The Servant Girl Annihilator PT 1
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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.

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On July 11, 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

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. ♪♪

Hey, Kate. How are you? Hey, Paul. I'm doing well. How about you? I am hanging in there. So what's been going on with you? Well, I'm very excited because the trailer for season 12 of Tenfold More Wicked drops in a little more than a week. I know that you're in disbelief that I actually do a show that doesn't involve you, but that is...

That was the original. That was my OG show, Tenfold More Wicked. This is an exciting season for me. It's different than what folks are used to. They are used to the seasons like the ones that we're doing right now, which is about one family and a tragedy. This is actually a carryover from season 11. It's a

the same family, a very dramatic family line that includes Lizzie Borden, which is a huge deal. And it involves this cursed family, if you want to believe in curses, and not only that, but Fall River, Massachusetts, which is where Lizzie Borden was. And there is a two or three block long section that has over 150 years seen some of the most unbelievable tragedy that

including the Lizzie Borden case where, you know, she was acquitted for murdering her stepmother and her father. So it's sort of do you believe in cursed families and do you believe in cursed towns? And we go through all of these cases that happen just in this little area with this kind of one family. Well, I will say over the course of my career that, yes, I have seen families that have bad things happen to them over and over again.

as well as locations. In fact, in my old jurisdiction, there's a neighborhood in which I had, over the course of a decade, multiple serial killers

committing crimes in this one little neighborhood. And it's like, how do you explain that? You know, why there? I don't know about this mystical curse aspect, you know, but I'm open-minded. You know, maybe, maybe there's a curse. Okay. Listen, what I want to make clear is that I actually really like Fall River. I don't think there's anything wrong with being a cursed city, actually. I think it's kind of cool.

This season really covers a lot of different time periods, but it really is this like two to three block radius that has seen a lot of things happen. And I'm not sure everybody who visits the Lizzie Borden house knows that. So I've always been interested in the Lizzie Borden case. I don't actually want to know if she really did it or not. I like the mystery, like a Jack the Ripper type thing. I know that is not something you want everything solved, I think, right?

Well, ideally, you know, for sure. You know, that's the whole point of what I, you know, why I got into what I do. But, you know, it's, you know, when you start talking about these historic crimes, obviously it's more of, okay, what can we learn from them? What were, you know, just as, you know, we talk about here in Buried Bones, you know, it's the, well, the time period's different. It's interesting to learn about the cultural and societal differences, right?

But then we also see, as we always talk about, well, the reason these crimes are committed is for the same reasons today as they were back then. Well, this season of Tenfold is unique, and I'm really excited. Speaking of Tenfold, the story that we are about to talk about today

Number one is huge, so it's a two-parter. And number two, it is connected to a tenfold season that I did a couple of years ago, which was a series of murders that happened in Austin, Texas, in the late 1800s.

We are going to be talking about, in my opinion, the most well-known serial killer you've never heard of, which is the Servant Girl Annihilator. It was, you know, a series of crimes that happened in, you know, the late 1800s in Austin when it was a growing city. And you and I have never talked about it. I have talked about it in tenfold because it was related to a different story. But you and I have never unraveled this sort of unsolved crime before. It's very, very old.

Okay, so this is in many ways, this upcoming case is a spinoff from Tenfold More Wicked then. Yes, in an odd way it is. And I'm going to have to throw a theory at you that I explore in Tenfold More Wicked and just see how it sticks. Let's see if the spaghetti sticks to the refrigerator or not. Is that how you determine if your spaghetti noodles are done, is you throw them out the refrigerator? That's what my grandma told me. Not yours? I guess not, huh? I guess I will have to try that. Okay.

Okay, let's go back to Austin, Texas in 1885 and let's set the scene. First off, I like to give trigger warnings. This does have some discussion, a lot of brutality. And I will say this, Paul, I've never told you this before, but when I watch shows, when I do stories, when I write books, nothing's

Knives and sharp objects really freak me out. It's really hard for me to watch a movie, even hear a description of a real crime involving a knife. It just scares the daylights out of me. And there's a lot of knife stuff happening in this story. Okay, yeah, you know, obviously I've worked a lot of cases in which the weapon was a knife, and there's good reason to be scared by knives.

You know, the type of injuries that they inflict are brutal. But I am well-versed, if you will, in terms of the wounds that knives can produce. And so I'm very interested to hear the facts of this case. So two things for listeners. One, if the descriptions of the wounds of somebody like Jack the Ripper's victims are

If they upset you, this is probably not the episode for you because this is brutal. And number two, I do have to talk about two children who were murdered in a story that's tangential to this one. So I will go quickly through that. So just some warnings. I try to remember to let people know about that. Sound good, Paul? That sounds good. Experience the glamour and danger of the Roaring Twenties 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. Okay. So, 1885, Austin, Texas, the very best city in the entire world. I think everybody knows that by now because they're all moving here. Well, I think you also have a personal bias. Yes.

