The Purrington Family Massacre
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while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club. There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out.

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On July 11, 2002, J.C. McGee was shot and killed in the doorway of his home in Ohio. For 22 years, the case remained unsolved until his daughter Madison started asking questions. This

This is the journey of a daughter searching for answers, for closure, and for justice, and figuring out exactly what that means as she uncovers some dark truths that have been hidden from her. As far as podcasts go, it doesn't get more personal than this. From Tenderfoot TV, Ice Cold Case is available now. Listen for free on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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

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

Hey, Paul. Hi, Kate. How are you? I'm doing well. I have a very important question for you. Okay. If you were to pick any summertime destination for you to unplug, no, Paul Holes is not available for an investigation, no, he's not available for buried bones or small-town dicks, what would you do to completely unplug? Where would you go? Well, I would take my Jeep out into the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.

Now, there's some bucket list trails that I'd like to take the Jeep on, particularly out in the Telluride area. You know, I've never been there. And just looking at the scenery and watching YouTube videos of other off-roaders, you know, traveling, it's just like, oh, it's God's country, you know. And so I'd love to get out there with the Jeep, do some dispersed camping, and just unplug. Yeah.

You are such a cheap date. I mean, that's free, isn't it? Pretty much. I mean, you're just bringing beef jerky with you and a little bit of coffee and that's bringing your kava and that's pretty much it, right? Well, it's a little bit more than that, but the Jeep is not cheap. They say Jeep just empty every pocket, J-E-E-P, right? Absolutely.

Never heard that. Yeah, no, it's a pricey hobby, if you will. If you want to do it safely, do it right, and then have the equipment like for the disperse camping, it's not a cheap thing at all. Now, did you say Cora or no Cora? No Cora. In fact, the way I've got a little two-door Jeep, and in order to store everything, Cora's just too big of a dog. And she is...

She's clumsy. So, you know, the entire back of my Jeep with the shelving I've got back there would not fit a dog. And she cannot ride...

in the front passenger seat. She just is awkward. It does not like that. Yeah, that's just not her thing at all. She can go in the back. My wife has a Honda Pilot, and so she goes in the back of a much larger space. And we'll go hiking, but, you know, a long trip in the Jeep is not Cora's thing at all. So, first, she's attacked by a bear, and now Dad is calling her awkward. That's not...

I'm just being honest. That's not good for her self-esteem. I have two awkward dogs, so I get it. But I would never say it to their face. Well, the reason I bring it up is because when I think about summertime destinations, one of my most favorite states is Maine. And I love Maine in the summer. And we're talking about a story set in Maine a long time ago, 200 and something years ago,

When I was reading through it, I was thinking, oh, my gosh, Maine would be my summertime destination. Getting something on a lake or a pond, I don't need to be on an ocean. I just wanted, you know, to be there where it's cooler because, you know, by June in Austin, it could be 102, 103, and everything's wilting. So I was thinking what would be sort of nice and crisp and with a breeze. And so my mind went to Maine, which is a wonderful place.

Yeah, you know, I've never been there. Of course, I've seen, you know, some movies that were shot there, and it looks like a beautiful location. And the ocean, you'd mentioned the ocean, you know, the rugged ocean, that is cool. It's like Northern California coast, you know, from my past. So I would love to get out to Maine. Yep, it's a great place. And you use the word rugged, which actually, strangely to me, fits into the story about what we're talking about.

which is a story that is a really, really big family tragedy. So, you know, I like to give a disclaimer at the front of these stories. We do talk about the murders of children, and we do talk about suicide in this story. It's set in 1806, which I feel like much of this country was rugged territory at this point. I'm anxious to hear your reaction to all this because it's a very twisty tourney. So let's go ahead and set the scene.

So 1806, one of our older cases, 1806. I have a note in here that I was going to bring up later on, but I'm going to bring up now. I mean, this is three decades before organized police in the United States. So you're talking about, at this point, anyone investigating a murder is kind of a band of citizens, gangsters.

good-hearted, we hope, people. So already I'm a little wary of where we're going to be going with this story because we have a really big murder scene to deal with.

And very inexperienced investigators. Yeah, you know, and that's interesting. I didn't realize that there wasn't any organized law enforcement in the early 1800s. You know, I'm now immediately envisioning sort of this ad hoc community watch group, you know, and that's how people were policing themselves. That's interesting.

They had the occasional sheriff and deputies, you know, constables floating about, but an organized police force, which was formed after England's first organized police force, that wouldn't happen until basically the 1830s. So you are on your own, as you will find out here soon, if something happens to your family, which is what we figure out happens here online.

It isn't often where I feel like there is such a clear indicator from this early time in history that really terrible things that to us these days...

feel like, you know, an outlier, like, ah, this is a once-in-a-lifetime event when we're talking about a lot of people in one family who were murdered. And the more of these stories that you and I do, the more I just realize, boy, this has just happened for so long and for all similar reasons. So your insight here is going to be pretty crucial, I think. Okay. I'm looking forward to hearing it.

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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. Okay, 1806.

In what is now the state of Maine, but at this time, Maine was actually a part of Massachusetts. That's how far back we're going, where the state lines are changing. We're specifically in Augusta, which I've never been to. It's a sleepy small town with about 1,200 residents. And one of the most prominent is the family called the Purrington family. And it is led by a 46-year-old man named Captain James Purrington.

He was in a local militia, and 1776 happened, so this is what, now I have to do math, 30 years ago. So he could have been in the militia and then with what happens in the years that follow after the American Revolutionary War, but he certainly was somebody with a military background, somebody who was very well respected. So he's the one leading this family, just so that we know who everybody is.

