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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. ♪♪

Hello, hello. Hey, Kate. How's it going? It's going really well. How's it going with you? Yeah, I'm doing good. It's been a good time out here in Colorado. So one of the things that I wanted to talk to you about because our senior producer, Alexis Amorosi, is into trail running or is interested in at least hearing more about trail running. For my part, I am petrified of trail running for two things. One, hurting myself because I'm clumsy.

And two, I mean, I think I've done too many stories about people going missing in rural areas or forested areas by themselves. So there's two things, both self-preservation. But I think you're going to demystify some of that. Well, yes and no. Okay. Okay.

No, you know, I got into trail running out in California and I was fortunate that where I worked in Martinez, California, there was some, you know, decent hills out there that surround the bay. And I would go out and hit the trails regularly.

And one of the things that I really started to enjoy, of course, I love being out in nature. I love being out in the trees. I love getting up on top of the hill, you know, the ridge and being able to have the sights. But I also found that once I acclimated to running on uneven surfaces,

It was so much easier on my body. And I had actually read an article and it was like maybe Runner's Magazine or something similar, where if you think about it, if you're running on pavement, your feet are hitting that pavement the same way every time. And those forces from each stride is the same throughout your body. So you're much more susceptible to getting sort of that chronic wear and tear versus with the trails, every footstep, your

Your foot is hitting a little bit differently. The forces are being distributed differently. When I first started trail running, my ankles hurt. Really? Oh, because you're bracing yourself so much, right? You're having to build up strength, you know, but once I acclimated, my lower body acclimated to the trails, then I found that my body didn't feel like it was getting beat up so much anymore.

If I'm on asphalt, you're just kind of in that steady state run. With the trails, I'm going up a hill, I'm going down a hill, I'm having to jump over a small little ravine, I'm having turkeys chase me. Turkeys? Yes, yes.

I came around a quarter one time and there were these tiny little turkey chiclets. But they were just little tiny ones. And so I'm now being very careful. But then mom was there and mom's doing the broken wing thing, trying to get me, the big bad...

predator away from her little babies. And I was like, it's okay, it's okay, as I'm running by. And then I finally get by. And I've got my headphones in, I'm listening to my hard rock music, and I'm just going about my trail. And all of a sudden, I hear this weird noise behind me. And I turn around, and this mother turkey has her head down, her wings spread, and she's charging at me. So

It's like, okay, here's my ambush predator up out in California. But you're concerned about going out on the trails. Yeah. There have been cases where runners out on the trails, they'll get jumped by a mountain lion. Oh.

That's a big deal, right? That's not the predator I was thinking of, but okay, by a mountain lion. Well, don't people, would you bring pepper spray or mace or something with you? Well, I don't bring anything. And I'm, of course, concerned about a mountain lion, you know, because it is an ambush predator. Yeah. I would never see it if it were to jump on me. I wouldn't hear it because I've got my five-finger death punch blasting in my headphones. Death punch.

But I'm kind of willing to take that risk because I like being out there so much. There's also out here in Colorado the black bear, but they generally avoid you. They're not as big of a concern and they're not an ambush predator like the lion is. But one of the problems that I've run into is now it's been, geez, almost 10 years ago I tore my right calf. Oh, yeah. And I was just playing flag football with some staff on a weekend and

the medial part, the inside head of my calf muscle is like all rolled up in my leg. I didn't know I had torn it. So I never had surgery, but I've got a ton of scar tissue in that calf. And so running on the trails, I am constantly pulling my calf.

So now that's where the mountain biking has really replaced trail running for me. It gets me out on the trails. It gets me out there in nature. And there's a very fun aspect to mountain biking, but I don't risk the calf injuries that I was having with the trail running. Well, that's impressive. You are a more aggressive athlete than I am. I am scared to death of that stuff. I love hiking. The kids...

really enjoy hiking. And when we were in Scotland, we hiked Arthur's Seat, which was incredible with amazing views. But being out in the wilderness, I just, for so many different reasons, I kind of braced myself a little bit. But again, we always come back to ways that you and I both cope with stress and with anxiety because we both have anxiety. And I think that's another great example. You've got your kava, you've got your mountain biking, and

Sometimes you'll do a little tiny bit of running. And so I think you're in the right state, clearly. So that's great. I absolutely am. I love being out here. It's just, you know, unfortunately, you know, I've also got Raynaud's syndrome where my hands and feet kind of shut down in the cold. They become very painful.

And so I can't really do the outdoor physical activities. Even with gloves on, they still shut down. It's like my body just knows it's super cold out. Wow. So what does that mean? You can't walk well? Or what does that present as?

The body is, in essence, sensing that it's very cold and it wants to keep the core, the blood supply to the core. So it starts shutting down your peripheral arteries. And so I initially feel it in my fingers, down to my toes, and it can progress to my entire feet or my hands.

I start losing sensation. They become very painful. Wow. It's shocking at how much it hurts. And it's so frustrating. It's something that I've inherited from my mom. Three of my kids also inherited it from me. And it's common. Yeah. A lot of people have it. I just didn't realize I had it until I moved out here to Colorado because it's

really gets cold here versus where I lived in California. Wow. You know, we've been talking a lot about rural areas and running and, you know, being super active. And the case that I'm going to talk to you about today is the opposite. It's in a big city, I think the biggest city we've been in so far, Chicago. So let's go ahead and set the scene for this story.

