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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker vck. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 4: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening. On September sixteenth, nineteen twenty two, the bodies
Speaker 5: of Reverend Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills were found beneath
Speaker 5: the Crabapple Tree on an abandoned farm outside of New Brunswick,
Speaker 5: New Jersey. The killer had ranged the bodies in opposed
Speaker 5: conveying intimacy. The murder of Hall, All, a prominent clergyman
Speaker 5: whose wife, Francis Hall, was a proud heiress with illustrious
Speaker 5: ancestors and ties to the Johnson and Johnson dynasty, would
Speaker 5: have made headlines on its own, but when authorities identified
Speaker 5: Eleanor Mills as a choir singer from his church married
Speaker 5: to the church sexton, the story shocked locals and sent
Speaker 5: the scandal ricocheng around the country. Fueling the nascent tabloid industry.
Speaker 5: This provincial double murder on a lonely lover's lane would
Speaker 5: soon become one of the most famous killings in American history,
Speaker 5: a veritable crime of the century. The bumbling local authorities
Speaker 5: failed to secure any indictments, however, and it took a
Speaker 5: swash buckling crusade by the editor of a circulation hungary
Speaker 5: Hearst tabloid to revive the case and bring it to
Speaker 5: trial at last. Blood and Ink freshly chronicles what remains
Speaker 5: one of the most electrifying but forgotten murder mysteries in
Speaker 5: US history. It also traces the birth of American tabloid journalism,
Speaker 5: pandering to the masses with sordid tales of life, love, sex, money,
Speaker 5: and murder. The book that we're featuring this evening is
Speaker 5: Blood and Ink, The scandalous jazz age double murder that
Speaker 5: hooked America on true crime. With my special guests, author
Speaker 5: and Vanity Fair correspondent Joe Pompeo, Welcome to the program,
Speaker 5: and thank you so much for this interview. Joe Pompeo,
Speaker 5: thank you, thank you so much. You write in your
Speaker 5: introduction on February first, twenty and nineteen. You're at this
Speaker 5: Somerset County Prosecutor's office in Summerville, New Jersey. Tell us
Speaker 5: about this experience and before we start telling this incredible saga.
Speaker 1: Sure, so this was sort of at the beginning stages
Speaker 1: of of my research. I had started working on this
Speaker 1: on the proposal for this book in the fall of
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. There's a great archive of some of the
Speaker 1: original records from the prosecutor's office that's at Rutgers and
Speaker 1: their Special Collections archival department. I had gone through that
Speaker 1: and all the information they have there, all the documents
Speaker 1: they have.
Speaker 3: It's based on the evidence.
Speaker 1: From the actual prosecutor's office in Somerset County, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: which is where this case was was investigated and tried.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to actually go in shoot the prosecutor's
Speaker 1: office and also, you know, to look at the some
Speaker 1: of this stuff firsthand. But also because I knew that
Speaker 1: they also had some of the physical evident evidence from
Speaker 1: the crimes, which which obviously was not in the boxes
Speaker 1: of documents, which I was able to mine at the
Speaker 1: at the Rutgers Library. So I made an appointment with
Speaker 1: you know, the evidence custodian who you know, keeps you know,
Speaker 1: all of all the evidence for all of the active
Speaker 1: crimes happening in Somerset County, but as well this one,
Speaker 1: you know, historical trophe.
Speaker 3: Of evidence that they've that they've kept.
Speaker 1: So they let me come in for the morning and
Speaker 1: you know, spend about half a day going through all
Speaker 1: this stuff. You know, so some of it was, you know,
Speaker 1: the stuff I'd already seen. You know, there's witness lists,
Speaker 1: there's autopsies, there's you know, detective Corus bond ins, all
Speaker 1: sorts of good first hand documents. But also, you know,
Speaker 1: the most thrilling part of the experience is when you
Speaker 1: know one, you know, there's just one guy who works
Speaker 1: in the evidence unit took me to an adjoining room
Speaker 1: and said, here.
Speaker 3: You can go, you can go through all these tots.
Speaker 1: And we started going through these toats full of physical evidence. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, I picked up the glasses of the murdered
Speaker 1: reverend that he was wearing at the time he died.
Speaker 3: They're now snapped into.
Speaker 1: I held stockings, a pair of shrivelled black stockings that
Speaker 1: belonged to choir singer Eleanor Mills.
Speaker 3: Again, presumably she was murdered in these.
Speaker 1: I held a key piece of evidence, which was this
Speaker 1: day calendar that had belonged to this woman who became
Speaker 1: the star witness of the trial, Jane Gibson, also known
Speaker 1: as the Pig Woman. I mean, there was just tons
Speaker 1: of stuff there that was that was fascinating. There was
Speaker 1: handkerchiefs found in the crime scene. Some of the best
Speaker 1: physical evidence, the most historically significant physical evidence, is actually
Speaker 1: encased in a little display, you know, downstairs, kind of
Speaker 1: on the way to the Somerset County Courthouse. So that's
Speaker 1: where you can anyone, any visitor really from the public,
Speaker 1: can go and see the scarf that Eleanor Mills wore.
Speaker 1: They can see the famous panama hat that covered the
Speaker 1: reverend's face when the bodies were discovered. But you know,
Speaker 1: being able to hold some of this stuff, it was
Speaker 1: just a thrill, you know, really a morbid thrill. But
Speaker 1: I had become a student of this crime, and I
Speaker 1: was now suddenly holding pieces of it. I had this
Speaker 1: tangible connection to this case I'd been researching. But also,
Speaker 1: you know, I was the other part of my book
Speaker 1: focuses on the coverage of this famous crime and how
Speaker 1: that affected the crime, and particularly the emergence of the
Speaker 1: tabloid newspapers in the nineteen twenties and how.
Speaker 3: That played into the crime.
Speaker 1: And I was talking with the evidence custodian about this,
Speaker 1: how I had also had this newspaper angle and I
Speaker 1: mentioned the Hearst tabloid that famously revived this case, the
Speaker 1: Daily Mirror, and he said, oh, just the Daily Mirror,
Speaker 1: and he said, hold on a second, and he got up,
Speaker 1: and he came back a few months later and he
Speaker 1: held up handed me this sort of packet of old
Speaker 1: newspapers that were just wrapped in plastic, not like preserved
Speaker 1: and you know, an acid free box things should be.
Speaker 1: And they were about you know, ten original copies of
Speaker 1: the Delhi Mirror from the time of the trial. And
Speaker 1: it was just amazing to you know, very carefully unfold these,
Speaker 1: you know, as bits of you know, brittle newsprint is
Speaker 1: like crumbling off the edges, and I'm trying not to
Speaker 1: damage them at all, but to lay them out and
Speaker 1: see original copies of this obscure very very now rare
Speaker 1: Perst tabloid from nineteen twenty six. So that was, you know,
Speaker 1: all on all, it was a very very productive day
Speaker 1: of research and a fun one.
Speaker 5: Let's get to a day in question, September sixteenth, nineteen
Speaker 5: twenty two, at least in terms of bodies being discovered.
Speaker 5: Pearl Bomber, which is fifteen year old, and Ray Schneider,
Speaker 5: twenty three year old, found the two bodies in New Brunswick.
Speaker 5: You say, along the railway corded between Manhattan and Philadelphia.
Speaker 5: New Brunswick. Tell us what they find and what they
Speaker 5: do once they realized their discovery.
Speaker 3: Well, they're strolling down this, you know, sort of notorious
Speaker 3: lover lane in the morning.
Speaker 1: Obviously we should note the very inappropriate age difference here,
Speaker 1: a fifteen year old girl, a twenty three year old
Speaker 1: man who is married, but a strange from his wife.
Speaker 1: But nonetheless they are there for the exact reason you'd expect.
Speaker 1: And they come across what Pearl observes and to be
Speaker 1: what she thinks are two people sleeping. And she comments
Speaker 1: to Ray, look at those people over there sleeping, and
Speaker 1: he says, I don't you know, don't don't.