It's a little confusing because we've got two Jameses that are happening here, but I'll try to kind of pull them apart. There's also two Marthas. One is part of the family and one is somebody who's an observer who gives us some really important insights. So I'll say one Martha versus the other. I'll say James Jr. and James Sr. just to try to keep everybody straight. But the patriarchs

is married to a woman named Betsy. She's 45. So we have a 46-year-old married to a 45-year-old. They have quite a long marriage, decades long. And Betsy gives birth to 12 kids. So four die in infancy. And then they have eight children that range from 18 months old

to 19 years old. That is the range we're talking about here. And, you know, we've talked about families like this before, really large families who are not quite in the countryside, but in small towns, small area. And there is a risk of being isolated because

because if somebody comes in and hurts somebody in the family, there might be an opportunity for the killer to easily get away because we're not in a big city. You know, the flip side is we're in the countryside-ish, we're in a small town, and that means that there probably is a certain amount of protection. Everybody knows each other. So there's this interesting, for me, dichotomy of the countryside being both safe and also not safe if you happen to be on the wrong end of a crime.

- Yeah, the pros and cons. Just like in any type of neighborhood, there's pros and cons from a security standpoint. This Purrington family, where they're living, is this farmland or is this within an actual town? - I'm glad you asked. So this is farmland.

that he recently purchased James Sr. So they are new to Augusta. They've only been there a year, maybe even less than a year. They came from a different town in Maine, which is about 25 miles away. So they don't know many people here. Now, I mean, they've been there a year and he gets the family involved in a church. I'll tell you about that in a minute. So they are familiar, but we're not talking about deep roots in Augusta. They are on a farm.

They don't live on the farmland. Their house is about a mile away, but the family goes back and forth from the house to the farm. And the older kids, not surprisingly at all, are all working on the farm. Everybody except for, in fact, the baby, who is Louisa, who's 18 months old.

Everybody is integral to working on this farm, including Nathan, who's six. I mean, we've got a six-year-old, an eight-year-old, a 10-year-old, a 12-year-old, a 15-year-old, a 17-year-old, and a 19-year-old.

all working with their parents who were in their mid-40s. That's the family unit that we have here, which is very typical of this time period and this area. When we are learning more about the family, they are a hardworking family of farmers. They are working the land. James Sr. is described as kind of a reserved man, very quiet,

kind and affectionate to the family, obliging to his neighbors. They're really trying to, when we're kind of investigating this case, the investigators are looking into the profile of the family led by this man who is a really important part of the community. When looking at the kids in the family, there is no red flags. Nothing is coming out about why such a tragedy would end up falling on them.

So the one note that I think is interesting is they settle with the Universalist Church, which I had never really, I'm not familiar with. Universalism is rooted in the belief that all humans will ultimately be saved by God.

So, you know, I think that their devotion and their belief within this church is important. And they just seem like a very well-grounded family that is about to experience a really terrible tragedy, which, of course, we've talked about hundreds of times on this show.

So I feel like we do many stories that take place around 2:00 in the morning. I feel like maybe the last five stories are 2:00 in the morning. It's never a good time. 17-year-old James Perrington Jr. So he is the second eldest behind Polly, who's 19. So, James,

James is at a neighbor's house frantically banging on the door. It's two and, you know, between two and three o'clock in the morning on July 9th, 1806. He is screaming. He is banging on the door and he has his hand kind of on his back and

And he is saying that he and his family have been attacked. When the neighbors come down and he starts talking to the neighbor, which is a guy named Dean Wyman, Dean is talking to him and says, what happened? And James says that he had been sleeping. He had been rattled awake by the distressing sound of his mother screaming. So Betsy's screaming.

He hops up. He rushes out of the bedroom to investigate what's happening. He tells the neighbor on the way to Betsy's room, to his parents' room, James Jr. says that he ran into a man who was holding a bloody axe.

And to the boy's horror, of course, the man starts to swing the axe in his direction, the 17-year-old's direction, and he hits him on the back. If we're believing this story, there are dead people in this story. So if we believe James, the 17-year-old, he's holding his back, there is a wound there. And I know this is a silly question because I know that this depends on how hard he was hit and where, but...

I would think it would be very difficult to go to a neighbor's house, which, you know, probably was not right next door. I'm assuming it was, you know, a quarter of a mile or maybe even half a mile away with an injury on your back from an axe. Yeah, it really depends on the extent of the injury. You know, an axe, of course, can be a devastating weapon. It's also a tough weapon to use.

use when you have, let's say, these two combatants. So you've got two combatants, James Jr. and this unknown man, and to swing an axe and hit James is not going to be the easiest thing, particularly in a house. If you've got

walls or a low ceiling, the offender may be limited in terms of how strong the swing can be or how much of an arc the swing could have with the axe. And then if James is really close to the offender, it's hard to employ this very long weapon. So there's so many dynamics going on. Of course, evaluating James' statement

You know, one of the aspects is, okay, where is this wound located at? Is this something that James could have inflicted himself in some way? Is it consistent with being struck with an ax? Or does its location, the type of wound, the seriousness of the wound, tend to suggest that James is telling the truth and that he actually was struck in the back at a location that James would unlikely be able to inflict upon himself?

Yeah.

And, of course, I've read of modern stories and old stories of people shooting themselves in logical places. If you're going to shoot yourself in the leg, maybe in the buttocks, you know, definitely in the arm. But axing yourself in the back just seems like there would be a more convenient place to do it. It does seem like it's a location where he could have reached it himself. It just seems like there would be an easier route to go if you were going to hit yourself with an ax to frame a narrative. Yeah.

And I agree, you know, so I think at this point, you know, I'm leaning towards what James is telling Dean the neighbor is probably truthful. Okay, so Dean is horrified and he wants more details. And he looks at James's wound on his back and it is very bloody. And it is not the blunt end. It's definitely the sharp end of the ax. So James is unfolding this story and it's very chaotic. So we've got all of these young kids who

When James is on the move trying to get to his parents' room to see why Betsy, his mother, is screaming, there's this man with the axe. There's a fight. And James is scared that he is going to be murdered immediately because the man is pulling up the axe to hit him again, it seems like. But one of the kids, the little kids, tries to escape through the front door.

