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This is exactly right. 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. Listen up. I'm Liza Traeger. And I'm Cara Clank, and we're the hosts of the true crime comedy podcast, That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast. Every Tuesday, we break down an episode of Law & Order SVU, the true crime it's based on, and we chat with an actor from the episode.
Over the past few years, we've chatted with series icons like BD Wong, Kelly Giddish, Danny Pino, and guest stars like Padgett Brewster and Matthew Lillard. And just like an SVU marathon, you can jump in anywhere. Don't miss new episodes every Tuesday. Follow That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Dun-dun!
I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold. Very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪
Hi, Kate. How are you doing? I'm well. How about you, Paul? I am doing really good. Well, I'm excited to get to this story kind of quickly because it's a story from a listener. Oh. And I love these kinds of stories. This comes from her family.
And her great-grandmother was really invested in this family story. And so she did a lot of research, and then a cousin picked it up. And there's a lot that she sent me, which was wonderful. And Maren has been able to use, and I've been able to use, to put this packet together. And it made me think about, I know we talk a lot about the people who insert themselves into your cases, but there must be the helpful people. Can you think of a
a case where a layperson found something that was really helpful for you and you just thought, well, thank goodness this person decided to contact us. Otherwise, we would be flummoxed by this case. Well, I think, you know, there's numerous examples. One that just immediately comes to mind is Golden State Killer. There was a recorded phone call and there were some background noises. And I spent so much time
trying to figure out what these background noises and voices were to see if it gave me a clue as to who the Golden State Killer was. Well, it turns out that somebody in the online community was able to figure out, no, those background noises were just the Monday night movie of the week
You know, on the victim's side of the phone, had nothing to do with the Golden State Killer's phone call at all. And it was very helpful because now I didn't have to spend any time on it. I could move off of it knowing it didn't give me any clues. So it wasn't direct information. Oh, I haven't heard this. It was more of like, well, OK, I know you don't understand this, but I understand it. Let me explain it to you. That was helpful for you in that case.
Yeah, you have. And that's part of, you know, when you start crowdsourcing, you have people who have certain skill sets and they can apply those skill sets and get accurate information back to the investigators. And that can be helpful. Obviously, there's those that are trying to help, but they're not so helpful. But it sounds like with this family case that you're about to bring to me, it sounds like there's going to be some significant investment that this family has done over time.
Yeah. And, you know, in Tenfold, I always involve the family. You have to. I have to reach out to the family. That's part of the story. And I talk about this in my classes is, you know, going to the family and talking to the family and sort of getting permission for my case that's 200 years old even is important for me. When you're going as in-depth as I do on Tenfold More Wicked. So I love involving the family and I love a family that researches. So Maren was impressed with the amount of research that
That came from our listener, Jennifer Arnold, who was wonderful to reach out about this. I just want to give a warning to listeners here. No sexual assaults, thank goodness, in this episode. But this does involve the murder of children, several children in this story, which I know is really upsetting to a lot of people. So I just wanted to give you a warning here before we proceed. Okay, let's set the scene.
This is 1902 Homestead, Pennsylvania, which is 10 miles outside of Pittsburgh. I'm not going to ask if you've been to Homestead. I have not been to Homestead, but I love Pennsylvania. So there's that.
Yeah. I remember flying into the Pittsburgh airport and then driving to West Virginia, I think. But that's pretty much my extent of exposure to that area. Well, this involves the Cauley family, and this stays all within the family. So let me frame this by saying the matriarch must have just been a strong woman. She's in her early 40s. Her name's Hannah Cauley. She was recently widowed.
So a year earlier, her husband Charles Sr. died of an accidental drowning while he was working at the local docks.
and they have 10 children together. So this is kind of a rural area. They have a six-room house, multi-level house, that houses these 10 people. There's a woman named Ella who lives off the property. She's the eldest child. We don't know how old she is, but she's married, and she lives off the property. Ella Cauley is Jennifer, the woman who brought us the story. This is her great-grandmother. So...
She was not there when this happened. This is how important this is to this family, having that sort of involvement and kind of finding out a little bit more, some sort of, you know, some insight into what happened here. So she's recently widowed. She's dealing with these 10 kids.
They're at home and it's nighttime. It's October 9th, 1902. Ella is not living there. She's gone. Now, let's talk about the age range of everybody who's in this house. There is a 21-year-old son, a 17-year-old son, a 14-year-old son, and then you've got a 13-year-old daughter, a 10-year-old daughter, six-year-old twins, and a 15-month-old named Joseph.
