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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.

Lady to Lady here to tell you we are celebrating our 600th episode. We commemorate every 100th show with the iconic actor and our dear friend, French Stewart. French, French, French, French, French, French, French, French. I'm French Stewart. And this time we took him to Las Vegas, baby. Tune in to hear about all the antics and make sure to check out more episodes. We've got literally 600 to choose from.

They're packed with sleepover games and ridiculous tangents with the best guests. Don't miss new episodes every Wednesday. Follow Lady to Lady wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold. Very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪

Hey, Kate. How are you? I'm doing well. How about you? I am. I'm hanging in there. Good. I have a big decision. Maybe you can help me make it. I have a big decision to make. Oh, okay. I am considering getting contacts, and I've never, ever had contacts before. And I have friends who fall asleep accidentally with their contacts on, and it's like a horror scene, and they're crying, and it's awful, and I'm scared. Okay.

I know many men of a certain age need to get glasses and you don't have them. And then I just found out you have contacts. What do you mean men of a certain age? You've put one of my feet in the grave. No, that's, you know, yeah, you know, I...

God, I had perfect vision up until really maybe my early 40s to mid 40s and then ultimately had to wear glasses. And then after I retired and quite frankly, having to do some of the TV work that I did, wearing glasses became problematic, you know, because editors are constantly having to sync different edits up and

And, you know, I'm constantly taking my glasses off and on. And I did a show, well, it was DNA of Murder. I did an episode with Lonnie Coombs, who also wears glasses. But, you know, we would have to put glasses on to look at this laptop screen that was sitting in front of us for the segment.

And then when we would talk to each other, we're constantly taking our glasses off. And so we're constantly putting glasses on and off and driving the editors nuts. And then I recognized I needed to man up and get contacts. And I have always been scared to touch my eyes. That is the one thing I can't handle. That's a thing, right? Isn't that a phobia? I don't know if it's a phobia or not. I know it's something that I just did not want to do. And I...

have seen the most horrific things. But like when I'm in the morgue, the one thing I will not watch is when the pathologist needs to interact with the deceased's eyes. Oh, wow. I don't like that. Oh. So getting contacts was scary. It took me a while to learn how to take the contacts out. Putting them in was pretty easy, but taking them out was hard. In fact, I had to go in

to my optometrist one morning to get them out because I couldn't figure it out. I was so scared that I'd just go so hard that my eyeball would be rolling around in the sink when I was done. But eventually it becomes routine. I don't think there's anything you need to be scared of. I have...

slept through the night with my contacts in. They're just soft contacts, just these dailies. And your eyes do get scratchy, but I also find they kind of dry out and that makes it easier in the morning to be able to pull them out. So I really haven't had any nightmare scenario. Once a contact kind of floated up above the eyelid and I had to fish it out. Paul, you have to stop. This is all nightmare scenario.

You are not helping me one little bit. But the convenience. Yeah, I will say it is nice to be able to go through the day without, you know, carrying my glasses around, putting them on if I want to look at my phone or, you know, just read something on the computer screen. So the convenience is there. The weird thing with...

my prescription is I've got what's called monovision. So my left eye has the prescription to allow me to look at the computer screen and see it clearly, and my right eye is for distance. And so both eyes, when you're looking through both eyes at the same time, it's a little weird, and the brain kind of adjusts. So if I look

Like if I want to look at the mountains, you know, it's my right eye that has to focus. And when I'm having to look at you on the computer screen right now, it's my left eye, whereas my right eye, you're just fuzzy. Well, I have to wear my old glasses when I look at you on my computer screen because my new glasses that are progressive glasses.

You're just at the worst angle. Like, you're too close for me to be on my close-ups and too far away. It's really confusing. So I am considering, I mean, I'm on the computer all the time. I do a lot of sort of like back-and-forth television-type stuff, and the glare of my glasses bothers me, and so I am thinking about it. But I might have a little bit of that fear. I don't have a problem getting, like, an eyelash out of my kid's eye, but I do have a hard time thinking that contacts are going to be okay. But...

I'm not sure you've helped, but it's more information, I guess, you and your dried out contacts. You know, all I can do is provide data and you have to make the decision yourself.

Your lack of sympathy is apparent here. Well, I'll let you know. Well, I guess you'll be one of the first to know because all of a sudden I won't be wearing my glasses and you'll be like, what happened? I know. So I'm excited. Big changes ahead. Big changes. That's about as dramatic as my life gets. Contacts, no contacts. I'm looking forward to seeing you glassless. Yep. Well, I'll let you know. Well, I want to get into this story because it is, I think, interesting when people are...

Trying to cover up a crime. And I think I've told you this, you know, I interviewed a forensic chemist and we talked about fire and how people think some magic thing happens when you pour gasoline on someone and light it and that it's going to completely, you know, solve all their problems and the body is going to dissolve and and that's it. And it's.

Not that easy to cover up a crime, not as easy as you would think. And this is, I think, an interesting sort of way and a disturbing story at the same time. So you'll have to tell me what you think about all this. You know, it's a story set in the 1800s, in late 1800s in upstate New York. So let's set the scene.

So, trigger warning here. This is involving the sexual assault and the murder of a child, a 14-year-old girl. This is in Plainfield, New York, and this is about 10 years after the end of the Civil War, late 1800s, so 1878.

And Plainfield is right in the middle of the state. And we are in a farm setting. And straight away, I'm going to ask you about farm settings because in our experience, farm settings mean it's easy, seemingly pretty easy to get away with stuff.

