Horse Thief PT 2
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In June's Journey, you have the chance to solve a captivating murder mystery and reveal deep-seated family secrets. Use your keen eye and detective skills to guide June Parker through this thrilling hidden object mystery game. June's Journey is a mobile game that follows June Parker, a New York socialite living in London. Play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s

while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club. There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out.

You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.

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. Listen up. I'm Liza Traeger. And I'm Cara Clank, and we're the hosts of the true crime comedy podcast, That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast. Every Tuesday, we break down an episode of Law & Order SVU, the true crime it's based on, and we chat with an actor from the episode.

Over the past few years, we've chatted with series icons like BD Wong, Kelly Giddish, Danny Pino, and guest stars like Padgett Brewster and Matthew Lillard. And just like an SVU marathon, you can jump in anywhere. Don't miss new episodes every Tuesday. Follow That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Dun-dun!

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. ♪♪

Hey, Kate. How are you? I'm great, Paul. How are you? I am doing good. What's going on with you? Well, I know we have a part two in the William Freeman case, but I wanted to give you a little update on, I know it's hard to believe I have another show or two here, but I do have another show. What? What?

Tenfold more wicked. I always have people ask, when is the show coming back? And, you know, we had season 10, which was so much fun to do, set in Virginia. Season 11, the trailer is out now. And season 11 is a humdinger, as my dad would say. I know I use that phrase all the time. It is right up your alley. It is fire. It is 1600s, which is not exactly up your alley. Yeah.

I would definitely say 1900s are up your alley. But 1600s, it is a woman, the matriarch of a family, has a very troubled relationship with her eldest son, and things turn really badly for everybody in this family. There is a fire. There is a

a ghost who is a witness to what may or may not be a murder. And it is a case that people still talk about in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. It's part of their history. So I have a forensic chemist

I've got fire experts. I mean, we really try to dig into this case. Have you worked a lot of fire cases, arson cases that involve death? I've worked a few, you know, responded out, you know, in a CSI capacity. And, you know, it's typically either a car or a house has been set on fire, and then there's a body. And that's when I got called. But, yeah.

Those are tough, tough cases to work. Well, what I've learned is just because you think fire is going to be a wonderful way to cover up a murder does not mean that is what's going to happen for you, because this, if it was a murder, did not work out.

Fire is always a big mystery to me, and I know people think it's going to solve all the problems and you could cover up evidence, but oftentimes it doesn't. It all depends on what gets burned up. Yep. And this case is a wonderful time period. It is the growing of the colonies. It is founders of Rhode Island involved here. And whether or not somebody was railroaded for something he never did...

And that is the best kind of case, I think, is to try to figure out a puzzle from, you know, 400 years ago. Well, I'm on the edge of my seat right now. Well, you need to go over and listen to the trailer of Tenfold More Wicked, Season 11.

I'm happy to have all of our listeners, you know, come over and check it out. Let me know what you think. And the first episode will drop the following Monday. So I know you're on the edge of your seat about William Freeman. So let's jump right back into that story.

Okay, so just as a reminder, because I know a lot has happened in the week or so that I've seen you, this is 1846, and it's in March, and the Van Nist family, almost all of them have been murdered by a mysterious offender late at night.

You have Sarah, who was stabbed in the backyard, her husband John, who was stabbed in the doorway, her mother Phoebe, who was stabbed in the stairwell, their son, who was two years old, George, who was brutally stabbed in their bedroom. And then the offender is confronted with his large knife with a man who was a farmhand named Cornelius holding a broom.

who is stabbed, but effectively with the broom kicks the offender out. The man hops on a horse, which collapses. He stabs the horse out of what we presume is anger. He finds another horse and rides out of town.

He is tracked down, it seems like, because he was trying to sell this stolen horse, and he is quickly arrested. This is all happening in the backdrop of a lot of racial tensions in upstate New York between Black people and the white people. So that's where we are. And I imagine you remember all of these details? Yeah, you know, this case is fresh in my mind. And, you know, we...

pretty much ended the last episode with this black man, William Freeman, being arrested. And, you know, at that point, the one descriptor that the living witness, Cornelius, said, it was a black man. Now, you know, this is where, okay, I have to

Dig into the veracity of that statement. You know, this is 930 at night inside a house in 1846. It's not like there's light bulbs on inside this house. So what was the lighting conditions? How well could Cornelius see the offender that's attacking him?

I have a case, two girls inside a house at night were sexually assaulted by the same man. One girl said he was black. Another girl said he was white. They couldn't see the man. How confident am I with this statement? Right now, I need to be able to evaluate that. And then of course,

You know, William Freeman is arrested with a stolen horse that is presumed to be stolen by the offender who killed this entire family. But that stolen horse is not from the crime scene. It has no nexus to the actual homicides. Is it possible or coincidental that William Freeman did steal a horse that night and it was presumed it was stolen by the killer?

So there needs to be more information that links that when William Freeman is arrested. Does he have any, does he have the knife on him? Does he have the bloody knife on him? Does he have any of the victim's blood on him? Does he have defensive injuries, you know, from dealing with Cornelius? Was Cornelius able to provide descriptions of the offender's clothing that matches what William Freeman is found with? You know, so this is all part of me just, okay, I need to know, you

You know, how strong of a case do they have against William Friedman at this point? They don't seem right now to have much of a case only because they haven't interviewed witnesses yet. But they will. And I will frustrate you by saying we're going to have to go back because this is their main suspect. I like your instincts about a wrongful accusation.

because this is not the first time that William Freeman has been accused of something that he might not have done. Oh. So let's talk about our main suspect here, William Freeman. I want to go back and get some background on him, okay? About two decades before the murder of the Van Ness family, William Freeman was born in Auburn, New York. His mother is described as Black and Indigenous Native American.