So, my goodness, she must have given birth and then he died a couple of months later, I guess. How awful. And then there's a little girl named Mary who they think was kind of toddler age. So, that's a lot to deal with in a six-bedroom house, kind of, it sounds like, in a rural area with no other parent there to help. Already, this is not looking good for Hannah, unfortunately. Yeah, you know, no question, there's a lot going on. But, you know, having done, you know, genealogy and casework and seeing...
You know, this era of families, this is something that was common, you know, where you have lots of kids, you've lost a fair number of kids at a very young age. And sometimes, you know, the parents, one parent, both parents die young or leave one to have to care for, you know, now in this case, 10 kids.
Okay, here we go. It's in the middle of the night, and Hannah, the mother, and Belle are sleeping in one bed. So I'm going to have to keep scrolling up and down to find out how old these people are. She's 13. So Hannah and Belle, the 13-year-old, are sleeping in one bed. They're in a bedroom that's at the far end of the home's second floor, multi-level home. And
In the same room, Joseph, the little boy, is in his crib. He's 15 months old, so this must have been the one who was born just right before his dad drowned. And then in the same room of Joseph and Hannah and Belle is a separate bed that has Agnes, Adeline, and Raymond.
So, Agnes is 10 years old. Adeline is 6, and her twin brother Raymond is 6, obviously. So, we've got a lot of people sleeping in one room. So, you've got Hannah, and then Belle, and then Joseph, and then three other kids. So, six kids in one room. And in an adjoining room on the same floor, on the second floor, there are the three big boys, Charles, and Harry, and James. James is the 21-year-old, Charles is 17, and Harry is 14.
So that's where kind of everybody is at this point. Between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. of what is now October 10th, someone walks down, gets into the house, goes down to the basement, picks up an axe, and goes back upstairs. So goes down into the basement, accesses the basement, picks up an axe, and goes back upstairs. Okay, so he enters the bedroom where Hannah and the youngest siblings are all sleeping. And this is where things go very bad and get pretty graphic.
So this person has the axe and he beats Hannah's head and the upper part of her body until it's described as jelly. Belle, who is a 13-year-old in the bed right next to her mom, actually sleeps through the attack, but...
when he notices Belle there after he's clearly, you know, beaten Hannah to death with an axe, he throws the axe at the little girl. He misses, but it hits the mattress and likely wakes her up. And then he grabs the axe and he kills her. 10, 15, 20, 30 blows.
on a 13-year-old girl until the bedsheets and the mattresses were completely soaked. And the other kids do not appear to be moving right now. Like, waking up, maybe they're stunned. But this is brutal on two people, you know, a little girl and a woman in her 40s in this bed.
I can visualize the scene quite clearly. It's interesting that you have the detail that he threw the axe and then killed Bell. That would be a tough detail to reconstruct from, you know, the crime scene, the physical evidence. So now it sounds like there's a witness that observed this.
We'll talk about that in a minute. He starts to walk over to the little boy, Joseph, who's the 15-month-old. He takes the axe and he hits Joseph in the head and the chest. But Joseph still seems to be sort of breathing when the killer walks away and confronts the other three siblings.
And it's notable that he's not quite as brutal with Joseph and Adeline and Raymond, the youngest ones. But he did kill them, the little boy and then Agnes, Adeline and Raymond, the twins. But he did not beat them beyond recognition like he did with Hannah and Belle. I don't understand that. Does that actually mean anything? I mean, he killed them. Does it matter whether they were beaten beyond recognition? Definitely matters. You know, this is where you start...
When you get into this interpreting the offender's inner psychology, that gets expressed in the actions at the crime scene. And when I see a victim that has
more violence being inflicted, violence that is up and beyond necessary to kill, that tends to suggest that there's a greater emotional angst that that offender has towards that particular victim. Now, sometimes it's in the sexual world, right? There's greater sexual attraction and a need to commit crimes.
greater violence towards that person. But we're not talking that in this case, per your disclaimer up front. Right. So now with Hannah being so brutally killed, overkilled, tends to suggest that the offender, and you used the pronoun he, so I'm going to assume this is a male offender, that this offender has a lot of angst, had a lot of angst towards Hannah and took that out. This is your classic anger retaliatory offender. Right.
Now, let's talk about who's in this household because now we have eliminated the mother and all of the younger children. So who's left in the household is James, who's 21, Charles, who's 17, and Harry, who is 14. All of the young kids and the mom are gone. What do you make of that? Why would you start in the room with the people who present, to me, the least amount of
of complications, resistance. If this is a man, and I have said he, if this is a man who is trying to systematically eliminate people for we don't know why yet in this family, why start with the most vulnerable people first and leave behind a 21-year-old, a 17-year-old, and a 14-year-old boy? Well, I think there's multiple factors to consider. First, you've got the adult female, Hannah, and
And Hannah, with the brutality of the violence, seems to be a target.