It's 1910 Chicago Southside. And Chicago is a really, really big city. Of course it is now, but it's the fifth largest city in the world at this time period. And it's a really happening city. So I'll set the scene because we're going to have to talk a little bit about race relations and

in the city. This is a neighborhood on the south side of Chicago is on edge because there have been a recent rash of home invasions. There is high crime in this time period in 1910, and there is a high immigration area, right, of south side, which are a lot of Irish, European descendants. And then you have a section of that area of the city that is also predominantly black.

And the black section is really vibrant, but the city is not investing in black businesses. They're investing in themselves. So you have this city within a city. Sure. And my understanding, you know, Chicago back around this time was not only the largest city, but also was the city from an architectural standpoint, had all the high rise skyscrapers back in the day, even more so than what New York had.

I don't know if it was at the 1910 time, but that really just shows how big of a city Chicago was back then. It was. It was really congested. I'm always interested in transportation at the turn of the century. So it was congested with people, with a lot of train travel, smoke, a lot of pollution. Just your typical big city, a lot of people coming in from the countryside. So what you would say is a melting pot, but a melting pot that's sort of divided at the same time. Okay.

So in this neighborhood in the South Side called Washington Heights, at the turn of the century, Washington Heights had a reputation of being a place where all of the railroad workers lived. And of course, you know, railroads were incredibly important modes of transportation, along with steamers that would be on the various lakes and

So these are major modes of transportation, and the people who worked there were respected and really important, and they congregated together, and they were hard workers. So the family that we're centering on is the Hiller family, and the patriarch of the family is a guy named Clarence Hiller, hardworking guy. He was a railroad clerk.

So he is in this Washington Heights neighborhood we're talking about where there are a lot of European folks there. So German, Swedish, Irish residents. Again, it's a neighborhood that's on edge because there's been several home invasions. And they go to sleep one night. It's September 19th, 1910, relatively cool evening. His family goes to sleep. Clarence is a father of four. He has a wife. One of his children is a 15-year-old teenager.

So Clarence is asleep, and the house is very, very dark. They have electricity, which some people didn't in 1910. So they had electricity, but they often slept with a gas-powered nightlight that they would put on the ground in the hallways just for people who needed to use the restroom, you know, four kids and a wife and a husband.

So, when Clarence Hiller wakes up in the middle of the night, he notices at 2 a.m. there's something strange has happened because the nightlight near their daughter's room, the 15-year-old teenager, the nightlight on the ground in front of the daughter's room has been extinguished. So, a very, very dark night. Yeah, and what is the fuel for this type of light?

I think it's just your typical kerosene lamp that you just light up and keep on the ground just so people didn't trip over stuff. I mean, the way they describe this house is really dark. Everything is shut. They're shuttered. Okay. So this is an unusual circumstance. You know, I would imagine if it was low on kerosene, assuming that's the fuel, that it would possibly burn out overnight. And then I would think, okay...

Maybe they have a routine to make sure that this nightlight has sufficient fuel to get through the night. Yeah, and what's interesting is Clarence isn't woken up by a noise. He just wakes up probably to use the restroom at 2 a.m. He notices this light's out.

He thinks it's strange. Like you said, there's typically been enough fuel to last throughout the night. That's why it's a nightlight. And he goes down the hall to investigate. And when he gets to his daughter's room, the doors open and there's a man standing there. He cannot see the man. It is that dark. He cannot identify him. He sees a man. They face each other and they fight. This guy wakes up at two in the morning. He's barely awake.

They get into a huge fight. There's a struggle. And they both together, wrapped together, tumble down the staircase. And at the bottom, the man pulls out a gun and he shoots. He shoots Clarence twice. And Clarence is dead. And the guy runs. Okay.

So the police are called and they talk to the daughter and the daughter has been sexually assaulted and she can't identify him either. The only thing she says is that he was there and his light that he used was a match, which seems chancy to me. I guess it was enough to get into the room and get the layout of the room. I mean, what do you think about that?

Did the father live long enough to provide any last statement to say, I just saw a man, couldn't identify him? Or is this just based on the daughter who was sexually assaulted can't identify who this man is? Well, the report that I read, he must have lived long enough because Clarence couldn't identify him. And I don't know if that was to the police or his wife ran downstairs or someone ran downstairs and

and he just couldn't identify him, which seems incredible. It must have been really dark to fight with someone that close. But I guess if your adrenaline's going and you're scared and somebody is attacking you, then maybe you're not concentrating on details like face. Right. That doesn't surprise me because here, this is something which is going to be very traumatic. It's pitch black. I'm not surprised at all that the father wouldn't have in his last breaths any details to provide to whoever's interviewing him.

nor the teenage girl if it's that dark. Now, the use of the match sounds like the offender likely extinguished the nightlight and then relied upon a match or maybe a set of matches in order to be able to navigate through the house to be able to see.

And that shows some pre-planning. Oh, yeah. I don't know, maybe back in 1910, people carried matches all the time. You know, smoking is a big thing. And so this was just something that he would have had on his person. But these matches have, you know, limited time in which they're lit. Right.

And so I'm kind of wondering, did they see other burnt matches that might indicate how long the offender, after extinguishing the nightlight, was in the room or in the hallway, wherever these maybe other burnt matches are found?

Yeah. And I think you're right. Of course, he brought a gun. So there's some, I'm assuming, some pre-planning there too. I just had never heard of anybody doing that before. So he lit the match long enough, essentially, to get the lay of the land in the bedroom. He climbs into bed with her. He sexually assaults her. And then he runs out, runs into the dad. They fight, go down the stairwell. He pulls out a gun, shoots the dad. Dad dies and he is on the run.