And the man turns and distracts him, giving James the opportunity to run outside. And that's when he ends up at the neighbor's house. He has no idea what happened to the rest of his family. He doesn't know where his dad is, his mom, and all of his brothers and sisters. He just is trying to go get help. So this is probably not a good ending for the child who was trying to get out the window, but it

stopped James from, you know, being murdered, of course, and gives him an opportunity to escape. Well, and it underscores when you have a single offender who's going in and you have so many occupants inside a house, how hard it can be to contain all these occupants. So there's a lot of truth ringing out with what James is saying about that observation.

And this is what tells you a lot about the early 1800s. And that comment I mentioned that there was no organized police force. When James Jr. tells the story to Dean Wyman, the neighbor, he says,

Dean says, I will go over there and see what's going on. But he is frightened, smartly. So he goes to several neighboring houses. And that's how frightened he was, knowing that probably people were being butchered in the Purrington house. He has to go over to these neighbors' houses to get together a group of neighbors so they all feel safe enough to go over. So, you know, by this time, it's about 3 in the morning.

And as they start to approach the house, it's eerily quiet. And, you know, I have a point in here that, of course, these days you would call 911. They didn't ring a bell to alarm neighbors or, you know, get more people. They just went door to door knocking and getting people

to come to the door. I don't know if I were getting a knock on the door at three in the morning now if I would answer the door, but that was the response the community had. They had a group of men go over to find out what happened.

I imagine because of this type of community that when, you know, somebody's knocking on the door in the middle of the night, they're screaming out. They're saying, you know, hey, James, this is Dean, right? And you recognize the voice. You recognize, you know, the name of the person, of your neighbor. So I could see where this would work in this culture back then. You know, of course, today, you know, everybody's so suspicious about somebody coming to the door in the middle of the night, you'd have to be absolutely convinced that

that it is somebody you know and you trust before you open your door.

Just to paint the scene here, we're in a countryside on this farm approaching the house. I say this line sometimes in my stories, there's only candlelight and moonlight. So there's no electricity. We're 100 years from electricity. So you have this group holding candles, not even gas lamps. They're holding candles, trying to move through the summer night to get to the house. There's no light on in the house at all. No candles are lit.

So they walk into the house, which is completely quiet. There's a room that contemporary newspapers and the data that we have says it's called an outer room or an out room. It's not an out house. I think the closest thing would be maybe a covered porch, kind of just like an external parlor maybe. But this is where they find the first body. The body is that of James Sr., so the patriarch of the family. He's 46.

Tell me what this means. It says James Sr. is found lying prostrate on his face in a pool of his own blood, and his throat has been slashed with a razor, which is sitting nearby his body on like a table, and there's a bloody axe found in the same room. So the patriarch is dead. Now, prostrate on his face, is that face down? Is that what that means? He's face down, right?

pool of blood around his head. You know, of course, I'm kind of curious as to what other injuries he has besides the incision to the neck.

But of course, when you incise the neck while somebody's still alive, there's a fair amount of blood that will come out as the heart pumps. So I'm a little bit surprised that the elder statesman, James, 46-year-old male in the militia, you know, so this tells me a little bit about his victimology. He's probably fairly capable of taking care of himself, is fairly robust, you know, relatively speaking.

And this is where it's like, did somebody surprise him? Did he come down and hear a sound and he was surprised, hit with the axe, throat was cut while after he went down to the ground, or did he get into a fight with the offender or offenders that he's interacting with?

Well, I can tell you no other injuries once the coroner arrives. And we do have a coroner, thank goodness. No other injuries on James, but really a bad slash throat. And they don't know what the order of the murders was, but I just thought,

to myself, well, Paul always says that if you're a smart killer and there's just one of you, you're going for the most capable first, eliminating, what do you usually call it? Eliminating the male, the biggest threat. Eliminating, that's what you say. You say eliminating the biggest threat. Absolutely. So is that what we think might have happened as of now? Is there's a possibility that maybe James came downstairs, he heard a noise, he's eliminated first perhaps? Yeah.

I'm assuming that James was asleep in a room inside the house. And so something has drawn James out. The likelihood of an offender going into the house and pulling James out to this location, that doesn't seem right.

So possibly maybe there was a knock on the door and James Sr. is the one that would naturally be the one to go investigate. And as soon as he opens the door, is he being confronted by offenders? The blood flows out of the neck would be very telling. Does he have any blood flows that are going down the front door?

of his clothing, his pajamas, whatever he's got on to indicate that he was upright at the time the bleeding started? Or was he forced down to the ground, face down, and that's when his neck was cut? Because that is how some offenders will execute their victims.

A pool of his own blood. I don't know in which direction it flowed. I will say, I think it's curious that the axes in the room and the razors in the room. And I had wondered if James Sr., for some reason, was the last one killed. And then, like, the person went out the door because why...

Are those things found by the person who was potentially the first victim or maybe James was killed first and then the killer goes around the house? And I'll tell you about all the other victims here soon and then goes back out to where James is. He knows he's dead and then leaves the stuff behind and then that's it. I don't know what the possibility would be.

Yeah, I need to know more. In terms of sequencing, obviously, we know that we have a family inside the house. We have multiple victims. You've described, you know, James Sr. being out at this location. You know, it's possible he's the first one killed. It's possible he's the third one killed. It's possible he's the last one killed. I might be able to do some sequencing as I hear more information later.

However, my initial thought is the reason why these weapons are at this location is this seems like the logical entry and exit the offender or offenders took going into and out of the house. And if we believe James Jr., he's not much of a witness right now because he seems to have maybe come in in the middle.

You know, he's awoken. He is on the move trying to get to his mom and her screaming. And then he encounters the killer and then turns and runs. So we don't really know. You know, we've had some cases where we can see there's a survivor who has kind of seen the sequence. And we just have a disadvantage in this case because James sort of just sees this one pocket of time and then he is out the door if we believe him.

One thing that I want to give a lot of credit to is I love the folks in the 1700s and 1800s who kept a diary. There is a woman named Martha Ballard, which is kind of what led me to this story. She was a midwife.