Because in the 1800s, farm settings, these are people who live miles away. It's very isolated. There are weapons everywhere. Oftentimes, women are left alone because the men go off and go into the fields. And this makes, I think, people pretty vulnerable. And then the flip side is, well, you would think they're safer. They're not in a big city. Bad things aren't happening. I feel like for us, a farm setting sometimes is challenging. What do you think? Well, when you think about...

You know, this is a limited witness pool. The low-density population would allow an offender to go and commit a crime, whether it be outside or inside.

And your visual witnesses, your audio witnesses, you know, because of the distances between the farms, it's almost by happenstance that somebody, that a witness might be present to either see or hear the crime being committed if the offender is planning the crime appropriately.

So that does create challenges. And when we start talking about this era, you know, it's not like if somebody discovers that a crime has been committed, that law enforcement can be notified right away. So the offender has so much time and geography in order to be able to escape unnoticed and separate himself from that location. And on top of that,

the law enforcement that is there in the late 1800s in a smaller, quiet area, rural, they're not going to be experienced most of the time in investigating these big cases. And, you know, it could take them forever to bring in somebody who's more experienced from a bigger city, which often would happen. So they're at a big disadvantage. And on top of that,

Remember the whole bell ringing? That was the emergency is they would ring almost like a dinner bell. And then the neighbors would come running and the neighbors are picking up axes and trampling over footprints and shoe prints. And so there's just so much opportunity for, you're right, the person to disappear into the woods. I feel like we are already at a disadvantage every single time we talk about a murder in the 1800s in a farm setting. So already it makes me nervous. No, for sure. You know, but we have to work with what we've got.

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

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.

So there are three men who are involved here. There are two farmhands. One is a 20-year-old named Myron Beal. One is a 32-year-old named Daniel Bowen. And they're both, you know, farmhands, laborers on the farm. And the owner of the farm is a man named William Richards.

He's married, and he has a daughter. We're going to focus right now on Myron because he is one of the people who makes a pretty bad discovery here. So Myron is the 20-year-old. A little bit of background on him. He was born on a farm in Plainfield, so local boy.

And if you're born on a farm, it's not predictive of, you know, whether you're going to be a big burly guy or not. I guess just your stature is your stature and you do the best you can on a farm. And that's what his lot was in life. Yeah, you know, and I imagine, you know, with the type of hard labor that Myron is doing, regardless of his stature,

You know, he's probably developed a fair amount of just functional strength. And he could be somebody who's my size, which is kind of like the average male size here in the United States, or he could be a much larger guy or even a much smaller guy.

but he likely has pretty decent functional strength. He may not look very strong. It's not like, you know, he's consuming protein shakes and, you know, developing, you know, a lot of this muscle hypertrophy from doing the heavy lifting on the farm. But I guarantee that he's probably fairly physically capable. You

You know, when I was 12 or 13 and I was on my dad's farm, which I talk about sometimes, he had me doing all kinds of manual labor. He would bring over bales of hay on a tractor and I would grab them, you know, with their twine, with big gloves on and throw them up onto a pile. And I would climb on the top of the pile and he would throw up, you know, a hay bale and I would grab it. And I was young. I was 12 or 13 and I was perfectly capable of doing that. So I think

growing up on a ranch that my dad taught me how to cut wood. And, you know, I used an axe from a very young age and I painted, I would just say, miles of fences. Even though I'm sure I didn't look particularly burly, I definitely had functional strength. So when we describe Myron as a boy or youthful looking, I definitely don't want to discount the fact that this is somebody who has been working now for two seasons, two years on Mr. Richard's farm.

So he has had a great reputation. He was a hard worker. He could tackle all sorts of tasks. Very smart. And right now, this is interesting, these are farmhands who are hoeing hops.

What do you know about hops? Because the only thing I can think about with hops is, of course, beer. Are there any other things that you know about hops? You have a quizzical look on your face. They're an anti-inflammatory. I know that. My perspective, I've looked into how

beer is made. And so I remember kind of reading about hops. And so that really is my only, I don't even want to say that it's a knowledge base. I'm just more aware of how hops are used. And of course, when you drink beer, oh, it's got a hoppy taste.

But from what I remember is that this is a very fast-growing plant that grows up like lines and then these wires, you know, that are then, it's like a trellis system. And now you've got, you know, the actual, is it the flower? I think it's the flower that is collected. So in terms of hoeing up the hops, it almost sounds like this is the ground preparation, you know, to grow the hops or, you know, at the end of the season where now they're having to take down the plants and then...

get the ground ready to replant for the next season. Well, and what I thought was interesting is I assumed beer, and I'm sure it was beer, but at the same time, I didn't know that it was used medicinally by a lot of different cultures. The Native Americans had used it for a whole host of reasons, sleep, bladder problems, anxiety, fever, like breast and womb problems.

And it sounded almost like a sedative, which I thought was interesting in a murder story, that there are these two young guys out there hoeing hops on this man's farm, and we know that a murder is coming. We just don't know of what. Okay. Yeah. Kind of curious to see where this goes. Yep. So hops. There you go. One of those things I never think about. Of course, hops need to be hoed. I never thought of it before. But that's just to reiterate, these are two strong guys out there.

So Myron and Daniel, who is his coworker, are winding down for the day. And they notice, and this is in June, just to remind everybody, this is June 25th of 1878. So I'm sure a warm day. And the two of them are winding down and they notice that there is a bull.

running amok on the property, which would be alarming as someone who grew up around bulls and currently has bulls on their property. It's a little frightening. Probably somebody is going to say, don't be frightened by bulls, but it's hard not to be. Have you encountered a bull? I know about the bear, but I don't know about a bull. Hold on.

I didn't know you had bulls on your property. Yeah, well, not in Austin. On the farm, on the family farm, we have cows and bulls. And cute little story, my kids are in love with this donkey. You know, donkeys need to have companion animals, and her companion animal is a goat. What?

