An Unsettled Debt
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Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android. On July 11th, 2002, J.C. McGee was shot and killed in the doorway of his home in Ohio. For 22 years, the case remained unsolved until his daughter Madison started asking questions.

This is the journey of a daughter searching for answers, for closure, and for justice, and figuring out exactly what that means as she uncovers some dark truths that have been hidden from her. As far as podcasts go, it doesn't get more personal than this. From Tenderfoot TV, Ice Cold Case is available now. Listen for free on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold, very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪

How's it going, Kate? It's going well. How's it going with you? I'm doing good. You know, I'm sitting here thinking, you have this whole other job at the University of Texas. You're a professor out there. What are you a professor of? I know, but what do you teach exactly?

I'm a professor of knowing it all. No, I'm a journalism professor. So I actually do have to know a little tiny bit about, it feels like everything. I teach video journalism. So films that are in the journalistic sense, in the world of journalism, things that maybe you would see on the New York Times or the New Yorker, short films. And so I've taught journalism for the past

15 years or so. And I was at Fordham University before. And I love teaching. I love podcasts. I love writing books. I love everything that I do. But there is really something special about talking to students in person and helping them one-on-one with projects. That's primarily what I do is I'll say, let's do a book proposal or a magazine article or a video, and then I'll work with them a lot.

over Zoom or in person over getting the project to be where they want it to be. And oftentimes it leads to jobs. I love working with college students. It's just always been something. My dad was a law professor for 37 years. I got it from that. You, I think, would be an excellent professor with tweed jackets.

I think I could totally see Professor Holes. Have you ever taught before? Have you done anything in a university setting? Well, you know, I would teach frequently within law enforcement. So I would teach at advanced officer classes, typically sexual assault investigators or homicide investigators, and kind of get them up to speed on things.

basics within forensics, understanding a DNA report, crime scene investigations. And then towards the end of my career, I was teaching a course on the introduction and recognition of the serial predator because I was just seeing law enforcement just does not understand that type of offender. But I was a guest lecturer at St. Mary's College to some undergrads. And the professor there was asking me to see if I could join the staff

Yeah.

And going down to the university, it's all a big balance for me, and it can be a little bit complicated. But to do the math and to say that I had a hand in helping just hundreds and hundreds of students over the years...

who then go on and help people and have wonderful careers in journalism and many going on to teach. It's been very satisfying to me. But finding, I always tell my kids this all the time, sometimes people don't have just one passion. There's no one route sometimes to finding things that can make you feel creative and fulfilled. And that's really how I feel about teaching. But I'd also be lost without podcasts and books. So it's all a bit about learning who you are. And it's good for you to know.

That being in a classroom setting full-time would not be for you. But if you ever come to Austin, Texas, and I think you will someday, you will be guest lecturing in one of my classes. Absolutely. I'd look forward to that. Now, I want to know, what do your students call you? Do they call you Professor Kate? No, they call me Kate. They just call you Kate? Yeah, Professor Kate.

Professor Dawson was my dad. I could be called professor, but they try, and I always just say Kate. Okay. Just from my newsroom days. But when I started teaching, I was at Fordham. I was 28. My dad started teaching when he was 28, too. And he sent me this wonderful black and white photo of him teaching his first year, and he sent it to me to put in my office. And I was just a few years older than the students I had. So it's very strange. They stay the same age, and I just keep getting older and older and older.

But wiser and wiser, right? Maybe. Occasionally. Occasionally.

But the reason that we're talking about this is because the case that we're getting ready to talk about is in the area where I went to school at Boston University undergrad. And this takes place at Harvard Medical School. And this is about a professor who gets himself into a lot of trouble. Money is always a motivator for murder. And this is a case that people have heard of before, but I want to take a little bit of a different look because it's not as cut and dry once I started reading about it as I thought it was.

And this will be interesting because there's a lot of forensics, some of which I don't really understand. So we'll talk a little bit about that. So this is somewhere that I think you're going to enjoy. It's very Halloween-y, even though we're not in Halloween, but I'm a big believer in always telling Halloween-y type stories year round. So I'm happy this is happening in November. All right. Well, let's hear it. Let's go. Let's set the scene.

So this is a crime actually on the campus of Harvard Medical School. This is 1849, and this is a time period when they were using cadavers to teach medical students about surgery. And

people who have heard Tenfold More Wicked, if you've heard season two about Birkenhair in Scotland, you know all about this, where the church and Christianity, it was forbidden, both in the United States and in Europe, much of the time, for doctors to take cadavers who were donated to them. They

it was illegal to do that. They would use grave robbers and they would buy cadavers from them. And that's how they would teach medical students how to do surgery was to be able to work on an actual cadaver. And it was becoming problematic in the 1800s because they were rewriting the laws so that there weren't as many executions. And executed bodies were the only bodies that many medical professors could use. So with fewer executed bodies, you have fewer cadavers and that's

where the rise of the body snatchers slash the ghouls who would dig up graves, where that came from. And I'm sure that you've heard all about the grave robbers that have happened over the centuries. What's interesting to me is like with the grave robbers, if they are in business with the medical institutions,

I mean, the bodies that they have to be providing have to be fresh. Oh, very. Yeah, they can't be digging up somebody who's been buried, you know, five years ago. No, they're very fresh. And I hate saying fresh bodies, but that's the reality of it. They're one or two days in. And what they would do for what I found in my story in Scotland is the families would hire guards

to sit there with shotguns. And they actually built towers all over big cities, including in New England, where they would have people just sitting watch with a shotgun, making sure there wasn't anybody to dig up a grave. And one of the things that I didn't really realize when I was interviewing an expert on Burke and Hare, I said, you know, these two guys killed all of these people when they could have just gone and robbed graves. And she said, honestly, it's easier to kill someone than it is to rob a graveyard.

because you have to dig down so far and then they would have to figure out a way. They didn't want to dig up the whole grave. So they would dig up one large hole, figure out where the feet are, and then try to pull the feet through the coffin or wherever they were. And then through the mud and the muck, you can imagine that was very labor intensive. Yeah.