Okay. So this is, you know, obviously very traumatizing for the family. And this is a man who was very important to the family. So they're trying to give police a lot of information. Police, of course, respond immediately. They look around. They're looking for physical evidence.

The only real piece at the scene of physical evidence, well, there's two pieces of physical evidence. One is a cartridge of the gun. It doesn't sound like they retrieved bullets. It sounds like they retrieved the cartridges. Okay. Tell me if I'm thinking this correctly. If they find the gun that they think fired these cartridges, can they say that this cartridge, cartridge A, came from that gun, or is it only bullets and the rifling that can point to a specific gun?

When you're dealing with spent cartridge cases out of a firearm, which if that's what they actually had, then that tells me, okay, you're dealing with a pistol versus a revolver. Are you sure these are spent cartridge cases versus whole rounds? Well, they call them cartridge cases. Okay. And maybe they're wrong because it was a revolver. I don't know the difference. Okay, so that's interesting. That's why you're here. Okay.

Yeah, you know, so I would say if he had a revolver and you have unfired rounds that have dropped out, it's possible maybe he had something like that in his pocket as extra rounds, you know, and these weren't something that came out of the gun. Okay. Or he opened up the cylinder of the gun at some point that allowed some of the rounds to come out. Okay. I don't know.

Now, rounds, if these are unspent rounds and all they've had done to them has been chambered into the revolver, it's unlikely to be able to associate those rounds to the revolver based on the marks. What about fingerprints? If it's a cartridge, something they had to load, is it possible if it's a good sample to pull a solid fingerprint off of a cartridge, either a spent one or just one that was a backup? Well, if it's

a round that has not been fired, there's a greater likelihood of being able to get the fingerprints because it hasn't been subjected to the heat of the firing process or the expansion. Imagine when you fire a round in a gun and

The gunpowder combusts and rapidly expands. You get the heat generating, you get the cartridge case walls expanding against the chamber that it's in. And especially if it's in a pistol where now it's being extracted during the firing process.

there's a lot of mechanical actions that can disrupt a fingerprint. Okay. However, today we can at times, it's rare, but recover prints off the sides of spent cartridge cases. So that is a possibility, but it depends on the caliber. If this is just a very small caliber round, like let's say a 22, that diameter, that let's say a finger touching, you know, the side of that cartridge is,

There's not a lot of the fingerprint that's really being deposited versus a larger cartridge like a shotgun for sure. But like even just a, you know, a 38 or especially when you start getting into the 44, 45 caliber rounds where now you have more surface area for the fingerprint to be deposited on the side of the cartridge case.

Well, luckily for the police in Chicago in 1910, they didn't need to rely on the cartridge to pull a fingerprint. They had something much, much, much better. Oh, really? I know. And this is what makes this case significant.

whomever broke into the house, sexually assaulted the teenage girl, and killed Clarence Hiller had gotten in through the kitchen window. They had just painted the outside of the house, including the wooden ledge outside the kitchen window. So when he put his hands down, it left four fingerprints intact.

Oh. That dried. Yeah. Okay. Like they had just done it earlier that night. So they are left with this sample. They saw it off. I don't know if that's normal, but they saw off that part of the windowsill and take it back and preserve it and do everything. I don't know what they would do in 1910, but would that be a standard practice is to take the whole sample or would you have done it in the field? So fingerprints left in this sample

soft paint. So these would be visible prints. Most people are thinking about fingerprint evidence left at a crime scene that aren't visible. You know, you have to use a process to actually make them visible, such as black powder or super glue or a variety of techniques.

Those types of prints that are not visible are latent fingerprints. This print, which is in this recording media of this drawing paint, is what we call a plastic print. It's an impression. It's like if you were to step in mud and leave your shoe print in that mud, that's the same thing that happens with these plastic types of prints. And I've seen, like, I've got a case in which I had a plastic print left by the killer on the side of a candle.

in the soft wax. So that's what's going on there. So this is a great form of evidence, especially if you have four fingers from the offender being deposited, possibly, I'm assuming, in the anatomically correct order. So that adds a level of confidence when there's going to be a fingerprint comparison being done. Now, preserving this type of print, yeah, you know, it is possible. And even to this day, there may be times where we would cut

out the surface in which this print has been recorded on, but that would only be after we have good photographs of it. Photography of these, we always do out in the field. And then if we feel that there's better ways to record that print back in the lab using mounted cameras and better lighting, et cetera, than what we can bring out in the field,

then we would consider cutting out the surface and bringing it back with us. You know, and as we know, the most important thing is the really clean sample. That's what the priority is. So here are the prints as printed in the newspaper that they captured from this windowsill. Does this seem like a pretty high quality? Yeah, I'm looking at these three prints here.

And these are also taken into account that these were printed in a newspaper. So we've seen a loss of quality just from that printing process to what I'm seeing here. So they are likely much higher quality from what they recovered from the crime scene. And these prints are on the order of close to like what we would call a rolled print.