Plus, you have the dynamics of the number of small children within the same room. That is something that a single offender could rapidly lose control over. Imagine having three, four young kids all screaming, crying, running out. It's really something that the offender wouldn't want to have happen.
Plus, it has to do with the environment. We're dealing on the second floor of this house. Hannah and these younger kids and Belle are on the extreme side of the house, right? And so maybe the offender is assessing going, I'm
I'm confident I can go all the way over to that bedroom and carry out this attack with an axe and not alert the three older boys that are in their bedroom. So he's making sort of a tactical assessment and deciding that would be the best course of action. Now, Hannah being an adult is somewhat of a physical threat, but...
But you have the three boys, a 21-year-old and a 17-year-old. Basically, they're in essence young men. And then you have the 14-year-old. And I don't know how big these boys are. You'd think, well, these are the three people that possibly could cause you the most physical harm if they're alerted to your presence before you're ready for them.
But it does sound like he's got a target with Hannah, and he's making a tactical assessment based on the layout of where everybody's at on the second floor of this house. Now, let's talk about access, because the access is confusing. In this time period, in a rural area, they are very unlikely to have locks on their doors. We did not have locks on our farmhouse door until, I think, five years ago, to be honest. Good God. Yeah.
You guys were a little slow to the party on that one. Yes, we were late to the party. But honestly, we were on such a big ranch. It would be, we have locked gates, but we did not have locked houses. So I think it would be very easy for someone to come into this house if they know the layout of the house. Right.
But to go down to the basement and know that there will be an ax there, I guess in 1905 is a pretty good assumption. But what about the person who doesn't bring the weapon with him and who slaughters people like this? You have the Idaho murder suspect who police allege brought a weapon with him. But what about the found weapon? It doesn't make it makes no sense to me.
You can go into any house and find a weapon. So the offender, he's going down to the basement. He may have known that there was an ax there. And if he did, that tells me something about who the offender might be. However, may have gone down to the basement because this is typically where I would assume on this type of house, this is where the tools would be like hammers, various potential weapons would be down there.
and chose to use the ax. So right now, we don't know what the offender's intent was, but it seems like, yes, the offender is going into the house, assuming that this is not somebody from who was already in the house, but the offender is entering that house and knows that there will be an object that that offender will be able to use. The offender also, while entering the house, has to be cognizant that an entire family is asleep.
And so while going through the house to try to find a weapon elevates that offender's risk, spending more time in there.
But this is common in terms of offenders not bringing weapons with them. Wow. So you think I often, you know, go back to Golden State Killer, Joe D'Angelo. You know, he would use knives out of the kitchen drawers. You know, he would use shoelaces from the victim's own shoes as binding material. You can get the implements of the crime from within any house. We're going to move over to the boys' bedroom and...
James, who is the 21-year-old, is asleep, and the 14-year-old boy, Harry, is next to him. He starts to hear moans. James hears groans from the other bedroom. We presume probably it could be Joseph, the little boy. It could be, you know, Hannah dying. Any of the kids, we don't know.
And he starts to get up. He wants to know where everybody is at this point, and he's alarmed because it could be Charles, it could be anybody. He gets up, and he looks in the doorway, and he is struck by...
by what he says is the worst image he's seen in his life, which is his brother Charles covered head to toe in blood, not his blood. He's holding the axe. So we have a 17-year-old boy who took an axe and murdered all of his younger siblings and his mother and now is back to knock off presumably his older brother James and his younger brother Harry. 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.
So James hears moaning. He sits up. He starts to get up and walk, but Charles steps into the doorway with the axe and the blood dripping. And he's like,
And James, of course, has an oh shit moment and he grabs a chair and they start to fight. Big time fight. James overcomes Charles. Thank goodness. He gets control of him and he drags him through the streets of Homestead and
and deposits him to the police station and says, this guy just tried to murder our entire family and he's my little brother. Wow. Can you imagine? So do we have any information of any behaviors that Charles was exhibiting ahead of time that might be predictive for this type of violence? Boy, are we going to have to get into that because this is not open and shut. Because now we know who the killer is.
You know, we're a third of the way through this. We know who did it. There is no question that he did it, but why? So this is what James says, and then we can get into Charles and his personality. He says that on the way down to the station, Charles fought him like a raccoon. He was going crazy. James is bigger and managed to get him down there, and they put him in a cell, and he calmed down and
And then Charles said, why am I here? I don't understand what happened. And just like that, he says, I have no clue why I'm here and what I did. Don't remember it at all. And before you ask, this is not, once again, our sleepwalking murderer. But he says, I have no idea what happened. Now we can talk, if you want, about Charlie's
Charles's personality and where we think things went. But the big deal for me with this case is, did he know what he was doing? Where does he end up? What ends up happening? And how do you know if someone legitimately did something terrible but doesn't realize it and shouldn't be held accountable in some certain way?