No, that would be tremendously hard to do. One of the things with a fresh grave, though, is the soil has already been disturbed. So it's not as hard as like if you're digging a grave in virgin earth. We see this where people think, I'm going to get rid of a body by putting it into a grave. And they abandon the effort to dig a deep grave. It's always a... I mean, these graves are 18 inches, 24 inches max deep. But...

lots of work. I mean, this is hours at the cemetery just to be able to get down to, even if you're just getting to a point to where you're trying to access just part of the body, that's a lot of time that you have to spend there. Yeah. And so Dr. White Webster, who was the center of this story, was a medical professor at Harvard. This is the setting where we're in, 1849. And

In this time period in Boston, this is where there's a big gap between the very, very wealthy and the very, very poor. But members of the wealthy class are John White Webster, and then he has a friend named George Parkman, who is also a doctor. And in this time period, you know, you have people loaning money back and forth. There's a lot of money around Boston area, Cambridge area, and you're sort of having to keep up with the Joneses.

And John White Webster, and I'll just call him Dr. Webster probably from now on, Dr. Webster was one of those people who was trying to keep up with the Joneses. They made money, doctors made money, medical professors made money, and they were living in luxurious lifestyle and brownstones.

in Boston. And Dr. Webster was well-known. He was well-bred, brought up in a good family with a lot of connections. And one of the issues, though, that we're having is that these men were not quite in the Gilded Age yet. And the Gilded Age is where people just spent ungodly amounts of money when they didn't have it. But

We're getting pretty close. And in this society, there were people who had not enough money, but were spending like they did. And Webster was one of those people. So he had borrowed money from his friend, George Parkman. And this is where we're having a little bit of a problem because it seems like this is going to be a motive for murder. But I think it's a little bit more complicated. So let me just tell you what happens. And then we'll talk about money as a motive for murder.

So, November 23rd, 1849, in the middle of the afternoon, Parkman, who is 59 years old, visits Webster and their friends. And Webster's at his laboratory on the campus of Harvard Medical School. And the problem is, is that this isn't a friendly visit, which normally is something these guys would go and have a drink and they socialize. They were in the same circles. But

Parkman wanted money from Webster because Webster owed him money. And Parkman was at one point a practicing physician, but then he essentially retired. He became a landlord and a businessman, and he would loan money to his friends, and he wanted to come and collect.

So let's just talk about the idea of borrowing money from family members. This is a motive, isn't it? Family members and friends, when it's personal, and maybe you are borrowing this money with the feeling that maybe you can get an extension or even get out of it because of the personal relationship that you have with the loner, and then it creates acrimony that can get out of control. Right.

And it frequently does. Usually when you're getting into a situation of borrowing something from a family member or a friend, often the borrower is in a predicament that repeats itself. And so now they have to keep borrowing more and more money and the debt grows. And so the loaner or loaners...

This becomes a bigger and bigger deal to them. And when they realize, I'm never going to get that money back, that's when you start getting those spats within the family or within the friendships breaking out. And sometimes those spats grow into real violence. And I think what also doesn't help here is when you're married to someone who wants to overspend,

That puts more pressure on the friendship or the family. Then it just gets, and you know, I'm leading to a wife who likes to throw lavish parties.

When Dr. Webster is a chemistry professor, he doesn't make much money, but his wife is spending money, which puts more pressure on his relationship with Dr. Parkman. He's going to feel that he has to keep his wife happy with being able to provide the money. Now, is Dr. Parkman, when he's loaning money, is this with interest? Is he expecting to get more money back?

Or is this just to, you know, gentleman's handshake? I give you however much and I expect within a certain period of time, you will give it back. It doesn't appear to me that this is a loan with interest. I think he's just trying to help out a friend. Okay. They're in the same social circles. He does loan money to other people, but I don't get the impression that this is something that

He's really, he wants his money back. He wants it repaid. But I don't think Parkman's trying to make money off of this deal. Well, and think about this one-way flow of money. Here you have Dr. Webster. He's borrowing money from his friend. Part of the reason he's borrowing this money is to support his wife's lifestyle, throwing these lavish parties.

Now, she's probably not charging an admission fee to come to these parties. It's not like that's a business transaction, right? It's literally just a one-way flow of money. Webster never recoups any of this money in order to pay back his friend.

So then it's an even bigger insult, isn't it? That really creates a lot of issues between the two of them. And Dr. Parkman is very philanthropic. He gives a lot of money to John Audubon, and he donated an entire building, the Massachusetts General Hospital. But with debt, he's uncompromising. He's come to collect a debt, and this is happening November 23rd of 1849. And

And again, when we come back to the background of Dr. Webster, he's married, his wife throws these lavish parties. He's making a salary of $1,200 a year, which is about $45,000 in today's money. And he has a family fortune, but he's burned through it.