And I was really interested in her diary because she chronicled everything that happened. Her house was one of the houses that was, you know, the door was knocked on at two or three in the morning and her husband was requested to come outside so that

that, you know, all these neighbors could go over and see what's happening in the house. So Martha had a first-person point of view of all of this. In true 19th century fashion, you know, there's a lot of drama between the newspapers and Martha. She said it was the most shocking scene she'd ever seen in this part of the world. And then one of the newspapers said the whole house seemed covered with blood, which means I need to start to tell you about the other victims, right?

Because that's a big tease. Yeah, absolutely. You know, as I'm thinking about this, we have multiple victims inside the house. And is the offender targeting the family? Is there a specific person of this family that the offender is targeting? And learning more about the offender-victim interactions could help me kind of determine, okay, is this the offender going in and just wiping this entire family out or...

Is there a specific victim that the offender really wanted to target? You know, is there more time the offender spent with a specific person based on the amount of injuries or the types of activities the offender did with the person? And then all the other family members are just ancillary to the crime. Well, let's continue on. I will be curious about your thought on weapons. So I will tell you there were, it seems like only two weapons used, an ax, which was used on James Jr.'s back,

and a razor that was used on several people, including James Sr. Maybe there's some sort of weapons theory that I don't know, but as we go through the victims and their injuries, maybe you can tell me what you think might have happened and why the killer chose one way versus the other. And I want to do a little bit of a trigger warning that there will be discussions about, you know, kids who have been murdered here, and we're coming up on them now,

Near James Sr.'s body, the neighbors find the bodies of 8-year-old Nathaniel and 6-year-old Nathan. These are the two youngest other than the 18-month-old baby. Both of their throats have been fatally slit. So one of them is the kid who tried to get out the window and couldn't.

And this is with the razor, presumably the same one that was held by the killer who murdered James Sr. This seems, in a world where everybody owned a gun, this seems like so close up and personal.

Well, the offender is choosing this weapon purposely. You know, so that's where now getting into the offender's mind, why not just go in with a gun?

Well, we know that guns make a lot of noise. Is it possible to start shooting family members in one room and not alert other family members that something bad is happening? So it sounds like the offender purposely chose the razor and possibly thought would be able to silently go through the house and execute the family members.

without alerting the other sleeping members inside the house. I think that is the offender's initial plan. And then something goes sideways. We have James Jr. hearing mom screaming. So possibly mom wakes up

unexpectedly while the offender is attacking her. And now the family is alert to, uh-oh, something bad is happening inside the house. Well, let's move on to the next victim. So we've got the father and then we've got an eight-year-old boy and a six-year-old boy and the 17-year-old with an ax mark on his back.

When the neighbors go with their candles, which just must have been an awful thing for them at three in the morning in the countryside in the summer with all of the noises that I know come that I think are beautiful with the crickets and the frogs and, you know, all of this that come in the countryside to paint the scene of having candles and walking from room to room.

discovering bodies because they know how big this family is. They get to the common areas, which would have been maybe the parlor, we could call it the living room. They look in front of the fireplace and there is the body of the 12-year-old whose name is Benjamin. He has been axed to death.

So not the straight razor, not the razor. He has been axed to death. He's in front of the fireplace on the floor. And the investigators say that Benjamin's pants are tucked under his arm.

So it sounds like maybe he was in his underwear or his nightdress, and he had grabbed his pants trying to dress himself to either find out what the noise was about or to get out. And before he collapsed, he left a bloody handprint on a nearby wall, which in 1806 would not have been particularly useful. As forensics, sorry. As a forensics tool, it was not useful. Right.

I'm envisioning if there's a single offender, a single offender is utilizing two different weapons and having multiple victims being attacked as they are trying to escape or move about the house.

There's a lot going on here without even hearing about what's happening with the other victims. Just with what we know right now with James Sr. and the three boys, the 6, 8, and 12-year-old boys being in different locations in the house, I'm trying to envision how the offender is able to contain

these boys? Is it just merely the physical presence and the boys are scared and they freeze? You know, that is typical for kids this age. Or is the offender, in essence, just planting himself

knowing that as the family tries to escape, they're going to run right at him. You know, and basically the victims, he knows these victims are just going to come to him, and he's dispatching them as they kind of emerge out of their rooms. And the sequencing is really confusing to me, and I'm not sure it's going to be any more illuminated. Maybe by the end of the story it will be. But now we're going to move to Betsy's room, who is the matriarch of the family, the 45-year-old.

So this is when we hear her scream and James is awoken, James Jr., and he's, I'm assuming, taking a few minutes or a few seconds to orient himself.

When the neighbors find her, Betsy, her head has been almost severed from her body. And there are no other injuries. It seems like whatever happens with her neck is the only thing. There's not hack marks anywhere else on her body. She's found in her bed. So investigators will later surmise that she was sleeping when this happened. Maybe she saw the killer standing there with the ax. She screamed, "Then this happens."

The trick here is that there is a little girl on the floor who has also been killed. The 10-year-old is Anna. Now, the contemporary newspaper from 1806 says that they think that Anna also heard the mom's screams and came running in, and then she was killed, which they said had been clearly done with the axe. She had been hacked with an axe and was murdered. But I would think that James would have seen

seen her run into the room, then get murdered. And then I guess it just depends on how quickly James got himself together, got up and ran to, you know, his mother's room. Right. Also, just the configuration of the hallways, the doorways, the room itself. You know, what could James Jr. actually witness, particularly when his attention is really going to be focused in on this man with an axe that's attacking him? You know, so his senses are going to be focused in on that threat. Right.

Well, now we're going to talk about, I wonder, another potential threat. Who was the eldest child? She was 19, Polly. I would say let's go with functional strength. We've talked about this before, how I used to throw around hay bales when I was 12 or 13 and built up a lot of functional strength. I think we can assume that Polly at 19 and has been working on a farm her whole life

I would assume could have been a threat to some stranger who came in or somebody in the family who came in and encountered her. Do you think that that's a fair assessment? Well, first, Kate, I think I know I better not mess with you in any way. Functional strength. It's not old man strength, but it's in there somewhere. It's in the mix. I envision myself being pinned down on the ground real fast.