And William was described by the very racist newspapers as having strongly marked with distinctive features of the North American tribes. His dad was enslaved until 1815 before becoming a free man, which becoming a free man meant, of course, being in servitude much of the time to white people and being paid, if at all, a penance.

So his dad died in 1827 when William was just a toddler. So here's where things get really interesting with William's family, who is our main suspect. The dad's cause of death is said to be disease of the brain caused by what was supposed to be a fall. Disease of the brain caused by a bad fall. What would that be today? Well, how long did he live after this fall? Was the injury so severe that...

You know, he died right away or did he live for a significant period of time and then it was so obvious that he had this brain injury that it contributed to his death even though it was well after the time that he had the fall? We could just assume right now that he had fallen and hit his head and maybe this was a brain injury and that was it. But I can't say for sure.

You know, we've talked about this before, how underreported people of color were in newspapers, in good news and bad news. And so we don't have a lot of details, unfortunately. I wish I knew more. So more about William himself. He was seven or eight years old when he was put to work as a domestic servant.

So, he was working in white family homes. People described him as having some behavioral issues, but I mean, a six or seven-year-old forced to perform labor probably would have behavioral issues, I would guess. They just said that he would wander aimlessly while he was on the job, despite being playful and energetic.

He did not want discipline or instructions. And, you know, moving forward in his teens, it becomes more potent. He's unsteady at times. He has a temper. He cycles through jobs, oscillates from being cheery to being depressed. He even winds up committing a few petty crimes here and there, but none are really serious or really violent crimes at all. So he steals some chickens before actually then returning them to the owner and

So it just sounds like a little unstable. It also could sound like a teenager in some ways. Just a typical teenager, you think? Well, with what you've said, I mean, there's nothing that you've described that I find alarming or predictive of future violence. You know, it's just okay. Maybe he is a struggling teenager. Maybe there's more going on. But right now, none of the red flags that I would be looking for, you know, what kind of...

you know, physical violence as he getting in as a young boy with classmates. Of course, when we start getting into somebody who's slaughtering a whole family, you know, is there any fantasy aspect? Is there, you know, this whole serial killer triad, you know, the biggest thing

component of that in my mind is the harming of animals. Is there anything like that in his past at this time? We know he killed a horse or at least the offender. I'm still reserving judgment on William Freeman as the actual offender right now. But we know the offender took the time to kill a horse on the escape. Is that indicative of somebody who has previously purposely hurt animals for no reason? We have no

indicators that he did this. If he is the offender before the stabbing of the horse, no. It just seems like typical hormonal teen stuff, even the stealing the chickens that he subsequently returned.

This is childhood teenage stuff. Now, an interesting note. People later on would connect a lot of mental illness throughout his family, but this is going to be maddening, so to speak, for you to hear these descriptions, because in historical context, their idea of mental illness is much different than our idea of mental illness, I think. By the mid-1840s, William had been preceded in death by a sister who is described as, quote-unquote, insane.

His brother was still alive at the time this all is happening, but they called him a, quote, wandering lunatic. And he had reportedly an aunt and an uncle who were both, quote, crazy. And then, of course, his father was described as dying with disease of the brain.

Now, this is also a time period when they considered epilepsy to be a mental health issue. So I have no idea what all of these people did to earn these labels. But I do know that what they described as things that were very unstable types of behavior might not be considered that now or he might legitimately have a history of mental illness in their family. I do. I mean, most people do, I think.

Well, I think you're making a good point is, you know, today we have kind of the modern psychology, psychiatric evaluations. You have diagnoses, you have standards, DSM, you know, the standards that these medical professionals use in order to evaluate somebody's

mental health. Here, these descriptions, insane, crazy, back in 1846, that sounds like lay people who are just watching going, yeah, I'm going to stay away from that person because they're just a little off. They're a little crazy. There's no weight that I can put on these descriptions of the families and their characteristics to say, yeah, there is a pervasive mental health aspect within this family tree.

I agree with you so far. I think that that's definitely the case. You know, I have probably mentioned this before. One of the seasons for Tenfold involved a man who killed his family. Probably months before doing this, he was really complaining loudly about Catholics, Catholics this, they're ruining everything, they're wanting to take over the country. I mean, going on and on.

And I talked to a forensic psychologist and said, you know, isn't this part of sort of a delusion? I know there's a religious aspect. And she said, often there is. And she said, but tell me about the time period. And I said, this is, you know, the late 1800s.

And when I talked to someone who was an expert in Catholic history, he said, everybody said that. That didn't mean you were crazy. Everybody hated the Catholics in the late 1800s. So I told the psychologist that, and she said, that is why historical context, and not just historical, cultural context, what we think is weird in this country is different than what they might think is weird in a Latin American country or Europe, you know? Absolutely. And I think that's part of what you're bringing to...

these stories is you are providing not only the time period and what's going on in the world or in that particular location, but also, you know, the social and cultural aspects. That is so huge to evaluate, you know, what's going on in the case, right?

I agree. So let's move forward. Let's talk about where things go wrong for William. So he can't keep a job. He's flitting from one place to the other, getting in line. A lot of people can't keep a job. But he starts having really, really bad luck. So six years before the murders of the Van Ness family...