So, again, he is feeling money pressure. Parkman is seen walking into Webster's laboratory, and then he doesn't leave. Oh. We never see him come out of the laboratory. Disappears. So, Dr. Parkman is expected back to

to his home and he doesn't return. And this causes a panic. This seems pretty quick to me. He's supposed to have been back by that night, but his son-in-law posts a $3,000 reward immediately looking for information about Dr. Parkman's safe return. I think, and I was going to ask you, this seems pretty quick to

I'm wondering if Parkman suspected there would be problems to begin with. And that's where this came from. Because when I first read that fact, I thought, whoa, I mean, you're not even going to wait to see if he shows up the next morning before posting a reward? Yeah, that is highly suspect. And I would suspect that Dr. Parkman had said, hey, if I'm not back by this time, something bad has happened.

So that informs me a bit. If that transaction with, it was his son that posted the reward, right? Son-in-law, son-in-law. So with the son-in-law, if he's actually telling the son-in-law, if I'm not back by a certain time, something bad has happened. That informs me that now he's recognizing that there's a contentious relationship between him and Dr. Webster.

to a point where he's in fear for his own safety going over there asking for money. There must have been some sort of interaction prior to that night for him to think that. Yeah, and what's interesting about it is, is that Parkman goes, he disappears, the son starts to post a reward, $3,000, which is a lot of money. So he then gets a knock on the door. He is at his mother-in-law's house,

Mrs. Elizabeth Parkman answers the door and it's Professor Webster. And Professor Webster says, I've heard that you all are alarmed about Dr. Parkman. He did come to my lab. He wanted to collect the $484 that he was owed, which I'm thinking is around $10,000. It's a big chunk of money in that time period. And he said, he came, I gave him the money and then he left.

And that was it. Okay. So yeah, the typical, if Dr. Webster is the responsible, since there's no witnesses, he's able to now try to kind of convince others. Oh yeah, we had this interaction. Thereby, he's able to soothe people's suspicions about him. Yeah, he came, but he's moved on. I gave him the money, we were good, and he's moved on. And whatever happened to him happened to

after he left my lab. Right. And people believe him to a certain extent. But when days pass, no one sees or hears from Dr. Parkman, the wife says, you need to go to Professor Webster. So they show up at Professor Webster's lab because that's the last known location. Of course, you know, policing 101, go to the last known location. Nothing, no blood, nothing, nowhere, nothing disturbed.

Okay, and Dr. Webster is a medical doctor. I just want to clarify that. Yeah, he's a chemistry professor who also works in medicine, both. Okay. Is his lab something that would have these bodies for the medical students?

I don't think he would be doing dissecting necessarily in the lab, but he could be working with bodies. It could be many different kinds of experiments. So he's somebody that has, you know, maybe above the average layperson's understanding of human anatomy and medical and maybe even surgical techniques. But his primary skill set, his primary expertise is chemistry. Yeah.

Correct. Okay. So the police say, we don't have any proof that anything actually happened. And we don't really know what to do. We can't charge him with anything. There's nothing to be done. So clearly Webster has done so far a good job if he's responsible. If he's responsible, he's responsible.

He has done a good job covering his tracks so far. At this point, we have a missing persons case. Yep. And Dr. Webster is admitting he's the last person to see Dr. Parkman, the missing person, alive.

Yep, and he left after that with his money, a big chunk of money. So police leave, and there is very little to be done until something happens. Parkman, his body pops up, or he is spotted somewhere else. But we've also talked about before how incredibly easy it is

in the 1800s to just leave, hop on a train and change your identity. No photographs, no IDs, nothing. And just say you're somebody completely different. So he could have disappeared very easily and for whatever reason. And he had enough cash on him. Oh, yeah. This is solely a cash society, right? I would say so. Yeah. I mean, there were certificates of, you know, bond certificates and stuff, but yeah, mostly cash, I would say.

Right. It's not like there's a credit card trail that can be followed. No. Right? So, yeah. And he's got a lot of cash on him that night. So if he's decided, well, I want to change my life, I'm going to change my life, and he could easily have done that. But then it comes down to, is there any reason for him to do that? Sounds like he's a highly respected professor. He's well-liked in the community. Nothing to indicate that...

He's concerned about his own personal safety. You know, he's upset, you know, some organized crime outfit. And now he has to leave in order to preserve his life. Nothing about his victimology would suggest that. So the reality is, is that, well, the likelihood that he's just deciding, I'm going to change my life and get out of here on the very night that he's going over to Dr. Webster's to collect his debt, that doesn't wash with me. Okay. Yeah.

So interesting things start to happen. Within days of this man's disappearance and the police leave Webster's lab and conclude, well, he's not there. We're just going to have to wait and see what happens. Letters start showing up to the police, which always are interesting. A good letter sent by a supposed killer is a great way to either help the police or throw them off. What do you think about that? Well, it's...

It's very, very rare for the killer to actually be sending in letters to assist with the investigation. Sometimes you see killers sending in letters for notoriety's sake. And I think most notably Zodiac, there's an ego aspect to that particular type of offender. BTK. BTK, again, another egomaniac with Dennis Rader.

But here, what did these letters say? So one says in a very scrawled handwriting, almost indecipherable, you will find Dr. Parkman murdered in a Brooklyn hotel. And another one says Dr. Parkman was took on board with, on board spelled incorrectly, the ship Herculan. And this is all, I dare say,

or I shall be killed with two more misspellings. What is happening? What is somebody doing?

Is this overthinking? No, no. Well, I think there's a fair amount to dissect within those letters. But first, what I would like to know is how much public attention was this case receiving? A lot. Okay. Huge case. Very high profile case. Predating TV, predating radio. Basically, people find out about this case through what, newspapers and the town crier? Town crier. I don't know about the town crier. Yes.