You know, when we end up having to print a person and we roll each finger and get...

high, high quality prints. These are excellent quality prints. This is rare to get prints like this at a crime scene. They're very, very, very clean. I can see all the swirls and whirls and everything, and I'm a layperson, so I was pretty impressed with this. I guess this is what you get when, what did you call it, plastic prints? Is that what it was? It's a plastic print where basically the finger has pressed into this

soft paint, and the paint just became this perfect recording medium to capture all the details. And when you start talking about the whirls, the loops, et cetera, which are your class characteristics of fingerprints,

But what I'm also seeing is I'm seeing the smaller characteristics that are used to help affect a comparison. And that's your ridge detail, where now you're looking at an ending ridge, a bifurcation, a trifurcation. There are some clear areas in those prints, and that's where the person who left those prints, did he have any calluses? Did he have any warts? Other things on his fingers that can also add to some further details

individualization of that print? Well, in a little bit, we're going to need to talk about expert testimony and what makes someone an expert. And we'll talk a little bit about the trial. But first, we have a suspect. He was caught shortly after. He was out at 2.30, 3 o'clock in the morning when he was in a neighborhood he wasn't supposed to be in in that time period. He was a Black man. His name was Thomas Jennings.

And I'll tell you kind of a little bit later about Thomas Jennings, but he was found very, very quickly. You know, they had the prints.

However, there were many more suspicious things about Thomas Jennings. So they found him with a revolver that they say had been recently fired, and the cartridges matched those found near Hiller's body. Now, I guess in 1910, it would have been possible. How do you know if a gun's been recently fired?

There really is no way to put a timeframe onto a gun and say it's been recently fired versus previously fired at some point. There are indicators such as unburnt gunpowder particles that may still be deposited on surfaces that would naturally have fallen off or had been wiped off in the time after it was fired to the time that it's actually being recorded. I think I've seen some old movies or TV shows where the smell

of the firearm is used to say, oh, you know, it was just recently fired. And it's like, no, I am not somebody who would put any weight on that statement at all. Yeah, I had wondered if it's like you put your hand on the hood of a car and you can tell unless it's hot weather, you can kind of tell the car just

stopped running at some point. So it's not the same thing. How many shots were fired at the victim? Two. Two? You don't know. This gun is not going to be very hot and it's not going to retain any of that heat for any significant period of time. So I think that that statement is... Misleading. Yeah, well, it's not one that could be reliably ascertained.

Okay. So they say that this is the type of gun that was used to shoot Mr. Hiller, and they know that just because it's the same type of revolver that would have used those cartridges. They're not talking about striations or anything else with that. They're just saying same type of gun. I don't think they're able to place it definitively as the gun, the gun. Well, if all they're relying upon is they've got these unspent guns,

unfired rounds that are left at the crime scene. They're going to be able to see the head stamp markings in terms of the brand of the round, the caliber of the round, it's rimmed ammunition for a revolver. And then they open this revolver off of Jennings and it has the same head stamp, it's the same caliber. And so you say, okay, well, here's a connection. Now, I think I'm still a little bit puzzled why there's unspent

rounds inside the victim's house. I know. And not to be presumptuous, but of course, maybe cynical knowing how we are dealing with a 1910 Chicago area where there's probably a lot of racial tensions and law enforcement is focusing in on this black man that's in a white neighborhood. Is it possible that they removed some of the rounds from his revolver and then said it was collected from the crime scene? It's planted evidence.

We just had an episode about that with the Coyote Flat, remember, where we had Jack Ryan, who a prosecutor admitted that he set him up. Certainly not unheard of.

So one last thing about Thomas Jennings. Thomas Jennings was wearing a bloody coat. I know this looks bad. It's starting to look very bad, but okay. But I need you to be almost like the journalist cop who's really, really open-minded. So a bloody jacket, it's human blood. They didn't even bother testing it. You'll find out in a little bit. But they're just thinking, black man, wrong neighborhood, got a gun and a bloody jacket. Yeah.

Sure. Well, you know, in terms of testing the blood in 1910, basically, besides saying we've got blood here, there's not much more they could have done. Okay. From my perspective, under the case circumstances, why would victim's blood be on his coat? Now, we have two victims inside the

The house, we have the girl that's been sexually assaulted. That assault can most certainly have led to bloodshed. So, you know, does she have any bleeding injuries? Right. Whether it be from violence being inflicted on the outside of her body or is she menstruating or is it from the actual sexual assault? Right. And then, of course, we have the combat with the father as well as the gunshot.

And now, does the father have lacerations or bleeding injuries from the combat from the fall down the stairs where they're in close contact where now you can see where there'd be blood transferred onto the offender's coat? Or did the offender manipulate, you know, let's say father's shot, he goes down. Does the offender go up and manipulate the body and possibly get some blood onto his coat? You know, so there's things in terms of what I would need to know to assess the relevance

of this bloodstains as well as does it fit in to the context of the case as we know it at the crime scene? Well, things get worse for Thomas Jennings as far as evidence goes. And I know this seems open and shut, and it's not. So Thomas Jennings has an injury, which is one explanation for the blood. Sure. The injury, when he was examined by a doctor, is consistent with a bullet grazing him. Mm-hmm.

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

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

turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club. There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out. You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world

and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android.

Now, first of all, if you're shooting someone, how does that happen? Do you get your arm in your own way or what would cause that? Well, no, that's entirely possible. You know, your offhand, you know, if your offhand is in front of the muzzle of the weapon at the time it's discharged...

then yes, you could have either your arm or your hand having a bullet wound to it or a graze wound. So do we know where this injury was on Jennings? It looks like his arm is what I read. His arm? So I don't know what that, I still can't picture that. Yeah.