But no, but this is true. You know, this is something to where now Polly, a 19-year-old female, I think maybe relative to today,

To the average 19-year-old woman, Polly probably had a greater capacity to defend herself from, let's say, a more robust combatant, such as maybe the average type of male. So now is Polly engaged with the offender and it's taking longer for the offender to subdue Polly or dispatch Polly? You know, this is where I'm going to be very interested in hearing about Polly's injuries.

The only quote I see is dreadfully butchered, which I believe the coroner was saying just hack marks everywhere. Polly is in a separate bedroom, but there are two other people in the bedroom. This is getting interesting in terms of, so Polly, her injuries, the coroner is describing as severely butchered. Now, we were just talking, did Polly put up a greater fight? And that's why she maybe has more injuries than what we've seen.

been told about on these other victims. You know, we have little boys, you know, with singular, you know, throat slashes. Betsy with, you know, a singular either throat slash or ax to the neck. Even the biggest threat in the house, the 46-year-old James Sr., single throat slash. But

Polly, there's a lot more going on. So I'm right now, I'm just kind of marking that in my head going, okay, is this just because Polly resisted more? It was due to the dynamics of maybe the combat that was happening between her and the offender. Or is it because the offender had a focus on Polly? You know, so that's where I'm going to be trying to tease that out as we talk.

So we have 19-year-old Polly who's in this room, nearby room to her mother's room, butchered. There are two other people in the room. One is the 18-month-old baby Louisa, who it seems like has also been killed with an axe. She is on the floor, and there is the final kid, 15-year-old Martha.

And Martha's head is resting on top of Louisa, I think maybe trying to protect her. But here's the shocker to me. I mean, Martha's got axe wounds all over her and she's alive. I mean, I know that it depends on where you're hit. But gosh, being hit with an axe just seems like almost inevitably...

Death, but she is still alive. It all depends on what is injured, wounded within the body. You could have a very serious wound from an axe and easily survive it. You could have a wound that doesn't look like much and it could be fatal.

So what ends up happening is when the neighbors finally find Martha, she is the final victim. Now we know everybody who has been discovered. And so now, just to conclude, we've got...

The mother, Betsy. We've got the father, James Sr. We've got a 19-year-old. We've got Martha, who's 15 but seems to be surviving. We've got a 12-year-old boy, a 10-year-old girl, an 8-year-old boy, a 6-year-old boy, and then the baby, 18 months old. I cannot understand this.

the baby aspect of this at all. I've never been able to understand why that would happen, why a stranger would come in, if this is a stranger, and do something like that. What is the motivation? Well, I go back...

to a case that I reviewed, 1986 triple homicide out of my jurisdiction in which a husband, wife, and their toddler kid in the crib were all killed. And it was a solved case, and the offender in that case said that while he was attacking the parents, the little toddler is crying in the crib.

And that was a threat to the offender because that cry would potentially alert witnesses. And so he went and horribly butchered this little toddler. But it was M.O. This was for the offender to succeed, and it had nothing to do with this young child being targeted.

So there's always that as a possibility. You know, but this is in this case with the Purrington family, this is where it gets to, okay, is the offender trying to just eliminate this entire family? Or is the offender targeting select individuals in this family, but also eliminating witnesses? And I don't know just yet. The two people who seem to endure the most injuries were Betsy Monson,

the mom and then the 19-year-old. And, you know, he never got a chance to finish the job with James Jr. because he ran out the door. So the reason that Martha Ballard, who is the woman who kept all of the diaries about this and gave great detail, the reason she knows a lot about this is not only did her husband...

respond when the neighbors needed somebody to go over and help search this house room to room. When Martha Purrington was discovered still alive, laying right on top of her 18-month-old sister, they take her to Martha Ballard's house, and Martha tends to her wounds.

And Martha Purrington eventually starts to recover. The 15-year-old starts to recover. And she starts to talk about what happened that night. She had no idea during the attack who it was, what was happening, why it was happening. She says, she told Martha that she was in the room with Polly.

And they were in bed. I don't know why Louisa, the 18-month-old, was in there. It wouldn't be surprising. Maybe the mother and the father needed sleep. Maybe this was a normal thing. But Martha and Polly were in bed together. And Martha says she woke up while her sister was being struck with an axe in bed.

So Martha, the 15-year-old, grabs all of the bedding, which I don't know how much that would have been in June, but some kind of bedding. And to defend herself from the blows, she wraps herself up in the bedding before she is being struck on the head and the arm. So those are her injuries. And, you know, it seems likely that whoever did this assumed she had died along with Polly and everybody else because she was bleeding. Right.

and left her. And that's how she survived, is wrapping herself up in the bedding to muffle the blows, I guess. So Martha, at least what's observed on the 15-year-old Martha Purrington, is just maybe defensive injuries to her arm, as well as a blow to her head, but sounds very different from

than the number of blows being inflicted to Polly, who is lying helpless on the bed. So it's not like Polly had gotten up and was able to use her functional strength. Polly probably was asleep when she's first being struck with blows by the axe.

possibly doesn't have any capacity or even awareness of what's going on before she's killed. You know, so why is the offender inflicting so many blows on Paulie relative to what's happening to the rest of the family?

And, you know, kind of going through this, well, then now naturally it's going back to James Jr. Of the children, you know, he's the oldest boy. He's 17 years old. He's working on the farm. So we're talking about Polly as a girl having functional strength. James Jr. probably is the second biggest threat in this house as a 17-year-old boy working on a farm. Mm-hmm.

He's able to escape. Now, is he telling the truth or this is where I kind of go back. How is this offender controlling so many family members inside this house? Well, if these family members are seeing James Jr., they're possibly more willing to just kind of approach him or let him approach James.