No. Listen, I'll tell you, Paul, I lived in London, New York. I went to school in Boston. I lived in L.A. I lived in San Francisco. And Austin is still the best place for me. Yeah, you know, I've only, as a kid, when I was living in San Antonio with my parents, I think...

We drove up through Austin once, but that's really been my only experience. And I don't remember it, of course. Yeah. So let's talk about this story. This story involves, and I know most of this because of my buddy, Skip Hollinsworth, who is one of the best journalists on the planet. He's with Texas Monthly, and he wrote a book that was based on an article that he wrote for Texas Monthly in the year 2000, which I barely remember. Yeah.

And the article was called Capital Murder. And it was about the Midnight Assassin is what the name of the book was. But it was about the person who was known as the Servant Girl Annihilator, which we'll talk about in a little bit was not exactly a accurate moniker for him to have.

But, you know, Skip wrote this amazing article, and then he got a book deal. And The Midnight Assassin is a really good book. And there's so much historical context. I need to go through a little bit of it before we start really digging into the story. But there's a lot of murder that happens here. There's a lot of issues with race, which isn't surprising at all. 1885, Austin, Texas.

A lot of sort of complications. So let's just get going with where we are in time. So Austin is growing big time by 1885. Two decades earlier, it was about 5,000 people. And by the mid-1880s, it was somewhere between 23,000 and 30,000 people, which is huge growth. You have to picture downtown Austin as like mule-drawn streetcars. There's this beautiful opera house.

There's ice cream parlors and restaurants. It's really growing. There's a Capitol building that's under construction. And then what I will say, modestly, is the best hotel on the planet, which is the Driscoll Hotel. It is haunted for sure. I have stayed there with my kid and watched The Shining, which scared the crap out of both of us. We stayed in a historical wing there.

People have died there. It is the most beautiful, but in some ways the creepiest hotel around. So that just sort of paints a picture of where we are. Yeah, you're really selling me on this hotel. Oh my God. It's gorgeous. It's a wonderful hotel. I was just there two weeks ago. I took my kid over one of our little breaks and it was great to stay there. But yeah, haunted hotels are a mixed bag for me sometimes. This

This is on a national level. This is 12 years after the Civil War. So this is sort of the beginning of Reconstruction. So one thing that's interesting that I want to start out with is, you know, there are a couple of researchers that I'll give a nod to. One is Skip Hollinsworth. One is a guy named J.R. Galloway.

who was at the University of Texas. And basically, he wrote a book that it sounds to me like he was able to have access to so many newspaper articles from the 1800s. He was able to get a really good sense for the story. And Skip really nodded to Galloway as in this is somebody who did a lot of research.

So let's start with my first question for you. This person was named the Servant Girl Annihilator, even though this case does not exclusively involve Black women who are servants or, I mean, that's, you know, the older term for it, or assistants or helpers or housekeepers. It expands to two white women and to a couple of men.

So where do we come up with the names of serial killers? I know what happened with the Golden State Killer and Michelle McNamara, but generally, is this a media thing where they come up with the Colonial Parkway Killer and all of these different names?

Yes. In most instances, the monikers given to serial predators are media-driven. And oftentimes, the moniker is not descriptive of the types of crimes that the predator is doing, whether they are, let's say, a serial rapist or a serial killer. So it's not surprising to me that this Serving Girl Annihilator moniker is

is kind of missing the mark to be inclusive of all the victimology. Nor is it surprising that you have a single offender who is killing black women, white women, men. You know, this is...

what is called crossover offending. It is a myth that these predators choose a certain victim type and only stick with that victim type. And a lot of that myth, you know, really kind of comes out of the Ted Bundy era in which, you know, everybody thought Ted Bundy

only killed brunette females with hair parted down the middle, which is not true. But that's what the media propagated. And so oftentimes, law enforcement during unsolved series has so much more details about the cases than what the media does. And so the media is relying upon scant details to

to kind of form opinions that oftentimes are wrong. Yes, I hear you with the wrong opinions of the media, but they do come up with some quippy little monikers for serial killers, and this one was the servant girl annihilator. Servant girl is not a phrase I would normally use, so when I use it, it's because this is how they were literally described in 1885.

So let's start with it. We are in December of 1884, December 30th. So for you local Austinites, I'm going to say the name of the street that it was, and then I'll tell you what it is because they got switched around quite a bit. I thought this was interesting. The first thing happened on December 30th of 1884.