He's 16 years old, and he's living with his sister and his brother-in-law in Auburn. There is a horse that belongs to a local woman named Martha Godfrey, who is white, and the horse goes missing. And the witnesses say that the thief is...

you can guess, a black man. He is quickly accused of the crime just because he lives nearby. He is not only black, like the alleged thief is, but it's also known that William has done the dastardly thing, which is steal chickens. Nobody mentions that he returned the chickens.

But he stole chickens in the past, so now he has this bad reputation. And if you've stolen chickens, you've obviously stolen this horse. He says, I didn't do it. Don't bug me. He's arrested. But then the magistrate eventually lets him go because there's no evidence he had anything to do with the animal's disappearance.

And the horse is found later on in a different county. And another black man named Jack Furman is arrested after records show that he had sold the horse after the theft. I guess they're busting a lot of people like that. You know, there's a horse that's reported missing and then somebody tries to sell it and they say, you know, you're the one who obviously stole the horse.

Yeah, this is sounding a little like something out of the TV show Yellowstone. Don't steal horses. Steal horses and sell them and make money. Oh, yeah. They didn't mess around about theft in the country especially. So Jack Furman is arrested, this other man. He knows William. He's

He finds out that William had been briefly questioned, and Jack Furman says, wait, that's the guy who did it. I didn't do it. It was him. It was the other black man. And they go back and believe Jack Furman, and they jail William for this with seemingly no evidence whatsoever, except

that a horse thief says, he's the one who did it. I didn't do it. Remember the chickens. William is scared, and it sounds like rightfully so, that he is going to be scapegoated for this horse theft. That's what happens. He is put on trial, and despite having no evidence, he's convicted. He does not get the death penalty. He does get something that is not so far off of it.

He is sentenced to five years hard labor at Auburn State Prison. Now, you don't know anything about Auburn State Prison. I do because Edward Ruloff, the killer I know the most about, spent years in this time period at Auburn State Prison. He was at Auburn State Prison the exact same time that William Freeman was, and it was not a good place to be.

Experience the glamour and danger of the roaring 20s from the palm of your hand in

In June's Journey, you have the chance to solve a captivating murder mystery and reveal deep-seated family secrets. Use your keen eye and detective skills to guide June Parker through this thrilling hidden object mystery game. June's Journey is a mobile game that follows June Parker, a New York socialite living in London. Play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s

while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club. There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out.

You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.

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.

The spoiler alert here is William Freeman is tied directly to the Van Ness murders, and there are witnesses, so we'll be able to talk about that. But this time in his life might have been the breaking point for him. And I just wonder if what you're about to hear about Auburn State Prison, we can connect directly

to what ends up happening with the Van Nist family because there is cruelty and then there is awful cruelty. And, you know, Edward Ruloff...

did not have a terrible time at Auburn State Prison. I'm presuming because he was white, he was quiet. He actually made a lot of money because he was an excellent carpet designer. And one of the things about Auburn State Prison during this time is it was an experimental prison, which meant that they were silent. They were never allowed to talk.

They had to eat in silence. When Ruloff was there, they had their own cells. There was no communication at all. And Edward Ruloff loved it because he was able to do his studies and, you know, he eventually writes this groundbreaking, you know, manuscript that he thought was going to change the world about linguistics. But for someone like William Freeman, who was Black, this begins a really difficult five years for him.

So let's just start with, let me tell you what the silent part is. They're required to go about their days in complete silence. If they speak out of turn, they are lashed, particularly the black prisoners.

But William, unlike Edward Ruloff, refuses to remain silent. He never stops saying that he was innocent. He's extremely vocal about it. And on top of that, he'll often get so upset that he either refuses to perform the labor, which is like breaking rocks. Edward Ruloff was in a nice little carpet manufacturing room, but the rest of the guys were breaking rocks. It was awful.

He would get so upset that he would say, I'm not going to do it. And the prison staff hated him and the other prisoners hated him. And everybody, it sounds like, including people who had no reason to lie, was increasingly abusive to him as the years went on. So the silent part, is that a solitary confinement thing? They're all together, but they can't talk.

Of course, there's been studies, observations on solitary confinement and how that impacts a human. I don't know from the lack of the ability to be permitted to speak to others. There is obviously a denial of a fundamental social interaction that we do. So maybe that could have an impact that would be on the spectrum of

of what somebody would experience if they are totally isolated from social interactions. But I don't know for sure, you know, but it sounds like it could be. But I think just everything about this environment for William most certainly would have an influence on his behavior. Well, I'll warn listeners, some of the stuff that he went through, while not sexual in manner here, is really upsetting. So...

He is admittedly by the staff subjected to horrible punishments. One is what they called showering, which is waterboarding. Can you explain waterboarding for people who don't know? I do not know waterboarding to any great detail, but in essence, this is where somebody is

is held, has a cloth over their face, and then water is poured. And it gives the subject a sensation of not being able to breathe, like they're going to drown. And it's, you know, the controller, the one who's applying this technique, you know, they're, in essence, like what I've talked about in other episodes, like with offenders, in essence, they're playing God. They choose when they stop pouring the water.

And of course, you know, this type of torture is to try to elicit some sort of response to get information or is a form of punishment.

