The Trolley Problem
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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.

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. ♪♪

Hi, Paul. Hey, Kate. How are you doing? Good. I have this sexy raspy thing going. Maybe I sound normal to you, but I don't feel normal. I just got over the flu, which was a terrible experience. I've managed to avoid COVID, which is incredible for me, but I have never had the flu. Really? It was no good. It just knocked me out.

And I've at least took Tamiflu and that really helped. But have you had the flu? Did you have it as a kid? Because I don't think I ever had it. I rarely get sick, but I would say that I've had the flu at least twice. And it was miserable. I remember that for sure. You know, I was bedridden for several days, nauseous.

you know, the headachy, body aches, feverish, you know, I really was sick for sure. I mean, the flu is no joke. No. But how are you feeling now? I feel so much better. And I'm excited to get into this story because this case is in your neck of the woods, but also in my neck of the woods. I lived in San Francisco.

Cisco for several years, and this takes place in Oakland and a little bit in Berkeley, California. It's a tragedy all around, but the person who did it is a bit of a mystery, so I'm going to be interested in seeing how you help me untangle this. Well, why don't you let me know a little bit more? Okay, let's set the scene.

It's 1927, and this is, as I said, Oakland, California. And I've said this many times, this time period is a great time period for me. This is officially the Roaring Twenties, flapper women, a lot of money floating around that really people were spending money that they didn't have, couldn't afford. All kinds of wacky inventions were popping up and being funded when they had absolutely no business being funded. And I think it's a great time for me to say,

And we have a teenager named Mabel Mayer, who was 15 years old. She was living in Oakland, California with her family. And when people were asked to describe her, she was called Sunshine Mabel because she was just a joy to be around. She was described as pretty and innocent and a very happy girl, someone who was really popular with her friends. She didn't, it sound like, have a

An enemy in the world, and she was very happy with her parents and her brother. Very tight-knit family in Oakland, California. And do you know whereabouts in Oakland she was living? Was she up in the hills or down east side, west side, et cetera? I mean, that just gives me a sense in terms of the area where she's growing up.

2008, 86th Avenue. Now, remember, this is 1927, so it would have been a different demographic. This looks like a nice neighborhood to me. This is probably middle of the road, I imagine, back in 1927, Oakland. Okay. Okay, and I'll show you some photos in a second. Got it. That might be able to give you a little bit of perspective on the type of houses we're talking about. The story is very long and twisty in a way, but we like those houses.

So this is July 2nd, warm day, 1927, and Mabel has a very busy social schedule. This is what we know. So it's a Saturday. She's off of school. It's at 10 a.m. She went to the dentist. At 11.30, she went to a music lesson. She ate lunch at a restaurant with a family member. And at 4.30, you have a couple of people who are friends of hers that say that she was shopping on a busy street in Oakland where she lived. What we don't

really know is what happened between 4.30 p.m. and 6 p.m., which might not be important at all because we have someone who knows where she was, a family member, from 6 p.m. until 9.30 at night. There's a random 90 minutes that is unaccounted for, but I don't think it's going to impact this case. But it's just something to keep in mind. Okay. So she's 15. She's

She decides she wants to go have dinner at her uncle's house, which is in Berkeley, which is about a five-mile away. And there are commuter trains running back and forth, so she can just hop on a train. She's an urban kid. She can hop on a train and go. So she goes to her uncle's house. She's very close to the family. She dines with him and his friends there. The uncle is not considered a suspect.

He is just the last person, aside from a couple of other people, but the last close person to spend any time with her. Around 8 o'clock, her brother William calls the uncle's house and

So this is 1927, and they have a phone, which would have been, I wouldn't say unusual, but the uncle definitely had more money than maybe some of the other people in Berkeley did. He calls the home and checks in, and they decide that once Mabel was done at the uncle's house, that he would meet her at the commuter train station near their house in Oakland. Okay.

So, around 10 o'clock, you know, maybe an hour before that, she was going to catch a commuter train, and then she was going to go the five miles or whatever it was from Berkeley over to Oakland. And he was very prudent. He wanted to meet her there. This would have been not light, but, you know, at 10 o'clock at night, it would have been a situation where her brother wanted to walk her home.

even though the commuter train was not very far. The brother had planned to walk her to the short-distance home. Mabel's father thought this was a great plan and told William, go ahead and go a little bit early to make sure that you get there and she's not standing there at this commuter station by herself, even though this wasn't considered an unsafe neighborhood.

So William waits, 10 o'clock at night. Every single person got off of the train that he was assuming she was on, but no Mabel. He went home and updated the father. Not panicked, because the uncle and the family don't live very far apart, and she would spend the night sometimes. They weren't panicked.

But he just wanted to say, this is why I'm not coming home with Mabel. Did the uncle take Mabel to the commuter train and see her get on the train? Yes. And what's interesting is they don't immediately call the uncle. I think they want to give her a little bit of space and they're not panicking immediately. But that was the plan was the uncle was going to take her to the train station. Okay.