And the address is 901 West Pecan Street. Pecan Street is now 6th Street. So if you've come to Austin and you want to really see a lot of partying and a lot of drinking, 6th Street is definitely one of the places you would go. It's where I grew up going. But back then, it was a residential area. And the victim is a Black woman in her early 20s. Her name is Molly Smith.

So we're just going to jump right into it, and I hope I have enough information for you. You know in the 1800s, they were vague, and there was a lot of propriety. I mean, I struggled with when coroners or whatever you want to call them back then, pathologists, city physician in this case, wouldn't even necessarily take the clothes off of the victim out of propriety. So I hope I have enough information for you here.

So Molly Smith was sleeping in her bed, apparently, that she shared with her boyfriend, who was a 30-year-old named Walter Spencer, also Black. So she lived in a cabin on the property of her white employer, who was a man named Walter Hall. He was an insurance salesman. Molly was a cook in the Halls' home. She was sleeping in her bed and had apparently been attacked that night, dragged out of her bed,

Now we're talking about snow, just this one instance, because I'm telling you it never snows here. There was a little bit of a snowiness on the backyard, dragged out onto the snow in the backyard, laid by an outhouse, and murdered. And I have details on potential sexual assault, and then I have details, of course, on what ended up happening with her. The boyfriend, he was attacked too, but he survived. But it sounds like he was attacked in the bed and was never taken out of the bed. Right.

Okay, so you have an offender that is willing to go into a house with a man and woman who are in bed. He attacks these two victims. I mean, he's taking on a male, and this is sort of like Golden State Killer. You know, this is where Joseph DeAngelo is willing to engage with the male present in the house. This tells me that this offender has a lot of self-confidence in their physical ability and is willing to take on this higher-risk crime.

It's interesting that now after attacking the male, the offender is dragging the female outside and there's snow on the ground, it's cold. And this is where he is now potentially sexually assaulting and killing the victim.

Were there other people inside the house? Is there a reason why the offender is taking her outside? It sounds like it was just Molly and her boyfriend, Walter. Walter has a head wound. It sounds like he was likely attacked first. He had a head wound by an ax.

and doesn't remember anything. He survived, but he doesn't remember anything. She is dragged out. Now, there is a main house that's in front of the cabin in which, you know, the insurance salesman and his family presumably are, but it's just Walter and Molly at this point in bed. Okay, so the offender is hitting Walter in the head with an axe. It sounds like the offender is now trying to remove Molly away, get space away.

between him and Molly from Walter. This tells me the offender doesn't have confidence that he has completely incapacitated Walter. So he's now trying to generate space so he can spend time with his intended victim, which is Molly. Walter is just...

He is just trying to eliminate this threat. But the intended victim is Molly. And it sounds like this is a sexually motivated crime. So the description is interesting, and you can tell me what you think. She was found on her back, almost completely naked, which in the 1800s would have been shocking for a city physician or investigators to come. That's why they think that she had been raped. Right.

My very first book was set in the 1950s with serial killer John Reginald Christie. And I remember reading the pathologist being able in the 1950s to specifically say semen was present when I did an autopsy. They are not going to say that here. They say that because she was mostly naked and that her organs, you know, her sexual organs were exposed, that

It suggested to some that there was a sexual assault. But I would not say that any autopsy or anything is going to be definitive in that way. But stripping her down, you know, and brutalizing her sounds like pretty clear to me, right? This is a sexually motivated crime. Now, back then, they're probably not looking for the physical evidence that could prove rape. And when I use the term rape, I come out of the California statutes. Rape

Per California is a penetration of the vagina by the penis. No matter how slight you can have rape and no semen present. There is no ejaculation. There's all these different sex acts that these offenders do. It all depends on what the offender wants to get out of the crime, what the offender's fantasy is.

So in this instance, we don't know the sex act that the offender did, but we know because she is stripped down, there is a sexual motivation to this crime.

And he separated her, which I know is another big clue for you, obviously. If he just wanted to come in. So the bedroom is definitely turned upside down. Somebody is looking for something. You know, I don't know if it's a thing of value, but to take the chance to drag her into the public, even if it's in the backyard, is motivating. You're right. It's got to be something that's sexually motivated. Well, I think, you know, the undressing of the body is what's telling me there's a sexual motivation issue.

The separation, pulling her outside, I believe the reason for that is because of Walter. And this is where the offender is not confident that he has dispatched Walter to the point where now he can take his time with Molly inside the house or even inside the very bedroom in which Molly and Walter were sleeping together. This may inform me that the offender is a novice when it comes to killing.

Okay. That's going to be interesting for later on, a novice. Okay. And we'll see what progresses as we have many other victims coming up. Two things. One, I said this place was in disarray. It could have been that he was looking for something, but also there was clearly, it sounds like Walter put up a fight. The furniture was in disarray. There was glass broken. They found a bloody axe on the floor.