I've had, in fact, I've got one of my big cold cases or series of cases with a known offender who was convicted of three, this Phil Hughes. This was the gamut that Phil did in saying when he's being interviewed that he had amnesia in essence. I don't remember killing them. I remember talking to her. I don't remember actually killing them.
And I'm just so skeptical of that. In many ways, I feel that that's just a way that the offender is minimizing. I would need to hear from reliable experts to tell me that this is a real situation to where somebody can twist off, kill an entire family, and not have any type of conscious thinking
thought that they were aware that they were actually committing these crimes. Well, let's talk about his background, and maybe that'll be helpful. The murders are a total shock for everybody who knows this family, and for Charles specifically, because he seemed like a wonderful teenager. There was an article in 1902 that ran in the Sausalito News that
that he was of a kindly disposition. He was very fond of his mother and his brothers and his sisters, and of course his dad before his dad died. He was roundly described as a genius. They called him a teen with an inventor's mind, and that he seemed destined one day to join the ranks of Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and Cyrus McCormick,
who I know I had never heard of before, but he was the guy who invented the mechanical reaper, which is a huge thing. I could understand in the 1900s why people would think that that was a big deal. But this is someone who people thought it wasn't just like he's a good kid. This is someone who had a real potential, a real drive. So does that help? Probably not. No. You know, in terms of trying to correlate, okay, so now we're looking at, we're getting some background information about
Charles has not exhibited behaviors that people go, oh, yeah, you know, we expected him to do this type of thing or just he's a bad seed. So that's, you know, it's interesting that that's how Charles is being remembered. You know, this idea of a person not committing a crime with such brutality on his own family, you know, this is where I wonder, okay, you know, is there a chance there's significant drugs on board? Yeah.
So let me tell you more about Charles. So he had been hard at work perfecting a patent for a combined air and power brake system for streetcars at 17. He'd been inspired when he was involved in a streetcar accident himself five years earlier, and he was really eager to improve this existing technology.
He had been working on these breaks for two years since he was 15 and had made it so far that his patent was pending in Washington, D.C. Problem is, Charles is a perfectionist and obsessive, and he cannot take time to stay away from his work.
He tinkers constantly. He is someone who in the 1800s, they would have called it monomania, just a singular focus that could drive him crazy. And I think it sounds like his mom wanted him to step away from work and get some mental health rest, and he wasn't doing it. But this also would have been a big deal for the family because...
One newspaper said that he could have installed this patent if the system worked. He could install the patent on cars for about $300 each. It would have been a great savings for wrecks and damage and everything else. So he had all of this potential. One of my good professional friends who is a retired California DOJ profiler, you know, she...
often would say offenders will frequently make the decision to kill within 72 hours of actually committing the crime. And so it's always important, you know, to get a timeline of, well, what's happened in the last few weeks leading up to this homicide? So I'm wondering with Charles, you know, what was the interactions that he had with his mom, Hannah,
It sounds like he is so obsessed with this, I guess I'll call it like an engineering aspect of his life. That seems like a passion. Yet they live on farm. Did he have expectations to work the land or in the house, have other chores, and his mom was getting on him? You're not holding your end up, Charles. And now she's trying to get him on.
to do more inside the house or for the family or whatever it was, and that's taken him away from his passion. Is he getting angry at her? Even though by all accounts, he seems like he's a good kid, but he's still going to have emotional responses, especially if he's so obsessed about a passion that his mom might be trying to take away from him, at least from his perspective.
Could be. I mean, he could be given. We don't know. He could have been given responsibilities for the younger children and he was resentful. You know, we don't know yet, but we do have more information. I want to go back to the house to see what is happening. So Harry, the 14-year-old, is alive and fine. James, when he dragged Charles down to the police station, Harry, the 14-year-old, calls two doctors. They come to the house and
So, Joseph, the 15-year-old, Agnes, the 10-year-old, and the twins are still alive. Okay. I mean, can you imagine? The Pittsburgh Press reports that from the heads of the four victims, the physicians took over two cups of bone, which had been broken in the skulls. Eventually, these kids are taken to a local hospital.
the majority of them die except Agnes. Okay, so Agnes is the 10-year-old, but she'll never remember what happened. Yeah, too much brain damage probably. Oh, gosh, yeah. She survived. She regained consciousness several weeks later, but she couldn't remember what happened that night.
So they go into the bedroom, and the police describe it as a horror show. There's blood on the floor, the walls, the ceiling, on the knob of the door leading into the front room, which the murderer opened.