Oh, okay. Who is a little creepy, I have to be honest. I mean, the goat stares at me in a way that the bull stares at me, but the donkey stares at me with love, so that's why I'm drawn to the donkey. It's a complicated ecosystem we have at this moment. I'm learning all sorts of things. You're throwing bales of hay up. I know. I'm a complicated woman, I will say.

So there's a bull running amok. This would have been frightening for these two guys. They told each other, kind of within trying to stay back and make sure they're not going to get hurt, that the bull must have escaped from one of the nearby barns on the property. And Myron runs and immediately tries to wrangle the bull. And in the meantime, Daniel, the other farmhand, rushes toward the barn and

He throws open the doors to the barn to figure out where this bull came from. And inside the pen, he finds something that he says is absolutely terrifying. It's the dead body of the owners of the farm, the Richards, 14-year-old daughter. Her name is Catherine Mary Richards.

She is dead. She appears to have been mauled. And she is in the bull's pen. And both of these young men seemed very alarmed by this. So what are your first impressions? I know you want all kinds of details, and I have them. But, you know, that kind of a scene...

seems on first blush, you would say she got into the bull's pen and he ran amok and then, you know, somehow got out and this girl is dead. That would not be, I feel like, out of the realm of possibility on a farm. No, you know, and I think that that's obviously something that would have to be looked into in terms of, you know, her injuries, you know, that there would be some distinctive injuries that would indicate trampling by the bull, possibly, you

being impaled by the bull's horns and evaluating is there anything about the injuries to indicate that they were fresh injuries

or do you have post-mortem aspects? You know, this is where I know we're going to be talking about a homicide. And so is this part of staging a crime scene where you put a dead body into the pen with a bull and then now you agitate the bull so it's now stomping around inside the pen in order to put some false injuries on the body before the bull is allowed out?

So I am interested in the details, but my initial thought, you know, of course, is what kind of staging is going on with Catherine. Well, and I have a query about how you would investigate something like this today. Let's say that the injuries to her, let's say it's just blunt force, right? Like that it looks like she's been beaten to death or stepped on or whatever that could possibly have happened by a bull.

What would they do to tease that out? Would they be looking for, like, organic material from the bull's horns or from the hoofs to determine whether it happened from a bull or whether it happened from a piece of wood or somebody's fist if the injuries could kind of be consistent? Well, you know, first and foremost, this is where it really comes down to very thorough documentation because, again,

at the scene with this type of blunt force trauma. It could be a very bloody scene. A lot of the actual injuries, the wounds may not be readily visible until the body is cleaned up. But the idea of, let's say, layered injuries where you have a homicide with blunt force trauma using whether it be fists and stomping or

an impact weapon of some sort, a hammer, a baseball bat. And then now you have a 2000 plus pound animal stomping on that body. It could very easily complicate the interpretation of what happened.

And so the devil would be in the details and it really would depend on, well, what is present that could differentiate post-mortem damage by this large animal versus violence inflicted by a human

And it's not necessarily just the injuries to the bodies. It's what's going on with the clothing. It's what's going on within the crime scene. Is there a secondary crime scene? Obviously, if there's blood in the house that's on the property and now Catherine's body is in this bullpen, well, obviously the bull isn't inside the house doing it. That would be a clue, you know? But, you know, it really depends on what is present and what's

it would be so easy to miss maybe that little detail that would differentiate homicide from accidental stomping by the bull. Well, let's continue. Daniel is petrified at this. Myron runs up and is very upset also. And the two men go to the farmhouse to alert others, except that Catherine's mother and father are away from the farm.

Mr. Richards is in another town doing business and Mrs. Richards is in a store across the county. So the only one who's there is a woman who is Catherine's sister, Maggie. There happens to also be a seamstress who joins up with them and accompanies them in and they go back to the barn. Maggie is in complete shock.

and says to the farmhands, how did Catherine die? And Myron says, we assume it was from the bull because she was found in the bull's pen and the bull was running around and people get kicked all the time. Little something about me, Paul, I've been kicked by a horse numerous times. One, I was taught by a farrier how to clean a horse's hooves and I just made a bad decision about where to go and I got kicked twice.

And it hurts. It has a huge bruise. It can kill people, you know, if you're not standing in the right place. And I was not standing in the right place a couple of times, and I learned a lesson. So when I read the details of, you know, potentially is this going to be something that a bull did, I didn't think this was going to be surprising at all. Plenty of people died from both bulls and horses.

When Mr. and Mrs. Richards come home and they're told what happens, they don't seem that surprised, not because, you know, they weren't upset, but that is what happens sometimes, as we've talked about, living on a farm. This spreads across the community, and it's, you know, really seen as a tragic death at this point. And the bull explanation is very plausible to just about everybody who hears about it, except our very smart coroner.

And we've talked about coroners before, how they are elected. They don't always have to be. They many times don't have medical knowledge, I will tell you. In a season of Tenfold More Wicked, I deal with a coroner who became a coroner because he owned a very popular tavern and people thought he would make a great coroner.

So we happen to have a smart one, thank goodness, here. But let's just review coroners right now for us. Okay. Well, you know, of course, in our current day, we have both coroners as well as medical examiners. Depending on the state and jurisdiction, the coroners can either be elected officials or

or a combined official. Like, I used to work for a sheriff-coroner office, so the elected sheriff was actually the coroner as well. But he wasn't involved in the day-to-day aspects of the coroner's operations. There was a captain that was assigned

And the pathologists were the ones that conduct the autopsy and determine cause of death. And then the captain would be the one that issues the death certificate with the manner of death based on what a true medical doctor determined. However, in jurisdictions across the United States back in the 1800s, as well as still today today,

There are elected coroners, and oftentimes they became coroners because they were funeral home directors. So they were used to seeing and working with the deceased, but they're not medical professionals. In some jurisdictions, the individuals conducting the autopsies have limited expertise relative to other jurisdictions and the pathologists that have been hired there. So this is where now you get into situations to where things get missed sometimes.