So they did not identify whether or not this was from the people who lived there or from Molly and Walter. Everybody had axes back then, of course. But the bloody axe is on the floor. So he drags her out, and it sounds like he has another weapon. There's a city physician, is what they were called in the 1800s, named William Jefferson Burt, who comes to the scene. And if you've heard that season I told you about of Tenfold More Wicked, you'll recognize his name because he becomes important again.

So the city physician, one guy, would show up to all of these different murders and assess what happened, help solve the case, you know, and he says...

Molly had been stabbed in the chest, the abdomen, the arms and the legs, and had a deep wound in the side of her head. That to me sounds like a knife also because the ax was left inside. Yeah, you know, depending on description of the wounds to Molly, I'm going to assume it's a knife or a screwdriver or an ice pick or something like that. You know, it is interesting. He goes into the house with an ax. Yeah.

And after using the axe on the male, he discards the axe or drops it. I'm assuming he's not picking up a knife from inside the house, but he's brought a knife to the scene. So he's bringing two weapons. It's almost as if he knew that the male, Walter, was inside the house and made a predetermined choice that he was going to utilize the axe while Walter was asleep to

to dispatch Walter, but what he wants to do with Molly, in addition to the sexual assault, is part of his fantasy is the knife play on her body. He's not using the ax on her. He is purposefully choosing to use the knife. Well, this next one's tough. I thought Molly was hard, but this next one was very difficult for me. So just another warning to listeners, this is pretty graphic.

A few months later, May. So we are now in late spring, 1885. Nothing happens similar to this between December 31st and May 6th. But on May 6th, something very similar plays out.

So with this story, I'm hoping you can help me say, yes, these all seem to be related because they have always been packaged together as the work of one killer. And two, who this person might have been, because there are some suspects. So here's your second case to see what the similarities are. This is another Black victim, a woman. She was a cook. Her name was Eliza Shelley. She was in her 30s.

She was the mom of three young boys, and she worked for a family, the Johnson family. And the patriarch of the family was a doctor.

She and the kids, these three young boys, lived in a tiny back cabin on the property of what is now Third Street. So these are in close proximity. So we went from Sixth Street down to Third Street, downtown Austin. She stays in the bedroom. She's found dead on the bedroom floor, wrapped in bloody sheets, her bloody sheets, as if she and the bedding had been dragged off the bed together.

And they think Paul multiple weapons here. Okay, so here's the graphic stuff. Her brains were reportedly oozing out of her head wound. She appeared to have an axe wound in her skull and a deep hole drilled between her eyes and above one of her ears.

as well as deep slashes all over her body. There is one witness, one of the boys who was under 10 years old. He said he wasn't sure whether the attacker was a black man or a white man, but he thought he was white. But either way, the intruder had covered his face with this white rag. The boy, under 10, said that the man had woken him up, demanded to know where the mother had kept all of her money,

and then told the boy to put his head under a pillow and keep it there until he left. So I'm presuming the mom was dead at this point. So what do you think of that? You know, I don't know if I would presume if the mom is dead at that point. The offender possibly is lacking familiarity inside the house and first runs into this boy and now is knowing that he's got his face covered, is now interacting with the boy and trying to get direction as to where the intended victim is.

If he's asking the boy, "Where is mom?" He says, "Where's money? Where's mom's money?" "Where's mom's money?" But he's also, he's aware that there's an adult woman inside this house. And this is tiny, Paul. They said a tiny cabin. So I don't know how much room there actually is to move in here. It's interesting to me he's also using an ax in this case. We don't have an adult male present like we did with Walter in Molly's case.

So it sounds like this is how he is equipping himself. And the similarities between these cases is enough for me to say, yes, this sounds like it is the same offender. But it is important that he is also sounds like he's got a knife with him, you know, the deep slashes. And again, this is something that I believe is core to his fantasy. That is oftentimes offenders like to use a knife to

versus something a little less impersonal. They like to utilize something that they can now penetrate into the women's body. The holes being drilled, I don't know what to make of that. If that's... I'm kind of skeptical. You know, it's not like they had...

a portable drill, battery-powered drill, you know, it's like, well, how would this be done? You know, you're sitting there with a hand-cranked drill, you know, so I would tend to think that maybe this was more likely a puncture wound with something like maybe a screwdriver or something similar that would indicate, yes, you have some sort of bit that is boring through the bone.

Well, they have very little evidence to work with here. They have a witness who's very young who can't identify whether this person was black or white. Of course, we're talking about not even candlelight. He's striking at night when people are in bed. There's no lights anywhere. And he's covering his face, it sounds like.