Speaker 3: Don't bother them, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: They walk past, they go into a clearing. One thing
Speaker 1: leads to another. They come back some minutes or moments later,
Speaker 1: and Pearl immediately is nervous. She sees the bodies once again,
Speaker 1: they creep closer, they realize these are two dead bodies.
Speaker 1: There's not you know, in their recollections that exist in
Speaker 1: the records I was able to find. Of the original
Speaker 1: witness statements. They didn't describe the bodies in great detail.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be till some of the other people that
Speaker 1: arrived at the crime scene that we would get a
Speaker 1: fuller picture. But they presumably thought they could tell these
Speaker 1: people were dead. They presumably saw some bullet wounds because
Speaker 1: when they ran to a nearby house to phone the authorities,
Speaker 1: they said that these people had been shot. But basically
Speaker 1: they came upon to what they thought was a sousing
Speaker 1: couple on a lover's lane, perhaps there for the same reason.
Speaker 1: They were there and it's turned out to be two corpses,
Speaker 1: and they were the ones who first, you know, rang
Speaker 1: the alarm bell about this.
Speaker 5: Now detectives coming. There's a problem with jurisdiction. Can you
Speaker 5: explain that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the bodies were you know, New Brunswick, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: is in the county of Middlesex.
Speaker 3: So the victims.
Speaker 1: And also Pearl and Ray they were coming from New
Speaker 1: Brunswick on this into this curve of rural hinderland the
Speaker 1: edge of town, and they cross onto this abandoned farm
Speaker 1: which veers into Somerset County in the town of Franklin.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's not entirely clear at first where
Speaker 1: the bodies lie to a late person. But the first
Speaker 1: patrol officers that arrived from New Brunswick, you know, who
Speaker 1: do see a more gruesome scene here. They observe that
Speaker 1: these bodies are very carefully laid out in this way
Speaker 1: that it's clear suggests that these were lovers of some sort.
Speaker 1: They you know, his arm is outstretched and her head
Speaker 1: is resting on it. Her hand is on his thigh.
Speaker 1: There's there's love letters placed between them. There's a calling
Speaker 1: card place near his foot. It was a very precise arrangement,
Speaker 1: and one of the one of the cops, thought to himself,
Speaker 1: it looked almost like a mortician had done this. But
Speaker 1: in any case, one of them says, you know, this
Speaker 1: is no case of ours, because he recognized that they
Speaker 1: had crossed into Somerset County. So they phone their superiors
Speaker 1: to call the Somerset County Detectives to come and take
Speaker 1: take over this crime.
Speaker 3: Scene.
Speaker 1: But even as the case progressed, there was still a
Speaker 1: question of you know, where had where had where had.
Speaker 3: These two people been killed?
Speaker 1: Were they killed in Middlesex County, in New Brunswick and
Speaker 1: then brought to this place in Somerset County or where
Speaker 1: they killed here.
Speaker 3: Where their bodies were found.
Speaker 1: So there was kind of this dual tracked and probe
Speaker 1: that unfolded between the authorities in Somerset and Middlesex that
Speaker 1: led to, you know, certain tensions and certain differences of
Speaker 1: opinion and created a little bit of you know, contributed
Speaker 1: to sort of the bumbling nature of the probe.
Speaker 5: Talk about bumbling nature of the probe and that police
Speaker 5: don't aren't able to secure the scene from curious onlookers
Speaker 5: that arrive almost immediately. But the tabloids and the newspapers
Speaker 5: enter this story almost immediately. Again, police don't keep media
Speaker 5: away from these crime scenes. And there's an Albert Cardinal
Speaker 5: from the Daily Home News and he arrives on the
Speaker 5: scene and does, as you write, a more thorough examination
Speaker 5: or investigation of what police had just found and made
Speaker 5: his report. What did he find in terms of you
Speaker 5: talk about letters, but also a card that was found
Speaker 5: by the foot of this unknown men, and how does
Speaker 5: it come. What are the circumstances in which he's the
Speaker 5: man and woman are identified?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she You know, as you say, this is
Speaker 1: a small town. Gossips flying. People start getting wind of
Speaker 1: this pretty quickly. This reporter arrives at the scene pretty
Speaker 1: early on. He's the first reporter of men many, many
Speaker 1: who will cover this story over the next four years.
Speaker 1: He notices some of the details that definitely suggest this
Speaker 1: is a major story, that it's a scandal.
Speaker 3: Again. He he's very keen on looking at the love letters.
Speaker 1: He's told actually maybe in one of the good things
Speaker 1: that the cups dated the scene.
Speaker 3: He asks if he can pick them up.
Speaker 1: They say you better or not, But nonetheless he kind
Speaker 1: of leans down and he transcribes some bit of texts
Speaker 1: from the love letters that he could see on the
Speaker 1: top few pages. And he picks up the calling card
Speaker 1: that is seen at the foot of the murdered man.
Speaker 1: And he picks up the card and printed in bold
Speaker 1: Gothic text that says the Reverend Edward W. Hall And
Speaker 1: this was someone, you know, a prominent minister from town
Speaker 1: that would have been well known in the community. This
Speaker 1: is a fairly small provincial town, New Brunswick, sort of
Speaker 1: a burgeoning manufacturing and academic and industrial hub, but nonetheless
Speaker 1: still a small town. This reporter, you know, immediately realizes
Speaker 1: that this is, you know, maybe even a bigger story.
Speaker 1: Then he thought, you know, it's not your run of
Speaker 1: the mill homicide, between this curious staging of the bodies
Speaker 1: and the fact there's a very prominent local person involved
Speaker 1: next to someone who is an unknown woman who's clearly
Speaker 1: not his wife. So he rushes back to the newsroom
Speaker 1: to get the first thing to press. One of his colleagues,
Speaker 1: another reporter named Frank Diner, whose son I actually is
Speaker 1: still alive. He's in his early nineties, and I actually
Speaker 1: spoke to him for the book. He shows up a
Speaker 1: little bit later when the crime scene has devolved into
Speaker 1: this sort of circus and they're still trying to figure
Speaker 1: out who is this woman. And this reporter happened to
Speaker 1: live near around the corner from the mansion where Reverend
Speaker 1: Hall lived with his wife, Francis Hall, who's this very wealthy,
Speaker 1: wealthy heiress, this sort of prominent woman with illustrious ancestors,
Speaker 1: and this reporter, Frank Dyner, lived around the corner from them,
Speaker 1: and he says, you know, I think I can identify
Speaker 1: this woman because he knows he knew something everyone else did,
Speaker 1: and he knew about the gossip that was fairly hot
Speaker 1: around town that the minister was known to be quote friendly,
Speaker 1: I think, as he described it, with a woman named
Speaker 1: Eleanor Mills who was a choir singer in the t
Speaker 1: So he goes and finds the detective of Somerset County
Speaker 1: who's leading this case, George Tauten, and he said, I
Speaker 1: think I could identify her, and they bring her over
Speaker 1: and he says, that's Eleanor Mills.
Speaker 3: So he identified Frank Diner.
Speaker 1: This reporter is the one who identifies Eleanor Mills as
Speaker 1: the choir singer. And now there's really no doubt about
Speaker 1: what's going on there. There's philandering clergyman who has been
Speaker 1: having an affair with a member of his church who's
Speaker 1: in the choir, who's also married to the church sexton.
Speaker 3: So you know, immediately you could see how this was.
Speaker 1: Just catnip for the newspapers, you know, not just locally
Speaker 1: but all over the country, and it became a massive
Speaker 1: story that you drove the news was on front pages
Speaker 1: for months to come.
Speaker 5: What does George Tauten and the authorities do? How do
Speaker 5: they progress with questioning of people? There is obviously some
Speaker 5: people to speak to the husband of the woman found,
Speaker 5: and obviously Francis Hall, the wife of the slain reverence.
Speaker 5: So how do police progress in this investigation?
Speaker 1: They actually they go after the cook golded widower for
Speaker 1: Jim Mills. They start, you know, as soon as they
Speaker 1: officially he kind of got got wind of this through
Speaker 1: through back channels because you know, the news was starting.