On all fronts, whether it be a homicide, an accidental, a natural suicide, you know, these can be missed because you don't have the people with the right experience or expertise conducting the examinations and then forming the right expert opinions. What is the solution to that nationwide?

Well, you know, it's a complicated answer. There has been recommendations over the years that the coroner's system should be abolished and it should move entirely over to medical examiners.

where now you have true medical professionals that are not only the ones that are conducting the examinations on the deceased, whether it be the autopsies or the microscopic exams or reviewing the toxicology results and forming a medical expert opinion as to the cause of death. And then you have a medical professional, the medical examiner himself, who's the one that is issuing the death certificate as to the manner of death.

But there's complications with that, of course. Now you're having to completely change a system in which you have a very powerful elected official that's not going to want to give up that power. And there's a democratic aspect to that. There's statutes in place that would have to be recodified. And then there's costs involved, huge costs in terms of if you're going to become a medical...

examiner's office, and let's say you want to abide by accreditation standards, there's a maximum number of autopsies that a forensic pathologist within an accredited medical examiner's office can do. And in order to meet that standard, so you can become an accredited medical examiner's office, oftentimes you have to

double or triple the number of pathologists that you have employed. Well, pathologists are expensive and they're rare. In fact, we have a dilemma because there's very few medical professionals that want to become forensic pathologists. Really?

Yes. You know, so it's a tough thing to find and hire forensic pathologists. And so now what you see and what happened in my county is you have contract pathologists. And so they, under contract, work for a county, but they often work for multiple counties.

So they not only do autopsies for one county and then they will get in their car and drive to another county and have to do more autopsies. And so they're stretched thin. So there's a lot of resources, money, changes that would have to be made in order to fix the system.

Well, I don't know the background of this coroner from 1878 looking at Catherine Mary Richards when he's doing an autopsy or an examination. But he is calling BS on this whole bull story. So I'll tell you what he says. And I don't have a ton of details, Paul. We're just going to have to trust that he clearly knows what he's doing. He says she's covered in scratches and bruises that he doesn't think are consistent with a bull.

He says she was hit near the temple with some sort of blunt object. He does not think that it was a gore from a bull's horns or stomping. She had heavy marks around her neck that appear to have been made by some sort of ligature. So this idea that the bull did all this, of course, gets flown out the window.

And he said it seems clear that she died of strangulation. So the question of where the other crime scene is, is it doesn't seem like there is one. There is a young girl in a bullpen with the gate open who has appeared to be strangled. So the coroner says this is murder. This was struggle. She fought hard and this is not a bull. And now we need to investigate. So what do you think about all that? It seems pretty clear. Right.

Yeah, no, they got lucky. If the coroner is taking a look and sees ligature marks encircling Catherine's neck, a bull isn't doing that by stomping and bucking around inside that pen. So now there still has to be an evaluation of what else is going on with Catherine's body in terms of what can be attributed to the bull versus what is not.

but also an evaluation of this bull pen as a crime scene itself. How did the bull escape? Was it purposefully let out? Does it indicate that the bull became agitated and just somehow broke out of the pen? And if it looks like the bull must have been purposefully let out, well, who would do that? Why would they do that? And this is where your investigation starts going. And this is now having to

talk to, okay, so when was Catherine last seen? Who was she last seen with? The people who are on this isolated farm, they need to account for all of their activities over the course of the last 24 hours. And right now, I

I have no information when Catherine was last seen, so I don't know how long she's been dead. Was she killed the day before and she's just now being discovered or was she killed that morning? Well, the parents and the sister saw her that day. And again, huge farm and everybody did different things on this farm and the parents left. The farmhand saw her that day. This is near the end of the day.

And one more piece of medical evidence that is very important. The coroner says it appears she had been sexually assaulted either just before or just after her death. Now, do I have details on what that means and how they came to that conclusion? No.

Why do I think that he probably knew what he was talking about? If they gave evidence that they said this is somebody who has definitely been sexually assaulted, it means they probably found fluid and definitely disheveled clothing and probably trauma to the vaginal area or a different aerobatic.

But there was not a been a microscope era at this point where we would have had a coroner being able to look at different things under the microscope. But he said he is certain she's been sexually assaulted. So there's part of your motive right there, it seems like. No, no, for sure. And, you know, anytime I'm dealing with a female victim that's been strangled, you know, there always has to be.

that mindset that sexual motivation was part of the contributing factors to the crime. Whether or not sex acts were accomplished doesn't negate the idea that it's a sexually motivated crime. You're exactly right in terms of back in this era, they're looking at her state of clothing. You know, was she, let's say, nude from the waist down? Was her body left in a splayed type of position?

Was there trauma to the genital area or other parts of her body that would indicate some sort of sex acts had occurred? And then the idea, you know, during autopsy, sometimes, not all the time, there can be a visualization of, let's say, semen within the vaginal vault, as an example.

They're not necessarily doing a formal identification of it, but a coroner pathologist would say this substance is not something that is native to this female body. One thing I want to talk about, because these words will come up a little bit, and I know I've said this before, you know, of course, they didn't say rape or sexual assault in the 1800s. Oftentimes, if you read in the 1800s newspapers or in documents, if you see outrage, he outraged her, that's sexual assault.