Not quite. We're still in the 1800s. Sure, but news is going to, back in the day, is obviously going to travel much slower than what it would today. Part of what has to be at least considered is the nutjobs out there that have nothing to do with the case, but what they will do is they will send in letters. It's their way of inserting themselves into the investigation.

And these letters will contain this type of information just because they want to feel, you know, like they are part of the investigation. I think in these letters...

First, Brooklyn is mentioned. Brooklyn is quite a distance away from Harvard. Right. The second letter is on a ship, Herculane. And where is this ship heading again? It just says on board the ship Herculane. Okay. And this is all I dare say or shall be killed. So it doesn't even say just on the ocean, we're assuming. Right. So I'm assuming that that ship and investigators would be able to

figure out, I would imagine, even in 1849 where that ship was at port and where it was headed to. But that is probably headed to a location that is quite a distance away. Yeah. So you have two letters that are basically saying, whew, Dr. Parkman is, his body is a long ways away. So there is a consistency in terms of the geographic information within those letters.

Now, the misspellings, the grammar within these two letters sounds like it's pretty consistent. Somebody who is not well-educated. And both letters are like that. The first one, you will find Dr. Parkman murdered in a Brooklyn hotel, is written normally. Okay. The second one is where the misspellings and the grammatical errors are. And then I'm going to throw one more thing at you.

Sure. There's a third one that says, police need to search the cellars in East Cambridge. No misspellings.

So that's right there in the epicenter of all of this. So then the question is, does this come from three different people? Is it all the same person? Regardless, none of it's right. None of it leads to Dr. Parkman. None of it's right. Well, and I think I want to address, you know, the one with the grammar problems, the misspellings is, you know, when you have somebody, let's say a suspect who is well-educated,

This is a type of staging. If Dr. Webster is trying to misdirect the investigation, he's not going to send a letter in that is going to be on Harvard letterhead and written with somebody who is a very well-educated person. He's going to want law enforcement to be looking at somebody that's

that is opposite from him. And that's what stands out to me, given the circumstances of this case. Now, it's entirely possible this is just a nut job sending a letter in, has no knowledge of the case, and truly doesn't have the education in order to send something in properly. But under these circumstances, I start to go, I wonder, at least with that one letter,

if that's Dr. Webster trying to throw the investigation off. Well, the investigation's about to be thrown really far off because these three letters printed in the newspapers, you can imagine, are sort of supercharging everything, all of the rumor mills. And to answer your question about the town criers, in the 1800s, many times there were little boys standing on the corner hawking

these newspapers and they would scream out the headlines of the newspapers to try to get attention. So you were partially right there. So this, again, was a big case. It was a mystery to affluent people. One might have been responsible, except...

Much of the community could not believe that a medical professional, a chemistry professor like John White Webster would be responsible for whatever happened to Dr. Parkman. So people start pointing the finger at someone really interesting named Ephraim Littlefield. I love Ephraim. It's a great name. Ephraim has popped up in so many of my books and in my stories. It's a very old school name. If I ever had a boy, I'd go with Ephraim, I think. Ephraim Littlefield.

Littlefield was a janitor at Harvard Medical School.

He was someone who did the grunt work that no one else wanted to do, including buying the cadavers from the grave robbers and would give them to his bosses who would have been the anatomy professors. So he already had sort of a sketchy, shady reputation just for what he did for a living. Even though it sounded like he was making an honest living, still he was doing some technically illegal things

in 1849 Massachusetts. That is interesting. So Littlefield now has a resource. So if foul play has fallen on Dr. Parkman, which it sounds like in all likelihood it has, and Dr. Parkman has lost his life, Littlefield is dealing with grave robbers.

Could you imagine where now you have a reverse transaction instead of Littlefield saying, okay, I need bodies that you have dug up. Now it's, I have a body that you need to bury. Now Dr. Parkman's body could be in a grave of somebody that they dug up previously, right? Yep. So he's in a misidentified grave. I think that is a great train of thought to go down because obviously,

I also then wonder, would someone like Littlefield, a janitor, would he have been responsible for one of these letters, particularly maybe...

the one with grammatical issues. Or as you said before, statistically, it's unlikely that anybody who was connected with any murder is really going to write in. These are just people trying to insert themselves. Well, and with Littlefield, his connections to this underbelly of society, if you will, with the grave robbers is, of course, very interesting. But fundamentally, there has to be a reason for him to commit the homicide on Dr. Parkman to

begin with? What would his motive be? Not to go down just a rabbit hole that we would never be able to prove today. Do you have a janitor who's, let's say, a predator who prefers male victims? And it just so happens Dr. Parkman, going to Dr. Webster's lab late at night, has isolated himself and Littlefield has decided, I'm going to take advantage of having this lone man to do what I want to do and I can get rid of the body.

Mm-hmm.

That really still, I think, is where my focus is going to be. I just kind of wonder, does Dr. Webster have a relationship with this janitor Littlefield? He really doesn't. This is a janitor who is, of course, he buys the cadavers from the grave robbers, but he's around during the cleanup. I don't even know if they had interacted. They didn't seem to have a relationship. But here's what's key to the police.