So William goes home, tells the father. The father says she probably got on the 1020, go back to the train station 11, 15 or so to see if she's there. He goes to the train station. She doesn't show up. They figure that Mabel must have changed her mind and stayed the night at the uncle's house instead of deciding to come home.

And they don't call the uncle. I don't know if they don't want to bug people. They don't call the police. They just said, well, this must have happened previously where she just decided to spend the night. They just decide to let it lay and they'll talk in the morning. What do you think about that? It does come back down to what is her routine? You said she's very much an urban girl. She's doing a lot of independent things. Even that day, you know, she's out shopping by herself in a busy area in Oakland. Right.

Part of what I would want to know is how frequently is she riding these commuter trains? Is she very, very familiar or is this like the first time she did this? No, very familiar. Very familiar. So she's not necessarily getting off at the wrong stop. It sounds like the family, you know, I know in this day and age, you know, I've got four kids. I've got, you know, my youngest is a 15-year-old girl. And, you know, the thought of putting my 15-year-old girl on a commuter train by her

herself, instantly I start to panic about that thought, right? Just because I know, you know, what could potentially happen. But in 1927, I think they're a lot looser. They didn't get the concentrated exposure to, let's say, the predators that are out there. So this is probably par for course. And I can see where they go, okay, you know, she's independent and she's making her own decisions and we'll check in with her tomorrow. Yep. That's exactly right. That's exactly what they thought.

So Mabel doesn't come home the next morning. They call the uncle and the uncle says she didn't spend the night with me. I took her to the train station to catch the nine o'clock train that she initially was supposed to catch and we missed the train.

So she did not get the commuter train, which was not a big deal because she did something that she does quite often, apparently. She decided to hop on a streetcar and go home that way. So now we're talking about a different mode of transportation. They've been expecting to go to one station. Now they're scrambling to figure out what happened to her if she got on this streetcar.

In this streetcar, this must be like the San Francisco trolley system. Yeah. I think it would be the streetcars that you would ride that are now antiques that you could ride that one streetcar in San Francisco. Yeah. They would have been all over, you know, Northern California at this point. Well, at least these major cities. So instead of waiting for the next train because she missed that 905 train, she

She hopped on a different train. She's so familiar with the streetcar line and doing this on her own late at night that at 925, she transferred from one streetcar line to another that ran closer to her house. How do we know that? Is the uncle saying that? Nope. Several streetcar operators and also customers saw her get off and then she's gone. They don't know where she is. The uncle's cleared.

She's been on a streetcar, and the last time anyone has seen her is at 9.30 when she stepped off that streetcar just a few blocks from her house. Okay. She's making it close. She's making it close down to her house. Now she has to walk the four blocks, I imagine. Yes. And let's keep in mind that this was a last-minute decision. This is not most likely some boy stalking her from school or somebody who knew her schedule. This is unplanned. So she's

going in a different direction. Her schedule's not predictable tonight. Yeah, and that is a very important point in terms of somebody lying in wait for her at this location where she gets off four blocks away from her house. So that is off the table. Now, the way that you described her and her family life

She is not known to be a runaway. She doesn't have any instances in the past of running away. Nope. Nothing to indicate that. So...

At this point, then who else is in her social circles? Does she have a boyfriend? You know, maybe sneak out. You know, she has an opportunity to go see somebody that maybe her father doesn't want her to. Well, all those possibilities are up in the air because I will say what happens in the 1920s, girls are framed in these sort of adjectives that I've just mentioned to you. Pretty, innocent, happy girl, popular with her friends, content, sunshine Mabel. Mm-hmm.

So this is framed as a, you know, almost like a virgin, this incredible, perfect young girl, which, you know, under normal circumstances is a lot to put on someone. But my point is from the newspapers and from the research, we don't really know. Because I don't know if these are questions that investigators would have asked of the family of a girl who's gone missing. I know what we know, which is that, no, there are no problems in the family whatsoever.

Yeah, so, you know, from my perspective, what I am hearing is that she's likely not voluntarily not making it home. Right. Okay, so now somebody is crossing paths with her in those four blocks. Yeah. And prevents her from getting home. So this is where the part of the story that's hard for me to recount because now the family gets really terrible news. Four blocks from her house, 15-year-old Mabel's body is discovered. Yeah.

The next morning, they have alerted police. They've talked to, where is our daughter? We don't know where she is. The uncle says, last time I saw her, she was getting on a streetcar. And the next morning, she is found just four blocks from her family's house. So she was discovered by two carpenters who were building a garage onto an existing vacant house in her neighborhood.