"Molest," which seems a little clearer, is also one. But the third one that pops up a couple of times in this story is "ravish." So, you know, he ravished her. And actually, my kid was just reading "1984," and she said to me, Winston, who's one of the main characters of "1984," you know, George Orwell's book, says he wants to ravish this woman. And she said, "What does that even mean?" And then I had to have a discussion with her about what that meant.

And she was very confused about the word. So, you know, oftentimes we have to explain what these words are because I'll read verbatim some of the things that were said. So just so you're clear. Yeah.

Yeah, well, I had never heard the term outraged used in that fashion, you know, so that's very educational. Yep. Well, this is interesting, the way this moves forward, because the coroner's declaration that this was murder alarms everyone. This is a young girl, you know, from a family of farmers. This is an innocent area. This is rural. Everybody's supposed to be safe. All of this stuff.

that we think comes with living on a farm. And now people are scared to death about who is out there. And they immediately start asking, of course, about alibis, which on a farm is really hard. These are people who work independently, who are oftentimes not seen for, you know, days and days at a time. I mean, you and I, if you have to think back to the beginning of Barry Bones, one of our very first episodes was

was about a young man who fell from the top of a windmill. Remember? I am remembering that. People hadn't seen him for a long time. He was up there by himself working on a windmill. And then his uncle comes back and he's dead at the bottom. And the big question is, was he murdered because he had some inheritance? And so it is a mystery because you've got the outside where there's...

nightmare for forensics. You know, you've got people who are working in very isolated conditions, very far apart. And so when they're asking these farmhands, where were you when she might have been murdered, the timelines are a little bit squishy. So Myron is someone they look at pretty closely. He's the 20-year-old.

And he was actually absent during a key window of time here when they believe she was killed. She was warm when the coroner reported out there. He went pretty quickly, it sounds like. So they know it happened that people saw her in the early afternoon and she's dead before the sun goes down. So Myron is kind of under suspicion at the beginning because they're trying to figure out what his timeline is. His co-worker, Daniel, says that while they were out tending to the hops, Myron

Myron said that his boots were giving him some blisters. He went to the farmhouse to grab a new pair of boots, but that should have been pretty quick, and he didn't return for 45 minutes.

And when Daniel says, where were you? He says that he was wrangling a colt and a mare that had busted out of a nearby stable, which is a totally valid alibi. I mean, we are talking about unexpected things that are happening. I was backed up against a tree for about 25 minutes because a water moccasin was sitting in front of me and I was petrified. So, I mean,

I would not have had a good alibi either if that were happening. And that's what Myron says. Try to prove me wrong. So a couple of things. Myron is isolating himself from

back to the farmhouse. So is this where I'm presuming where Catherine was likely located at? They aren't sure just yet. Okay. Because she is wandering around doing different things also. She was a really big fan of playing with the calves. Remember, she's 14, she's young. Yep. And she likes to play with the calves, so nobody knows 100% where she was when this happened. That's the problem. And then the second thing is, is Myron to account for why it took him so long...

is he's having to wrangle these other animals that had broken out. And Catherine is found because a bull reportedly breaks out, which we know is a truthful and factual occurrence. You know, so this is where, okay, so how often are the animals breaking out on this farmhouse?

Or is Myron doing what typical liars do? Is he weaving some truth, some fact into his statement? So those are things that I'm paying attention to in evaluating Myron. So if he's going back to the farmhouse, he's isolated. Okay, in my mind, he's checking a box of he potentially has opportunity to commit the crime. What was Myron and Catherine's relationship like there?

prior to the homicide occurring.

Do we know that? Funny you should ask, Paul Holes. Oh. Things get pretty complicated because of Myron. The investigators, of course, find out that his alibi is, as I say, squishy. And they start talking to people about Myron and his relationship, if there even is one with Catherine. So Myron's been there. I think he's going on his third season now, seasonal work as a farmhand. So probably the first time he met Catherine would have been...

been when she was about 11 or 12. It sounds like, according to

Daniel and according to other people who have been around them both, that he was infatuated with Catherine. So six years his junior, which would not be that surprising if she felt the same way. And she didn't. 14 and 20 wouldn't have shocked anybody in the 1800s, really. So Catherine did not like his advances. He had proposed to her

She said no. I'm sure her father was not thrilled about it either. He reacted inappropriately, according to Murder by Gaslight, which is my favorite true crime blog. He proposed and she said no. What witnesses, you know, propriety in the 1800s, what they said was that he made improper suggestions that were really distressing for Catherine to hear, which means lewd comments and

And Catherine was really freaked out and said, I'm going to tell my parents if you don't stop. And so he backed off. So he was reacting. And this is where we need to get into profiling if this is our guy. He's reacting in a very aggressive, almost verbally right now, violent way when she's rejecting his advances. His boss's daughter. Well, Myron is checking another box.

You know, he is showing an infatuation or maybe even an obsession with Catherine for, sounds like, several years leading up to her homicide. So this is where, okay, he's isolated himself. He's given himself an opportunity to have committed the crime. He has had a prior interest in Catherine for a few years leading up to the crime being committed. When the bull is seen,

Myron is back with Daniel, hoeing the hops. Do we have an idea on how long Myron had been with Daniel before the bull shows up?

I don't have that idea, no. I'm not sure Daniel's really good at figuring out the timeline. It sounds like he left to get new boots and then the bull at some point comes out. It sounds like Daniel just knew that Myron should have been back far sooner and then everything goes out the window when this bull is running around and both guys are freaked out. But we know when the bull is running around that Myron and Daniel are now together because they're worried about the bull.

And that's when Daniel makes the discovery of Catherine dead in the bull's pen. So that's the sequence of events. But I don't know timeline-wise how much time was there. You know, and that'd be one of the things that that timeframe would be one of the things that I'd be kind of paying attention to. Because let's use the hypothetical that Myron is Catherine's killer. He kills her, places her in the bullpen, and then leaves the gate open for the bull to get out. Mm-hmm.

