Hello everybody and welcome back to another Ghost Hunt episode. I’m your host, Erin Bogert, bringing to you (you guessed it!) another radio play. In the last episode, I mentioned how Frances Hall, a prime suspect in the Hall-Mills double homicide case, took a vacation to Europe not long after the grand jury failed to indict anyone. In today’s radio play, we find Mrs. Hall, joined by her friend Sally Peters, embarking on that journey.

It’s early February, 1923, and at Manhattan’s Pier 55, a band of newspaper photographers are swarming the S.S. Mauretania (MORE-EH-TAY-NIA), an ocean liner setting out for Europe. They had been tipped off that Mrs. Frances Hall would be aboard, but when they searched the ship with the help of the passengers, no sign of her could be found. Instead, Mrs. Hall is forty blocks to the north of Pier 55, on the steam liner “America'' bound for Genoa (JEN-O-UH) and Naples in Italy. Her and Sally Peters had asked that their names be left off the guest list in order to avoid those same reporters. And so, the two are able to enjoy a peaceful departure…

Tale as old as time, isn’t it? Money talks so the wealthy don’t have to. The murders of Eleanor and Edward happened in September of 1922. By the end of that November, the grand jury had failed to indict anyone. While the Mills, especially Eleanor’s daughter Charlotte remain desperate for answers, for justice, wealthy Frances Hall, a prime suspect, travels abroad to Europe, where she remains for months. How would this case have been different if Eleanor Mills and her family had been wealthy? If Frances Hall and hers had been poor? I wonder, I wonder…

This episode was brought to you by the New Brunswick Historical Society and Thinkery & Verse. Grant funding has been provided by the Middlesex County board of chosen freeholders through a grant award from the Middlesex Cultural and Arts Trust Fund. Our theme music this season comes from Blimp66 of Freesound.org. Today’s radio play was written by Ania Upstill and performed and edited by Karen Alvarado. I’m your host and engineer, Erin Bogert.