When they walked around the backside of the property, they reportedly almost tripped over her body. She wasn't buried. She was dumped there. The police say the conditions for the crime were—this is a terrible word to use, but perfect—

There was no light. There was a vacant house there. There was a hidden backyard that you would see not right off of the street, so there was seclusion. There were no other people on the street, no one peering from windows. There was a neighbor, but kind of far away. So this was a place where somebody could take her. You know, so now, of course, okay, we have her body being found at this location. You know, my immediate question is, is this the...

scene of a homicide, or is this a disposal site? Well, let me read you some of the details. Just to start out with, this is not a sexual assault, and the wounds are interesting, and this is where profiling might come in for you, I'm assuming. Mabel's body is found twisted and crumpled, just dumped on a flower bed. She was found lying on her back with her legs spread apart, and her clothes were pulled up over her waist, exposing her legs.

But the police don't think this was posing. And later it's determined it wasn't a sexual assault. They think she was dragged to this spot. So they think that the murder happened in one place, and I'll tell you why they think that. And then she was dragged and sort of dumped into this flower bed. She was wearing a blue coat, a red dress, and a straw hat.

There were drag marks on her. I think that's why they assumed it was dragged, but they really felt strongly that this was not a posed thing. I don't know if a killer posing a victim was something very commonplace. I had not read about it very much in the 1800s and the early 1900s. So what is her cause of death?

So she had a broken arm that was still raised in rigor as though it was warding off merciless blows, is what the newspaper dramatically wrote. Her face was described as so lacerated and battered that it was unrecognizable. And they identified her by looking through the contents of her little green purse, which was lying nearby. It was a very bloody scene. There were bloody prints on the green purse,

footprints on the ground. There was blood splashed onto a nearby fence. Lots of trauma. This is what I thought was really strange. So there was no sign of sexual assault or rape before or after Mabel was killed. No damage to the genitalia, anything like that.

In fact, there were no marks below her throat. So what they were saying is that the drag marks from dragging her and putting her in the flower bed, but whoever did this didn't damage her below her throat. The blows were aimed, according to the coroner, at her mouth.

She didn't have any skull fractures, which he thought was amazing, but that her death was caused by concussion, shock, and hemorrhaging. He said all the blows seemed to be centered on her mouth. I wonder if that was to stop her from screaming, and that's why there weren't injuries other places.

Well, is there a weapon being used or are these blows or, you know, is she being beat with fists? Is she being stomped on? There was a board that they believed was used, a two by four, that was found at the scene, not brought there. It was part of the construction stuff that was there. Because remember, there's a renovation happening in addition being built. This is what the investigators say they think happened. First, the board was probably swung up.

So remember, they call people fiends instead of, you know, offenders. While the fiend... I think you should start using that language, fiend. First, the board was probably swung while the fiend was in a standing position from right to left, causing a few lacerations and several contusions on the left side of the victim's face. And...

And later, either end of the 2x4 was used by grasping this 2x4 in the middle with both hands and striking the face within a radius of four inches, taking the nose or mouth as the center and disfiguring and lacerating the mouth and the nose, lower part of the frontal bone and chin, breaking the bridge of the nose, fracturing both upper and lower jaws in a number of places,

lacerating the features and knocking out nearly every tooth in her mouth. Violent. Okay. So, in essence, she's being bludgeoned with this 2x4. Yeah. And this is very typical. These are the typical injuries that you see with bludgeonings with a weapon such as this. This is normal. I hate to use that word in this setting, but from my perspective...

You have an offender that is inflicting violence focused on her face. They used a weird phrase, but her arm was raised in rigor as if still trying to fend off the blows. Now, does she actually have defensive injuries? Are her forearms bruised? Nope.

They said no injuries below her throat, essentially. Okay. And do you have any information as to what the pathologist found when he dissected her neck? Oh, no. What would you expect for that to be? So what I'm trying to discern is, you know, of course, how thorough the pathologist was in terms of conducting the examination. Is this a situation to where she strangled?

At a different location, she's now, her body's placed here and the offender is now bludgeoning her. In essence, part of this is to ensure she's dead. Another part of this is these offenders are still getting out that anger, retaliation type of violence on this helpless victim. When you talked about

this scene and you said this was a disposal scene or they had said she was killed somewhere else, but then you said there had been blood splashed on a wall? Well, what they believed was that she was killed in this back area and then dragged and dumped. It could have been one foot away. This might clarify things for you. Let me show you this scene with these bloody fingerprints. So this will give you a good idea of what we're looking at. Let me start at the top and we'll take a little tour of this.

So this is the house, the abandoned house in the back. You can kind of see the investigator standing here, and I have plenty of angles of this.

But you see the street, we are on the street, you can see the driveway. And it's one of those driveways that has, you know, only the concrete where the tires would go only. How do you describe that? That's perfect. You know, it's basically two parallel pours. You know, it looks like two sidewalks side by side, but it's for a car to be able to drive back there. And I think, you know, they did that style. In essence, it's less concrete. It's cheaper than if you're doing a full driveway.

poor, but I see this done frequently out there in the Bay Area and the older neighborhoods. Well, this is the house that's, you know, an abandoned house. And then these are, you know, a police officer and an investigator. Where Mabel's body's found, I have more photos though, if this doesn't give you a good reference, but what do you see so far? There's a lot of brush. Well, the offender, here you have the victim. She has, you know, a relatively short walk home.