How long would it take for the bull to either figure out how to get out or was the bull forced out of the pen so now Catherine's body could be discovered in the bullpen in this staging of a crime scene? And this is what is so significant to me. Imagine a stranger who's just wandering through the countryside and stumbles across this farm, sees Catherine, sexually assaults, strangles Catherine.

He has no connection to the farm. He has no connection to the people on the farm. Why is he going to elevate his risk by manipulating Catherine's body and taking Catherine's body to the bullpen in order to try to stage this crime scene? That stranger offender is going to run off and get away and not take that time. So this is where the staging of the crime scene happens.

really does kind of focus my attention on the people that would likely be suspects. They themselves think they would be a suspect. They're trying to misdirect. They're trying to cover up this homicide and make it look like an accidental death.

So, again, that is consistent with Myron. I'm not saying Myron's the guy right now, but, you know, Myron has some explaining to do in my mind.

Tell me what you think about this, because I don't think Daniel likes Myron very much. He tells investigators when they say, tell us about this guy. He had a good reputation as a hard worker on the farm. And Daniel says that Myron told him something disturbing. Weeks before Catherine's death, Myron said to Daniel that Myron had a relative, a male relative. So this is Myron's relative, not Myron's.

Now, this is the quote. This is why I needed to give you some definitions of rape from the 1800s. Who had, quote, succeeded in outraging girls by choking them with a cord.

So he's not saying, I do this. He's saying my relative does that. Why would he do that if he is guilty of what just happened? And this is before Catherine dies, but isn't that an odd thing to say? It is, though, you know, it's not unheard of, you know, in terms of individuals almost bragging about what happened.

whether what they've done or what family members or other associates have done to a confidant, you know. But this is where, okay, we have this statement that Daniel is saying Myron told him. And, of course, the details in that statement overlap with what happened with Catherine.

I need to know, well, is this really factual with a relative of Myron's that I would assume that Daniel would have no idea about unless Myron had actually made that statement? Or does Daniel have somebody in his family who has done that? You know, and so this is where it's, okay, I now have a statement that's significant to

And is Daniel putting that out there because Myron truly did say that to him? Or is Daniel putting that out there because he's trying to direct the investigation and keep the focus of the investigation on Myron? And if it turns out that Daniel is the one that has somebody in his family that has done this type of crime over and over again with women, now I start to think, well, maybe Daniel

is the one that is responsible because there's no reason to do that misdirection and lie to law enforcement. Absent using modern technology, now this is just gumshoe investigative technique to try to figure out which one of these guys is the one that killed Catherine.

And I was just thinking this, you know, if they had been able to pin the semen on because of DNA and they were able to pin it on Daniel or Myron. So then you could say to one of these guys, this is your evidence on her.

Modern day guy would say, yeah, we had sex and that was it. She agreed. That was it. I mean, and I left her. I don't know what happened to her. She was fine when I left her. There's no way that response would have been believed in the 1800s at all. Let me give you physical evidence that would help tease that out.

So in all likelihood, you know, there are instances where offenders redress their victims. But oftentimes with these sexually motivated homicides where the victim, like Catherine, is strangled, the sequence can vary. But let's say she is strangled contemporaneous to the sexual acts.

Now she's placed in the bullpen. Chances are her undergarments haven't been placed back on her. So one of the types of physical evidence that I would be looking at is, okay, presuming the coroner's right and there's vaginal semen, after, let's say, a sexual assault, the woman redresses the

There's vaginal drainage, which now into the crotch of the underwear, we get that semen into the crotch. It shows that her clothing had been put back on after the semen had been deposited internally. So I would be looking at Catherine's clothing to see, oh, yes, I see this, whether it be Daniel or Myron's semen in her undergarments, which would indicate the sex act possibly occurred prior to the homicide because she was allowed to redress before.

And then you have the vaginal drainage. But if I don't see that, then it would suggest that her undergarments had been taken off, the semen had been deposited, and she was not allowed to redress or go vertical and function with these undergarments on. So now this is not, oh, I just had sex with her.

This is, well, you had sex with her and she never put her underwear back on and she's been strangled. There's more to the story here.

Well, that's interesting. Moving forward, we'll just kind of go through this quickly. He is arrested because he seems like a jerk and he says weird, creepy things. And it sounds like she rejected him and people knew that. There is zero physical evidence. They did not find a cord, if that's what he used. There was no way to really pin it on him. And they put him on trial for 10 days, which is just like an epically long trial from the 1800s.

And the journalists watch him because he is fascinating to them. He seems either puzzled or indifferent. I don't know why.

I don't know how journalists think that killers are supposed to react when they're sitting there listening in their own trial. But some of the most entertaining things from the 1800s I've read is just like the description of these people. And I kept thinking, well, how would you react if you're sitting there with all these reporters staring at you and the victims' families? There's no right reaction, I think, from anybody, particularly a guilty person. Sure. You know, and it is hard to assess and

You know, I've testified, well, I've actually testified close to 200 times, but I would say 50, over 50 times for major felony cases in which, you know, a defendant is looking at a serious charge. And how they're sitting there, I mean, most of them look disengaged, to be frank. I've seen some, you know, like notably...

NorCal rapist. He was very engaged with the testimony. And then I've also seen, I've literally seen what a psychotic defendant looks like. Somebody where you walk in and you go, oh yeah, he's not here. You know, he mentally has an issue. And in fact, the judge ultimately in that case, you know, found the guy incompetent to stand trial.