If he is the one that's killing this family, and that would, in my mind, account for how a single offender would be able to go through this house and kill everybody. So I'm kind of curious to see how this develops with James Jr. You know, early on, it's like, well, it sounds like he's telling the truth, but I'm a little suspicious at this point. Yeah, considering he's the only survivor out of all of this.

So, Martha Purrington says to Martha Ballard that eventually, after the, it sounds like the killer thought she was dead, he left, left the room. Now, what I was just thinking as you were talking was Martha Purrington does not mention her mother screaming. With a head injury, maybe she missed it?

But now I'm wondering what the sequence of events would have been if she doesn't mention hearing a fight nearby between James and the killer and yelling, if she doesn't mention, you know, her mother screaming. So now maybe this head injury knocked her out. Probably it did. You know, when you have these, you know, head injuries, traumatic brain injuries, there can be so much lost in terms of memory that

you know, or she is not even conscious at the time that maybe her mom, Betsy, is being attacked, you know, so that would go to the sequencing. But it is a significant statement by her. I'm not sure we can tease it out, though, from a sequencing standpoint because we don't know her state of consciousness, you know, at the time that Betsy is being attacked, her mom. Here's an interesting note that is very graphic, but I feel like important to say.

There's a writer, modern-day writer, named Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and she studied Martha Ballard's diaries, which are really interesting. And according to Ulrich, she says that the younger Martha, the 15-year-old, is in bed with Polly all

Polly is murdered, and she said she felt the blood from her sister's wounds and was convinced she was dead after Martha herself was attacked. Martha is laying there pretending to be dead or passed out. But she says that according to the diary, Martha Purrington says that she remembers laying her head over the edge of the bed.

and hearing the blood run like a brook upon the floor. Sounds like indicating that was coming both from her sister and from her wounds. Now, if you'll remember, it sounds like she dragged herself off the bed, fell off the bed maybe, because she is found ultimately laying basically on top of the 18-month-old girl on the floor. I don't know if she saw Louisa dead on the floor, the little girl, and wanted to protect her or check on her or something, but she was

almost killed in bed next to her sister, but found on the floor on top of her baby sister. Yeah, you know, and if she's putting her head over the side of the mattress, it sounds like it's her head wound that is bleeding so extensively. She's hearing her blood coming

in essence, run out and strike the floor. And when you start getting a pool of blood and blood dripping into blood, now you get a lot of the spatter, the secondary satellite spatter that occurs, and there'd be almost like a slapping sound as, you know, drops of blood are going into this pool of blood on the floor. Again, I kind of go back

to even though Martha is severely injured, she's in bed with Polly, yet Polly is receiving a lot of the offender's attention. It seems like the offender has angst with something about Polly.

Now, I don't know how much credence you want to give this, but the coroner says that it looked like to him that the killer seemed determined to sever the heads from the bodies of just about everyone except for the two young kids who were found near James Sr., whose throats had been cut with the razor.

He felt like everybody else had really been butchered, particularly Polly and the 12-year-old son, Benjamin, which he believes meant that they were both putting up a pretty good fight. And that's what happened. There were more injuries kind of all over their body, like they had really been trying to fight back.

So, again, it comes back to, like, what is his motivation? What is he thinking? And how is he choosing the victims? And I know right now it's a big mystery. It is a mystery. And, you know, I'll put some credence into the coroner's observations. However, I also question the coroner's, you know, at this time frame, you know, his level of expertise in evaluating these injuries. You know, how many cases like this, homicides like this, had he ever seen before?

Is he truly classifying these injuries appropriately? You know, these throats being cut versus being struck with an axe, you know, but the offender is almost exclusively targeting the necks, whether it be with the axe or with the razor. And that, in part, I think there is the, you know, the kind of what I talked about earlier, you know, kind of the silent kill, you know, you...

cut the throat before vocalization could occur. And this is maybe the plan the offender had to be able to take on the entire family. But also, I imagine during this era, you have a fair number of people who are probably raising their own farm animals and slaughtering their own animals. And how are...

animals typically slaughtered? You know, is this something that the offender is comfortable doing because of something in his normal life? So I think that your observations of specific people being targeted is a good one. And now I want to...

clarify sequence for you because now this takes a pretty big turn. Okay. So the neighbors are going room to room with their candlelight. They find all of the victims, make note of where everybody is. Eventually, the coroner shows up and eventually he will call an inquest, coroner's inquest. So people get interviewed.

While James Jr. is safe at the neighbor's house, he is talking. And the neighbors eventually, of course, say, who did this? Do you know who did this? And he goes back and he says, this is what happened. I heard my mom scream. I got up. I started to run to her room because it was an awful sound. I saw a man standing there with an ax, and it was my father. Okay. Yeah.

So let's talk about James Sr., who was found laying face down out on that porch area with a single cut to the throat. Yep. So this throws in, okay, we got James Jr., who's a survivor. And of course, there's some suspicion about him, whether he's telling the truth or not. Do we also have potentially James Sr. being the killer?

And he kills everybody. James Jr. is able to escape, but James Sr., after everybody's dead, cuts his own throat. It's a possibility. What do you think, if that is the route we go down, you have the two youngest boys...

who, if we believe the coroner who thinks Betsy was killed with an axe, everybody was killed with an axe, except James Sr. and the two young boys who were found nearby. You've got an axe nearby, James Sr., and you've got this razor laying on a table nearby.

Does that fit in with what James Jr. is saying happened and what would fit in with the scene in general? With the information as presented, I think that that's a fair scenario where if you have the father, James Sr., going through the house with an ax, dispatching the family members in their rooms...

He also has the razor with him. You know, after he goes through and Betsy has been killed and Polly and he thinks Martha is and then the 18-month-old Louisa, he has the interaction with James Jr., but gets distracted when he sees one of the younger boys

trying to escape and goes to contain the younger boy, does he kill Nathan and Nathaniel, you know, six- and eight-year-olds in this area, and his final act is he takes his own life? The ax would be there.