The offender's in the area. This is a victim of opportunity. Okay. And whether he's in a vehicle, he happens to be walking and crosses paths with the victim, or he's a resident. You know, I think that's going to be something I'll touch upon in a little bit. But the offender has pulled her off of the road and...

and has committed this crime in an area where it is hidden from witnesses. So part of what I'm trying to assess when I look at these locations is, okay, does this suggest that the offender had prior knowledge of this location? Yeah. As you mentioned, it was like the perfect location. It's a vacant house where her body was located. It's tucked.

back, you know, and it's not until construction workers come the next day and find her body. So he would have been able to spend some time with Mabel. Tell me more. Okay, let's look at the scene down here. So this is the back door shot. You can see lots of weeds. I now understand why

why the construction workers didn't see her because she's hidden within these weeds in this garden. And now you can see all the gawkers. This is a photo of just the huge amount of people that have come, including a kid, to come and look at the crime scene. This is very typical. Every time someone says to me, this resurgence of crime, of true crime, everybody all of a sudden loves true crime now. Everybody's been interested in death and murder and crime for centuries and centuries.

So you see there are a lot of gawkers here, but I just wanted to give you a different perspective and then I'll show you the bloody handprints in a minute. Okay. You know, in essence, now you've got a small house. You've got a backyard that is really just full of weeds that are about...

knee height for the adult men that are standing in the middle of those weeds. The killer knew about this location or stumbled across it as he's having to get Mabel back there. You know, that's part of the dynamics of this is Mabel

How is he getting Mabel into this back location? Is she walking with him? Is he dragging her and she's fighting him? Is she unconscious and he's pulling her back there? This is where I need to assess her injuries and the crime scene and the blood that's present at this crime scene in order to start teasing apart Mabel.

you know, these final moments between the offender and the victim. And that will help give me insight as to what the offender's actual motive is. Because I will tell you, I do not trust law enforcement assessment that this was not a sexually motivated crime. Right. You know, so let's hear more. Okay. And one of the other things that I had just thought about when you were talking about this is the injuries, where they're not reporting bruises, nothing, defensive wounds, anything except what's happening on her face.

I wonder if that means that this is someone she knows from the neighborhood and he drew her back somewhere because wouldn't, if you snatch someone and force them back, he doesn't have a weapon, right? He doesn't use a gun. He's using something that he found on the ground somewhere.

And maybe she knows him, and that's from the neighborhood, and that's how he knows this. He draws her back somehow for just a second, and then he immobilizes her with the two-by-four. It's entirely possible. This type of crime, this is very much akin to what I would call this trapdoor offender.

Here you have a victim of opportunity. You know, this is not like a routine walking path of hers at this time of night, every night where somebody who's watching out their window knows about. Right. She's not coming home from school or anything. Right. So this now is an opportunity in which the offender is taking advantage of.

Now, is he emerging out of a residence when he sees her walking alone? Or is he walking in the neighborhood? I can't discern that right now. But I want to know more about how he is committing this abduction and this homicide. So show me the photos of the blood patterns or you said bloody fingerprints. Yeah. So this is a shot on the side of the house. Now, this is the part that's really hard for me.

They know relatively where she was because there was blood everywhere she went. There were handprints on the back of the door of this abandoned or this vacant house. So they know that she escaped at some point, they think, and tried to get inside the house, but it was a vacant house. And so this is a handprint on the house. This is blood on a nearby fence.

Okay. And this handprint is on... It looks like the siding, yeah. Right. And there's one on the fence, too. Yeah, I mean, there's stuff everywhere. And her hands are bloody. Yes. The original investigators are saying this is likely her hands versus the killer's hands. I'm assuming grabbing her head because he's beating her. For her to not have defensive wounds with a two-by-four, he must have stunned her, and then she came to and tried to run, and then he hit her again, and that had to have been the end of it. But she didn't have a crushed skull.

which I thought was interesting. Well, I mean, he most certainly could have stunned her with a blow. Or with the state of pathology back in 1927,

I would be suspicious that the pathologist may have overlooked that. I mean, she could have been asphyxiated. She could have been strangled and rendered unconscious, maybe not killed that way. So there's other modalities that the offender could have used on her in order to overpower her, get her under control.