And now, you know, when you have Charles sitting here saying, "I don't remember any of this. Why are you accusing me?" He's not admitting to anything. He is saying, "I don't remember anything that happened." So now they're having to say, "Okay, are we gonna have to prove that this kid is the one who did it, even though the brother saw him covered with blood, carrying an ax, and he fought him all the way down?" So they said that when the murderer, Charles, we assume, opened the door with a doorknob, he was intent upon slaying his brothers,
there's blood everywhere. He placed his hand so close to the door to shut out the light from his mother's room. There are marks of his four fingers on the door, while in another place is the bloody mark of his entire hand. And
Is that a good sample, do you think? Can they, you know, pull that? And I guess it just depends, right? Well, when you say a good sample, you know, there's a lot going on here when you start talking physical evidence, the blood patterns. The types of blood patterns on Charles is going to be absolutely critical. And it may not just be
There may be bone matter. There may be brain matter. There could be hair, other tissues, scalp that's on Charles. This is what all demonstrate, depending on the pattern and the formation, demonstrate that he's present when this tissue or the blood is being deposited. Right.
His movements also become critical. Being able to say, "This is his hand," was their bloody ridge detail. Could they do fingerprints? Now, we're talking 1902, so likely they weren't doing any type of fingerprint comparisons.
But that's all part of building a case to determine, okay, the evidence is showing Charles' movement after bloodshed. It's showing that he was present at the time that you have blood spatter or tissue that is now being deposited on his person.
You know, that is all everything that we would be looking at today in order to build a case to show, yes, Charles wasn't just standing in the room. He's actually the one that is swinging the axe.
Well, what an awful story so far. They're really trying to figure out with Charles, when he is saying, I don't know what happened, I don't know what happened, what the police say he wants to talk about is his invention. And he has a conspiracy theory, not about the murder of his family, but around this invention. So this sounds familiar to me because it pops up kind of in a case from American Sherlock about a chemist
who believed that he was also being plotted against because he had an invention. So this is part of, I guess, the monomania, and this is where we want to get into his mental health a little bit. So...
The police think it's clear that Charles is responsible for the crime, but nobody gets why. So they ask everybody in the family who's still alive. And according to Harry and James, Charles had seemed a little bit more off than usual just ahead of the killings. James told the police that Charles had very recently become quiet and withdrawn. But everybody blew it off because he's been waiting for this patent from the government for the streetcar braking system to be approved.
And he was obsessive about tinkering with it, you know, and making sure it was going to be right. And they said it was all that he could focus on. So they saw some signs and ignored them because they said he's been kind of weird about this whole patent thing to begin with. And we never blame the victim. But it is interesting to talk about signs that might have been missed. But who would have predicted this? Right.
Just, you know, sort of somebody withdrawing into themselves. I mean, how often does that happen to so many people? And yet they don't go off and become axe murderers, right? So those aren't such significant behaviors where I would expect even the family members to go, oh, we need a mental health check on Charles.
But it's in hindsight going, okay, well, there was something going on with him, but what caused him to escalate to committing this level of violence on his family?
That seems to be the million-dollar mystery right now with Charles. And you started talking about when law enforcement is asking him, he's more interested in talking about the invention and he's not talking about the crime. And there's a conspiracy theory. You know, it's almost like, okay, is there a paranoia developing? I think you might be right there because listen to this.
Charles. Charles tells the police, again, he doesn't want to talk about the murders. He says that he's been recently receiving threatening letters. One particular letter ordered him to stop trying to secure this patent for the streetcar brakes or else he was going to be physically harmed.
But he couldn't tell police where the letter was in the house. It never materialized. Okay. And it gets deeper. So if you want, put your hand up if you want to comment on any of this stuff, because he really has a detailed story about who this person is.
Well, you know, right now, kind of assessing the crime scene, you know, this is a disorganized crime scene. And typically when you see this level of disorganization, Charles is not even trying to cover up, you know, the fact that he's committed this crime. He's got blood all over him. You know, he gets caught by James. Anytime there's this type of offender, this is where now you start to think, okay, are you dealing with a psychosis?
Are you truly dealing with somebody who is legally classified as mentally incompetent to be charged with the crime? And so that's kind of the way I'm starting to assess Charles as you're giving me more information about him, as opposed to being this anger-driven offender that I possibly thought earlier. Now, knowing more about Charles...
Sounds like, oh, there could be something developing on the mental health side, a psychosis that he may be attributing the commission of this crime to, he's justifying it to something that the normal person would go, that is just bizarre.