The razor would be what he uses to cut his own throat. And this is now where blood patterns become important in terms of evaluating, does the evidence and his wounding suggest it's self-inflicted versus is there something that would indicate it was done by an offender? You know, and of course, I know I'm not going to get that concrete evidence, you know, those photos and autopsy reports in order to try to figure that out. But it is...

I think the scenario is a possibility, you know, because why is James Sr., the biggest threat in the house, all the way out front and killed face, you know, he's face down with just a single cut to the throat. You know, you would think if he's interacting with this man who has an ax, you

You know, he's probably putting up the biggest fight of all the family members, and it doesn't look like James Sr. has the types of abrasions and bruising and defensive wounds as he's in combat with an armed offender. So I, right now, you know, with what's presented, I think Dad may have killed his family and then killed himself. It does seem like that is clearly what happened.

And I will say, just like today, in 1806, people wanted to know why. All the newspapers fixated on the why. Why would he do this? This is a successful farmer, somebody who was in the military, someone who was well-respected. They had a nice family. There seemed to be no history of violence that we knew of. Of course, behind closed doors, we don't know.

But there is some circumstantial evidence that I find really interesting. I'm always baffled by family annihilation stories.

But this is the evidence that people started to dig up when they started to get information about James Purrington Sr. The coroner's jury found multiple things. One, they said that he was seized with an attack of hereditary insanity and was a maniac when he committed the deed. So there's that. That was the basic what drove him. But there is a lot of kind of context about his fears and his own rationale.

So just throwing out the coroner's jury saying he was crazy. Well, I mean, how helpful is that? Were there any behaviors he was exhibiting, you know, in the days and the months and the years, you know, that would indicate that he was suffering from some sort of mental health aspect?

You know, I could see where, yeah, you know, here he is. He's 46 years old, potentially has been suffering with some mental health issue, and it spirals out of control. And then one night, he goes through and takes out his family and himself.

That's a possibility, you know, but this is where, you know, studying James Sr. and his behaviors, you know, what he's getting himself into, you know, everybody has secrets, you know, what did he get himself into trouble with, you know, somebody else and thought the only way to get out was to take himself and his entire family out. So there's so many things that could be bubbling up

within James Sr., including the mental health aspect. He was, it sounds like, becoming in the months before more zealous about being in the Universalist church. But really what people were picking up on are some really disturbing things. I was surprised because

This all seemed to come within a week of the murders. No one is really flagging anything until about a week beforehand. So let me tell you what happens. You know, he's a farmer. Neighbors say that really over the last maybe couple of months, he had become incredibly anxious about his farm.

According to the Bulletin of Maine State Library, we always try to give credit for this, he was known to be elated or depressed up and down according to circumstances. And before the tragedy, he was incredibly despondent over a severe drought that made him fear that his crops would be cut off and his family would suffer.

So you have just this monetary, everything is going to hell feeling that he is expressing openly to other people, panicking, or, oh, we're getting a rain, everything is fantastic. So the ups and downs, what do we think about that? I always have to couch this. I am not a trained psychologist, psychiatrist, but yeah.

I think just, you know, common lay knowledge of symptoms that different mental health issues present. You know, you have manic and depressant oscillations, you know, within certain conditions. Sounds like he may be exhibiting that, you know, whether it be like a bipolar situation or something else. You know, again, I don't want to put any type of diagnosis on James Sr., but it is something that

possibly suggests that he was struggling from a mental health standpoint and

and may have put such great emphasis on this drought coming up and the suffering of the family. And he didn't want his family to suffer. So he decided, well, they're better off being killed and going into the hands of God than living through this upcoming drought. Who knows what kind of warped logic he had at the end of his life.

So, moving forward, there are two key things that happen that give us a really good indication that things are not going to go well here. A week before, they both happened basically at the same time. So, a week before the murders, James Sr. asked Martha, the 15-year-old who survived, so she's the one telling us this, to bring him a butcher knife. He sharpens it. And when I started reading this, I thought, oh, man, did he threaten her?

Martha says that her dad put the butcher knife to his own throat. And Martha panicked and screamed and said, "I'm getting mother," turned and ran out the door, and he put the knife down. And that happened a week before. So what do you think about that? He's not threatening her. He's threatening his own life, ultimately. Yeah. Whether or not he was actually going to cut his throat in front of Martha or at that point in time, who knows?

But it's a behavior that is predictive to ultimately what he did to himself. You know, I'm absolutely convinced James Sr. killed his family and killed himself. So this act of sharpening the butcher knife and putting it to his neck in front of his daughter, you know, for me, that's a behavior that turned out to be predictive of what ultimately he was thinking about downstream.

Don't know when he was going to carry out this, you know, cutting his own throat. But he definitely was thinking about it the week prior to the homicides. And, you know, when he first moved to Augusta with his family, he had been sort of trying out different churches and ultimately landed with the Universalist Church, which I'll remind you is rooted in the belief that all human souls, no matter what, are ultimately going to be saved by God.

which is different than, you know, suicide is a sin, murder is a sin, you know, all of this stuff. So I think that plays into it. Now, here's the most compelling evidence.

Around the same time, his wife finds a letter that James Sr. had written to his own brother, and he hadn't mailed it yet. Betsy, who is, you know, now dead, is flipping through this letter, and it says, "'Dear brother, these lines are to let you know that I am going on a long journey, and I would have you sell what I have and put it out to interest and put my boys to trades.'"

Or send them to see. I cannot see the distress of my family. God only knows my distress.

I would have you put Nathaniel to Uncle Puritan to a Tanner's trade. I want James Jr. to go to school until sufficient to attend in a store, Benjamin to a blacksmith's trade, or to what you think best. Be sure to give them learning. If it takes all, divide what is left, for I am no more James Puritan.

Now, what I find interesting is he does not mention one of the girls or his wife in that letter. It is all boys. Right. You know, this is a suicide letter. And very possibly at this point when he's writing, his intent was to take out his wife and the girls for whatever reason, whatever was in his mind, but preserve his sons and wanted his sons taken care of after he was gone forever.