The lack of defensive injuries is very telling, especially in a bludgeoning, if she's aware she's being bludgeoned. So that would suggest that if it's solely a bludgeoning, that in all likelihood, the first blow she didn't see coming and she's rendered unconscious or unconscious.

not aware because of being stunned by that blow. And then the subsequent blows ultimately caused the internal hemorrhaging, which led to her death. Now, the blood pattern on the fence, and if you could just scroll down so I can describe this to the listeners, you have a fence, and I would say roughly about 12 inches above the ground is

Splash. And surprisingly uniform in terms of, it's not a spatter pattern. Like when I stomp into a pool of water and how that water spatters, and then you have droplets that fly out, that's what happens when blows happen.

occur in blood pools and you get blood spattering. What I am seeing is more in line with a contact transfer, an item, an object,

that has a heavy coating of blood on it that has been pressed up against this fence. Unfortunately, the wood pattern doesn't allow for a replication of what that item is. This could be from her head. Yeah, that's what I thought. And that she's been pressed up against this fence, and you can see it's a heavy enough blood transfer where now you have these rivulets of blood that are flowing down after the object has pressed up against the fence.

Now, there does appear to possibly be some droplets on the right-hand side of this very large blood pattern that possibly could be spatter. But because it's black and white and not very close, it's hard for me to be able to determine that.

but there most certainly could have been a struggle. And with that struggle, I would expect that Mabel would have had some type of injury to her hands, to her arms, to her torso. 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.

Well, we know for sure there was a lot of blood loss and she had to have been stunned by some of these blows, which just looks like an absolutely terrible way for anybody to die. So they find the murder weapon. It's there. It was a piece of lumber that the carpenters said, yeah, we used. The killer tossed it, had her blood all over it.

They tried to pull fingerprints and they couldn't. Is that the case today? Well, you're dealing with a piece of 2x4. It's wood. Right. So wood is typically fairly textured, especially construction grade 2x4. And the more textured a surface is, the poorer it becomes to record fingerprints or latent prints. Now, wood is poor.

So in terms of processing it, the types of processing for fingerprints, the examiner, the latent print examiner would need to take into account that aspect of this surface is that there is, it's porous.

So the residues that are left when you touch a surface that would leave your fingerprints behind get absorbed into this porous material. And typically, something like a porous wood or paper

It's not processed with black powder, expecting that that residue, that fingerprint residue is just on the surface. You need a wet chemistry that will be absorbed itself into that porous material and actually turn a color. And so commonly used today, like for paper, is an anhydrine. You know, that's a chemical that reacts with the proteins within this fingerprint residue and actually turns a kind of a purplish color.

And so I'd be wondering, okay, did they process it with that type of chemistry or did they just powder this wood and go, nope, we don't get anything, and that's it? Well, they worked very hard to pull prints. They weren't able to get anything off of that piece of wood, but they were able to pull a print from her purse, which was not her print. It was, we presume, of the killer. It might not also have been the killer. So they had this one print that they were able to pull, and when they start gathering suspects,

they use this print as a way to include or exclude people. So that still would be valid today if it's a good print. No, absolutely. And you said it was off her purse. And so was there anything taken out of her purse? Did she carry a lot of money or anything like that? Nothing. And her ID was in there. So they knew who it was. Remember I said the injuries were so extensive on her face that it was hard to identify her, but they were able to identify her based on what was inside her purse.

So he didn't take anything. Okay. So now they're rounding up suspects. They're comparing suspects to this bloody print to see who matches. Yep. And there are neighbors to this vacant house. Not very many. Someone said they thought they heard a girl scream around 10 p.m. Now, time of death, Mabel was wearing a watch.

And just like out of a Lifetime movie, the watch stopped at 9.55 p.m., which is what we presume would be her time of death. It had been broken in the struggle. And based on the train, the commuter train that she got off of. Right, about 9.30. At 9.30, so 25 minutes. Yep. Now...

It doesn't take 25 minutes to walk four blocks. Right. So he snatched her pretty quickly. And spending some time with her. You know, like I said, no signs of sexual assault. Vaginal swabs was pretty commonplace actually in America in the 1920s. So they would have been able to recognize whether she had been sexually assaulted. If there was sperm. Right. I think the theory would have, well, there was no trauma at all. Well, this is somewhat of a myth.

is that if there is sexual assault and you have penetration, that the vagina is always going to show trauma. And that is not the case. When trauma is present, then that is an indication that there has been a penetration of some sort.

However, if there's no trauma, you can't say or conclude that no sexual assault occurred. Think about 1927. They're doing microscopic exam from these vaginal swabs. All they could do is look for sperm. If you have a vasectomized individual, if you have an individual that has a pathology in which you cannot produce sperm, which you run into in these cases, they had no ability to determine whether or not semen was present there.

So part of assessing what is the motive of this offender, of course, it's the state of her clothing, but also offenders will sexually assault and allow a victim to redress herself and then kill. That happens. So now I've got a 25-minute window. Could she have been confronted by an offender early on after getting off the commuter train

could she have been sexually assaulted where there's actually true penetration of her body? She redresses, the offender ends up deciding, nope, you're going to die. I can't allow a living witness to this and takes her behind the house and kills her. That's one possibility under the circumstances.

Well, what they do is they interview, of course, everyone around, including the neighbors who live right next door, who came home right before 10 and said they didn't hear a thing. So we're assuming that this was all concluded before 10 o'clock.