They find one thing that will become important later on, a bare footprint in dirt near the cabin. A footprint. I mean that, not shoe print. So as we go forward, he does not wear shoes, it sounds like.

Did the young boy, was he able to describe the clothing that the offender was wearing outside of the white mask? It doesn't sound like it. The only thing he was focused on was that scary white mask and the guy telling him. Now, he's not hurting the child, who is a witness. So that's another question. What does that mean, even?

he has a soft spot for kids, or does that mean he doesn't think that this kid's going to be able to be helpful to investigators at all? It's so hard to exactly say why he doesn't harm the kid, you know, but I would probably say the primary reason is that the kid is not...

meet his victim type. - Okay. - Yeah, so he's not going to do that. Whether he has a soft spot for kids, who knows? You know, the bare footprint, there is a practical aspect. And that practical aspect is that you can walk much quieter inside the house than if you have a hard-soled shoe on.

And so this would be something that you see cat burglars employ. Cat burglars are offenders that break into houses while there are people inside, typically asleep, and they are silent as they move through the house. They're like a cat, you know, and they will do this type of thing, only have socks on in order to be able to walk quieter as they move through the house. So right now,

This offender not having any shoes on, my guess initially is he's doing that in order to be able to move silently through the house or as quietly as he can.

Let's assume that he did this for the first murder, for Molly. It's in the snow. Maybe he didn't, but it's in the snow and it's covered up. Would you then have reconsidered what you said about him being an inexperienced killer? Would that have added any sort of validity to him being somebody who's more experienced if he did this on the first go-round?

No, because these killers evolve over time. If he, let's say in the first one, the reason I'm saying that I believe he might be a novice killer is because he's separating Molly from Walter. And in my opinion, the only real reason to do that, to take her outside into the cold where now he's exposed versus being in the privacy of the house.

It's because he's unsure about whether or not Walter could reanimate and become a threat to him while he wants to spend time with Molly. However, prior to that homicide, chances are he's already gained comfort and experience breaking into houses, probably with occupants inside.

And so he has learned, okay, I need to do this, this, and this in order to be able to move throughout the house without alerting the victims. And part of that learning process may have been, I need to ditch the boots or ditch the shoes and go barefoot. And so he is just employing what he learned

as a cat burglar before escalating to homicide. Okay. And we actually don't know from the kid if he ended up finding the money. We would assume maybe he took it if he found it. But we know from what you're saying, likely the primary motivation is sexual. I don't have any details on whether Eliza was assaulted or not. It sounds like she was partially clothed, but does it matter at this point if the first one was sexually motivated? Are they all going to be after that?

Well, in all likelihood, you know, you have female victims. We know with Molly, there's no question that it's a sexually motivated crime. We don't have enough descriptors in terms of what happened to Eliza in terms of what disruption to her clothing, what positioning of her body, any types of, you know, specific injuries or sexually related observations. I do want to address the searching the house for financial gain.

And this is often seen with serial predators, is sometimes they are seeking financial gain. They take advantage of the opportunity, even though the primary motive is the sexual assault and/or the homicide. Or you have predators that want to display a potential financial motive

To kind of, in a way, minimize the fact that they really are there for the sexual assault and or homicide. In some ways, it's their justification. I was really just breaking into the house because I needed food and money. And she was there. And I just happened to take advantage of it. They're trying to minimize, you know, what their true primary motive is.

Well, after Eliza Shelley, the police start looking sort of in earnest for someone. There's a lot of contradictory information out there. People who I have spoken with have said in their research that the police could give a fig about this because it turned out to be a litany of black women until we get to the two white women at the very end.

which I believe. I had a quote from someone who said that the police mounted their horses and made it all the way to Shoal Creek, which is not very far, and stopped because it was primarily Black women and a few Black men. But other sources say they're kind of on the hunt for

for someone. In Eliza's case, they start looking at her inner circle. They arrest one man who just doesn't seem to have any kind of connection. I think he was a near-to-well 30-year-old, and then they let him go. And then they talk to a neighbor who says, well, Eliza had a boyfriend, and they argued about money. They overheard someone asking for money, and

And, you know, they talked to a boyfriend and it turned into nothing. So there's not enough evidence for anybody at this point. And the city's black community is on edge. I don't think the white community really was, is the impression I got. But it's the black community that's concerned at this point because now you've got two women who are dead. And yes, they're five months or so apart. But, you know, when they were brutalized in this way, this is alarming people.

Yeah, you know, and as it should because...