Speaker 3: To fly all over town and you heard about.
Speaker 1: It through his sister in law, Eleanor's sister, when he
Speaker 1: had gone to her house, you know, seeing if she
Speaker 1: had knew anything about where his wife might be after
Speaker 1: being missing for almost two days. But he goes back
Speaker 1: to his house, the detectives are there, They give him
Speaker 1: the news. They pretty much interrogate him right away, but
Speaker 1: they are more deferential in their questioning of Francis Paul.
Speaker 1: They wait a day, they give her time to compose
Speaker 1: and let this sink in, and they go the next
Speaker 1: day and you know they are they give her a
Speaker 1: pretty They give a serious interview, but they're also pretty
Speaker 1: They sort of tiptoe around the elephant in the room
Speaker 1: and say, you know, were you aware of any close
Speaker 1: friendship between your husband and missus Mills. You know, they
Speaker 1: you know, sort of handle hard with kid gloves to
Speaker 1: an extent. That's kind of the first interrogations. But from
Speaker 1: there it was just, you know, this this torrent of
Speaker 1: gossip and intrigue and leads, and you know, it just quickly,
Speaker 1: it quickly spiraled and they had, you know, no shortage
Speaker 1: of intriguing leads to pursue.
Speaker 5: You say that francis you right, that she denies knowing
Speaker 5: anything of any behavior untoward by her husband. And Jim
Speaker 5: Mills is interviewed and says almost the same thing, that
Speaker 5: he did not suspect his wife of anything untoward. What
Speaker 5: do authorities make of both of those people's claims and
Speaker 5: how do they go and what and where do they
Speaker 5: go from there?
Speaker 1: In terms of leads, I suspect privately they didn't buy
Speaker 1: it because you know, the newspapers they were they were
Speaker 1: reporting so much that was coming out of the investigation.
Speaker 1: They clearly had you know, chatty detectives and officials they
Speaker 1: were talking to.
Speaker 3: So that's how a lot of this, you.
Speaker 1: Know, the details about this clearly well known affair started
Speaker 1: to leak out in the newspapers. They were reporting on
Speaker 1: gossip that church people knew about. You know, they were
Speaker 1: choir member who saw them arm in arm in New
Speaker 1: York City, or you know, this incident that happened at
Speaker 1: the Jersey Shore when it was clear that Eleanor was
Speaker 1: upset because the reverend left early.
Speaker 3: Things like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, the newspapers are flooded with this stuff, so,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's not clear who their sources are,
Speaker 1: but seems clear in retrospect looking at the historical record,
Speaker 1: they were getting this stuff from inside the investigation. So
Speaker 1: the police weren't buying it. But nonetheless they didn't have
Speaker 1: anything very firm. You know, they had bungled the sort
Speaker 1: of securing the crime scene. They didn't have a murder weapon.
Speaker 3: You know, Jim.
Speaker 1: Mills had a fairly decent alibi. Francis Hall had, you know,
Speaker 1: a very detailed story about you know, leaving the house
Speaker 1: and going to look with her brother who lived with her,
Speaker 1: Willie Stevens, going to look for her husband at the
Speaker 1: church the night he disappeared in the middle of the night.
Speaker 3: You know, I think I guess in the absence of
Speaker 3: any smoking gun.
Speaker 1: At first, they're they're taking these people at their word,
Speaker 1: and they, you know, have really not much concrete evidence
Speaker 1: to go on, and I think probably not much of
Speaker 1: an appetite to really aggressively pursue this.
Speaker 3: This him in from this very prominent local family.
Speaker 1: So the case takes kind of a number of twists
Speaker 1: and devolves into this side show where they circle back
Speaker 1: to Ray and Pearl, who had found the bodies, because
Speaker 1: you know, it was kind of there's some suspicious things.
Speaker 1: His the reverend's gold watch was missing, so you know,
Speaker 1: Frances and hert camp were very keen to portray this
Speaker 1: it must have been a robbery gone awry.
Speaker 3: But the question was if it was a robbery and.
Speaker 1: The watch was taken, why hadn't it turned up in
Speaker 1: any pawn shops. And they sort of suspected that maybe Ray,
Speaker 1: who was this sort of you know nair duell cobording
Speaker 1: with a teenage girl and you know, in between jobs
Speaker 1: he couldn't hold down and in the doghouse with his wife,
Speaker 1: maybe he had stolen it. Could these could these young
Speaker 1: people have been actually more involved than they let on.
Speaker 1: It's curious that they were the ones who found the body.
Speaker 1: So they circle back to them and they pull in
Speaker 1: also some of their friends, and detectives basically give Ray
Speaker 1: and a friend of his name Clifford Hayes, the third
Speaker 1: degree all night and Ray, under immense pressure from from
Speaker 1: a from detectives, thrilling him with no sleep, comes up
Speaker 1: with this story, this outrageous story about how they had
Speaker 1: been out around town the night before and he and
Speaker 1: his friends, some of his guy friends, saw Pearl with
Speaker 1: her drunk father. Her father was sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: no good guy. He owns like a low rent speakeasy,
Speaker 1: and he was a drunk and had a criminal record.
Speaker 1: And they see Pearl and her father, you know, walking
Speaker 1: you know, in the direction of this this farmland where
Speaker 1: the crime occurred, and and Ray's telling of the story,
Speaker 1: they tried to they followed them around and they lost
Speaker 1: track of them.
Speaker 3: But then they come.
Speaker 1: Upon this farm and they see these two people, you know,
Speaker 1: fooling around in the brush and it's very dark, and
Speaker 1: Ray's friend, for some reason, out of you know, in
Speaker 1: a sudden show of honor or whatever, pulls out a
Speaker 1: gun and shoots them. And then only when Ray strikes
Speaker 1: a match does he see that they didn't shoot Pearl.
Speaker 1: He didn't shoot pro in her father. He shot this
Speaker 1: these these strangers, they didn't know who they were. So
Speaker 1: it's clearly a ludicrous story. But the police are so
Speaker 1: the prosecution is so eager just to have some something point.
Speaker 3: They charged this poor guy, Clifford Hayes.
Speaker 1: But you know, no one buys it. There's an outcry
Speaker 1: in town. The newspapers aren't buying it. And George Taught,
Speaker 1: and he was a lead detective, he kind of knows
Speaker 1: this is not legit and he gets ready to fess up.
Speaker 3: So then they're back to square one.
Speaker 1: And it's only then where they make a decision based
Speaker 1: on a new witnesses that emerges that the focus will
Speaker 1: become Francis Hall and her family.
Speaker 5: Before we talk about that, we you write about that
Speaker 5: Francis Noel Stevens Hall came from New Jersey Royalty on
Speaker 5: both sides, the Stephens, the Stevens and the Carpenters, and
Speaker 5: she took immense pride in her noble ancestry. Her granddad,
Speaker 5: Ebenezer Stevens, was the stuff of grade school history books.
Speaker 3: You write, great great great granddad, great great dad.
Speaker 5: Yes, and so anyway, when you talk about Francis we
Speaker 5: also you introduce a character, Phil Pain. So tell us
Speaker 5: who Phil pain is and his role in this story.
Speaker 3: Phil Payne.
Speaker 1: At the time of the murders, he has just been
Speaker 1: made editor of managing editor, which was which was the
Speaker 1: highest position at the time of the d of the
Speaker 1: New York Daily News, which was America's first tabloid. It
Speaker 1: was founded a few years earlier by a guy named
Speaker 1: Joseph Madill Patterson who was the scion of the Medill
Speaker 1: family that controlled the Truck Cargo Tribune. You know, a
Speaker 1: wealthy heir who had struck out on his own and
Speaker 1: created a tabloid newspaper, which was, you know, a new
Speaker 1: innovation in America. And Phil, Phil Payne became was promoted
Speaker 1: to editor a week before the murders happened, so he
Speaker 1: obviously the Daily News was all over the story.
Speaker 3: He had a star reporter.