They start looking at suspects, and there had been at least one similar attack that was not a sexual assault. It was an attack on a woman. Again, no signs of a sexual assault to them. It doesn't mean anything. Got it. But there had been several of these not far from where she lived. But they didn't have a suspect, and this was, you know, an unknown offender. But they did not feel strongly that this was someone who would have actually...

There wasn't enough connection. I mean, it felt similar, but it would have been out of this person's geographic area to have done this. I mean, they just did not think this was going to be connected. They had set their sights on a couple of other suspects in the meantime. So they're developing a name based on a solved case in the area that they say is similar? No, there are a couple of somewhat similar

similar attempts at kidnapping women, and they didn't work out. That didn't have the same method that this person used, whoever this person was. It was simply, there have been a couple of people who have been attacked, but it wasn't similar enough for them to believe that this was the work of a serial attacker or serial rapist or killer or anything. This was just some of the stuff that they were spitballing to figure out where this person was.

Sure. But they do have what they consider to be a couple of interesting suspects. One is a guy named Charles Schlenker, and I'm just going to call him Charles because I don't want to say his name over and over again, Schlenker. According to an investigator who worked on the case...

This is from a true crime detective magazine, which you and I have talked about as an interesting source. But an investigator gave an interview, and this was the details that he gave. Police got a call on the Wednesday following the murder that Mabel's killer was hiding out under a warehouse near the waterfront, which

which was about 10 miles from the crime scene. Police go, right? This was a big story. They're under a lot of public pressure. Police go to this warehouse and they find a man who was suffering from what they perceived to be a mental illness. It was this man, Charles. He was 40 years old from Sacramento. He had a job. He was a boilermaker. What was alarming to them was that he had a horrible head wound and a bloodstained shirt.

And he had reportedly thrown his hat and coat away because he didn't want people to see how bloody they really were. So you've got this anonymous call, and they say, go down and talk to this guy. I think he was the killer. And they bring Charles in for questioning because he looked like he's just been in a prize fight.

So they take him down to Oakland, and they said that he essentially said that he was beginning to have a lot of paranoid delusions, that he was being followed or harassed in some way. And he was not able to give any kind of specifics about the night of Mabel's murder. So he just sat on a bench all night and then checked into a hotel. So what do you think about this? Is this

kind of two combinations of things. There's the call saying go down there, and then this man who looks like he's got some pretty extensive injuries. Yeah, well, I would not expect the interaction between the offender and Mabel that the offender would be suffering these types of injuries. Right. This more sounds akin to, I mean, we run into these red herrings all the time. This man sounds like he got into a fight with somebody else and got his butt kicked.

And that somebody else decides to call in the cops and say, here, here's your guy, just out of spite. Of course, the million-dollar question I have is, well, did Charles' fingerprint match the buddy print from Mabel's purse? Nope.

But there were other things that I thought were, poor Charles. So Charles says he's at the Avalon Hotel the night that Mabel is killed. They confirm that he was there. Charles was pretty hard to miss. He was very bloody, he said, from a failed suicide attempt. And he chose to hide out under the warehouse because that's where he thought he was going to essentially go and die. He said that this head wound was caused by him hitting himself with a large sledgehammer

sort of like a two-by-four, and that he had cuts from a razor on his wrists. And when they went back to where he had been at the warehouse, they found all of that stuff. They found bloodstains. They found the razor blade. Every part of Charles's upsetting story was corroborated by the evidence that...

they found at the scene. So this was someone that they concentrated on for quite a long time just based on a phone call and these injuries. But as soon as I read that, I thought you were going to say that you weren't going to fall for my red herring that I'm not seeing Mabel putting up a fight in any way. I don't think she had the ability to. No, yeah, I do not see this. There'd be evidence at the crime scene.

of that second bleeder if he's bleeding that extensively. So Charles's injuries are self-inflicted and probably due to his visible appearance, his disarray, you know, his behaviors, somebody sees him and they've read about Mabel's case and they're going, oh, he must be the killer. And that's why they call him in.

Now, look, I'm just going to show you this because this is what can happen in the media. This is him, Charles. He looks very messed up. He looks like he's taken a razor to his forehead. The headline says, is he the man, Charles Schlinker, queer acting suspect held for investigation by police?

This is not helpful to Charles at all, I'm sure. Well, you know, what you're saying, took a razor to his forehead. No, those are lacerations. That's from him inflicting those blows with the wooden object, whatever that was, to his head. And he's been cleaned up, you know, so those injuries probably bled extensively at this point. And you can see that is his right eye wound.

You know, it's swollen. It's probably, you know, black and blue. And I wouldn't be surprised if he's got an orbital fracture in there. Oh, gosh. You know, this is par for course. The way that he's being put out there to the public is inappropriate, especially, you know, in this day and age.

It's very prejudicial. I had a case. I was at a shooting in a bar. After a shooting, you know, I'm going to the bar to process this crime scene. And then the deputy that was security, all of a sudden I hear a loud voice outside and I go outside. And this deputy stopped a man who's bleeding extensively. His eyeball is hanging down by his cheek. You know, and now it's, you know, the fight is on. And this...