You know, it's obvious to me just with these two cases that this is a serial predator that is at work. These are related cases for sure. I don't need DNA in order to draw that conclusion. Kind of going back to Eliza, one of the details that you mentioned is that even though she wasn't taken out of the house, she is removed from the bed but found wrapped in sheets. Do you have a description? Is she like completely cocooned in these sheets or are the sheets just covering her?

The investigators are describing it as covered. So he attacked her in bed and yanked her along with the sheets off the bed, like trying to get her on the ground. And the sheets kind of came with her is the impression I get. So I'm not sure this was like addressing. I think it was like a frenetic moment. And then maybe the boy walks in before he's able to sexual assault her. But she's dead pretty quick. Yeah.

Yeah, because if the offender is taking the time, let's say, to cover his victim with sheets or wrapping her in sheets, you know, a purposeful act, that is significant behaviorally. And oftentimes that indicates that the offender either has some sort of connection to the victim and is expressing remorse, doesn't want to see what he has done to the victim, or there's a practical aspect. Sometimes offenders will cover the bodies to delay discovery.

You know, so it's a matter of this is where, you know, crime scene photos would be huge in terms of trying to really figure out, OK, did the sheets just come off with the body or did the offender actually purposefully cover her up? And if the offender did, then, yeah, that would be something I would be keying in on. That's not the impression I get, but that's really good information. I do think that there's going to be probably posing coming up here. Let's talk about the

the timeline a little bit because now I'm not confused, but I'm interested in this bit. So we go from December 30th to about five months later, the beginning of May. And that's the gap, five-month gap between Molly and Eliza. Now we're to a woman named Irene Cross. This is less than three weeks after Eliza. Is he ramping up?

Or what's happening? It's a very similar attack. Well, we have too few data points to determine if there is a temporal pattern to this offender. But that typically isn't something that is consistent in a series. You know, I saw it a little bit in Golden State Killer that once D'Angelo started killing, he initially went biannual. He would kill twice a year. Hmm.

And it was almost like he experienced, you know, it was almost like the sexual gratification from these homicides and then went into this refractory period for about six months and then offended again. But oftentimes when the offender offends, commits the crime, is often driven by when the offender has the opportunity in their personal life to commit the crime. And so sometimes we'll see a long sentence.

period in between attacks because now the offender is gainfully employed, you know, can't get out and do the prowling or whatever else is needed to commit the crime. Like in one instance, I can think of like with Green River Killer, Gary Ridgeway, when he stopped offending, when he was being interviewed, he says, well, I got married. You know, these offenders have real things that happened in their personal lives that can impact their ability to offend.

Now, there's also behavioral things, you know, in terms of, okay, in this instance, we have just a three-week gap between Eliza's case and Irene's case. Is this a time in this offender's life in which there's stressors that is now driving him to want to go out and offend or

in a quicker period than what he had done between Molly and Eliza's case. Who knows at this point? There's so many variables. Let me tell you about what happens next. So this is May 22nd. So we're jumping from May 6th to May 22nd.

This happens at 302 East Linden Street. Anyone who's local, there is a Linden Street in Austin, but this is a different one. This is now called 17th Street. So we've gone from 6th Street to 3rd Street to 17th Street. So we're all downtown at this point. This is a woman named Irene Cross. She was a Black domestic worker.

And she was heard screaming in the night on the lawn of her employer, who was a woman named Sophia Whitman. And just like the previous victims, Irene lived on the property in a small cabin in the back.

By the time the helper arrived, so she was conscious and screaming, he was gone. She is clinging to life, but the prognosis is not good, and they're trying to get information from her, and nothing. Okay, so let me tell you the wounds. A six-inch gash above her right eye. Multiple reports are that he tried to scalp her, so part of her head is open. Her right arm is

Had been so severely and deeply cut that it was cut almost in two pieces. And she survives this for a little while and then dies. I mean, just brutal. If the woman is found naked and they're saying this looks like certainly like a sexual assault, I'll tell you. But Eliza was a no and Irene is a no, meaning they're clothed.

So this right arm wound, did the wound penetrate through her bone or are they just describing a very large incisive wound? They just say so deeply severed it was nearly cut in half. Okay. And she's screaming through this.

Well, and I think that that is a huge factor. You know, she's making noise. The offender is aware she's making noise and possibly alerting other people in the surrounding area. So now the time that the offender has with Irene is sped up in his mind. And that may be why we don't see more overt signs of sexual assault, like her clothing being disrupted or removed from her body. This wound to her arm, unless he's, again, armed with an axe, you

you know, and swings the axe and in a defensive posture, you know, the axe actually goes through bone, you know, and that's a possibility. You know, I've got a case in which a woman is killed with a machete and her forearm is literally just hanging on by a piece of skin. But it sounds like that's likely a defensive wound, whether it be done by an axe or

or it's done by a knife and it's just, you know, it's a significant incisive injury probably to her forearm as she's trying to ward off the knife. And that can look like it's severing the arm, but it doesn't necessarily go through the bone. The attempt at scalping is interesting.