Speaker 1: Named Julia Hartman that you know, landed different exclusives and scoops.
Speaker 3: Along the way.
Speaker 1: You know what what you know, Phil Payne at the time,
Speaker 1: Francis Hall would not have probably known who this guy was.
Speaker 1: And Phil Payne was clearly you know, aware of her
Speaker 1: because his newspaper was was covering her in this very
Speaker 1: unflattering light and sort of you know, tormenting her one
Speaker 1: time she you know, tried. They had all these photographers
Speaker 1: around because the tabloid press when it emerged, the whole
Speaker 1: idea was that it should be photo driven and it
Speaker 1: was all about having big photographs and putting characters on
Speaker 1: the pages.
Speaker 3: And so they were really agressive about photography.
Speaker 1: And you know, Francis Hall tried to dodge one of
Speaker 1: their photographers, but he got a shot anyway, and they
Speaker 1: put it on the front page and the caption was
Speaker 1: something like, you know, Francis widow Missus Hall tried to
Speaker 1: dodger Camerman, but we got the best of her.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: So there was clearly like some element where you know,
Speaker 1: he is a tormentor of Francis Hall.
Speaker 3: But neither of them knew that four years later.
Speaker 1: In a new chapter of this crime, they would really become,
Speaker 1: you know, Phil Pain would become her mortal enemy.
Speaker 5: You talk about star reporter and Phil Payin really encouraging
Speaker 5: his women correspondence and newspaper women. And Julia Hartman stumbles across,
Speaker 5: or stumbles upon an amazing lead and this woman named Gibson,
Speaker 5: the pig farmer, as you call her. What happens? What
Speaker 5: does she have to say to Hartman, the big.
Speaker 3: Woman she got?
Speaker 1: You know, Hartman is the first order as far as
Speaker 1: I was able to glean for my research that learned
Speaker 1: about her.
Speaker 3: She wasn't.
Speaker 1: She didn't break the news and the pig Woman, Jam Gibson,
Speaker 1: the pig woman, is with the newspapers pejoratively nicknamed her
Speaker 1: because she was a pig farmer. She lived on this
Speaker 1: farm that was kind of next to up the road
Speaker 1: from the farm where the bodies were discovered. But she
Speaker 1: had come forward amidst this sort of side show with
Speaker 1: where this poor local kid was railroaded and charged and
Speaker 1: then released. Jim Gibson comes forward to the detectives quietly
Speaker 1: and says, you know, I didn't want to get involved
Speaker 1: in this whole thing, but I couldn't let that poor
Speaker 1: kid go down for this when I knew it happened
Speaker 1: because I was there, And she, you know, comes out
Speaker 1: with this pretty amazing tale of having been riding on
Speaker 1: her favorite mule named Jenny, down De Russy's Lane, this
Speaker 1: this dirt road that was the lover's lane where this
Speaker 1: all sort of took place, and she is out.
Speaker 3: Supposedly looking for a porn thief.
Speaker 1: It's you know, sometime around ten at night, and she
Speaker 1: doesn't she doesn't find what she's looking for, and she
Speaker 1: turns around and head back home. But she hears voices
Speaker 1: and she and Jenny tried a little closer, and she
Speaker 1: claims that she witnessed this murder. She heard four shots,
Speaker 1: she heard a woman cry out, Oh, Henry. Henry Stevens
Speaker 1: was the name of Francis Hall's brother. She also had
Speaker 1: a cousin named Henry, so that was a key detail.
Speaker 1: And Jen Gibson tells the story to detectives. Eventually, the
Speaker 1: press learns about this mystery witness. They find out about her.
Speaker 1: She starts talking to them, she starts her story becomes richer,
Speaker 1: it becomes more elaborate, with different tellings, you know, different
Speaker 1: details are shifting this way and that, but you know,
Speaker 1: at the end of at the core, it's sort of
Speaker 1: the same story. And this is finally what gives the
Speaker 1: authorities something to go on, and they pretty much just
Speaker 1: run with this. And she was a very she was
Speaker 1: a theatrical sort of recontour, you know, with sort of
Speaker 1: a checkered past and a backstory that didn't really check out.
Speaker 1: So she was definitely not the most credible witness, but
Speaker 1: she was what they had. They finally had someone who
Speaker 1: claimed to be an eyewitness to this crime.
Speaker 5: Now, along with this witness, they put together some other
Speaker 5: what they believe witnesses and put this case together for prosecution.
Speaker 5: What happens when it's finally to the grand jury. What
Speaker 5: happens at this court case And it's pretty dramatic testimony
Speaker 5: that Gibson does. Gibson gives at this court courthouse as well,
Speaker 5: So tell us about that.
Speaker 1: She gives more dramatic testimony in nineteen twenty six, which
Speaker 1: which I'm sure we'll get to. But they call a
Speaker 1: grand jury and they try to get indictments, and they
Speaker 1: really hinge on the pit on Jane Gibson and her story,
Speaker 1: even though there's all sorts of other, you know, bits
Speaker 1: of intrigue, and you know, they believe that other members
Speaker 1: of the church had sort of been, you know, resentful
Speaker 1: of the minister and the choir singer and had been
Speaker 1: spying on them and intercepting their love notes. And that's
Speaker 1: how Francis found out about their plans to meet that
Speaker 1: that's sort of the working theory. But really what they
Speaker 1: have is an eyewitness who says they were there for
Speaker 1: the murder. So that's really what the case the grand
Speaker 1: jury comes down to. But she's not a strong enough
Speaker 1: witness to convince a grand jury to return any indictments.
Speaker 3: And at that point, you know, it sort of fizzles out.
Speaker 1: They there's no indictments and it you know, the press,
Speaker 1: the party's over.
Speaker 3: They don't really have much more to cover. It fades
Speaker 3: from the headlines, and this is the end of nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty two.
Speaker 1: But you know, as the book chronicles, you know, there
Speaker 1: was this sort of this this tabloid war that was
Speaker 1: that was on the horizon, and that would ultimately sort
Speaker 1: of be the catalyst for how this case comes back
Speaker 1: four years later.
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Speaker 5: the smartest way to hire Now, Joe, we talked about
Speaker 5: the Grand Jury. Despite this supposed eyewitness, this look like
Speaker 5: a promising witness, this Skipson woman, the pig woman as
Speaker 5: referred to in the press, the grand jury could not
Speaker 5: indicte and put this matter aside. So you say that
Speaker 5: this was just the beginning of these tabloid wars. What
Speaker 5: happens with all the people involved, especially Bill Payne.
Speaker 1: So in the you know, even though this sort of
Speaker 1: disappeared from the headlines. Phil Payne, the editor of The
Speaker 1: Daily News, which at the time that was still the
Speaker 1: only tabloid in America, this is now early nineteen twenty three.
Speaker 1: He's the first one that tries to bring this case
Speaker 1: back to life, and he comes up with an outrageous
Speaker 1: plan because his star reporter, Julia Hartman, had learned that
Speaker 1: Jim Mills, the the widower you know, had kind of
Speaker 1: blown under the spell, as it were, of the spiritualism
Speaker 1: revival that was sweeping America, and he believed in ghosts
Speaker 1: in the other worldly and he was sort of a dim, meek,
Speaker 1: sort of dud.
Speaker 3: Of a guy.
Speaker 1: And they came up with this plan to try to
Speaker 1: scare him into confessing to his wife's murder. That you know,
Speaker 1: kind of what pivoted went in a different direction. He said,
Speaker 1: you know, let's look at the let's look at the
Speaker 1: husband now. And you know, Phil Paying gets some buy
Speaker 1: in from from the authorities who have nothing to lose,
Speaker 1: and he has another one of his prominent female reporters
Speaker 1: the time, named Bernadine sold who would later become Hollywood socialite,
Speaker 1: has her pretend to be a fortune teller and they
Speaker 1: deck out her apartment to be like a fortune teller's layer,
Speaker 1: with you know, all sorts of elaborate decor and incense
Speaker 1: wafting and they send Jim Mills this invitation on this
Speaker 1: spooky letter had they drew up, and they invite him
Speaker 1: to a you know, a reading in this in this
Speaker 1: Manhattan apartment that has been transformed into you know, a
Speaker 1: medium's den. And this actually happens in the winter of
Speaker 1: February nineteen twenty three. Jim goes, he sits down this
Speaker 1: fake medium whose name was was They called her Madame Astra.