And this is where that night when he's going in is his primary focus to kill his wife and the girls and somehow preserve the sons. But then things go sideways on him for whatever reason, you know, whatever. Or does he just decide even my sons can't?

you know, survive moving forward. And sort of what I alluded to with a previous statement in James Sr.'s mind is that everybody in the house is going to be better off dead because they would be taken care of by God than what the upcoming scenario that James Sr. is seeing for his family with the drought or whatever else is going on.

And it's interesting when he names off these boys because there's four. There's James, the 17-year-old. There's Benjamin, the 12-year-old. And then you've got Nathaniel and Nathan who are eight and six. So if you think about the details, they feel very different than the girls. So you've got James who's hit once on the back and he takes off.

but we don't have James Sr. chasing after him. There's Benjamin, who the coroner notes has a lot of injuries, like he fought. So I wonder if he walked into something or was found or what happened because...

Benjamin, if you remember, was found in the common area. So James Sr. did not go seek him out in a bedroom. And the two boys were laying with their throats cut next to James Sr., which to me, I wondered if they walked up on their dad getting ready to take his own life and he turned and killed them and then killed himself. It's just the boys are a totally different situation than the girls in this scenario. Yeah.

Now, Kate, what do you think about at this point, the culture was that the men were the primary income earners. Obviously, he was interested in select careers for his boys. Could that be playing into how he's writing about to his brother, hey, take care of the boys?

you know, but there's no future for the women or the girls in this family. Let's just say that there are no major interpersonal issues between the girls and the family. Obviously, I mean, there's an 18-month-old Louisa. You know, he probably thought they would not be able to survive this shame and would not maybe be able to get married or any of that. But

But the boys would. Because the boys could leave and reinvent themselves in 1806. They could call themselves whatever they want. It would have been really difficult, I think, for the girls to have done that without having jobs. There's very little you can do to reinvent yourself, I think, as a young woman in this time period. That's what I think. I think he, in his mind, was thinking he was sparing the shame for the girls.

Well, you know, he's attacking Betsy, who's screaming, and now that at least gets James Jr. up in the air.

And James Sr. is now being confronted by the 17-year-old boy who's now seeing him. And, you know, this is where the dynamics of a crime, the offender can plan it in his head and think he's got everything set up, but things go sideways and now things get out of control. And that's where what the offender does and how the offender reacts is so critical in assessing, you know, the motive of the offender.

And the crime got away from him. The case got away from him. And so instead of doing what he wanted to do, as he outlined in his suicide letter, you know, he ends up having to take out the whole family. Anytime we have these, you know, family annihilator cases, they're horrific and very sad.

Do we have any information on James Jr. and Martha and what happened with them? Well, unfortunately, Martha ended up dying. Oh, she did. Okay. She did. She was able to give some information. Of course, with this head wound, she couldn't remember a lot. But she was able to recall that, I think, very pivotal piece of evidence of her father putting a butcher knife to his own throat, which I think gave a lot of context to people.

And she died about a month later. I will say, you know, people talk to me all the time about our interest in true crime has grown. Here's another example. True crime has been alive and well for as long as crime has been committed. They took James Sr.'s body and put it on display on the front porch along with the razor and the axe for criminalization.

whomever, which I'm presuming was hundreds of people to come by and gawk at. People wanted to see it. They really wanted to see this guy, this story. It was devastating for the community. But that sort of odd bloodlust, I don't know if it's eye for an eye or what we would call that now, but that was alive and well in this time period in 1806.

I do think, you know, in centuries past, people were much more exposed to death and what death looks like. And then for the most part, today, people are sheltered from it. And so when somebody today sees death, it's a traumatic thing. But back then, it was something that I believe that people were much more used to witnessing. So putting James Sr. on display like that,

You know, people would be throwing up and there'd be screams with people looking at that today. But back then, it almost sounds like you said, it's eye for an eye and it was a form of true crime entertainment. Yeah, absolutely. So James Jr., of course, survives. Thank goodness. He lives with the Ballards for a while and then he just vanishes from any kind of records. We don't know what happened to him, hopefully. Yeah.

After witnessing all of this, being the lone survivor from a family of 10, you know, hopefully he went on and lived a good life. In the early 2000s, the Augusta Historic Preservation Commission found the graves of Betsy and her children. They ended up erecting this really nice bronze memorial plaque there.

at the burial site, which is in the Mount Vernon Cemetery in Augusta. So this was a shock to the community, a horrible story. I tell you, I can never, ever get used to family annihilation stories. I just, those probably, even more than the Edmund Kemper, the Ted Bundy, I am so much more baffled by family annihilators than probably any other category of killer, I have to say.

But I thought this was a good story to bring to you just because it's interesting to know the sequencing of events and what happens and how this all unfolds and why somebody would do this. No, it is. You know, it's a very complex crime scene. So I thought you did a good job, you know, walking me through that. You obviously can't get all the answers and details needed to help

reconstruct the events. But fundamentally, you know, it appears that the right person was accused of the crime. And it's just such a sad case. Well, one note that's a bit of a more positive note here to end on is I love New England and I love how deep the history is, including the crime history of New England. And what's great about New England with crime history is that oftentimes we have the Martha Ballard's

the people who cared so much about their neighbors and the stories and interviewing people that they jotted down all of this information that would have been missing otherwise. I rely on the Martha Ballards to write my books and do these podcasts. And so having a record, a historical record here, even if it came from a midwife, just a normal person, not a historian, not a journalist from 1806,

has been pretty invaluable. So, boy, big shout out to anybody who covers current events because it will be important not only now but to historians in the future. And you'll have somebody like Kate knocking on your door wanting to get into your diaries. Get ready, listeners. I'll be there. Well, next week we're going to skip the family annihilator story, I promise, but we'll come back with another good story. All right. Looking forward to it.

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 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.