Littlefield had access to every part of Harvard Medical School that Webster did. So if we're looking at access, who had, once we start talking about where Parkman ultimately ends up, who has that access? They both have the same access. They both have keys. As a janitor, he had a key to every room. He had access to the laboratory. You're talking about if we're going to go and play devil's advocate, right? So you've got one man who is struggling financially and

is now having to pay a debt, but we don't know if he had the money to pay that debt. And then you've got the janitor who might have, as you said, looked at $484, who makes no money and is then able to rob or kill or do whatever. I'm not going to be surprised who it is at this point because I could see money as being a motive for both of them. And they both had equal access. So a theory, let's say two theories right now.

but without getting into the really more exotic, is Dr. Parkman goes to collect debt from Dr. Webster. Webster kills Parkman and gets rid of his body. Second theory, Parkman goes to Webster, collects his debt, and then leaves Webster's lab-

And now Littlefield kills him, takes the money, and disposes of Parkman's body. In some way, yep. Okay. So those are our two choices. So this is where things become a little sticky. Littlefield is alarmed, as I would be too, that people are saying that he might be involved some way in this because people don't believe that Professor Webster would have done this.

He starts his own investigation, which never seems like a good idea to me. But, you know, if you feel like you have no choice and he truly is innocent, he starts making his own observations. I'm predicting you're going to say this is dangerous. Or do you think it's a great idea if you're truly innocent to conduct your own observation surveillance of the person you really suspect of committing the crime? Yeah.

If police don't believe you, what else are you going to do, Paul? I mean, he can't afford an attorney. People are saying he did it. Yeah. You know, I, of course, to anybody listening, as I always would say, rely upon law enforcement or professional private investigators to conduct that type of work. But quite frankly, if I were to be found in this situation, I probably would be doing it myself as well. Who do I trust more than me? It

will confuse the issues, especially if you observe something that helps exonerate your situation and incriminates, let's say, Dr. Webster. You know, of course, people are going, well, of course, you know, you could just be making this up to try to get out of being suspected of this crime. But I don't blame Littlefield for at least taking this on, but it most certainly would cause the investigators to go, hmm.

How much do we trust any information he has found? Well, he finds a lot of information. Littlefield noticed that the doors to the boiler room in Webster's laboratory, which had always been unlocked, were suddenly bolted and that the professor turned the boiler on and it was blasting from the furnace so hot that when you touched it, the walls were hot.

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So it sounds like he's insinuating that Webster was burning Parkman's body inside there, but I don't know how boilers work. Is that even feasible? Oh, well, I think it depends on the size and the construction of the boiler. Because obviously just by the term boiler, this is a device that is designed to heat up water. And so there's going to be a heat source and then there's going to be a container for boiling.

And then the question is, does the design permit objects to be placed directly into the heat source? Let's say into a fire, like a crematorium type of scenario. Or does the device permit a body to be placed in the water?

and then you have a boiling or you know very hot water that is working on the body i have no knowledge of boilers but it sounds i mean it's obviously suspicious and it sounds like there is a possibility that webster was trying to get rid of some evidence whether it be the body or items off the body

Yes, and I think the idea was from Littlefield was that he suspected that Webster had dismembered the body and was slowly trying to rid himself of all the separate pieces. And the furnace would have been big enough to fit some body parts inside with exposure to the fire to have destroyed. It was a big room, big enough for somebody to be inside of it.

Now, burning a body to a point where it's no longer, there's nothing left is not an easy thing. You know, crematoriums operate at extraordinarily high temperatures, probably much higher temperatures than I would imagine that a boiler would operate at.

Now, of course, soft tissue is going to be burned up, but to get rid of the long bones, the teeth, et cetera, I would be doubtful that this boiler would do that. There would still be remnants that Dr. Webster would have to address after this act. There's definitely a lot more evidence. So the incident with the furnace and the hot walls really alarm Littlefield, he says, and he wants to start gathering more evidence.

He continues to secretly watch Professor Webster, and he sees Dr. Webster is leaving campus with a bundle at one point. He also heard some water running in the lab the night that

Parkman disappeared, which he thought was unusual because it just doesn't happen very often, I suppose. I don't know what the plumbing was like then, but it's not as simple as flushing a toilet, obviously. There was an effort to get water into the lab. This would have been unusual. The bundle, I think, is really interesting because you're going to ask how big of a bundle. I would say the bundle is, I think it's a couple of handfuls of something. I don't think

This is a huge sack thrown over his back. I think this is something where some items can be put inside of it. But he thought he was being, that Webster was being sneaky. And this was alarming to Littlefield, he said. Now, is he making these statements during the initial interview? Because some of these statements are, he's observing the night of Dr. Parkman going missing. Yeah.

But then he comes under suspicion. So I'm kind of curious as to what he's making these statements. The order of things was Parkman goes missing. The reward comes out. Webster goes to the wife and the son-in-law and say, I gave him the money and he took off. I don't know where he was. He,

is a few days later under suspicion and the police go to him, search the lab, nothing comes up from Webster's lab. They then pretty quickly turn their attention to the janitor, Littlefield. So I think that Littlefield initially said, you know, listen, I have no idea what happened to this guy. And then

he started his own investigation. I don't know if he reported the bundle that night, seeing Professor Webster leaving the medical college that night with a bundle, but this is all an ongoing investigation after he's been accused already and after the police have sort of written off Webster as a significant suspect just because there's no body, no proof. Okay.

And when does Littlefield say that the Ferta slash Boiler room has been bolted and locked? This is after he puts Webster under surveillance by himself? Yes, yes. And this is under surveillance. And this is within days. I think it is likely after the police have exited and...