Gosh, it gets weirder. Okay, so Charles is saying he's gotten these threatening letters, and then he says, one evening, an Italian man stopped by the house while Charles was working on the front porch. He said, this Italian guy asked me about the papers in front of him. So Charles carries these patent papers around everywhere. Of course, he has copies. And this is, you know, connected to the invention.
Charles says, "This Italian guy and I had a conversation, and eventually he walked away." Charles said, "I took the papers and put them inside safely on the kitchen table." Concerned, though, he was afraid that this is the person who was the author of the anonymous letter saying, "You need to stop this patent immediately." And then he says that Hannah saw a strange man on the property who looked to be of Italian heritage, whatever that means,
But he wasn't inside the house, so he just was walking outside on the street and that was it. But this is, it sounds like Charles saying this. He said that later that day, Charles noticed that some of his papers were missing from the kitchen table. And, you know, he was very worried because now he's got these papers that are gone, not all of them, but
some. There's an Italian man walking around who he's scared of, and he's had these anonymous letters. And Charles is putting it all together and saying, this is awful. There's a guy out there targeting me and maybe my family, too. But he's still not talking about the murder. So is this continuing down the paranoia track for you? Yeah. Well, for sure. You know, but if he's making these statements, of course, you're going to try to corroborate those statements. It sounds like the investigators did go look for these papers. Yeah.
Who is this Italian man? You know, is he potentially a suspect in the homicides? And Charles was there. But I would imagine that the physical evidence is pointing so strongly at Charles is that they're not going to really have to focus on this mystical Italian man much at all. You know, they're pretty confident that Charles is the killer.
Now it's really getting down to, okay, so what exactly is going on with him on the mental side? Because they're going to have to evaluate, truly, did he know what he was doing when he killed his family?
Well, let me tell you what the police think. They start talking to family friends and talk to a few experts. They think that Charles is making the whole Italian thing up, that this man does not exist. He's never been able to turn over letters. They think that Charles has been so obsessed with
with working on this patent, that what happened was he did indeed leave, from what Harry remembers, these papers down on the kitchen table. And what this family friend, now the family members are not saying this, but a family friend theorizes this. You tell me what you think about this. The family friend thinks that what happened was a couple of the younger kids grabbed some of the papers. Charles
suspected they were the ones who grabbed the papers. And I don't know if he forgot about the Italian man who doesn't exist, but he snapped at three or four in the morning. I wonder if that's why he started in that room, because he thought the kids were the ones responsible. Right.
I think anything along those lines is possible, for sure. As Charles is relaying this, you know, this aspect, this is, you know, this seems to be his focus. You know, the patent, the papers, this Italian man, none of it is making sense relative to the type of crime that he committed.
This is where, from the law enforcement side, it sounds like they've got absolute probable cause to effect an arrest for, I don't know, how many died? - Oh gosh. - We have multiple homicides. We have multiple attempt homicides, 'cause you have several of the kids who lived.
So obviously this is a significant crime. He gets arrested. The DA would charge. But then you most certainly are going to be seeing an evaluation by an expert, a psychiatrist, a forensic psychiatrist. Where is Charles on the spectrum of mental health? Well, it gets a little complicated because...
You know, James is our hero, the 21-year-old. He confronts his brother, fights him, saves his life, certainly saves Harry's life. And the little girl who survived drags him down
James, he's a sketchy character and the police know him very well. He's arrested after the murders, but this happened before the murders, a couple of days before the murders. So there's highway robbery involved six days before Charles's rampage.
is when this happens. The charge is not taken lightly against James because one of the victims was struck by a train and killed when he was running from this gang. And it's interesting because, you know, the authorities did not want to arrest James immediately because of everything that was happening with his family when they were actually able to put together this case. But then the judge looks at him and once they finally bring him in and say, did you do this? And he nods his head.
He and Hannah fought all the time about his, James's behavior versus you take somebody like Charles, who seemed like sort of the perfect son when he wasn't gloomy and obsessive over his patent. So pretty quickly, James becomes the focal point of suspicion and gossip.
Because they think, the town thinks, because of kind of the way that he behaves, that the apple doesn't fall far from the, I don't know, brother tree, but that the two of them act the same way. There has to be a little bit of insanity with both of these brothers, and it becomes...
a little muddled because even though there's no evidence to back this up, pretty soon James is drawn in and people think maybe he's framing his brother. This is media and gossip, but still, I'm sure very hurtful for the surviving family members like Harry. Right now, sounds like really points Charles as being the killer.
But back in 1902, they probably don't have the photography to document all that. And so in order to go into court and show in front of a jury, hey, look, this is all this evidence that we have that points at Charles as being the killer. Without having that kind of documentation, it's very easy for, let's say, the defense to point at James and say, James is the bad apple of this family. He's the real killer. Yeah.