Another thing that happened is that he was often flogged with something called a cat-09 tails. Do you know what that is? No. I see you've put a picture up. Yeah, it looks like, you know, like a short whip that has multiple ends on it, like a lash. So obviously, with a single blow, you have multiple sites on the victim's body, and

that's being hit by these different strands. It's awful. It would have been very painful. So the description that these guards are admitting to of what would happen to him was that he was flogged with this cat of nine tails and

And they said a man named William Smith, who was a foreman in the prison's carpet factory, said he witnessed William being whipped and beaten. And on one occasion, he was flogged so severely that a hole had been cut between his ribs so that he could lay the end of his fingers in it.

What I'm kind of assessing, let's say William, he's truly innocent of stealing this horse, and now he is being subjected to this prison punishment, which is obviously very extreme.

Imagine the distaste that he is developing for the people responsible for putting him in that prison, for the people who run that prison. Sounds like he's having negative interactions with the other prisoners. He is really going to develop a disdain. So when he's released, he's a changed person. That's an understatement. And here's where something changes. And you can tell me what you think about this.

The real culprit here, besides, you know, the other staffers who were witnessing this and not stopping it or the people who were doing things to him, is this man who was a staffer named James Tyler. Tyler says, yeah, this is what I did to him.

He says William came at him with a knife, conveniently. He says this after, you know, William is suspected of killing somebody with a knife. He says William came at him with a knife. Tyler picked up a thick wooden board. It is 14 inches wide, half an inch thick, and two feet long. Tyler grabs the board and smacks it against...

William's head flatwise. He said that William was hit so hard that it split the board. And he said that the prison doctor looked at William, he had lost most of his hearing, and he was, of course, impaired cognitively. And so when he finally left prison after five years, he was very,

very different, like you just said. Confused is the way most people described him. He was in a confused state. Well, no shit. After being hit on the head with a board like that? I just have to assume that just like his father had with the fall, that he ended up having a traumatic brain injury as a result of being hit in the head. He lost hearing out of one ear. That does sound like there was forces being generated inside his skull that disrupted his ability to hear.

Imagine those forces are also having an impact on other functional areas of his brain. So he is released after five years. And as I said, he comes out in what people described as a confused state. And that is about six months before the murder of this family. Now, I will tell you that he is arrested. And when he gets a kick-ass attorney...

The attorney will go for the very first instance of the United States of the insanity defense. Oh, okay. We'll go ahead and say that William Freeman is not denying this happened, that he did this, but the attorney wants to explain what happened. And this is something that is connected to the way he grew up.

being in servitude. And of course, the prison is what they think was his breaking point, because up until prison, he had been falsely accused of stealing a horse and did a silly chicken theft thing and had just been sort of a flitty kid and a flitty teenager. And then he comes out of this prison and murders four people and almost kills a fifth. What a change.

You know, this is where cause and effect, you know, what he was subjected to in prison, what he was subjected to growing up, you know, did this really cause him the slaughter of this family? Kate, do you know, like in 1846, what the criteria was to establish insanity where legally the defendant couldn't be tried for the crimes?

There wasn't in 1846. There was after this case was done because his attorney, who was an abolitionist, and we'll talk about this in a minute, is the one who said, let's look to Britain. Let's look at something called the McNaughton test.

And that was the test that would become kind of the hallmark of how to figure out if somebody was legally insane. And we will talk about that in a minute. Let me tell you what happened that day first, because maybe that'll kind of contribute to whether or not you think how much what happened at Auburn would frame what would end up happening with the Van Nest family.

which is, this is a man who went into Auburn seemingly not a brutal person, but certainly came out and did something absolutely horrific.

and doesn't seem to deny it. Okay, you ready? There's a lot going on here. Six months before the murders, he's released. He looks and acts very differently. He seems fixated on the idea of revenge. He doesn't talk a lot, but when he does, it's always about revenge for his wrongful conviction for stealing that horse.

He tells his brother-in-law someone has to pay for what he's been put through for the past five years. There's a magistrate who testifies later on about William's obsession with revenge. He said, on the Saturday previous to the murder, William came to my office. He opened the door. He advanced four or five feet, stood half a minute, and then said he wanted a warrant.

I asked him what he wanted a warrant for. He advanced nearest to me. I asked him again. He said for the man who put him in the state prison. He acted strange, but I attribute it to deafness and ignorance. That was not the Van Nest family. He had no idea who they were. They were strangers. At the end of this story, nobody knows why he picked that house.

but this was not a personal thing against the Van Nist family. So they said that he was almost completely deaf and kind of dazed. And then I have more of his movements, but what do you think about that, this obsession with revenge? As I kind of talked about, you know, when you were describing the homicides, you know, these elimination homicides where the offender is not spending a lot of time with each of the victims, but is in essence trying to wipe out a family, right?

Part of the early theory I was proposing is this could be a vindictive offender. So this is adding up. Now, the fact that the Van Ness family, they're unknown to William, but the key thing that I'm focusing in on is...

is John, the husband who was killed, was a justice of the peace. So in essence, in William's mind, is it possible John represented

The very people that put him in prison caused him to be subjected to all this physical abuse and mental abuse. And so by proxy, John is who William chose to carry out his revenge on. I think that's a good thought. I don't know if there's proof that William knew who John was or what he did for a living. Okay. But white man represented a lot to him.

Yeah. And that's just another, you know, form of victim by proxy. Okay. Listen to this. So now we have some more movements and some more confusion. A blacksmith reported that three days before the murder, William stopped by his shop and purchased a knife. The man said that William was clearly hard of hearing and didn't have any money. And so he gave him the large butcher knife. Ugh.

at a discounted price. A day or two after that, a shop owner said that William came in the store with a large butcher knife and asked to have it grinded. Around the same time, so this is a day or two before the murders, William stops by Martha Godfrey's house.