I have no idea if the body is there, where Webster would have kept the body in the meantime. But as you said, there's probably cadavers everywhere, maybe not specifically in his lab. But as a chemistry professor, he absolutely could have worked on cadavers. But there's no mention of body parts everywhere. It just would have not have been difficult to conceal a body in a medical school at this point. Yeah, and I would question the thoroughness

of these investigators in 1849 in terms of doing a really good exhaustive crime scene search for Dr. Parkman, his body, his body parts, or his personal effects. And this is where the investigation gets kind of gross. So if any of you are listening and eating anything, I would probably pause for a second.

One of the things that Littlefield suspects happens with the water running, he thinks that Webster might have disposed of some of the body parts by shoving them down the toilet area, the privy is what they would have called it. So he goes in and he knows investigators have not gone in and done this. So Littlefield asks his wife to come and stand guard and

And he sits on the ground in the small bathroom, the privy in Webster's lab after Webster has gone home for the night. And he takes a chisel and he starts chiseling into the stone wall underneath the bathroom. And he knows the police hasn't searched this area. It's

a lot of persistence and apparently would take a strong stomach, I'm assuming. So he's literally sitting in human waste as he's chipping away at this wall where the bottom of the privy is. And he's taking a break and the nighttime rolls in. And the next day, he shizzles straight through and in the darkness, he sees human remains. A pelvis, a

a thigh, and part of a leg. Oh. Somebody has been dismembered and is underneath part of Harvard Medical School. So I'm trying to visualize this plumbing. When you say the privy, that's basically, that's the toilet. Right. And then is this like, you know, you have your outhouses where the toilet basically is open to a large, just repository of human waste, right? Yes.

Yep. Okay. So he went down and sat in that waste to get through a wall where he believed some of the body parts were and he finds it. To answer your question, I don't think that there is an entrance to get to where the waste is stored except by going through the floor of where the toilet would be. Like there's no cleanup. It just builds up and up and decomposes. That's my understanding. Yeah. I think, you know, at least,

you know, of course, I really just want to visualize this just to be informed. But the bottom line is, is we have partial human remains found in a location that Dr. Webster would have access to. And Littlefield, obviously. And Littlefield. But we're also in a medical school environment in which there's many other human remains from the cadavers. And is it possible that these human remains

could be just discarded cadaver parts? Yep, could be. Absolutely. Okay. That's what makes this crime scene so interesting. Yes. And now the question that I would have is, did they make any attempts to identify these human remains as being...

You know, something that had been deposited recently. Could they do anything to indicate this is, you know, from Dr. Parkman versus from whether it be a male body that is either much larger or much smaller in statue or age based on anthropological measurements and assessments, different gender, etc. So, you know, of course, I've got so many questions about these human remains at this point.

And I'll get to those because yes, if we believe Parkman's wife, yes, there are ways to identify him. So Littlefield clearly freaks out. Well, that was a tease. Hold on here.

I mean, I'm trying to think like you, questioning people's birth certificates and DNA and blood type and everything. I'm trying to think, I mean, you know, people lie. You never know. You got it. So you're right. All we know is we have some body parts and a missing man, but we also are in a medical school with body parts all over the place. So it could have been just a lazy medical student disposing incorrectly of some body parts. So he calls the police.

Webster is arrested immediately because it's his lab, and he's charged with the murder of Parkman, even though there's no body, okay? We don't know definitively yet. So upon this discovery, the police go, okay, let's go ahead and look at the lab. They do a more thorough search. They look in the furnace, which was the incredibly hot furnace that Webster was burning that night or a couple of nights later. They look inside, and they find buttons and coins, okay?

Inside. Odd stuff to be found in a furnace of a perfectly innocent man. Buttons and coins. I don't know if they could identify if they were Parkman's buttons and coins, but it's still weird. Especially in a device that is not intended to have buttons and coins inside of it. You know, this is something that is intended to...

to service the facility. I actually have a case in which I had two women victims, six months apart, whose clothing had been removed from them. And then the offender had burned their clothing in his fireplace at his house. So I collected the ashes out of the fireplace and then ended up having to go through those ashes. And with modern women's clothing, it's stifling.

Stunning, the amount of metal that is contained within that, which helps identify, okay, I've got underwire to bras here. I've got buttons from jeans. I've got steel shanks from high heel shoes, et cetera. I'm wondering back in this era with the type of clothing, let's say that Dr. Parkman would have on, besides buttons, would there have been any other recognizable components that would have survived the fire besides the coinage? Yes, absolutely.

Oh, I nailed it then. Human bone fragments, including a finger, a shin, a jawbone, and fake teeth are also found inside the furnace. Okay, so... Not hot enough, I guess, huh? No. I know teeth, teeth you're not going to burn, but the jawbone would have burned, right? This is where, you know, the experience that I have, of course, is dealing with cremains. And

And even with a crematorium, the operator who's disposing of the bodies at a certain point has to come through and do further crushing, if you will, of some of the remnants, the bone remnants, the teeth that still have not incinerated at that super, super high level. So I would imagine that in this boiler furnace situation,

that it doesn't reach those temperatures and there would be significant larger bone masses and teeth that would survive that level of fire. And what's interesting about these teeth, they find other body parts in addition to the teeth and the jawbone,

that have a chemical, an alkali chemical poured on them that Webster would have used in his lab. On top of that, some of these body parts, which had not been destroyed yet, there were specific markings that Mrs. Parkman said were probably scars that her husband had that she recognized.

if you believe her. But also, his dentist said that Dr. Parkman had teeth problems. He had some false teeth that had a distinctive quality to them, had been filed down during their fitting, and there were some false teeth found with those file marks on them. And the dentist had made a mold of Parkman's teeth, and it fit. It's all fit. All the stuff found in the furnace fit.