Speaker 1: She puts on a show Phil Payne, the detectives and
Speaker 1: a stenographer like hiding behind a curtain, right, and they're
Speaker 1: they're really like trying to scare Jim Mills into confessing that,
Speaker 1: you know, she pretends to conjure Eleanor's spirit into the
Speaker 1: room and this goes on.
Speaker 3: For a while and they can't get him to crack.
Speaker 1: But this was an example of you know, tabloids today
Speaker 1: they continue to be known for sort of you know,
Speaker 1: stunty journalism and spending certain ethical rules that you know.
Speaker 3: More august newspapers would look down on.
Speaker 1: And that was kind of the first attempt of like
Speaker 1: tabloid press to bring this case back because they knew
Speaker 1: it would mean glory for the newspaper. They knew it
Speaker 1: would mean big circulation, and the Daily News had become
Speaker 1: the biggest paper in America. So it was on this
Speaker 1: like upward track and it was surpassing all the broadsheets,
Speaker 1: and you know, the following year again the case is
Speaker 1: just you know, it is, you know, the people in
Speaker 1: the American readership has moved on to other new sensations,
Speaker 1: of which there were many in the roaring twenties. Then Hurst,
Speaker 1: William Randolph Hurst, you know, he's been he's sort of
Speaker 1: invested by the Daily News and he realizes, oh, I
Speaker 1: need to start a tabloid of my own, so he
Speaker 1: creates one called the Daily Mirror that comes.
Speaker 3: In the scene. It's now a direct rival to the
Speaker 3: Daily News.
Speaker 1: A third media entrepreneur, who is this wildly eccentric character
Speaker 1: named Bernard McFadden. He creates a third tabloid called the
Speaker 1: New York Evening Graphic in nineteen twenty four. So now
Speaker 1: by the you know, two years after the murders in
Speaker 1: September nineteen twenty four, there are three tabloids in New
Speaker 1: York City, and now the Evening Graphic decides it wants
Speaker 1: to try to revive the case, so they send a
Speaker 1: reporter down to New Brunswick go He talks to the
Speaker 1: Pig Woman every day. He thinks he's onto something. He
Speaker 1: thinks he has the solution. And their plan literally was
Speaker 1: for their debut issue. They wanted to solve this case
Speaker 1: and put it on the front page because they knew
Speaker 1: it would you know, it would sell like crazy.
Speaker 3: And they took a stab at this and this, and.
Speaker 1: At the eleventh hour McFadden and his other executives decide
Speaker 1: they don't have enough. This is you know, we don't
Speaker 1: want to get sued here. They kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: back away. This reporter. He keeps going out to New
Speaker 1: Brunswick throughout the fall. He's like desperate, he really wants
Speaker 1: to try to solve this case. Eventually, you know, the
Speaker 1: Mirror is just like, we're done with this, and again
Speaker 1: it kind of goes away.
Speaker 3: But Phil Paine, he was he was aware of this.
Speaker 1: You know, there's the tabloid sort of circles in Manhattan
Speaker 1: at the time were small, and he was friendly with
Speaker 1: people at the Graphic And when he becomes editor of
Speaker 1: The Mirror in nineteen twenty five, because he had a
Speaker 1: falling out with Patterson at the News, Hirst immediately hires
Speaker 1: him and and his mission now is to catch the
Speaker 1: daily news and beat the daily news. And Phil Payne starts,
Speaker 1: you know, there's all sorts of things that tabloids did
Speaker 1: to try to juice their circulation, and some of it
Speaker 1: was contests, and some of it was, you know, just
Speaker 1: stunty escapades or whatever it was. But no outrageous stories
Speaker 1: sold newspapers. And Phil Payn was very astute about that.
Speaker 1: So by nineteen twenty five, late nineteen twenty five, he's
Speaker 1: at the Mirror, he's on a mission, and he decides
Speaker 1: once again to send reporters back down to New Brunswick
Speaker 1: and try to try to revive this case once and
Speaker 1: for all, and he actually succeeds.
Speaker 5: So his focus at one time with you say, with
Speaker 5: this spiritualist astra was to try to get a confession
Speaker 5: out of Jim Mills. What is the focus now based
Speaker 5: on some of those reporters and the information that given
Speaker 5: to them.
Speaker 3: I think they went back down there.
Speaker 1: I think he still had Jim Mills and his crosshairs
Speaker 1: when he went back into this whole thing. And this
Speaker 1: would have been like late nineteen twenty five, early nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty six, But he sends a reporter down a couple
Speaker 1: of porters to do some reconnaissance and they start talking
Speaker 1: to people and they start finding out hearing things that
Speaker 1: paint a different picture.
Speaker 3: And it paints this picture that the Mirror.
Speaker 1: Believes suggests that it was actually Francis Hall and her brothers,
Speaker 1: her family that were involved in this. There was all
Speaker 1: this fishy stuff they learned, and they believe that this family,
Speaker 1: this powerful family, that he was able to cover up their
Speaker 1: involvement in this crime. So they had a lot of
Speaker 1: circumstantial little revelations and you know, bits of intrigue that
Speaker 1: they picked up on. But it wasn't until they found
Speaker 1: something of a smoking gun in this one guy who
Speaker 1: had become married to one of the two maid who
Speaker 1: worked in the Hall home and lived in the Hall
Speaker 1: mansion in nineteen twenty two and was present on the
Speaker 1: night when Reverend Edward Hall disappeared.
Speaker 3: Her name was Louise Geist.
Speaker 1: The guy she married was named Arthur Real, and he
Speaker 1: was in fact an himself, an armchair amateur detective who
Speaker 1: was obsessed with this case and wanted to solve it,
Speaker 1: so he kind of made his way into Luis Guyst's charms.
Speaker 1: They ended up getting married. She didn't know this, of course,
Speaker 1: but didn't work out. They became a strange so he
Speaker 1: was sort of this jilted and bittered. They were still married,
Speaker 1: but he was kind of an embittered partner, and he
Speaker 1: comes forward claiming that Luis Geist had confessed to him
Speaker 1: in private during their during their during their marriage, that
Speaker 1: she and the hall's gardener had actually accompanied Francis and
Speaker 1: her brothers to the farm when the murders were committed,
Speaker 1: that they had that they were there when the murders
Speaker 1: were committed, and that she suggested to him that they
Speaker 1: had been paid handsomely for their silence. So he puts
Speaker 1: all this into a notarized document that serves as a
Speaker 1: marriage moment. The Mirror kind of assists with this, so
Speaker 1: you know, they're kind of playing a role in in
Speaker 1: a way that was perhaps inappropriate. But between that and
Speaker 1: also they were able to find track down the calling
Speaker 1: card that from the crime scene, the one we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier, They track it down at some fingerprint expert
Speaker 1: in Newark who had assisted with investigation four years earlier.
Speaker 1: He had somehow like the card had been in his possession.
Speaker 1: They take it and they find fingerprint experts who are
Speaker 1: willing to testify that the card, you know, it bore
Speaker 1: a fingerprint that had distinct similarities to that of Willie Stevens,
Speaker 1: who was Princess's other brother, the sort of oddball childlife
Speaker 1: character who lived in the mansion with her and couldn't
Speaker 1: really manage his own finances or affairs. So they take
Speaker 1: this dossier they've compiled, which has these few, you know,
Speaker 1: fairly juicy things and then just a lot of circumstantial
Speaker 1: you know, intrigue or whatever, and they go to the
Speaker 1: governor of New Jersey at the time. You know who
Speaker 1: Phil Payne would have would have known because he was
Speaker 1: from Hudson County, and Hudson County, which is where Jersey
Speaker 1: City is, is the seat of the powerful Democratic machine
Speaker 1: of the nineteen twenties, which is run by Frank Haig,
Speaker 1: the infamous party boss. So Phil Payne was a resident,
Speaker 1: he would have would have, you know, had some connections
Speaker 1: to these people. And they basically take this dossier and
Speaker 1: they say, okay, well, you.