And if you remember, Martha is the one who owned the horse that he was accused of stealing. He comes and she says, sit down, and she gives him a piece of cake. And he asked her about the horse theft.

So he starts saying, do you really think that I stole this horse? I was wrongfully convicted of stealing your horse. I don't know what would have happened, but a neighbor showed up, a man, and asked William, what do you want from Martha? Because everybody knows the connection between Martha and William. William reportedly responded that he didn't really know why he was there. And when the neighbor said, are you looking for a horse?

He said that William sat a while, didn't say anything, looked around, smiled, and then finally said, "No, I don't want a horse."

He said, I've been in prison for stealing a horse I didn't steal, and now I want a settlement. And, of course, looked squarely at Martha. But he leaves, and he doesn't return. So ominous, I guess. He seemed confused. Well, at this point, he's already got the knife. Martha, in many ways, in William's mind, is his accuser that got him into prison. So you can see if he is now...

wanting to seek revenge, well, Martha could potentially be one of those individuals. Now, did he go into Martha's place with the intent to kill her and then the male neighbor coming by kind of caused that to go sideways? Or in his mind, getting revenge was, hey, I want money.

I want a settlement. I just spent five, six years in prison doing hard labor and miserable conditions. You owe me. You know, kind of that, you know, I don't know what William's intent was when he went to go see Martha, but

In some ways, she's probably lucky she was left alive. I think lucky that the neighbor showed up, for sure. Yes. So it sounds like the day of the murder, he is wandering around aimlessly this town of Fleming. And then he looks at a large house and he stops and he looks at it and people noticed him looking at it. And it is the Van Nist's house. And then the murders happen hours later. So I think it's possible, you know, this lying in wait...

where he's seeing a house, the family represents the people that he's mad at, victims by proxy, and he's probably going to go, okay, I've chosen my target. Now I'm going to sit back and watch and

possibly with the intent of breaking into the house in the middle of the night to kill the family. But then Sarah happens to step outside, and he just happened to be right there. It's awful. And when he is arrested, he shows, I think, an interesting reaction, physical agitation. He trembles and he shakes and...

He looks like he was going to cry. When I read this, I thought, not surprised at all. This is a black man in the mid-1850s. You think this is the first time he's been cuffed and agitated and arrested and hurt? I'm sure he's had many negative interactions. But at this point that he's being arrested, he's just killed a family. You know, he must be starting to realize, uh-oh.

You know, his future is bleak. Yeah, and I'll tell you, the press really framed this as blacks versus whites, which isn't surprising. The press runs wild with stories that completely vilify and dehumanize William before there's proof that he did it. He barely escapes being lynched. Again, not a surprise. It captures the attention of the entire state because it is so well publicized.

including a very, very powerful politically connected lawyer who is an abolitionist.

an Auburn resident named William H. Seward. He was a huge deal. He was New York's governor. He would later serve as President Lincoln and Andrew Johnson's Secretary of State. You know, he was a really big deal. And he and his wife also sold land to Harriet Tubman when she arrived in Cougar County. So, you know, this is someone who wanted to take up the cause for William.

which is, for William, a miracle that somebody wanted to represent him. And I don't, Paul, want to lose sight of the fact that we're talking about an entire family, including a two-year-old boy who's been murdered. How do you feel at this point, knowing everything he went through, but then knowing what he did to that family? Well, I was going to ask the question, are we...

There's no controversy regarding William and his involvement in killing this entire family. No, I don't know if he's admitted to it, but he's connected to it and he's not denying it. He's not saying anything, really. And Seward, when he takes up this case, is not denying it either. He's just saying, look at everything this man has gone through. Are you really surprised that he has this level of rage on him?

against white people. And it was a unique defense. I break, you know, evaluating William up into two components. I'm evaluating him and his involvement in this quadruple homicide of an entire family, including a two-year-old boy, plus an attempt homicide on the farmhand Cornelius. For me, I want to know William's mental state

at the time of those homicides, I mean, is he truly psychotic or is he just filled with rage? We have so many murders that are committed because somebody is filled with rage for one reason or another. It doesn't absolve them of the crimes, nor does it cause me to have compassion for them because they've committed a horrific act. Now, typically, after somebody's convicted of the crime in today's court system,

and the type of sentence that is going to be levied out, well, that's when the defendant's background comes into play to try to get sympathy, you know, to try to, whether it be the judge or the jury, to get them to provide a level of leniency because of their upbringing, what they were exposed to. So with William, of course, nobody should be subjected to the type of

torture that he was subjected to in prison, both physical as well as mental. And is there cause and effect why William, because of that experience, why he killed this family? Or if William never had this experience, would he still have acted out and committed some level of homicide in his future? I don't think anybody could predict one way or another.

So for me, of course, there's a level of compassion for another human being subjected to what William was subjected to. But absent compassion,

true mental health issues for the homicides, I don't have compassion for William. He killed a family. And that's kind of how I look at it. Well, William Seward has a tough road ahead of him. As I had mentioned before, there was no real criteria in the United States for evaluating someone's legal sanity in 1846. Just a few years earlier, I mentioned McNaughton, which I've written about many times.

So just to shorthand a lot of this, because there's so much detail here that we can talk about, just a few years earlier, there was a man, Daniel McNaughton, who in England murdered the then prime minister's secretary when he was in the throes of paranoid delusions. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He was sent to a mental health institution instead of prison.