Yeah, well, obviously, I think the teeth and the false teeth in the fire, that's the strongest evidence that this is Dr. Parkman. It at least gives me confidence that a reference standard from the dentist's office, this mold, is matching the false teeth that were found in this fire. The fact that

soft tissue was still present that showed scars that the wife was able to recognize. I don't put a lot of weight on her recognition outside of, you know, it's like a witness statement. You evaluate the veracity of it. But this furnace boiler did not do what

Dr. Webster intended it, or maybe Littlefield. I mean, I don't think you can eliminate Littlefield because he also had access to this room, right? He did. Okay. But it's not destroying Dr. Parkman's body. Now, you mentioned alkali? Yes. So what happened was they found a... This is pretty gross, actually. So hold on. Let me get it right. Alkaline.

After searching a small wooden tea chest, police find the upper portion of a human's left thigh and a gutted single torso of a very hairy man. And the remains were doused with, quote, strong alkali chemicals. Yeah.

This is becoming very obvious. Kind of what I was trying to get an understanding of a Fender's skill set with Dr. Webster and that he's a professor of chemistry. He possibly has some medical knowledge, but most certainly his expertise is chemical. And here you have a chemical being applied to a body that has been dismembered. He's utilizing his skill set to

This is where now if I'm trying to differentiate between Littlefield and Webster as the primary person, unless there was something in Littlefield's background that would suggest that he possibly had the access to the chemicals, but did he understand how this very strong base, this alkali solution, how that would dissolve human tissue?

Believe it or not, strong bases are much more effective at dissolving tissue than acids. And so that is something that tends to suggest to me that the person who is utilizing a strong alkali has some knowledge that it's going to be effective.

But it wasn't effective. That's the thing. It didn't dissolve. Whoever used that chemical didn't do it correctly or didn't leave it long enough. Whoever killed this man and attempted to cover it up did a terrible job because there's body parts everywhere. There's evidence in the furnace. There's stuff in the privy. So I

I lean honestly towards Littlefield at this point. I do, I do, because he had all of the access. This seems weird and botched to me, but what do you think? You're the expert. This is where, again, it comes down to you can have a very intelligent offender

But they have no experience killing. Or they're panicking. Well, there, of course, is going to be the external dynamics that could cause them not to be able to put as much attention or as much resources on the disposal process as in this case. But just because, let's say, Dr. Webster is this Harvard professor of chemistry doesn't mean he has expertise in human body disposal.

let's say he committed another crime and he saw the failings of disposing of Parkman's body, then I bet the next time around he would be much better because he has the intellect to learn. He has the sophistication to apply what he has learned from prior experience. For me, what I am seeing right now is motive. Dr. Webster owes a debt. He doesn't have the money to pay the debt.

Parkman is coming to see Dr. Webster to collect that debt. Dr. Webster has the chemical expertise in order to go, okay, I'm going to choose, because I imagine as a professor of chemistry, he has many chemicals within his lab. Oh, yeah. So Littlefield, not a chemistry professor, is going to be looking at all of the stuff that's probably written with chemical formulas or formal chemical names. He's going to go, well, which one do I use?

the dismemberment of the body. Now, both, you know, Littlefield dealing with cadavers, you know, maybe he has some knowledge and we've talked in previous episodes that many people, just because of their personal experiences, are able to dismember a body. But,

right now, everything from what I am seeing, I still lean towards Dr. Webster. I wouldn't at this point eliminate Littlefield. And I'm not eliminating that they maybe even, well, maybe I can eliminate that. Hold on. Because they're pointing fingers at each other in essence, I would imagine at this point. Webster says, I have no idea. He says, I wasn't there. That was it. He left. That was it. I had nothing to do with this. And somebody else who had access to my stuff did it.

Okay. This is a circumstantial case because there's not one key. There were other people who could have done this. Sure. But right now, just because of motive, opportunity, some of the things I'm seeing with the body disposal, I do lean to Dr. Webster at this point with the information provided.

So Webster goes on trial. He says, I didn't do it. He is found guilty, even though the judge admitted it was a circumstantial case. Essentially, the judge said, I mean, everything is a circumstantial case. If we let everybody go when we don't have a smoking gun, then

we won't have anybody in our jails whatsoever, which I think is a fair statement. But there were other suspects. You have this enthusiastic janitor who's doing his own investigation because he feels like he's been under fire. So he is found guilty. Okay, so Webster's found guilty. We have, at least within the furnace boiler area, as well as in some other locations that Dr. Webster had access to, parts of Parkman's body

But Littlefield also found body parts underneath the privy. In the tunnel underneath the privy, yep. Were those body parts

determined to be from Dr. Parkman? We don't know. The wife identified, I think the torso, there were a couple of things in the lab, actually in the lab. So those parts might not have had anything to do. Yeah. We don't know. I mean, there's body parts everywhere in that college. Because one of the things that I was wanting to assess is with Littlefield, he took the effort to find these body parts in

and offer them up to investigators, if he were responsible for the crime and he knew there's no way the investigators would ever search this location, why would he take the effort to offer up something that could be further used to incriminate himself?

Maybe he's not smart enough to know that other people could have deposited body parts. I mean, who knows? Why did he think they were down there? Why did he even suspect that? I think it's the water running is what he thought. But I thought that was an odd fact that he would just automatically think something would have been down the privy. Yeah, these other body parts, though, that are from Parkman were easier to find. They were. Yeah, you know, so for him to make that effort, I mean, that's where I'm really thinking that...

