposition with bruising. He did it. There just wasn't convincing enough evidence to legally seal a guilty charge. And now here's my interview with Kate Winkler Dawson, author of the Sinners. All Two Authors, One Murder and the Real Hester Prynne.

Howie Mandel (51:18)

I don't actually know anybody who loves writing as a job. It's really difficult to do. So the research part is so much fun. You know, I create, I'm pretty, I'm pretty rigid. So I create a lot of different folders and I have just a list of resources that I go through. So, you know, the biggest thing I needed to do was figure out what my primary sources were so I wouldn't write a book. This is my fourth and a half book. I have a half book, which is called the Ghost Club, and it's an audible only book. So this is one of many projects that I've had to really deeply research. And I have a checklist. I can't do a book or a project really without having a huge amount of primary sources, which means not newspapers or necessarily other people's articles. It means for me, trial transcripts and, you know, books that have been written when the person is there, like a reporting, like what Kathryn Williams did. And so, you know, the first thing I do is I go to a couple of. I probably have about six or seven sources where I look and see what's available. And that's how I found out the prosecutor's notes were in Rhode Island. Katherine Williams wrote a book where she was essentially a reporter right there on the scene. She had so many interviews. There were letters at the Fall River Historical Society from the original letters from Sarah Cornell, who was our victim, to the suspect, Ephraim Avery, as well as cache of a lot of other things. So then, you know, you put all that stuff together and then you, of course, then look at the secondary sources, which are unreliable beyond belief. I mean, 18th century, 19th century newspapers are terrible, but they do give a lot of social context, and that's really helpful. And then, you know, I will often go to Hath Trust or I'll go to archive.org and look and see what other kind of books are out there from the time period. So there was a book from the deputy sheriff who pursued the suspect, Ephraim Avery, across New England, and he thought so much of what he did that he wrote a little book about it that was really helpful. And then, of course, the trial transcripts, it would be very difficult for me, I think, to write a full book about something that didn't go to trial in some way, only because that's where you get the most information and what I would consider to be, in many ways, the most accurate, unbiased information. Although I find trial transcripts in the 1800s to be very inconsistent, because any yahoo could go and sit there and take notes and then sell it as a trial transcript. So I would say that's it. I mean, it's just like a mass. Like you take a large, large net and you throw it out there and kind of keep whatever it is. And then I usually have like a little folder that says unused and I'll dump stuff in There that I think I'm not going to use. And every once in a while I'll check on it and pull stuff out of it. So there you go.

Howie Mandel (54:44)

Yeah, one of the things that's unique about the book is that I kind of call her my. Well, I do call her my co author. And I actually wanted her on the title of the book, on the front page, on the front cover. And my editor said, well, there might be some legal issues with that. Who knows? Because, you know, when I got her book, it was the first of this kind written in America. It's amazing. That's so cool. I had never seen anything like it. And I've gone very far, far back to find narratives. And she had written this book a couple hundred pages, and I thought, okay, she's gonna be a great source. And then the more I read how it read, like what I would do, what a journalist did, I thought, okay, this is, you know, this is gonna be somebody who contributes so much. Because Sarah's family wouldn't talk to anybody. Barely the prosecutors in the case and she. And they shared letters with Catherine, you know, on and on. She was given access, this incredible access to the factories where Sarah worked. She had all of these great interviews with the people who Sarah worked with. So she had this access that I had to acknowledge. I mean, there was so much of it. So I thought, okay, well, I'll introduce her. And Sarah or Catherine and I had a lot in common. You know, we both were the heads of our household and we were kind of slogging through writing and we just had these sort of parallels. And so I related to her. But as I have to do, I have to double check myself. And then of course, you know, I immediately said, well, I have to double check her. And I have a hard enough time double checking myself. Now I've got to add this lady into it who I can't talk to because she died in 1872. So, you know, I'M going through everything. And it just starts to occur to me that when you read Catherine's narrative, which is beautiful, she talks about standing in the moonlight where Sarah died and going to her burial ground. I mean, you know, all of this stuff, and it's very poetic, but it's also very factual. But within, I would say, the first three or four pages of her book, it is very clear that she thinks this Methodist minister is guilty of murder. And I wasn't so sure. That was the reason I was interested in the book. I wanted to re examine it. There was a lot about handwriting and notes, anonymous notes, which, you know, were the reason that Sarah showed up at that place to begin with, where she died. And so I really, you know, I had to hire handwriting expert, which is not cheap, by the way. And, you know, I had to talk to all these other a. Not forensic, not expert. I had to figure out all this stuff. But Katherine was so sure. And I teach a true crime podcast class and, you know, I always talk to them about the intent. Don't just listen to what the story is. Why is the content creator, whether it's TikTok or HBO or everything in between or me, why am I telling the story in this way? Why is the victim framed in this way? And why is the killer framed in this way? And I wanted to know why she was framing Ephraim Avery as the killer just straight away from the beginning. And so that's when I started to think, okay, well, this is problematic. And I'm not used to putting this in first person. And this kind of, you know, my book kind of goes back and forth. But when I am double checking myself, I am also double checking Catherine. And I acknowledge, you know, pretty quickly in the book that there are some things that she's done wrong that are inconsistencies. But I kind of figure out why she's doing it. And so much of it is to frame her victim, which, you know, came about in the 1830s. Her victim needed to be the perfect victim. No matter what Sarah had actually done in life, she had stolen several times. But then I found out Catherine conflated all of these, you know, thieving incidents into one because, oh, it was a simple mistake. And in the 1800s, that would have been unacceptable. So Catherine, I think, really needed Sarah Cornell to be flawless. And we don't do that. I mean, that's not what journalists do. But if you read her book, it is the gospel. It is taken as fact. And the people in the 1800s did that when they read her it went through two different printings, so a lot of people read it and it was taken as fact and I needed to correct the record no matter what the record reflected about Sarah Cornell.