I'm aware of one instance in one case in which a California DOJ profiler talks about an offender who had read about another offender scalping his victims and wanted to try it. I personally don't have a case in which somebody was purposefully scalped.

scalped. But also, you're dealing with Texas back in the late 1880s or mid-1880s. Scalping would, I imagine, would be something that people were much more aware of just because of the indigenous aspects. You know, is this an attempt at staging, you know, where now the offender is trying to make authorities believe that you have an indigenous person that is committing this crime?

Or is this part of a way to denigrate the female? Maybe she has a beautiful head of hair.

And now he's wanting to collect a souvenir or trying to go after something that she takes pride in. You know, there's so many different potential behavioral aspects to what's going on with this scalping. But I do believe that in all likelihood, with the limited amount of injuries to Irene and the fact that she's outside screaming, that he probably got scared off in this instance. Yeah.

And there's a witness, another young witness. Now, this one's 12. And I think my 12-year-old kids would have been able to give some pretty good details. They would have been traumatized. But this is probably a more reliable witness than the kid who was under 10 in the last instance. This is a 12-year-old nephew of Irene. He says that he saw the intruder. It was a big, chunky, he says, big, chunky black man. He was barefooted.

and his pants were rolled up. He also said the man had a pocket knife, wore a brown hat and

and told him to shut up, essentially. What do you think about this? A pocket knife? He must have had something bigger than that. You know, in terms of evaluating the pocket knife, it would go towards this wound on her arm. You know, would this pocket knife have been able to create that wound? I'm skeptical that the people who are describing this wound really know what they're looking at. So maybe he is just armed with a pocket knife. Most certainly a pocket knife can be used to attempt to scalp somebody.

However, the consistency, pants rolled up, now that is consistent with the bare footprint that was found in Eliza's case.

So this appears to be, you know, really strongly tying Irene's case to the previous two. Yeah. And I will tell you, the black community is terrified at this point because we go into the summer, which is always hotter than hell in Texas. We go into the summer with three women dead and everyone is alarmed at this point. Nothing happens over the summer. The media jokes it's because it was too hot, which, I mean, who knows? Right.

August 30th rolls around, 1885. And now we have our next victim, two victims. This is a little complicated, so let me unravel this a little bit. It involves a 50-year-old woman, Black domestic worker named Rebecca Ramey. She was sleeping in the kitchen with her 11-year-old daughter because she was so scared of this, what they presumed to be a multiple murderer is what they would have called it in the 1800s,

She was so scared of this multiple murderer that she and her daughter wanted to be safe. And she and Mary were sleeping in the kitchen of this house where they were. So this is a little different. And it's different because this young girl, this 11-year-old girl, Mary, and her mom, Rebecca, are sleeping in the kitchen of their employer. They are not in a back cabin. They are in the family's kitchen to stay safe.

They are in the home of a family called the Weed family. They made a lot of money in downtown stables that leased everything from horses to carriages. So they had a lot of money. They are on what was then 300 East Cedar Street. Now it's 4th Street. So we've gone, boy, can I remember, 6th Street to 3rd Street to 17th Street back to 4th Street. And they are very, very close to Eliza's house. Very close, very close.

So the weed house is obviously not very secure. They are in the kitchen. The man comes in, hits Rebecca over the head with what my friend Skip Hollinsworth describes as a club about a foot long containing several ounces of lead packed in sand that are all wrapped in buckskin. That's called sandbagging.

And the person used this and knocked out Rebecca Cold. I'm assuming they found this. That's how they know that. Rebecca is completely knocked out.

So the sandbagging sounds heavy, but it sounds effective if you want to disable someone who's a potential victim. Yeah, you know, and it's somewhat of a, sounds like somewhat of a padded type of weapon, which is an interesting choice. It's not a hammer. It's not a bat, you know, something that an offender would use to bludgeon somebody to death.

So it sounds like this was purposefully chosen to incapacitate

So now I'm going to want to know from you when you hear this next, if this is a situation where he is specifically casing things out for specific victims because he does not take the 50-year-old Rebecca Ramey. He takes her daughter, Mary. So what happens is he takes Mary. He drags her to the weeds, the family's shed in the back, and he takes her to the hospital.

He, I mean, just brutalizes her. And I can tell you what the injuries are in a minute, but can you respond to that, that he didn't seem like he had designs on Rebecca, the older woman, that he was really focused on the young girl? No, exactly. If you could, could you tell me the ages of Molly, Eliza, and Irene? Yeah.