And this set up what we now know as the McNaughton insanity rules or the insanity test. Are you familiar with this? You've heard of this before? At a very superficial level. Okay.

The defendant ultimately was found to be mentally incompetent to stand trial. So I have seen a little bit behind the scenes in terms of how the courts approach that type of situation. So the McNaughton rules, just as I said to shorthand it, is that all defendants are presumed to be sane unless they can prove—

At the time of committing the criminal act, the defendant's state of mind caused them to, number one, not know what they were doing when they committed said act or, number two, that they knew what they were doing but did not know that it was wrong.

So those were the two. William Seward said, let's do it. I am going to prove one of those two with him in the United States. First time it was tried. Yep. And that's, you know, again, when it comes to today's process and justice system, I don't know precisely what the legal standards are, but those two criteria typically factor in even today.

Do you know what you're doing and do you know right from wrong? The one note here that I thought was interesting is point number two, they knew what they were doing but did not know that it was wrong. What I see is that a common example of that is if someone is acting on orders from quote unquote God. Does that sound right to you too? Like they know this is wrong, but something is making me do it. The devil, God, something. Yeah, I think there's a variety of different types of permutations, you know, in terms of

Okay, they're fully cognizant of the act that they're doing. You know, it's just that they're not recognizing the legal implication. This is something that is considered a crime as well as the moral standard of our society is being breached. So when I start evaluating William, you know, I'm looking at, well, he's methodically killing an entire family.

He's doing, in essence, after killing Sarah outside, killing John, he's doing a building search, you know, he's killing Phoebe, kills George, the little boy, gets into the fight with Cornelius. You know, he is showing cognitive function.

But I think it's also significant is he has his wits about him to know he has to escape. So a truly psychotic individual would be somebody who goes and kills his family and could be wandering down the middle of the street with the victim's blood all over them. They're not obviously aware of what's going on. That's, in fact, I have a case. A woman broke into a house.

using a hanging potted plant, smashed a window, grabbed a knife out of the kitchen, climbed on top of a sleeping woman and just started stabbing her and then left. Well, she was found completely soaked in the victim's blood, wandering down the middle of the street. She was high. She was absolutely zombied out on meth.

But there is a level of that type of psychosis, if you will. So evaluating the offender's acts as they're committing the crime, post-offense behavior is important. Are they trying to hide the fact that they commit the crime? They're demonstrating knowledge of right and wrong. They know, oh, I'm going to get in trouble if I get found.

William, by escaping to me, is recognizing that he did something wrong. Well, I'll tell you something that was interesting. When you were talking, I was thinking about a man that I interviewed a couple of years ago for Tenfold. He was a survivor in a case at the University of Texas where a young man who was a student died.

took a knife and started stabbing people in a very populated area right during lunchtime. And the young man that I interviewed, who was a survivor, one didn't, and he did. One young man didn't survive, and this one did, I interviewed. He said he turned around, he grabbed the knife with his hand and almost cut through all of the tendons in his hand. He turned around and he had

the blade of the knife in his hand. He turned around and he looked at the offender in the eyes and I said, what did you see? And he said, nothing. He's like, you know when you make eye contact with somebody on the street and you both look away, it's just like you make a quick, he said it was blank.

He didn't try to run. Police came. He just would have kept going if somebody didn't stop, but he didn't try to escape. And he said there was no one home. You just could see it. And that's the type of behavior I would expect when somebody truly is in that psychotic break. Don't know how the person would necessarily be diagnosed in terms of what condition.

But there is a mental health issue. And at the time that they're committing the crime, they are not understanding, you know, those two parameters. You know, what are they doing and or what they're doing? Is it wrong? I know these days judges are the ones who decide whether someone is

is competent to stand trial. Is that right? That's my understanding, yes. So in 1846, it was a jury. The defense attorney had two juries he had to deal with. If he made it past the first one, you know, his goal was to say that this man, William Freeman, should not stand trial. The first jury disagreed. They said he was competent.

So he goes on trial, and it is, of course, we always say this, the battle of the experts. The defense attorney's goal was to say that his sanity at the moment of the killings should be what we use to decide whether or not he would be held criminally liable for these deaths. And he says William clearly now has mental illness.

And he said that he had racist, violent mistreatment

at the Auburn State Prison, and he was there wrongfully that he did not steal this woman's horse. And this is where everything began. His number one goal is to say the abuse is what amplified the existing mental illness that led to the murders. Now, you and I already said that we were not quite sure it was proven that William walked into Auburn State Prison with a mental illness, right? Right.

And again, you know, this is that, is it causal to the homicides? You know, that's where I separate into the two components. You've got his background and you've got the crime. And what was William's mental state at the time he committed the crime? There are so many people who have grown up into abusive environments that don't go and slaughter a family, right?

You know, so you can't absolve somebody from this act of multiple homicides, this act of, you know, quadruple murder because they had a bad experience in their past. For me, it's what was his mental state at the time of committing the crime? You know, and I can be sympathetic to William for what he experienced as a human, but I am not going to take that leap and say, well,

He shouldn't be held accountable because of what he experienced inside that prison. Well, the prosecutor is the New York State Attorney General, a guy named John Van Buren. And if you recognize Van Buren, he was the son of President Martin Van Buren.