Howie Mandel (59:33)

No, it's sexism. And I would, and I would. I mean, I think you were being incredibly generous to the men who were able to be on this coroner's jury. It's like you had to own a land, a little bit of land, and that was it. And actually the next day they had to replace two of the members of the coroner's jury because they found out they didn't have land. So that was it. So they found these two new people. So it took nothing. You just had to be a man in decent standing, not even good standing. And that's, you know, it's still the case. I mean, you know, coroners, juries, don't have to have a medical background. So, you know, when what was very, very common in the 1700s and 1800s is that when a woman died, she was not undressed, she was not stripped naked in front of men. That would be very, very improper. And it would have to be an extreme circumstance, especially if they thought that this was a suicide. And when Sarah is found hanging from this pole and it's freezing and she looks sort of content and at peace, you know, she's wearing clothing, her shoes are neat next to her. Her physician says, I think this is a suicide. She was pregnant and she was going through a lot of turmoil. So that was that. They weren't highly motivated to break these rules of society, these men, and stand around and look at it, a naked dead woman in a barn. And so they just ruled it very quickly as suicide. And then when the matrons whose whole purpose for a couple of hundred years has been to take the clothes off the woman and then clean her and dress her properly for burial, which now I think would probably be a funeral director's job. They would be the ones that would see what happened. And so when the matrons did that, with Sarah Cornell preparing her for a quick burial the next day, there's no embalming involved in the early 1800s. So this had to be pretty quick, which was a challenge, I'm sure, because we're talking about Fall river in the. You know, in December. And so digging the ground would have been hard. And so when they take all her clothes off and they start to, you know, prepare her, they see immediately what woman. One woman described as R.A. it was just very clear that she had been in the fight for her life. But the men didn't see it because they saw none of it because she was fully clothed. So it was women. It was the women who sounded the alarm initially. Right. This would have been a suicide. This would not have been a book. And Catherine wouldn't have had a book unless it was not for these women. And I'm always looking for women as heroes in my books, and they also happen to be the villains in this book, because later on, there are many, many women who Sarah thought were other Methodists who worked in the same factories would take the stand and lie to make sure that their Methodist minister wasn't convicted of murder. So I have good women and bad women in this book.