Well, that's, you know, I can picture, let's say he's in combat with the father. He's holding onto the father, pulls the gun and shoots, or they're struggling over the gun. They're on the ground, I think. I bet that's what happens. They're on the ground. And his arm just happens to be in the way, but it's just a graze. Yep. You know, I've seen grazes on shooting victims in which it looks like a linear abrasion. And I've also seen grazes in which the bullet has literally tunneled a groove, right?

through the victim's arm or leg and literally pulls tissue out. And those wounds can be very bloody. Do we know the extent of this graze on Jennings? They're just calling it a grazing of a bullet, which is consistent. It doesn't sound like a grooving graze.

So he just said consistent. The doctor did not say definitively. So it must have been a little bit more vague. There are two other little things I'll tell you. One is that in Jennings' shoes was a sand rock dirt mix that was consistent with

with the same kind of mix that was deposited on the floor in the house that was also from the neighborhood. I'm not sure that really, I don't know. They're trying to place them at the scene, obviously. That doesn't seem very reliable to me because anybody could have dragged that in. Right. Well, that's where it's assessing. Is this...

soil material or construction material, you know, what is the source of it? Is that the type of soil that is within this neighborhood? Yeah. And it's basically ubiquitous in the environment. At that point, you go, yeah, you can't put much weight on it. It's just, well, it's interesting that he also has it, but he's walking around in the neighborhood, you know, so it really kind of negates the importance of that evidence. So, yeah,

tell me more. I'm kind of curious to see how this case stacks up against Jennings.

Well, this is not going to surprise you at all, but he doesn't have an alibi for that night. I mean, he has no reliable alibi. So he's not helping himself in any way whatsoever. And I have said this before in other podcasts, I wouldn't have an alibi 80% of the time probably if somebody accused me of a crime. I'm by myself. I'm driving around listening to music. You know, I'm just like roaming around on my own sometimes. So I don't put a lot of weight in alibis. But again, 1910, yeah.

That would be hard to check anyway. I mean, as you've said, no CCTV, no credit card receipts that you would have really been able to track down easily, that kind of stuff, right? You know, in terms of the veracity of any alibi that he could have given, chances are they would not have been able to truly verify it to the standard that I would feel confident in this day and age.

But he must have made statements about why he's walking around in this particular neighborhood. He stays silent. Oh. He stays silent and he asks for an attorney for a public defender. Okay. He is quiet as a mouse through this whole thing, which is smart, probably. Yeah. As much as I don't want bad guys to lawyer up, it really is the best thing to do. My dad, the law professor, said, don't call me, call an attorney. Here's my friend. Put his number into your phone.

And then you can call me later. Don't call me first, though. Okay, so things get from pretty bad. I consider this a pretty difficult case already against Thomas Jennings to even worse because now this is where your super duper sleuthing analysis will be helpful. So people in the neighborhood say, yeah, this guy looks like a guy who's been sort of roaming around a neighbor of the Hillers.

reports a home invasion same night, right before the Hillers' home invasion happened. Okay. Okay, so listen to this, this details. This woman's name is Mrs. McNabb. Mrs. McNabb woke up to find a man holding a match in her bedroom doorway, same way with the 15-year-old daughter of Mr. Hiller. He sexually assaults her and then leaves. So we can talk all about the five-pack, six-pack situation.

of how people identify either via photo or with a lineup. But she would testify that based on Jennings' height and his build, that this was him. So just to clarify, this is a white neighborhood and this is a black man.

And we know that cross-racial misidentification happens all the time. Tell me your thoughts on that. So first of all, it sounds like somebody sexually assaulted two people in less than an hour. First, maybe to address the cross-racial misidentification, you know, for me, when we start talking about witness identification, your standard eyewitness, that's

That just by itself is often faulty. Yep. And these considerations with McNabb, you know, mill the night again, it's dark. How much detail is she seeing? And she's being sexually assaulted, you know, so this is a traumatic event for her. Yeah. So just,

her as a witness is going to be potentially sketchy unless she provides really specific details that matches up with, let's say, Jennings, you know, when he is stopped by law enforcement. Now, when we get into the cross-racial misidentification, I do know that there are studies showing that there is

a difference. When it's cross-racial, the accuracy drops and there's racial bias that is built in as well. So now when you get into cross-racial misidentification, you now have a much lower accuracy rate of somebody actually picking the right person out.

The Innocence Project in New York says that you are 50% more likely to misidentify somebody who is not of your race. 50%. And then on top of that, 75%, about 75% of wrongful convictions, part of those are because, like you said, of bad eyewitnesses. So that's why we talk about in these cases when you're talking about, you know, eyewitness testimony is not junk science, but

that alone in almost all cases really shouldn't be something that's totally relied on by the police or the prosecutors. It's just, it's really dangerous. So that's starting to be what happened here. Right. You know, and that's where we will probably talk about different types of evidence in this case and how much weight should be put on that evidence. And for me, eyewitness testimony may want to introduce that for the trier of fact in order to

to consider. But there also has to be that cautionary guidance provided saying, recognize that this type of witness testimony really does not have a lot of veracity when you take a look at the statistics. I don't know if you made up that phrase. What did you say? Cautionary? Cautionary guidance? I don't think that's a real phrase, but I'm going to use it throughout this whole episode. Yeah.

I just pulled that out of thin air. You mishmashed two things. I love it though. So I'm glad you said that cautionary guidance because we're going to have some of that coming up. So let's look at the preponderance of evidence as we might say. So you've got a man, several people have said they've seen him in the area. A woman said that she was sexually assaulted based on his height and his size.