And these are two powerful men going against each other. So Van Buren says, listen, he was so degrading. I wanted to say mean, but degrading to William. He says, listen, this man is ignorant. He, of course, used not very kind language for a black person. He is ignorant. He is awful. He is stupid. He is the basis of the base people, but political.

But please don't misconstrue that for mental illness. He knew exactly what he was doing. He did it with intention. He tried to escape. Don't get confused and don't fall for this defense of I was beaten so badly and been given brain damage in Auburn that I should be absolved of murdering an entire family. So those are the two sides we're looking at.

Does the abuse, and we've just finished talking about this, does the abuse in Auburn State Prison do so much to his brain and so much to just his soul that it has triggered this six months after getting out? Well, that's obviously what...

the defense is trying to put out there. I think Van Buren, the prosecutor, you know, he's basically making the argument that I was just making myself. Assessing William's actions at the time of committing the crime, post-defense behavior is demonstrating William knew right from wrong. He was aware of what he was doing. He's not meeting that McNaughton set of standards for insanity.

So, in my opinion, I agree with that argument based on what I know about the case. But it'll be interesting to see how this plays out, because I'm sure you're going to tell me how the trial proceeds.

I'll tell you, there were a lot of witnesses. There were more than 70 prosecution witnesses, 36 defense witnesses, nine different physicians, lots and lots of stuff happening, including experts on the prosecutor's side who contend that he's probably faking mental illness.

For William's part, he looked confused. He laughs out of turn. He claimed he didn't have counsel when his counsel, Seward, is sitting right next to him. And he is unable to answer most questions beyond, I don't know. I'm assuming when the judge asks him questions.

So the judge does something interesting, and I don't know if you think this is right or not. Even though witnesses continue to litigate William's sanity and the history of his mental illness, the judge restricts medical testimony to facts discovered prior to July 6th when the previous jury found Mr. Freeman sane. So facts discovered before...

before July 6th? Part of what I wonder, you know, Williams' behavior in court, has that significantly changed where now the prosecution's going, he's faking this, right? And so now they're trying to reset and say, okay, well, yes, he was found mentally competent to stand trial. And then the defense has employed, you know, this behavior in front of the jury as a strategy, right?

What may happen here is if William's behavior is so bizarre during the course of the trial

The judge may, in essence, declare him mentally incompetent at this point in time. The defendant needs to be aware of the court process. And when the defendant, let's say, has a psychotic break and is obviously not understanding what's going on, trial can be suspended or mistried. And then the judge declares mentally incompetent

But then the defendant, once that defendant is clear and determined to be competent again, then they can be tried for the crime. That's my understanding of the power that the judge has. So, you know, in this situation, it sounds like if William is acting so bizarre that

You know, he may get at least a temporary suspension of the trial process just because he's considered incompetent. He's not aware of what's going on. Well, the explanation I'm reading is that determination's made by a lot of medical and psychological experts who observed William after he was declared competent. Right.

are not allowed to say he is insane currently. So they said that the judge's reasoning here is that the preliminary trial had found William to be competent. So medical testimony arguing right now that William is currently insane is not relevant to this trial because at the time when the preliminary hearing happened, they said he's good to go. Does that sound right to you?

Well, it sounds right in terms of assessing William's mental health at the time the crime was committed. But if, let's say, William does have a genuine psychotic break during the course of the trial, and now you have experts, they don't want to prejudice the jury personally.

based on William's current mental state. It's what he was at the time of the crime. But he could be found, even though he was found competent to stand trial during the prelim process, he could still transition into being mentally incompetent to stand trial at this moment as they are truly litigating William

you know, the trial itself. I mean, you can have individuals that they end up into a mental health crisis during the middle of their trial, and the judge can go, hold on, this person is not aware of what's going on right now. Well, that's an interesting point because, here we go, the jury goes out and discusses it all and comes back, and he is found guilty. So there was no pause. He's sentenced to

to death. That is not the end of this, though. So, William Seward filed an appeal that pointed out several procedural errors, including what we were just talking about, whether or not to include current testimony about the way he seems now.

And it goes to an appellant court and the court sides with Seward. And, you know, it's written up pretty extensively and his conviction is overturned. Seward wanted McNaughton kind of solidified and said, these are the rules that I think we should go by. This is applicable to this case. And the judge had said, I don't think so.

But the appeals court disagreed and said McNaughton would be a wonderful addition to American courts. So when his conviction was overturned, quoting McNaughton rule was considered appropriate by the appeals court. It became the standard for establishing insanity in New York courts.

So that's interesting. That was an interesting part of this case. This is a case that had a very significant impact on our legal system. Very much. And let me tell you the end of this, because he gets a new trial, which sounds great for William, except he dies at 23 years old while he's in custody before he can go on trial a second time. So the cause of death is attributed to tuberculosis, which doesn't surprise me in a prison one bit in the 1800s.

Here's what's interesting. A subsequent autopsy revealed that William was experiencing, quote, advanced brain deterioration at the time of his death. It said that he had, quote, hardened, leathery scar tissue from the beatings in prison, which showed a severely damaged brain. So, of course, Seward is saying, doy, this is the insanity defense at its finest.

So what do you think about all that? It is interesting to have that anatomic find to get autopsy. You know, there seems to remove the question that William had some brain injury,

That obviously could have impacted his behaviors. But I don't know if that anatomic finding demonstrates legal insanity at the time he's committed the homicides.