Howie Mandel (63:01)

I think that with Sarah's story, it's very clear that this was sort of the basis for Hester Prynne, for the most famous, I think, heroine ever in American literature. And, you know, this woman who is demonized because she has a child out of wedlock and she cannot live up to society's very strict expectations of women. And there are other women who certainly inspired Hawthorne. It seems like in this book, too, I think it is the general plight of what I just said. Women in these societies in the 1800s and the 1700s and the 1900s, who were not. It was impossible to live up to these expectations the parallels are pretty surprising in a lot of ways for me. You know, you have Sarah Cornell who is pregnant and she ends up dead because she has begun to demand financial support, child support, essentially, from the man who sexually assaulted her. Something that always gets rewritten incorrectly, I think, when I read this story, is that they had an illicit affair. It's not what happened. She says that he sexually assaulted me. And I absolutely believe that she wrote that to her family. And, you know, she said it to her family. She had no reason to lie about any of that. So I think that, you know, you've got these parallels between Hester Prynne, who has a child out of wedlock involved with a minister, and Sarah Cornell has been sexually assaulted by a minister. They're both, quote, unquote, factory girls. They're both women who, you know, use their trade. They're weavers or knitters, and Sarah was a tailor. And they're both very altruistic. You know, they do things for people who are not very nice to them. You know, there's Hester Prynne, who, because she wears the scarlet letter, looks down. You know, people don't make eye contact with her. But then those same people ask her in the dead of night for help and she gives it. And Sarah Cornell, from several stories had done the same thing. There was one where she was getting kicked out of a boarding house because somebody thought she was flirting with a man, would have been inappropriate. And there was a sick this house. And Sarah said, I'll take care of them, even though she was getting kicked out. So, you know, the parallels are pretty amazing, I think. And I think more importantly, the academics who have really dug into these parallels, who I was able to, you know, use some of their material, I think that this is. Sarah Cornell was who Hester Prynne was, who Sarah Cornell could have been if things had gone differently. She planned to keep the baby. She told her family how much child support or how much daycare would be and so she could keep working in the factory. She seemed excited about all of this, and she was very happy when she left for this meeting with an anonymous person because she was going to get money finally. And so I think then you look at Hester Prynne, who eventually, at the end, sort of fits into society one way or the other. And under her other's terms, but also under her own terms, she takes a lot of control. And I think that could have been Sarah had things not go differently. And, I mean, I just think the biggest regret ever is that she left without somebody going with her to that situation with him. And that to me is not blaming the victim. That's simply to say she just did not know. And it's so upsetting because then she ended up dead.

Howie Mandel (66:35)

Well, I mean, I think it's the main message I always tell my journalism students at the University of Texas, you know, it's the why are we doing this story now? And I think you've had to answer that question for your editor or your agent. And I always have to answer that question. Why would an audience in 2025 care about a story that happened in 1832? And you know, for me, the answer is that Sarah was vulnerable. She was pregnant, she was demanding, you know, support from the man who was the father of this trial. And when she finally stood up for herself, she ended up dead. And that happens now, and it's happened then. I mean, you know, I work in historical crime. Some of it's even more recent though, and it's a lot, an awful lot about stories about women who are murdered when they're pregnant or right after they have children. I mean, I just dozens and dozens of them. And you know, we see that Colonel Lacy Peterson is a really high profile example. You know, Shanann Watts from Colorado, the list goes on and on. And you know, I was so curious about it, I looked it up. And the main reason that women who are pregnant die in this country right now is murder. It's not infection. I mean, you know, probably a couple hundred years ago it was infection, but it's not infection, it's murder. And postpartum it's murder. So. And of course we have to assume it's often by mostly by their partner. So there were Sarah Cornell's before Sarah was found hanging from that pole. And there are Sarah's more to come. It just doesn't stop. And so when people say to me, why should I care about somebody from 1832? You know, why did you want to tell this story? It's because the reason that people kill, the reason that people are victims is no different in 1832 than it is now. It's the same people. The family annihilator like Chris Watts just a couple of years ago in Colorado is the same as list in the 60s who killed his whole family, who was the same as Eugene Burt here in Austin, Texas in the 1800s who killed his own family. They all say the same thing. It's all the same excuses. They are the same people. And so to learn from Sarah, if we can learn anything and at least understand what makes people vulnerable, I mean, anger is fear. And what is that that drove Ephraim Avery to do this? I think all of that is valuable information. Yes, it's from the 1800s, but this is, you know, this is a story that reverberates throughout history and I think that's important. This is not about a battle. To me, it's not a battle between mainstream Protestants who hated the Methodists, and the Methodists are trying to protect their reputation. I read that a lot in the context of this case. And that to me, is not the story. The story is this woman finally standing up for herself and then she ends up dead, hanging from a haystack pole by herself on a desolate farm in below freezing temperatures in Fall River, Massachusetts.