And he just happened to, you know, throw Charles, you know, into law enforcement's hands, kind of inserting himself into the investigation and staging it that Charles is the killer. So it would be tough. But right now, it does sound like James is just getting a bad rap for the homicides, though. I mean, he's committing a robbery that results in a death. Right. I mean...
He's culpable for a very serious crime right there. And he fights with his mother because he's a troublemaker. So, right, of all the Collies, James seems to be the one who is the most suited. But, boy, the crime, there's a big difference between highway robbery and chasing somebody until they get hit by a train and butchering little kids. When I read that point, it was likely Charles had sort of evaded
visualize the Italian man coming in and taking some pages and slipping back out. But then somewhere in there, he realized it might have been my little brothers and sisters. And that's why he heads to that room. That I can see clearly happening when he's standing there dripping in their blood. Just the description of his obsession over this patent
Boy, oh boy. I mean, what a motive here. I go back to the amount of violence on Hannah, his mom. I do think that there's something either that in reality happened between Charles and Hannah or Charles constructed something within his personality.
mind frame, if you will, as to why he was so angry at his mom and, you know, did such dramatic overkill. That speaks volumes to me. He is charged about two months after the murder. A grand jury recommends charging Charles with the homicides.
When he goes to trial, of course, he maintains his innocence. He says, somebody broke in and killed my family. It wasn't me. The interesting thing is the experts in psychology who were observing him in court said it seems that he genuinely does not think he was the one who did this. Like, this is not acting. This is somebody who does not remember something.
So he says, my mind was blank at the time that this act was committed. One expert, I know this wasn't about sleepwalking, one expert says he was probably sleepwalking during the event, that Charles probably had some sleep issues there.
But there is no doubt to the judge that Charles Cauley committed the murders. That being said, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. What do you think? You're nodding your head. I was wondering if you were going to be surprised about that. Because 1902, I didn't know they would be that progressive to be able to see that. I mean, obviously, there's a lot more information about Charles that would be needed, that they were dealing with, and what we've talked about in this episode.
But this, on the surface, with what I've heard, it definitely seems like, yes, there is a psychotic issue going on with Charles. You know, to what extent is it? I don't know. I'd have to rely on, you know, the experts who evaluated Charles to say, hey, this is what's going on with the 17-year-old kid.
But I can recall a case. It was a homicide case of a woman, and it was somebody who lived in her apartment complex that she was friends with that ultimately sexually assaulted and stabbed her. And walking into court and looking at his eyes sitting at the defendant's table, and you could just see there was something off with that guy. You know, that was very...
observable. And then eventually the judge in that case halted the trial and sent him off for further mental evaluation. And then he was found mentally incompetent to stand trial. I do believe there is those scenarios in reality. And maybe Charles, in reality, is mentally incompetent, you know, to be charged criminally. But too often,
That is where we see people who are not in that mind frame, but they use that as a defense. That's where you get skeptical. You know, is this real or isn't it? But it sounds like in Charles' case, there's at least enough there with the paranoia, his response to the investigation, the obsession that he has with this patent case.
that there is a mental health issue that is real. It's just unfortunate that so many people lost their lives because of that. Yeah, there was an expert who interviewed Charles and said that his memory of that brutal night literally is terrible.
just about the development he made on that stupid patent. And that was it. He doesn't remember anything else. And that's why they said he was temporarily insane during this murder spree. There were talks of transferring him to a psychiatric hospital, but he ends up spending most of his post-trial in the county jail. There were probably limited options for him.
So let's talk about what happens after this, because it's a sign of the times. The family members who survived and extended family refuse to turn their back on this guy. They think he really has some problems, that he doesn't remember anything, and that is that they want him out.
He, in 1904, just two years after the murders, is diagnosed with tuberculosis. The Cawley family says to the powers that be, let's get him out. Get him out right now. He was an excellent prisoner. He was coherent. He was no longer seen as a threat.
I have no idea why that would change once he's in prison. Is it because the patent is now gone? I'm assuming the government would not approve it. Is it that he can't tinker anymore and all of a sudden he's living in reality, but now all of a sudden he is Mr. Normal Guy in jail? What do you think about that? I would have reservations about letting him back out into society. Who's to say that he wouldn't have another
mental break, you know, and hurt somebody else. The crime that he committed, I mean, his mom, these kids...
with an ax, you know, I have problems. He may not be somebody that should be, you know, in general population in prison, but definitely under the care of professionals as well as, I personally believe, restricted from being out freely in society just because he's shown a propensity for extreme violence.
Well, according to an article in the Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette from around this time period, his attorneys and the jail attendants all say the boy, Charles, is perfectly harmless now.