Looks like the same guy. You've got Thomas Jennings in a bloody coat. You've got him with a revolver that appears to match the type of gun that killed Mr. Hiller. He has a wound that sounds consistent with the grazing of a bullet, perhaps during combat. Okay.

You've got sand, which we've kind of blown off from his shoes. So we've got all of these little pieces of evidence coming in. But most importantly, let us not forget, we have that fantastic fingerprint, four of them, from the windowsill. So the prosecution puts him on trial for first-degree murder. He is very quiet, wants to see how things lay out. He basically says, I was never there. There's nothing you can do to prove any of this. Mm-hmm.

even though he didn't have an alibi. But as we said, I would not have an alibi much of the time. The trial starts... The most important part of this would be the fingerprints because that's what the prosecution really is relying on. His defense, Jennings' defense says...

Listen, you know, if you pull all this stuff apart, yes, it looks kind of sketchy, but none of this points directly to the Hiller murder and the sexual assaults. You don't have anybody who is a reliable witness. It was really dark, cross-racial misidentification, which they even pointed to in 1910. But you've got the fingerprints. Of course, his fingerprints match. Four different fingerprint experts took the stand. Okay.

And said, unequivocally, this man did it. It's a fact. No one else could have put these prints down. They're matched, and that's it. Here's the issue. The issue is, is the first time that anyone has ever used a fingerprint in a criminal trial is this trial. It is brand new. And fingerprinting had been around for a long, long time. But recently,

really the first criminal trial in Europe was in 1856, so just 60 years earlier, and the U.S. had never really caught up. The first time that Scotland Yard brought it to the U.S. was just a few years earlier. So this was a groundbreaking case, but this is what I want you to react to. You have four men who are on the stand separately. They each have used fingerprints, you know, many, many, many times in criminal cases.

They're with the police department. And each one of them says unequivocally, this man did it. Here is your proof. It is a fact. And to the defense team, that declaration is a problem. And if this were now, they would call a Daubert hearing because this is a brand new technique that people are now purporting to be DNA evidence, essentially. Are these

fingerprint witnesses, are they making the statement that Jennings is responsible for the homicide or are they saying he left the prints on the window ledge? They said he did it and it's because there's fingerprints on the ledge.

Okay. And that's the issue. That's why this ends up going to the state Supreme Court because they said it's essentially like saying this guy left DNA evidence on the woman. It was that serious. Sure. You know, the jury hears that. What else are you going to do? You've got somebody who's saying this is the person who did it and they don't know enough about fingerprinting to be skeptical.

And from just an expert witness standpoint, this is showing most certainly cognitive bias. They knew the circumstances, the totality of the circumstances in the case, and they themselves acted as a juror and rendered an opinion on to guilt. So this is an inappropriate type of testimony for an expert to give.

I'm kind of curious to see what they said about the fingerprints. How strongly did they say these fingerprints matched Jennings? 100% is what they said. Now, let me tell you, I come from a very skeptical background about fingerprinting because it's not just the quality of the print itself.

then in 1910, it would have been the quality of the examiner. These are pattern matching and pattern matching can be problematic. If you don't have somebody who knows what they're doing. Now, you do have four different people all saying the same thing. Now, now, they're all with the police department. They're not independent.

Though I will say, taking a look at the quality of the prints that they had, and they had four of those prints, probably from the same hand, there's no question in my mind that they drew the right conclusion that these prints were left by Jennings. Part of the controversy with fingerprint evidence is people from the very beginning were testifying that it was absolutely individualization.

These prints are unique to the person. That's where the NAS report kind of comes in saying, well, hold on. How can you draw that conclusion scientifically without the supporting studies to be able to make that statement? And what happened with fingerprints is, in essence, from the very beginning, they recognized there's extreme variability with fingerprints.

And there's no question about that. But to take that observation of extreme variability and then say that only you possess your fingerprints and nobody else in the world possesses those same prints.

That's a big leap. Anecdotally, we know there's extreme variability if a print is found that is of sufficient quality and it is matched by a competent examiner, that this is good evidence.

But the NAS report is showing, okay, we're looking at what they did with DNA in terms of developing objective standards and statistics for an expert to say, okay, I've got a DNA profile from a person. I've got a DNA profile from evidence at the scene. I see no differences in the profile. And when I've done population studies or there's been population studies done of random people, this is the statistics.

Like one in 40 million. So it provides the juror or the judge the weight of the evidence. And this is where fingerprints, it was just assumed by the courts because of early experts coming in. Well, this is unique to a person. It's 100% an identification, but they don't, particularly back then, didn't have the studies to draw that conclusion. Right.

And you brought up Daubert. This is some of the frustration, particularly the defense side, is that once the courts accepted this evidence as being tried and true, now you're not seeing the judges allowing any type of debate as to the science itself, only to the actual testing process and what was found.

That's where, like in California, we weren't using Daubert, at least up until the time that I left. We were at what we call a Kelly Fry state. And Kelly Fry is kind of the same thing. Is this scientific method, is it valid? Is it reliable? Is it generally accepted in the relevant scientific community? But it needed to be a new and novel technique.