As circumstantial of a case it is against Webster, the actions of Littlefield tend to support that he really did get into, I have to protect myself. I had nothing to do with this. And he's sitting in a room full of human waste in order to go after his suspicions because what is his expertise? His expertise as a janitor is going to be- Cleanup. The cleanup and everything else. That's what he's focusing in on.

So right now, I think they're right. I think Webster's the one that's responsible. So I think probably you're right. After he was executed in 1850, there came out supposedly a confession that he had given. We don't know if this is 100% correct. This was a rumored confession.

confession from a letter that was released to a newspaper saying that Webster said that while Dr. Parkman was speaking and gesturing in the most violent and menacing manner, I seized whatever was nearest to me, a stick of wood, and dealt him a blow with all the force that passion could summon. I do not know nor think nor care where I should hit him, not how hard nor what the effect should be. So he was pissed and

This was, you know, an act of passion, it sounds like. He's saying not premeditated is what it sounds like. Sure, but... If this is true, we don't even know if this is a real confession. Yeah, but couldn't he just say, I hit him effing hard? Paul. Right? Versus what's going on back in 1849. They couldn't just say, yeah, I hit the guy. Yeah.

You're going to be so used to it by the end of this season. You're going to be so used to it. Wait till you read the handwriting. I'm going to send you some handwriting. Couldn't you see a hardened Bronx homicide investigator taking a confession like that and going, what?

Well, that seems like a reasonable explanation. They got into a fight and he hit him with a piece of wood and then dismembered him. Boy, that's something else. You know, I think dismembering a body is a occasional method that offenders utilize in order to dispose of the body. You know, it takes a special person to take that step.

And Dr. Webster, with his academic background, the location at the Harvard Medical Facility, I think that he's somebody that would have the intestinal fortitude in order to be able to take that on. Obviously, Littlefield could have done it himself. He's dealing with dead bodies. He's buying dead bodies. But I'm pretty much in the Webster camp on this. Okay.

So he is hanged. His family is destitute, but Webster's family was so respected that people like a citizens coalition gathered money, kind of crowdsourced money, and eventually raised $20,000, which is an incredible sum for 1850. The first person to donate was George Parkman's widow. That's

not blaming the family at all, feeling very sorry for everybody in this story. Oh, so this is actually to help Webster's family. Yep. Wow. Yeah, a fund, $20,000 fund to help his wife and his kids because now they don't have him. Yeah. Well, and that is something, you know, like Sacramento DA Ann Marie Schubert, who's a good friend of mine and was on the Golden State Killer case. We've talked about this, you know, a lot of people, it's the collateral damage that happens when

when you have somebody who commits a crime like this. And we saw it firsthand with D'Angelo's family in that many people were, I mean, his poor daughters, they were receiving death threats and they had nothing to do with his crimes.

And here, Webster kills Parkman. And I think it speaks volumes that his widow, you know, recognizes his family had nothing to do with this. Yeah. And they had the financial resources to help his family out. That really shows a level of compassion on her part. I agree. And one mysterious note to end on, because you know I like to end on mysterious notes. What happens to Ephraim Littlefield?

He receives the reward from the son-in-law, $3,000, which is $120,000, $130,000 now. He leaves the school, retires, and has made triple the amount of money as John Webster would have made and goes on and lives in comfort based on this very crude investigation that

So you either look at this as this man is generously rewarded for a vindication of the murder of a person who just came to collect a debt or someone who really benefited, maybe in a couple of ways, from the death of this person.

Yeah, you know, you'd hate to see Littlefield be the actual killer and actually profit and live a comfortable life afterwards. But... It happens. It happens. I think Littlefield, through his efforts probably to clear his own name, helped the investigation and rightfully earned that reward.

And with that, I will remind you again of what a wonderful place New England is and you should go visit because we have a lot of stories like this. New England is my favorite place to go for creepy, weird stories that have a real-life lesson now. Yeah. And what was in the water in New England back in the mid-1800s? Is it mercury? It was cholera, I think, was in the water. I don't know what was in there. Yeah.

Bad things that made people do really, really bad things. The creativity that people had to go through sometimes disposing of a body then versus now and what thwarted people then that wouldn't now and what would catch people now that would have never caught them then.

It really stands out where the limitations that the authorities had through their investigative processes, the technology, it just wasn't there. And so you have a lot of these cases

that are being solved and people being prosecuted and executed based on circumstantial evidence and circumstantial evidence alone. Yeah. And even to this day, there's many cases that are made just on circumstantial aspects. I know I get hinked up about that just because working big whodunit cases

that if I cast a large enough net, I can find individuals that have circumstances that make them suspicious. Yeah. And you get a good attorney arguing in front of 12 jurors. They can convince 12 jurors these circumstances prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this person's responsible. And I go, ooh, I'm not comfortable with that. I...

of course, come out of the physical evidence world. Unless the case is so obvious, I really get more comfort having modern technology and physical evidence help piece the puzzle together, so to speak. Well, I have some news for you, Paul. None of our cases are simple and easy. None of them. Otherwise, this would be a five-minute podcast. You're always going to keep me in that uncomfortable zone then, right? Yep.

So we will actually be taking a week off next week. Woo-hoo! But we will be back the following week with a brand new episode. So, Paul, I will see you there. All right. Sounds good. Looking forward to it.

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashen and Kate Winkler-Dawson. Our mixing engineer is Ryo Baum. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogle. Our art

work is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones Pod. Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.