Speaker 3: Know, we're going to reopen this thing.
Speaker 1: You'll get all of the scoops, We'll give you everything first,
Speaker 1: and he agrees to hold off on certain things initially,
Speaker 1: like he withholds details about the calling card. When they
Speaker 1: first published this massive expos in July nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 3: That immediately puts this.
Speaker 1: Back on the national stage and you know, brings the
Speaker 1: circus back to town, so to speak.
Speaker 5: The role that the Pain has in the Daily Mirror
Speaker 5: is very interesting that this would never occur with cooperation
Speaker 5: police and investigators, with a newspaper whatsoever, or a journalist.
Speaker 5: What is the effort that Pain does in terms of
Speaker 5: bringing this investigation to the kind of to the point
Speaker 5: that the prosecutors are comfortable with taking it to court.
Speaker 1: I mean, he literally they had this this thick dossier
Speaker 1: of information that he kept under locking key in the
Speaker 1: steel filing cabinet in his office, and he had a
Speaker 1: copy of it he stored away in some safety deposit box.
Speaker 3: So they had clearly.
Speaker 1: Compiled, you know, a fairly substantial bit of evidence or
Speaker 1: maybe evidence in quotes. And he called this, he called
Speaker 1: this investigation investigation a It was very secretive, but he
Speaker 1: basically just took what they had and he had a
Speaker 1: meeting with the Attorney General of New Jersey and the governor.
Speaker 3: That's all it took. He showed him what they had
Speaker 3: and that was really it.
Speaker 1: I mean, he single handedly instigated their bible of the investigation.
Speaker 5: So tell us about this trial.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they you know, the cases reopened officially, it's
Speaker 1: ostensibly the Somerset County prosecutors are involved. There's a new
Speaker 1: prosecutor at this time, the one who had prosecuted the
Speaker 1: case in nineteen twenty two and also had to work
Speaker 1: along a special prosecutor because the state, you know, brought
Speaker 1: in some extra help. Nonetheless, he had died a few
Speaker 1: months before Pain's investigation started. There's a new prosecutor in
Speaker 1: Somerset County. But again it was sort of like the
Speaker 1: political machine in Jersey City that was tied to the
Speaker 1: governor that were running this.
Speaker 3: They have Jersey City detectives that are going down there.
Speaker 1: They have state troopers that are assisting, and basically the
Speaker 1: governor and his allies, they're pretty much in charge of the investigation.
Speaker 1: And they are kind of have this alliance with Pain
Speaker 1: and are you know, giving him information, and he to
Speaker 1: some extent is probably still giving them information this time.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: They they eventually before too long, they arrest Francis. They
Speaker 1: then arrest both of her brothers, her one brother, Henry.
Speaker 1: You know, his alibi had initially been seen to be
Speaker 1: pretty ironclad. He lived down the shore near the Jersey Shore,
Speaker 1: at a town called Lavalette. He claimed he had been
Speaker 1: fishing the night of the murders and that there were
Speaker 1: you know, multiple other vocals that were fishing on the
Speaker 1: beach with him that night, and they they could swear
Speaker 1: to that. A new special prosecutor he goes and interviews
Speaker 1: some of those guys and they're, you know, they're they're, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was definitely the fourteen. You know,
Speaker 1: he realizes that maybe Henry's albi was not as tight
Speaker 1: as they thought, so they're able to get him. So
Speaker 1: now Francis and her two brothers, and also the other
Speaker 1: cousin I mentioned, Henry de la Breer Carpenter, they're all
Speaker 1: they're all charged. This time, there's no the Grand Juria
Speaker 1: doesn't flinch. It's it's a very quick process. The first
Speaker 1: one took, you know, several days. This time it's like
Speaker 1: a matter of hours, and they're indicted and a trial
Speaker 1: date is set to begin on November third.
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Speaker 5: Tell us about the trial and what was different from
Speaker 5: this grand jury hearing.
Speaker 3: We just had a lot more this time.
Speaker 1: You know, they did have this, you know, this this
Speaker 1: sort of revelation from about Luisgeist.
Speaker 3: They had this calling card.
Speaker 1: Interesting thing is that again, you know, once the case
Speaker 1: went to trial, the prosecution really went they went back
Speaker 1: to the pig woman again. They again became the focus
Speaker 1: of their investigation, you know, and they had they had
Speaker 1: to some degree really probed her story. There was a
Speaker 1: couple of you know, in nineteen twenty two, they had
Speaker 1: you know, brought her into the police station and they
Speaker 1: kind of They arranged for Francis and William and Henry
Speaker 1: to be there and she was able to get a
Speaker 1: look at them, and that's kind of how she identified them.
Speaker 1: There was a time also in nineteen twenty two where
Speaker 1: they took her to a train station they said, does
Speaker 1: anyone stand out? And she starts looking at a guy
Speaker 1: and she singles out this guy getting on at the
Speaker 1: seven am something trained in the morning, and that guy
Speaker 1: was Henry Carpenter. So, you know, she there were reasons
Speaker 1: I think they had to believe her. They had also
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty two gone with her and reconstructed this
Speaker 1: you know, late night mule ride and had her go
Speaker 1: through the whole thing like multiple times.
Speaker 3: So they did they did vet her to a.
Speaker 1: Certain extent, and I guess, you know, both prosecutors for whatever,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, they believed her story. And I think
Speaker 1: there just seemed to be a little more meat on
Speaker 1: the bone right this time around. And also just you know,
Speaker 1: just the frenzy was bigger. You know, the mirror really
Speaker 1: created a splash, and you know, I think that if
Speaker 1: this was seen as a second chance to find justice,
Speaker 1: and probably you know, anyone in that grand jury would not.
Speaker 1: You know, it might have felt a certain degree of
Speaker 1: pressure to not make the same mistake as they may
Speaker 1: have thought of four years earlier.
Speaker 5: What's the verdict at this trial.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's a four week trial. This is where
Speaker 1: this dramatic testimony from the pig woman happened. She had
Speaker 1: been suffering from cancer and other ailments, and she was
Speaker 1: in a hospital in Jersey City, and she is transported
Speaker 1: by ambulance over four hours slowly on this sort of
Speaker 1: like parade like procession where there's cars of reporters following
Speaker 1: her and police and people along the roadways cheering. It
Speaker 1: was a complete circus, you know, there was there had
Speaker 1: been hundreds of reporters from all over the country that
Speaker 1: descended on Summerville where the trial was taking place, and she.
Speaker 3: Testifies from a hospital bed in the courtroom. It's very dramatic.
Speaker 3: Francis and her brothers are pretty good on the stand.
Speaker 1: They sort of withstand the very aggressive questioning of the prosecutor,
Speaker 1: Alexander Simpson. In the end, it really comes down to
Speaker 1: these two key pieces of evidence.
Speaker 3: Amongst you know, one hundred and seventy eight witnesses who.
Speaker 1: Testified, and hours and hours of fingerprint testimony really was
Speaker 1: about the card, the calling card.
Speaker 3: And the pig woman's testimony.
Speaker 1: I think take the pig woman out of it, because
Speaker 1: just no one believed her, and the prosecution did a
Speaker 1: really good job of taking apart her life story and.
Speaker 3: Think the lies she had been caught in.
Speaker 1: You know, she the story she told about her life
Speaker 1: was very different than what the public record revealed, and
Speaker 1: they really tore her apart and were able to completely
Speaker 1: diminish her credibility. So I don't think any of the
Speaker 1: twelve men in this, because they all were men in this.
Speaker 3: Jury believed her.