But it is an interesting aspect. And, you know, what's popping into my mind is more like the current day football players and the CTE and, you know, the repeated brain injuries from the concussions and how that has impacted behaviors over time. Can you say that...

that type of injury. I've had a concussion. I still to this day get what I call my concussion headache. Did that concussion impact me behaviorally as a person as I got older? I don't know. I haven't gone out and committed a homicide. At what point do you have brain injuries that you can point to and say that causes this person to commit homicidal violence?

And it's not necessarily just the fact that you have a brain injury. It's like, well, what areas of the brain were impacted? Henry Lee Lucas, you know, this famous serial killer in the book I read about him, you know, he had been hit so hard by his mom. It's kind of a similar thing. It was either with a baseball bat or, you know, some object, you know, he lost consciousness, you know, and did that cause him to be a serial killer? Right.

How many people are actually hit in the head and they don't ever become a serial killer? So with William, you know, I think the autopsy finding gives me pause about assessing his mental state at the time of the homicide. But there still seems to be enough cognitive function as well as the realization of right or wrong that I don't think that

it meets the legal standard of insanity that he should just be absolved from committing those murders. I talked to a law professor at Columbia who's an expert in the brain defense, and I said, "God, are people getting off really serious crimes because of brain injuries that they've had?"

And she said, we really mostly see it in the punishment phase. She said it's mostly used as a mitigating factor to get people off of the death penalty. It's not to get them released or to get them out of something. It's like, let's not kill this person sort of situation, which made sense to me. Does that make sense to you?

Yeah, and that's where I was talking about that, like the two in assessing William, the two components, it's his background, and it's at the time of committing the homicides. And most certainly, it's okay, did he commit the homicides? And did he know right from wrong? Did he know what he was doing? And if he did, then he deserves to be convicted. Right?

And now the sentencing comes in and his background. That's when his background comes in. That's when now it's seeking leniency. You know, there's mitigating factors that need to be taken into consideration. And of course, there's going to be arguments on both sides as to whether these are truly mitigating factors to give a level of leniency to the sentence. Well, one note for me, this is such a complicated case. You know, I went back and I looked at

So he was in Auburn State Prison from 1840 until 1845. He was released. Six months later, he murders the family, and then he dies about a year and a half or so after that.

So, when you read this autopsy report, advanced brain deterioration at the time of death, hardened leathery scar tissue from the beatings, severely damaged brain, a 23-year-old just two years out of that hellhole of a prison. And that's what they did to his brain. I am not defending what he did to the Van Ness family. I'm saying that's hard to read. That's difficult. Yeah, though...

I would be interested to see what a modern pathologist, if a modern pathologist had conducted William's autopsy, what they would attribute this deterioration of his brain to. I mean, because William died of tuberculosis. Is there a different type of pathological condition that William could have been exposed to that would

could have caused this type of anatomic finding that has nothing to do with the physical punishment that he received in the prison system.

So that's something maybe I'm just skeptical of the medical expertise, you know, back in 1846. And also, you know, the other point I think that popped into my head is that this is a year and a half after the crime was committed is when they have this anatomic finding of the deteriorating brain. You can't say that it was

present at the time of the homicides. That may be kind of a moot point in the overall picture of this case, but it is interesting anyways that there was that post-mortem finding.

You know, it's so interesting, Paul. We're having this discussion, and it isn't often when I feel like you're very clinical and I'm very emotional about this. I'm just going, oh, my God, this is horrifying what this guy went through. I don't think it justifies at all what he did to the family. But just to read the details of that and to think that had to have something to do with it. And, you know, you're basically just saying, what was his state of mind when he killed those people? That's the only thing that counts is what...

was he legally insane when he killed those people? Did he know right from wrong? And it sounds like the answer was yes to that. So I think we just have to do our approaches. I think we both think that this was, you know, I mean, it's a sad ending for anybody, for the Van Ness family, for William. All of this was pretty horrible. But I do think it's interesting to kind of debate a little bit about what are those circumstances, what is mitigating, and what is just sort of an excuse for

Yeah. Kind of the world that I come out of, you have to kind of detach, you know, in assessing...

You know, is this person responsible for the crime? You have to detach from the emotions of the sympathy for that individual. What William went through as a human inside that prison, nobody should ever be subjected to. I'm definitely sympathetic, but for me, it's, I've got victims that lost their lives. William took those victims' lives. Absent him being truly psychotic at that moment,

He needs to be held accountable, no matter what his upbringing was, no matter what abuse he was subjected to. He still is committing a horrific act of violence. And if I get into that mode of, "I'm going to feel sorry for this person," then eventually, I think with like from a law enforcement perspective or even a prosecutorial perspective,

you end up possibly leaning in a direction and where you are no longer performing your job, looking out for public safety. Well, this has been an interesting story, a historic case. You know, we talk about those often here. I like to pick up on historic cases just because I think it

It's interesting that you now know kind of the history of the insanity defense here in the United States. It's so odd to think that Edward Ruloff, who was at the center of my attention for so long, I've written a book about him, I've done the podcast on him, I've done research on him.

It's interesting that they were in the same prison at the same time, and it was completely different experiences. Edward Ruloff loved that prison. Everybody was quiet. Nobody bugged him. He made money. He wanted to write. He wrote an entire book while he was there. And what a different experience for William Friedman. Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you for going down this road. We'll go down a different road next week. I've got lots of roads, Paul. We're brimming with roads. Thanks for joining me, and I'll see you next week. Thanks once again, Kate. Take care.

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbonessources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashan, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Talladay. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel. Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at BuriedBonesPod.

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.