Yeah, well, you know how this goes. People who are disenfranchised in the 1800s, I'll give you the best estimate. So, Molly, between 23 and 25. Eliza, early 30s, 31, 30 is what they're saying.

Irene, Skip thinks she's 33. Some people say 23, but all, you know, 20s and 30s. And then Rebecca Ramey is 50, and her daughter is 11. Yeah, so in this offender's mind, I would say that Rebecca is not fitting within the characteristics, which is her age range. We don't know about physical appearance requirements that this offender has.

But what we do know is that Rebecca is significantly older than the three prior victims. Now, Mary is significantly younger, yet evaluating that can be problematic. You know, in this day and age, we know that we have younger girls that hit puberty earlier than in past generations. You know, so an offender from afar...

may choose a victim based on her physical appearance, but has no clue what her actual age is. She just meets a certain physical characteristic or requirement that the offender needs to satisfy a fantasy. This can often be confused, you know, with like with an 11-year-old, oh, this must be a pedophile.

Not necessarily. You know, it depends on did this offender purposefully choose Mary because she was so young, maybe looked prepubescent,

Or did he see her from afar or see her in the moment in the kitchen and see a 11-year-old girl that maybe looked more physically mature than other 11-year-old girls at that time and decided she met his needs? We don't know what's going on inside the offender's mind, but I am fairly confident that in all likelihood, Rebecca did not meet this offender's needs as a victim, likely because of her age. Right.

Well, the evidence is that Mary, the 11-year-old, had been sexually assaulted. The injuries are pretty awful. The sexual assault, you know, again, the reason they say they believe it happened is because she was virtually naked and her organs were exposed. When they find her the next morning, she is still alive. And her mom survives this, Rebecca Ramey. So this is the injury. I mean...

They described her as dazed, Mary. She had a hole... Now, this is where the vernacular comes into play, drilled. We talked about this hole drilled. She had a hole drilled through her left ear, butt,

The next note is they think it was made by an iron rod or a pin. So it's a puncture. Right. Penetrated her brain. Her skull was also fractured. They found her. She was alive, but not for very long. And she ended up dying. I think it's informative. You know, they use the term hole-drilled left ear, but then they think it's an iron rod.

So this tells me this was a tool or a weapon that produced a puncture wound that could penetrate the skull. And then that goes back to Eliza, you know, where we had the debate as to whether a drill was used or it was a puncture wound. In all likelihood, what happened to Eliza was also something akin to an iron rod or pin that punctured Eliza's skull.

versus something that was drilled. Why would you do that? Is this experimentation? She was alive when he did this. Mary has no incisive injuries, so it's not like he's using a knife on her. He is only using this puncturing weapon. I do know that these offenders do experiment, and they will experiment in many different ways, including the type of weapon they use from case to case to case, and that may be what's going on here.

Does he bring this weapon with him or does he just, you know, find something on the property that he uses? We don't know at this point. But he's not using a knife. And so that, to me, is the most significant thing. I was kind of postulating that this offender really wants to use a knife on his victims. Were Rebecca and Mary more opportunistic, you know, so he wasn't fully equipped with his kill techniques.

Okay.

Let me give you a little bit more information. Another bare footprint in the dirt. This one is an unusual shape, they say. Now, you tell me what you think about this. It appears that whomever made this footprint was missing a little toe. Can you really tell that from dirt? I would need to see the print. You know, like, let's say you have...

a foot impression, and it's a good foot impression without distortion. And so when I say an impression, let's say this was a shallow, muddy area, and you have a clean impression, which I would have confidence replicates the foot. That would give me greater confidence that if there was a missing toe present, that the offender

was lacking a toe, if it looked like that little toe should have also been part of the impression, the way that that went into the mud. If this is just a footprint in dirt, I think my confidence is less because you can step in certain ways and that's not going to fully replicate all the features of the foot.

Okay. Well, the police now understand why the Black community in Austin is alarmed, and I'm sure the white community does not want killers roaming around their house, which is what happened in this last instance.

So they go searching. They arrest several people, including one man that they really felt like was trying to evade them by, you know, putting on a chemical on his legs so the bloodhounds wouldn't find him. None of it sticks. They do not have enough evidence in order to keep somebody longer than just a few days. So as we end this episode, we are left with

Four very violent murders, potentially all sexual assaults. We don't know for sure. One mother who has lost her daughter and I'm assuming has probably permanent brain damage from being whacked on the head with that sandbagging thing. And

Zero suspects and a lot more ahead, Paul. So I'm just going to have to stop there. We have a lot to talk about next week. Oh, I'm fully engaged on this case. This is my wheelhouse. So I'm looking forward to getting more details. Great. See you soon. Sounds good.

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.