Speaker 1: But there were a couple of people on the jury
Speaker 1: I think two in fact, who were swighed by the
Speaker 1: fingerprint evidence, you know, because this was something where you
Speaker 1: did have experts, you know, there was the prosecution had
Speaker 1: experts who had been with the fingerprint experts with the NYPD,
Speaker 1: or had studied with the more vanced fingerprinting agencies in Europe,
Speaker 1: and they swore that you know, there was these five
Speaker 1: or six.
Speaker 3: Ridgi characteristics as I believe they're.
Speaker 1: Called, that left no doubt in their minds that Willie
Speaker 1: Stevens fingerprint was on this calling card. The defense argued
Speaker 1: you know, how do we know what the real providence
Speaker 1: of this card is? And phil Pain got this and
Speaker 1: isn't that suspicious? And did they could they have doctored something?
Speaker 3: Could this? Could Willy's fingerprint not have ended up there
Speaker 3: by some innocent means?
Speaker 1: That was kind of the way they rebutted the testimonia
Speaker 1: of the fingerprint experts the prosecution put forward. But in
Speaker 1: the end, I think those two holdouts who felt swayed
Speaker 1: by the card, they were swayed in the other direction,
Speaker 1: and the jury returned a verdict, if not guilty, they
Speaker 1: acquitted them.
Speaker 5: What happens with the reaction from the press, you.
Speaker 1: Know, the press, they go nuts. Obviously throughout the whole trial,
Speaker 1: this was like, you know, this was like the O. J.
Speaker 1: Simpson trial, you know. And then it wasn't just the tabloids. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the tabloids were doing some of the most lurid and
Speaker 1: photo driven coverage that really, you know, turned some of
Speaker 1: these people into characters, really you know, showed you know,
Speaker 1: they showed people what they looked like.
Speaker 3: They you know, they blew them up on the front page.
Speaker 1: They had these elaborate cartoons about them, and they made
Speaker 1: their coverage something The whole idea of the tabloids was
Speaker 1: this should be fun and entertaining as well as informative.
Speaker 3: So it was.
Speaker 1: It was really a sort of an innovative, innovative form
Speaker 1: at the time. But the whole press, all of America,
Speaker 1: they were all over this, and the jury, I think
Speaker 1: the decision, you know, it was a huge I don't know,
Speaker 1: people were surprised because the pig woman's testimony was so bad.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone expected that this was going to
Speaker 1: go any way other than it did.
Speaker 3: Even the prosecutor, Alexander Simpson.
Speaker 1: He didn't even come back to court for when the
Speaker 1: verdict was was announced. He just stayed in Jersey City.
Speaker 1: I think he knew the case was tanked. And you know,
Speaker 1: there was all sorts of elements of in rural Summerville
Speaker 1: and Somerset County where this trial occurred. You know, there
Speaker 1: was taxpayers who sort of resented all this, this trouble
Speaker 1: that had been brought on their town by this by
Speaker 1: this tabloid newspaper, and that population was very sort of partisan,
Speaker 1: I think, probably more towards defense, whereas in New Brunswick,
Speaker 1: you know, where these rich people and their associates were
Speaker 1: really looking for them to be exonerated. There was more
Speaker 1: appetite for the trial in New Brunswick, but in Somerville,
Speaker 1: I think there was a relief among the local press
Speaker 1: that it was over and justice had been done. The Mirror,
Speaker 1: this was a huge blow to them, you know, because
Speaker 1: they had really Phil Pain at one point had written
Speaker 1: in an editorial like the mystery has been solved. They
Speaker 1: were very confident and cocky about it. But afterwards they
Speaker 1: got sued, you know, they eventually had to settle. Hirst
Speaker 1: eventually settled with Francis and Henry Carpenter and I believe
Speaker 1: Willie Stevens for some large sum That was, you know,
Speaker 1: the largest libel settlement in American press history at the time.
Speaker 3: So, you know, so it was a big It was
Speaker 3: a blow to the Mirror.
Speaker 1: But again Hurst, he just wanted Phil Pain to keep
Speaker 1: growing circulation, and he said, you know, Phil Pain, in
Speaker 1: his correspondence with Hurst, was very he was very worried.
Speaker 1: You know, he apologetic about this libel suit and he said,
Speaker 1: you know, don't worry, I'll fight this. And he in
Speaker 1: a fact had retained Alexander Simpson, the prosecutor who had
Speaker 1: prosecuted the case as his personal attorney and HIRSTI don't
Speaker 1: worry as long as you get me after he was
Speaker 1: after a five hundred thousand average weekday circulation. As long
Speaker 1: as you get that five hundred thousand circulation, that's all
Speaker 1: I want, so pretty much pain. You know, it was
Speaker 1: a black guye for him, and he didn't want to
Speaker 1: let it go, but he had to move on.
Speaker 3: To the next things, you know, to keep Hirst happy.
Speaker 5: Before we talk about the fate of Phil Payin very interestingly,
Speaker 5: what happens with this story. I know it goes away,
Speaker 5: but what happens in terms of any information coming forward later.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of that until many years later,
Speaker 1: which is where the book ends up.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 1: You know, even between nineteen twenty two and nineteen twenty six,
Speaker 1: even as this was not being covered at all the
Speaker 1: detective there would always be some stray, little short news
Speaker 1: article that they had a new lead or this and that,
Speaker 1: but you know, it was all you don't know what they.
Speaker 3: Were talking about. You don't know how credible it was.
Speaker 1: There may have some degree of that, but I think
Speaker 1: that the appetite was just now completely diminished. You know,
Speaker 1: the state had been embarrassed sort of twice because this
Speaker 1: was kind of you know, this national circus had descended
Speaker 1: on New Jersey and they it seemed that their officials
Speaker 1: couldn't you know, bring it to justice properly. So I
Speaker 1: think probably all parties involved, it was time to put
Speaker 1: this behind everyone.
Speaker 3: For everyone to put this behind.
Speaker 5: You talk about Hurst and Phil Payne and the continuum
Speaker 5: of them trying to achieve this so many readers per day.
Speaker 5: And then Charles Limberg, the American hero, tell us what
Speaker 5: happens with Fred Payne in pursuit of tabloids success.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know there's other here. He's moving on
Speaker 3: to the next things.
Speaker 1: He's you know, still doing different you know, contests and
Speaker 1: circulation stunts. But what he sees is on in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven, after Lindberg has made his famous flight and
Speaker 1: become this national hero and worldwide celebrity, which was a
Speaker 1: media circus in its own right, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of imitators who wanted to do the same. So there
Speaker 1: was different contests and some newspapers were sponsoring them, and
Speaker 1: everyone wanted to be the first flight from from this
Speaker 1: city to that city in Europe, and it became you know,
Speaker 1: one of the many fads of the nineteen twenties, one
Speaker 1: of the many competitive sensations of you know, which also
Speaker 1: included things like boxing and majong and but there was definitely,
Speaker 1: there was definitely flight fever. And phil Pain saw an
Speaker 1: opportunity in this, and he proposed to Hearst and the
Speaker 1: Daily Mirror should sponsor a flight from New York to Rome.
Speaker 1: And this will be this will this will both advance
Speaker 1: the cause of aviation and more cynically, Pain knew this
Speaker 1: would bring more more prominence and readership and attention to
Speaker 1: the Daily Mirror.
Speaker 5: And what happens, unfortunately, I'll.
Speaker 1: Try to give that I'll try to do this without
Speaker 1: too much of a spoiler, but you know, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a Pain doesn't tell Hirst at first that he
Speaker 1: plans to actually go on this journey with these two
Speaker 1: experienced airmail pilots, one of whom had actually been bested
Speaker 1: in the competition that that Limberg won when he when
Speaker 1: he made that historic light. But pretty much Pain is
Speaker 1: setting up or orchestrating all the details for this flight.
Speaker 1: They get, he gets a plane, you know, he starts
Speaker 1: publicizing it.
Speaker 3: It's getting pressed in Europe because they're.