So it is so hard to assess, evaluating like Myron's disposition as he's standing trial for what ultimately, you know, is going to determine what's going to happen to him for the rest of his life or whether he's going to continue to live. And I'll tell you, Paul, I mean, I don't know if a lot of people know this, but they regularly drugged defendants during their trials. So, you know, I've written about, I would say, half a dozen people who were given morphine right before their trial. So,

You cannot look at him and assess anything in any way possible to think this is an accurate picture of who this person is. But Myron really fascinated reporters. And I want to get to, to me, one of the more interesting parts here. And we're just going to skip over the trial. I mean, really, he is, despite, I think, a lack of evidence, he is found guilty. Does that surprise you or no? I mean, there's no evidence against him, except he's a creep. Right.

And he has no real good alibi, but I mean, that's farm life. Yeah, you know, because I was going to make a comment that though there's some boxes checked on Myron, I don't think that the investigators with what you've told me have developed sufficient probable cause for arrest. He's a suspect.

Daniel, depending on details about his timelines and his statements and everything else, as I discussed before, potentially is a suspect too. And that's where we need to figure out

is it one of these two or is it Mr. X, the stranger who happened to wander onto the property? So that's where it's like, yeah, Myron probably has the most boxes checked because of isolating himself, the statements where he's wrangling these animals that broke out of their pen and we happen to have a bull break out of the pen where Catherine was found.

as well as his prior infatuation with Catherine. But this doesn't add up enough to where I believe that there's probable cause that he can be arrested for Catherine's murder.

He's just suspect number one in my mind. Well, what's interesting about Myron is this is one of those cases from the 1800s that I bring to you where I look at this and go, there's not enough evidence. Just like you said, there's not enough evidence. This guy never should have been convicted.

He might not have done it just because he's weird and a creep and checks some boxes does not mean he should be sent to the gallows. And then I read that three days before his execution, he confesses to all of it. Very detailed. And that's why I wanted to get to the confession, because he planned this out. And luckily for the prosecutors, they got the right person. And it doesn't seem like it was Daniel or Mr. Richards, her father, or Mystery Man X.

He gives a detailed confession, but this was not, I would not say dumb luck that they got the right person, but boy, you know, this doesn't happen all the time where it's scant evidence and they convict and this is definitely the right person because he said, yeah, I did it. I'm telling you I did it. And here's how. Yeah. Well, and this is where it comes down to, you know, looking at, you know, various suspects on various cases over the decades that I've worked cases. Yeah.

It's, God, there seems to be enough substance here. This is possibly the guy. Do I have probable cause? You know, and this is something any investigator working a kind of a whodunit homicide is asking. There's obvious, in modern day cases, there's obvious things. We have DNA that we know came from the offender and it matches the suspect. Yes.

But when you're dealing with circumstances, one of the things about probable cause, and you'll hear whether it be, you know, when you're going through legal training and the police academy or experienced homicide investigators says, well, I can't necessarily define probable cause, but I know it when I see it. And then you have to convince a DA, I've got probable cause or a judge, I've got probable cause. Yeah.

I think it was the Supreme Court that was trying to define pornography. We can't define it, but we know it when we see it. It's very much the same feeling. Well, let me tell you about the confession. And then he says something that I want you to react to. And it's the very last thing he says. He appealed under the grounds that the judge should have advised the jury. So this was a jury trial.

That the judge said your choices are to acquit him or to convict him of first degree homicide. And the appeal basically said he should have been given a multitude of murder degrees, not just one or the other. He loses the appeal. He feels like this is going to be the end of his life. And this is when he confesses. He says, OK, to the reverend, I did it.

He says on this afternoon in question, he said Mr. and Mrs. Richards were gone. He knew that. He stepped away from his work with that excuse, my boots hurt. And he wanted to find Catherine and he knew he wanted to attack her. Animals play a big part in this guy's scheme here. He lets a calf loose from the barn and he also lets the bull loose. He lets the calf loose because he knows Catherine loves calves.

He finds her in the farm's cheese house. Remember, I told you this is a big place. There's all kinds of houses and barns and sheds. He finds her in the cheese house playing with her kittens. He says, this calf is loose. I need your help. And he knew predictably that she would want to find the calf and keep it safe.

He said once they found the cap and returned it to the barn, he closed the door. And he put a piece of fabric, which they never found, around her neck and strangled her to death. So he says her eyes, this is a quote, her eyes looked terrible when she was struggling.

Then I struck her with a milking stool that stood by me. Then I ravished her. She was dead but warm when I committed the crime. So what do you think about all that? And then there's more, a little bit more. Well, obviously, it's a horrific crime just on a personal level. And hearing the details of what Catherine's last moments in life were like from a professional side, this is where, okay, now I have details.

And I have to evaluate the veracity of these details. You know, my concern from case out of, you know, 1878, do we have a scenario of a false confession? We have a 20-year-old farmhand. I don't know what his intellectual capacity is, but we know this age is somebody that could be prone to false confession. So I have to make sure that what he is confessing to is accurate with the physical evidence.

And so this is where, even though he's already convicted, I would be wanting to go back and go, okay, you know, they don't have photographs. I know that. But let me see Catherine's injuries. I want to see this milking stool. You know, one of the big things is this piece of fabric, which the Reverend is not going to be a trained interviewer. You know, but that's a huge thing. He's saying he used a piece of fabric to strangle Catherine

Coroner is saying he saw ligature marks around her neck. That piece of fabric is huge. All right, Myron, where is that piece of fabric? And if he says, I tucked it underneath the wood pile in the bullpen, I'd go out to that wood pile. And if that fabric is there, then bingo, only the killer would know that.