This guy, he had just been in another physical altercation, was not related to the shooting at all, but now is walking right past a homicide scene, bleeding and everything else. This is just the real world stuff. And depending on the neighborhood in which the case is occurring, happens more frequently in some neighborhoods than others. Well, Charles is eventually cleared, thank goodness, because he's got bigger problems than even being a suspect in a murder case.

They turned their attention, the police, to a man named David Barnett, who actually seems on the surface as a much better suspect to me. He was a wealthy East Bay manufacturer. East Bay would be Oakland, Berkeley, California area. And he is eventually linked to Mabel's case, but it's a little hazy how. This kidnapping case of hers happened in 1927, 1927.

Two years later, Barnett was convicted of kidnapping charges involving a girl who lived near Mabel and went to the Frick School. And the Frick School was the high school where Mabel had also gone. Okay, so he was convicted of kidnapping charges. I don't know what was involved with those kidnapping charges. I'm assuming it would have been sexual assault of a

I don't know, but this is someone who had come in front of the police, and the connection mostly comes from, it sounds like, one particular Oakland police officer who said that he was known to stalk schoolgirls at this school, and the officer said he saw Barnett with Mabel at one point.

Of course, Barnett has denied kidnapping this other girl and has no clue about Mabel at all. And it turns out there's no real connection between Barnett and Mabel because she went to school at a different time period. Still to be under suspicion for kidnapping and convicted. Well, Barnett, if he is truly...

truly involved with this other kidnapping that he's convicted of. He's showing that he has a propensity to commit this type of crime. And so, of course, you have to pay attention to that. But we have to get to the nexus of Mabel's case. Is Barnett in the neighborhood when she gets off that train? And is Barnett's fingerprint in Mabel's blood on her purse? Nope.

Nope, big no on that one. Okay. That's part of one of the things that I think is stunning to many people is how many of these guys are out there in any jurisdiction. I know. And that's what law enforcement, we have to sort through.

I've got an unsolved series of sex workers that were brutally killed. And the number of strange men that are in this area is just incredible. And you think, oh, this has got to be the guy. I had a huge man, a guy that was over 300 pounds, 6'5", over 300 pounds.

And he kept getting stopped by patrol, watching the sex workers while he's sitting in his car, absolutely nude. Oh, my God. And you go, he's got to be the killer, right? No, he's not. You know, he's just one of these weird guys. And there are many of them. So now, going back to 1927, there are still a lot of weird guys in this area. And Barnett is one of them. That's why I don't really believe the serial predator story. One or two women who are attacked and...

And there just doesn't seem to be any correlation except a man being violent and attempting to assault a woman he doesn't know, which crime statistics would say even in the 1900s would not be that unusual. So Barnett seems like an interesting suspect, but the fingerprint clears him. And normally I would say, I don't know, relying everything on a fingerprint is...

But in blood, this seems like a pretty good print. It seems like a good source for a print. But, you know, of course, I haven't seen a photo of the quality of this print. But let's say it's what I would consider identification quality. Like, this is obvious. You've got the core, the delta, whatever. You've got enough detail. The fact that it is in blood on Mabel's purse, that's significant. And yes, it's

That is an item of evidence that can be used to either, I mean, if you find somebody who matches, right now that's PC for arrest.

You know, you have to build a case, but it's like, oh, you know what? You touched her purse after she was bleeding. You are very much in play as being the killer. If a person is eliminated, then again, based on the quality of the print, I would have confidence. Well, that person is not the one who left the print. Could that person be a co-conspirator in the case? You know, an accessory in the case? Possibly. But isn't the person that left that print...

And there's nothing about this crime right now that suggests multiple offenders. So from my perspective, I am looking for the person whose print is in Mabel's blood on her purse. I'll tell you, this case reminds me somewhat of the Michael Morton case. You know, Michael Morton spent 20 years in prison for murdering his wife while his young son was nearby. His son even said, who was very, I think he was three or four at the time, he said that the guy...

had red hands, and, you know, he had something on his head. He didn't look like Daddy. He would have been able to identify as Father, and yet Michael Morton was convicted primarily on the jury thinking he wasn't sympathetic enough on the stand when they finally tracked down this bandana that had been in evidence for years that was found in the backyard of

It had Christine's blood, the victim's blood on it. So whoever the perpetrator, whoever owned that bandana was the killer. And then when they ran DNA, they found out who it was, who was a convicted killer, who had killed someone in the meantime. I mean, it's incredible. So that kind of evidence

includes, doesn't exclude all the time, right? Yeah, you know, that for me, that just speaks to that there was a level of negligence and incompetence in that case. Because if you have such an obvious item of evidence...

that is something that should be processed up front. When did that case occur? Is it during the DNA era? It was 86, Williamson County. Oh, okay. So it's prior to DNA, but most certainly conventional serology might have been able to answer some of the questions related to his connection to that red bandana. The fact that it has

the wife's blood on it, it becomes a critical item of evidence. Going back to Mabel's case, this is where I'm assuming you're going to tell me they find a suspect who matches that bloody print. Well, they find a suspect 40 years later. Okay. Someone who confesses in the 1960s, 40 years later, a man named Nick Sackos.