He is so weak, physically weak, he can hardly raise his head up. His aunt says she loves the boy and wants to care for him on that account. And he's released. He gets out in late 1904, and he's released to the care of his aunt. And the first thing I thought of is, well, number one, did he get a new invention? Because he's now...
20. Did he get a new invention? Did he kill anybody else? What ends up happening? And what ends up happening is, like I said, a sign of the times. He dies from tuberculosis almost immediately after he gets out of jail. At 20, after all of this. Wow. My prediction is if he hadn't come down with tuberculosis and was let back out, that there is a possibility that he probably would have hurt somebody else. I go to Ed Kemper. Ed Kemper had some...
problems in his early teenage years, was given over to his grandparents to care for him, and then ended up becoming a serial killer, the co-ed killer. Sometimes these early behaviors earlier in youth are predictive of violence in the future. So with Charles,
Maybe he truly didn't remember what was going on due to the psychotic episode, but he's not somebody I would trust with my family members.
Well, I'll tell you, it scared the hell out of the people in this country. Once the story got around, the conclusion of this is poor Harry died two years after that. And we don't know what happened to anyone else except we do know about Ella Cawley, who was married and not on the property, who apparently went on and had a very nice life because her lovely descendant was the one who gave us the story.
But as I said, this scared the hell out of a lot of people because the Pittsburgh Weekly Gazette posted something I thought was really interesting. The Cawley tragedy at Homestead has resulted in numerous applications from parents who have partially or wholly demented children to have them admitted to the asylums. Man, what a story. I mean, this is it's so complicated because we
We have all of the experts now who would really be able to do a proper examination. And what we have is anecdotal evidence, which is this seems like to me all the hallmarks of somebody who really did have a huge mental break and didn't know what he was doing. But you never know. That doesn't mean he should have gotten out. No. And this is where, you know, there's investigating this multiple homicide. There's the law enforcement side. Got homicides. We're going to make an arrest.
charges filed, prosecution, et cetera. Charles is found mentally incompetent. But then there's also the public safety side. And even though maybe he cannot be held criminally liable for these homicides, we still have to consider, well, what is Charles' impact on public safety in general? And what mechanisms do we have that are outside of law enforcement to ensure that public safety is maintained
with Charles being released. And that is my primary concern, is yes, he needs professional help. But is that just, we're just now going to let him move freely out in society knowing what he is capable of doing when he has that kind of mental break? And I have great concerns about that mindset. What I wonder is, in that time period, it would have been once you had tuberculosis...
I wonder if it was compassion release because I'm not sure they thought he was going to survive because he died shortly after. But to your point, we don't know. I don't know. I was alarmed by that, too. You know, I like to bring you stories that are very forensic heavy and lots of autopsy discussions and how many blows to the head and blah, blah, blah.
But every once in a while, we do need to have just a good old-fashioned discussion about human behavior and what makes sense and what doesn't. And very few times have you and I been able to actually say, boy, this seems like somebody who really needed mental health help more than anything else in current-day mental health help, not 1902 mental health help. So this is a story of such a brutal crime that would be so hard to get over. But when the family says,
Please, we want to take care of him. He did not know what he was doing. I don't know.
Yeah. Well, you know, it comes back, you know, one of my fundamental texts that I initially read when I was 25 years old, it's called Crime and Human Nature. And this is where now you see the studies of the criminality that is present within our society. But there's also this stratification in terms of why do people commit crimes? And, you know, how do we treat people who are committing crimes but may not have the
the capacity to understand right from wrong.
to know that they're even committing an act of violence, like in Charles's case, you know, and then how do we handle people like that in a manner that is accepted within society? Because on one hand, Charles killed an entire family. He killed kids with an ax. You know, the anger, the rage of an offender committing that type of violence, he needs to be, you know, thrown into prison for the rest of his life.
But at the same time, if he truly has that mental incapacity, you know, it's like, okay, how do we handle that in the right way but keep the public safe? And I think that's part of the discussion, you know, and we see that today. There's no difference from 1902 to today in terms of, okay, we have these types of individuals. We're just not going to throw them in prison. The criminal justice system understands that.
but how do you handle them appropriately while keeping the public safe? And I think that's an ongoing debate depending on what you think about these types of mental health scenarios.
Well, this was a hard case. It involved children. It involved an entire family, a single mother, teenage boy, young man, who we don't know what happened there. But I know one thing for sure. You and I deserve a break. I think we need a break. This is a mandatory week off, Paul. I know you don't like doing stuff like that, but you are ordered to take one week off, and I will see you the following week.
All right. I look forward to it, Kate. Thanks. 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 McClashan, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.
Our mixing engineer is Ben Talladay. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogle. Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at BuriedBonesPod.
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked: A Gilded Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases is also available now.