So, that's part of what I would be doing. Even though it's a convicted offender, there still is an obligation to vet all the details to make sure that he is providing the information that only the killer would know. So, now I have confidence. This is a true confession because some of the things that he may be saying happened, but

the original investigators may be unaware of. They may not have recognized the evidence in terms of reconstructing the crime scene. But now that the information, the details and the statements are there, then that evidence could, "Oh, that's why this stool was over here." Right?

And that's part of the interview process is it's not just just tell me what happened. Oh, you use the milking stool. OK, where was it when you when you first saw it? How did you use it? How many blows did you inflict with it? Where did you put it afterwards? And if he said so, I set it down, you know, to my right. But then when I was running out of the bullpen, I kicked it.

You know, that's the type of detail where you go, geez, that's why that that stool is halfway away from where it normally would be. Yeah. But the details that he's providing, this sounds good to me without the ability to do all that type of veracity checking that I just talked about.

And just to button this up, you're right, the Reverend isn't asking a whole lot of details about that. I think he's horrified about listening to this story. Myron says that he picked her up and carried her to the bull's pen so that, you know, they would assume, people would assume that she had been gored by the bull. I guess he forgot about the ligature mark around her neck. He put her in the bullpen and he opened the gate and let the bull go free.

And then when the reverend says, "Why did you do this?" He said she was going to tell her parents that I have been what I can describe as a sleazy guy and had been making all of these, like, proposals and sexual advances and being mad at her. And he said, and this is infuriating, Paul, frankly, quote, "I loved Catherine and was jealous. I intended to kill her and ravish her because I was mad."

And I have heard that from other killers using that word mad. There is a sexualized violence that these types of offenders commit. They could just kill out of anger with no sexual component, but they include a sexual component. There's a fantasy aspect to these offenders. I guarantee Myron, who's been infatuated with Catherine for several years...

and making lewd comments. He's fantasizing about doing certain sex acts to her.

So in his statement, the first thing he does is he strangles her. This is self-preservation for him in part. He's eliminating her from going and telling his employers about his lewdness, if you will. But after killing her, he has sex with her body. It's about sex. You know, so there's power control, there's anger, but sex is a fundamental aspect of

to sexual offenders. And that's something that many people just kind of gloss over, but no, it's fundamental. And something within their nature, within their upbringing, they have crossed the sexual component and the violence into one thing. And that's how they get sexual gratification.

I have offenders that will have consensual sex with their girlfriends and halfway through push off and go and grab a gun and then hold the gun to the woman's head while he's having sex with her. Doesn't need to do that in order for sex.

but he likes that violence and that fear he's inflicting on his victim. These are different types of individuals. And the psychology of these people are so different from the normal. And, you know, when I talk to groups and law enforcement, you know, I talk, you know, the introduction and recognition of the serial predator. And one of my big phrases is, "'Know thy enemy.'"

because these types of sexual predators think differently and do different things. Well, let's go back to that statement that Daniel made where Myron has said my quote-unquote relative liked to outrage girls and strangle them with a cord. I hate to say, well, I am glad that even though law enforcement had diddly-squat

But as evidence that they got him because they obviously got the right person legally, what a bad case. Morally, what a good outcome, except, of course, I'm not going to give an opinion on execution, but he was hanged.

in November of 1879. So there you go, no evidence. They get the right person. He would have continued absolutely doing this. I think you and I both know that if this had not happened. But I mean, you just said this wouldn't have even been, you know, you wouldn't have even gotten arrest warrant these days on that evidence. Sure. You know, and again, the case, at least as it stood for what they could do,

relative to today's standards is it's thin, but they were on the right track. Suspect number one is Myron, and no question about it. But I do want to make the comment, you know, if in fact one of Myron's relatives was

was a serial sexual predator. We've seen this over and over again. This type of crime runs in families. Is it nature? Is it nurture? I think it's a combination of both. You have somebody that is born with a certain predisposition, and then, of course, if that type of activity is something that is not only permissible but even encouraged in some of these families, then you have somebody that goes out and acts in that way.

So, if they had done the follow-up on that statement and found, yes, a close relative of Myron was a serial rapist, then there you go. There already is a predilection within Myron, and we see it over and over again in law enforcement. Bad for the legal system, good for the community to get closure, and I'm sure that his confession just horrified her parents. It must have been just devastating for

But this is a good case because I think about what we use to convict people now, what they used in the 1600s. I can't go back any further. I might have to draw the line at the 1600s. But I mean, you know, they still were on the right track, as we know, throughout history. And this is one of those cases where I just said, well, at least they caught him, but the

But thank goodness they got it right and it wasn't Daniel. I mean, what if it were Daniel? I mean, you know, what if this guy didn't confess and he was hanged? Yeah. You know, if we had all the details, you know, from what the investigators had, it's a good training case for investigators. Okay. This is how, without using modern technology, this is how to build a case and to investigate a case properly.

And to sort out, you know, some of the complexities, because oftentimes we have multiple suspects that have circumstances that seem to check the boxes that they could be involved. Well, how does one try to find out the facts versus, oh, I've got boxes checked. I'm going to jump on this guy. He's got to be the guy. Well, no, maybe he's not.

Well, another good case. I will say, don't expect me to be wearing contacts next week. I think it's going to take a little longer. And I'm a chicken, so we'll see what happens. But, you know, next week I'll bring you something else and maybe I'll be squinting, but definitely it'll be interesting. I can promise you that, Paul Holes.

Well, Kate Weakler Dawson, if I can wear contacts, you can wear contacts because I guarantee I'm a bigger chicken than you. Oh, that's good to know. Okay. Good to know going forward. See, we learn things. Thank you. I'll see you next week. Bye.

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

Our mixing engineer is Ben Talladay. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel. Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Daniel 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.