So I think one of the things that we want to talk about is what ends up happening with this case. Something interesting happens, and this goes to the ego of attorneys. So his attorneys, Thomas Jennings' attorneys, were so convinced that they could poke holes in the fingerprint evidence that the defense attorney offered the prosecution a challenge of

He said he wanted to prove before the court that he had touched a specific piece of paper. So this defense attorney says, I touched that piece of paper. Pull my print. I bet you can't do it. It spectacularly backfired because the prosecutor— Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it was a perfect sample. So the expert, he pulls it, and it, of course, matches perfectly, and that's it. So, you know, what is the risk?

do you think of this? What is the risk of trying to show off in court? Well, this, I mean, this brings up OJ Simpson, where the prosecutors asked OJ to try on the leather glove that was found at the crime scene. And then now you got defense attorney Johnny Cochran. OJ can't pull it on. And so Cochran is now saying if it doesn't fit, acquit. You know, it backfired.

And with this, you know, touching a piece of paper, paper is an absorbent material. So your fingerprint oils get deposited. It kind of, it's like a sponge. That paper kind of absorbs those oils with your fingerprint pattern in it. And then using something like ninhydrin, which reacts with certain amino acids in the proteins of your fingerprint, we can easily develop that type of

print. Paper actually is a great source of fingerprints. In fact, it's a better source than often many of the surfaces at a crime scene because the prints can easily be smeared from either the person touching and then moving their hand while it's still touched or somebody else coming by and brushing up against that surface. So yeah, that really backfired. And now that is, of course, the jurors watching this

experiment go wrong for the defense, and that's going to put so much more weight on the prosecution's evidence.

I would say just taking a look at what the prosecution had in terms of these four fingerprints and with four different experts doing the comparison, I don't doubt that those were Jennings' print in the paint on the window ledge. Yeah. But that's all they should have said. That's all they could conclude. Now you have to establish he is the one that's sexually assaulting the victim. He's the one that shot the father. You have to establish all the other elements of this crime. Right.

Utilizing other evidence. The fingerprints aren't putting him inside the house. They're not putting him as being the one who pulled the trigger to kill the father. You know, so that all is part of presenting a case. And in this day and age, generally that is how it should be done is you have to walk the jury through with the other types of evidence to show this person is responsible for the murder. This person is responsible for the sexual assault. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's not going to be any surprise to you that he was convicted pretty quickly. No. With all of that evidence, they just said who else would have done it, and they didn't have any other suspects. So he is convicted, and they appeal, and it took a year because this is a capital case, and it went to the Illinois Supreme Court court

And essentially, they looked at the case. The defense's argument was, this is such a new science. You're going to let this science, along with a bunch of other circumstantial crap, send this guy to be hanged. And the Illinois Supreme Court said yes.

We are. Okay. This is sound science, even though this is the first year it's been used. And this was when Oscar Heinrich, my forensic scientist, started, was 1910. So this is the beginning of forensics in the United States. It had been around in Europe for, you know, 50, 60 years in its modern form, but this was sort of the beginning. So the Illinois Supreme Court said, yes, this is sound science, and Thomas Jennings is executed the next year. Wow, that's fast.

Now, I will say when I'm assessing the evidence in the case and what they could have done back then, you know, such as the blood on his coat, they could not have conclusively shown that the blood came from either of the victims. They weren't doing ABO testing back then, you know, definitely no DNA.

Well, it was probably from him, right? From the grazed bullet also. It could have been him. It could have been a mix. Absolutely. You know, it could have been him. That's where it's, again, did the father have bleeding injuries? Did the daughter have bleeding injuries? McNabb, who he assaulted possibly, you know, earlier, did she have bleeding injuries? Right. The number one piece of evidence that we haven't talked about is what about the bullets? Yeah. The bullets from the father. Because the gun, you know, this is semantics, but this is the way I think

The gun is a tool. The murder weapon is the bullet. It's the bullet that kills the victim. So did they compare the bullets to Jennings' revolver? So, you know, one of the things that you and I talk about with these old cases, I know when you talk about new cases that you can say, well, you know, can't you just go check with the medical examiner or you can hop on the internet, LexisNexis and find stuff. Sometimes I don't have the right information. However...

As an investigative journalist, I can read between the lines, and here's what I'm reading. There is nothing to talk about the matching, specifically the bullets matching the gun. They were able to do that in 1910 because they omitted it, and his attorneys leaned so heavily on the fingerprint. I'm assuming they didn't find the bullets, or I don't know if it was a through and through and went out the door. I don't know what would have happened.

There are times, you know, with gunshots, bullets sometimes fly into what we call never, never land. If there isn't a backstop, let's say they over-penetrate the victim and pass through the victim. If they still have enough energy and there's no backstop, they can travel a distance and they're very, very hard to find downrange, especially if you're out in the woods, you know, and it's like, well, that's almost impossible to search for a bullet that could be 50 yards anywhere downtown.

that way. And then you bring out the metal detector club to look for something like that. But this is inside a house. There's plenty of backstops inside the house. So if these bullets pass through the husband, every attempt should have been made to recover those bullets. And in my opinion, if those bullets were successfully matched back to Jennings' revolver,

then I'm good with a verdict of guilty. I'm not necessarily opposed to the jury based on the totality of the circumstances finding him guilty. But to

have it be a death case when you have an execution that occurs so fast. Oh, yeah. It's like, okay, hold on. From at least the way that you've presented what was really being put on trial, I'm not hearing that they established the elements of murder sufficiently. I think they established, yes, he touched the window lid.