He confessed to killing Mabel, and he also confessed to killing a high-profile unsolved murder involving a different schoolgirl named Stephanie O'Brien around the same time period. Then he recants, and he says, you know, I admitted to these murders when I was drunk, and

And they actually never brought charges against him because they cleared him. This was just somebody who was spouting off, 40 years later, spouting off about these crimes that happened in the 1920s. But he was cleared. They never charged him. There wasn't any evidence. They think he just made it up. I still do not understand how people can do that. You can just make things up. I understand being pressured. To be pressured into a confession is one thing and not right. But to just...

say I attach myself to a case that I really had nothing to do with is really, it befuddles me. I don't understand. But it's common. Well. And the psychology of those individuals, they're individuals that are seeking attention. People say, why do you want that kind of attention?

but they do. But I want to know, well, how did they clear this guy? You know, first, I mean, 40 years later, and he's aware of Mabel's case as well as this other case. Why is he aware of those cases? They were big cases, and he was from the area, and he might have just been fixated on them. Maybe they had a 40-year anniversary. Newspapers frequently do that. You know, something must have sparked...

something with him. I don't even believe he was in town during either of these at the time. I mean, they really just said there's nothing. And he didn't know anything significant about either case, except what was in the newspaper. Okay, so he's not divulging intimate details that only the killer would know.

And then secondarily, I hope that they actually did a direct comparison of his fingerprints to that bloody print. Yep, no match. Okay, so no match. Nope. Is Mabel's case unsolved then? Yep, unsolved. Can you imagine what that must be like for her family? I mean, just terrible. And this is an Oakland PD case. Yeah, Oakland. Oakland is an agency that...

potentially could still have evidence from Mabel's case. And if they do, I think it could be revisited, you know, with modern technology. How would that work, though? Because wouldn't all the fingerprints that they had collected been on index cards? How can you do that if there's no DNA? Would you be testing for blood? Well, you know, first, you know, you have this fingerprint in blood. You

in the victim's blood. So provided that it's of sufficient quality, that fingerprint, even back in the day, the way to record that type of evidence is through photography. And so the photograph of that bloody print would be in their latent print file or in their property room as evidence. That most certainly, if it's of sufficient quality, can be searched online.

in the FBI's AFIS system or IAFIS system today. And it's possible if the killer has been printed and put in the system, you could affect an identification just like that. I mean, you don't have to resort to DNA. But also we know this is a crime. She's being bludgeoned. The killer is up close with her. And I suspect that this is a sexually motivated crime. So if they have her clothing items,

If they have the body swabs, test it and see if you get foreign DNA. The killer is going to be male. Yeah. So if you find male DNA somewhere off of the evidence that Mabel has, her purse, go after it and see if you can identify the killer.

This case in 1927, the killer probably died well before his DNA would have ever made it into the FBI's CODA system. This would be a genealogy case. So if you get a male DNA profile and see if you can identify somebody who stands out as, yep, he was in that neighborhood, he lived nearby, or he's a known killer. So there are ways that this case from 1927 could be solved today.

Well, I just know that this devastated Mabel's family. Oh, sure. And there was a massive funeral service for her. She was at an LDS church, and it was devastation for her family, especially to not have any answers. And we can only hope that someday there will be answers. And I know that this is ripe for a forensic genealogy case, and I would love if we got answers someday. Yeah.

these are the kind of cases that are really difficult for me involving young girls, teenage girls with all of this promise. And I hope it gets solved, but I am looking forward to bringing you more cases. I think it's important to shine a light on the victims. And I think we've done a pretty good job with Mabel Mayers in this case. Yeah, well, these are the cases I focused on during my career. I focused in on cases where I had truly innocent victims whose lives were stolen.

Mabel's case is just like this. And Mabel's case is within my wheelhouse, you know? And so if this case had occurred in 1970 versus 1927, I would have been on it in a minute if it was in my jurisdiction. In fact, I would have known about it out of Oakland because offenders that are committing crimes in Oakland, they're just going right up the road and getting into Contra Costa County, you know? So I was always aware of what was happening in the Bay Area from the 1970s up until the current day.

1927, obviously it's a different story. Yeah. But it is important to talk about these cases because what happened to Mabel and the circumstances, that's what's happening to victims today. You know, there's no difference. People back in 1927 were committing the same types of crimes. And so telling this story is also alerting people who are listening that, yes, you have to be diligent about

you know, either yourself or about your children because there are guys out there that do these types of crimes. Yep. Well, I look forward to talking to you next week about another case. You just keep them coming. ♪

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

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