And then he's got other circumstances. He's in the neighborhood. He has blood on his coat. He's got a bullet graze wound. He's got a revolver that, if it's not planted evidence, at least has the same type of ammo in it that was found at the crime scene. So it's like... It's a lot. I think they got the right guy. It's just, do you have enough to where you're going to execute this guy within a year after conviction? Well, as you know, I'm really sneaky. Here we go. And I always hold...

I always hold something back. I hold stuff back from you because I want you to focus in on the physical evidence because this is kind of a doozy. So before the sexual assaults happened, Thomas Jennings did spend time in prison. He had sexually assaulted several women and he entered their rooms with

Okay. So you know why I did that. I wanted you to look at the evidence and defend each piece of it because there are plenty of people who are not Thomas Jennings. It does sound like this guy did it, but there are plenty of people who didn't do it who get convicted on evidence that you can kind of pull apart and justify and go, well, I don't know.

So I wanted this challenge. Well, this is where when you start getting into evaluating an offender's MO and signature behaviors for the type of crime. He sounds like he's a serial rapist. Yeah. He's a serial predator. He has two prior cases. And of course, I'd want to know so much more details about all of these sexual assaults so I could take a look at the types of behaviors involved.

to see is there anything that really stands out as being unique or fantasy motivated in order to go, yeah, you know, this is not only the same MO, but there are signature behaviors within here that even without, you know, taking a look at physical evidence, I'm fairly confident these cases are all being perpetrated by the same offender. But,

But just adding that prior criminal history and how specific it is to these two sexual assaults, that really does show and kind of stacks the totality of the circumstances, considering Jennings and his responsibility for the homicide of the father. Yeah, I'm convinced. Yeah, they got the right guy. I think I agree with you based on what you told me is that

The way they presented the evidence was faulty. And the fingerprint comparison, they did a good comparison. They just made the wrong statements in front of the jury about what that comparison meant. Well, I'll tell you, it got people in Illinois into a load of trouble. There were a lot of editorials and a lot of outrage. Despite all of this, despite his prior conviction, despite all of this pointing directly to him, there were numerous editorials. I think the most interesting one was the Washington Post article

called it an outrageous conviction and said, quote, no man's life will be safe if the courts instruct juries to regard as conclusive the testimony of partisan experts. That's all correct. It's just difficult because you and I believe that this was, I don't know about the death penalty. I'll say, I'm not going to say the death penalty, but I think the conviction certainly was just, I mean, just based on everything. I'm fine with the conviction. I'm

I'm just more concerned about the penalty aspect in this case. Me too. And how the state put on its evidence and how the experts testified. They way over concluded basically saying he's responsible for these murders just based on fingerprint evidence would be no.

You can't say that. And they probably overstated, they individualized the fingerprint evidence, which has been happening forever. Only Jennings possesses these prints. Right now, scientifically, that is what is still being assessed. The weight of this evidence is very, very strong. But what is that weight? How do you put it in front of a juror so they understand, oh, this is really strong, but is there a chance that somebody else could possess these prints?

Yeah, it's hedging your bets in a lot of ways. And I think that that is one of the things that's the most interesting about this case. There's not tons of twists and turns like I like to give you

But this was a landmark case, and I thought it was really fascinating the way that everything unfolded. One thing that I will say that the law is just so messy in some of these cases. The fingerprints, the way that they handled it, that was all, I think, inappropriate in many cases. But then you look at a case like why they caught Ted Bundy was using bite mark evidence, which we now know is squishy at best as far as junk science. And so sometimes I think, well, I mean...

They got Ted Bundy with questionable science, but this is, that's what the Washington Post's point is, is that, yes, everything has to be fair across the board. And that's hard. It's hard. Yeah. There was a Texas prosecutor, former Texas prosecutor, who used to talk about the different cases she would get. And she would take out a pen and say, I've got this case and it's just got DNA. It's just this one pencil. She used a pencil. It's just this one pencil. Yeah.

And she said, I've got another case that's circumstantial and it's nine pencils, each little piece of evidence. And she said, you know, if I turn these over, I can't break that. I would rather have a case with nine pencils than one, relying on one piece of evidence

that can be picked apart and argued because something happened with the lab or was this contaminated or, you know, is there a possibility of this being something else? But when you just put all of these circumstances, unfortunately, with Thomas Jennings, when all of these circumstances are laid out, it seems pretty clear what happened. So this has been exhausting. I mean, I did not think this was going to be a big case. And again, I know I always like to shock you a little bit. Maybe there was a little bit of shock there, but I think these types...

Thank you.

You weren't sure if you were going to be able to relate to the people or to the investigators or what's the science going to be like. But this is a case that could have gone in 2020. Sure. No, it absolutely could. But in this day and age with modern technology, this would be a very, very easy case because we could do DNA on that blood. All this evidence, we would have been able to utilize that.

and either eliminate or include Jennings as being the contributor of these layers of evidence that was present. They just couldn't do as much with it as we can today. Well, I hope for you a cool but not too cold day today in Colorado. I'm jealous.

And I want you to be mentally prepared for the next case because it's going to be a doozy. And you're going to need to put your forensic science and your detective hat on. Okay. Because you know how I like to bring the twisty turns. We go back and forth. We're doing some really interesting deep cases and then some that are just crazy stories that all, to me, have significance. So it's really exciting to bring them to you.

Well, I'm looking forward to it. I'll roll up my sleeves and I'll start listening as soon as you start telling me about it. Yep, start drinking your kava now. That's my suggestion. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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.