Speaker 1: Going to go to Rome, and you know he it's
Speaker 1: on the radar of Mussolini and the Pope and kill
Speaker 1: Paine had simultaneously he also had a one point proposed
Speaker 1: to Hirst that Musolini should write a column either for
Speaker 1: the syndicated in all Hearst papers or exclusively for the
Speaker 1: Dailing Mirror, because it would bring so much circulation to
Speaker 1: the to the paper. So he was really he was
Speaker 1: an ambitious guy, and he was mischievous, and you know
Speaker 1: there there was things about his journalists, even by the
Speaker 1: stamps end of the day that we were not found.
Speaker 1: But he was a good natured, ultimately good natured, well
Speaker 1: liked person. And Hurst finds out that he's actually planning
Speaker 1: to get into the plane, and he's not happy about that.
Speaker 3: In the meantime, some of these other contests they're.
Speaker 1: Ending in disasters planes are like going down into the ocean,
Speaker 1: including one that had been sponsored by her son, who
Speaker 1: was the time, I believe, the publisher of the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Examiner. I want to and Hurst wants payin to
Speaker 1: call the whole thing off, and he becomes more and
Speaker 1: more adamant about that up until at the very end
Speaker 1: the flight can't take off from Long Island where they
Speaker 1: planned because weather conditions and the runway they are just
Speaker 1: were not working out. So they move it to Old
Speaker 1: Orchard Beach, Maine, where there's this long, natural sand packed
Speaker 1: runway and better weather, and up until literally the eleventh hour,
Speaker 1: pain is getting frantic telegrams from Hurst, begging him, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll pay the pilots the prize money.
Speaker 3: Don't do this.
Speaker 1: But Phil pain Is is just determined and he sends
Speaker 1: he disobeys Hurst's wishes or orders and sort of writes
Speaker 1: Hurst this really fatalistic sounding reply, but also a very
Speaker 1: touching one where he says, I know you've been such
Speaker 1: a good chief.
Speaker 3: Hurst was keeps called the chief my honor and respect
Speaker 3: and love you.
Speaker 1: It was almost there was something very final about it,
Speaker 1: almost as if you know, if I don't come back,
Speaker 1: and this plane, you know it's people are on the
Speaker 1: beach and they're watching it starting to take off, and
Speaker 1: it's really struggling to gain altitude until you know the
Speaker 1: last possible moment it swings out over the ocean and
Speaker 1: it's still kind of like covering a little too close
Speaker 1: to the waves, but then it catches Augusta win, and
Speaker 1: it finally goes up on its journey to Rome into
Speaker 1: the sky, and all the people on the beach, including
Speaker 1: Payne's second wife and the pilots wives, they're they're just thrilled.
Speaker 1: And and Payne's his second wife. Her name was Dorothy Payne.
Speaker 1: She was kind of a actress and showgirl. She hadn't
Speaker 1: appeared in a d. W. Griffith film, and she wrote
Speaker 1: to her saying, you know, with how spun they took off,
Speaker 1: and you know, we're so excited, and pain expects to
Speaker 1: dine with Mussolini, you know, when he arrives tomorrow night.
Speaker 1: And maybe I'll leave it to your listeners to find
Speaker 1: out how how this how this flight ended. But it
Speaker 1: was it was, you know, this one more spectacular stunt,
Speaker 1: probably the biggest stunt of Payne's career. You know, he
Speaker 1: had created this national media circus like the country had
Speaker 1: never seen, and now he was on this historic flight
Speaker 1: to the eternal city. He had captured the world's attention,
Speaker 1: and you know that would alply be his legacy.
Speaker 5: You're write a part of that legacy too, you say.
Speaker 5: True Crime, of course, has been captivating readers for at
Speaker 5: least two hundred years, but the early New York tabloids
Speaker 5: arguably laid the groundwork for the genre as we know
Speaker 5: it today by transforming true crime into something more vivid
Speaker 5: and compelling than a dense wilderness of small font newsprint.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think it's not that crime and
Speaker 1: the American reader's obsession with crime happened in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: If you go back to you know, the penny papers
Speaker 1: of Victorian and guilded age America. I mean, there was
Speaker 1: all sorts of sensations and murders that people were devouring.
Speaker 1: Same thing with the Yellow Press, the Hurst and Pultzer
Speaker 1: papers in the turn of the century. But the tabloids
Speaker 1: was the first time, like I said, where you had
Speaker 1: this new medium that just it wasn't just you know,
Speaker 1: like a broadsheet if you could picture it. Especially back then,
Speaker 1: it was just this inky, endless, huge lines of texts,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think readers devoured that. But suddenly
Speaker 1: you have these smaller publications that you could open like
Speaker 1: a book, and they had all these amazing, you know,
Speaker 1: eye popping photos in them, and you can really see
Speaker 1: what people looked like, and they were filled with these
Speaker 1: these contests that people loved, and they were filled with
Speaker 1: pictures of you know, scantily clad women, and they really
Speaker 1: focused primarily on scandal and the more lurid, sensational things
Speaker 1: that you know. Patterson when he founded The Daily News
Speaker 1: said that readers loved and he identified those things as sex, slash, love, money,
Speaker 1: and murder, and especially if there's a story that involves
Speaker 1: all three.
Speaker 3: That was like the cream of the crop.
Speaker 1: And that was precisely what the All Mills murder was,
Speaker 1: the Whole Mills case.
Speaker 3: It was a swirl of those of those elements.
Speaker 1: So I think this was the first time people in
Speaker 1: the tabloid newspapers and the tabloid press were consuming this
Speaker 1: sort of you know, true crime news in a way
Speaker 1: that was designed as entertainment. The Daily Mirror their motto,
Speaker 1: their slogan was ninety percent entertainment, ten percent information. That
Speaker 1: was the whole idea behind it, and that's what was
Speaker 1: new about those publications of the time.
Speaker 3: And they did some.
Speaker 1: Really outrageous things that hadn't been done before, and you know,
Speaker 1: all sorts of As I said, they kind of created
Speaker 1: a new culture for media that I think you can
Speaker 1: trace a line from that directly to you know, the
Speaker 1: National Inquirer, or Court TV and reality television. It's all
Speaker 1: the same, the sensibility of turning sort of eccentric, sometimes
Speaker 1: unfortunate characters into these you know, kind of mega personalities
Speaker 1: that other ordinary people.
Speaker 3: Become obsessed with.
Speaker 1: I think I think that the tabloids kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: the first to really hit on that formula, and it
Speaker 1: continues today. And we should should note that, you know,
Speaker 1: talk about you know, big personalities that you know, are
Speaker 1: are kind of become titans because of the tabloids.
Speaker 3: This this was Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: You know, he became a towering figure, sort of ridiculous
Speaker 1: towering figure, but but nonetheless a towering figure because of
Speaker 1: the coverage he got from the Daily News, this same
Speaker 1: paper that started it all, and the New York Post
Speaker 1: at the time in the early late eighties and early nineties.
Speaker 1: I mean, they turned Trump into the you know what
Speaker 1: he was, what he became. So I think that I
Speaker 1: think it shows you could trace that all back.
Speaker 3: To this moment of media in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 5: You say that these tabloids still have their descendants. But
Speaker 5: what we talked about too, is that Bill Pain was
Speaker 5: able with the Daily Mirror to launch this investigation or
Speaker 5: this reinvestigation, and he tried. They tried as hard as
Speaker 5: they could, very much like the most papers with the
Speaker 5: most integrity, to bring these people, these killers. They tried
Speaker 5: to attempt to bring these people to justice, and they
Speaker 5: weren't successful. But unlike the tabloids of today and following,
Speaker 5: I think, and some of the tactics and antics that
Speaker 5: he employed with this tabloid example with Jim Mills and
Speaker 5: that questioning with this spiritualist, but regardless, they still brought
Speaker 5: attempted to bring these killers to justice and to show
Speaker 5: that the prosecution was self hampered in basically prosecuting rats
Speaker 5: because of her incredible wealth and her status.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think it was an entirely you know,
Speaker 1: cynical motive at play. I think that phil Pain did
Speaker 1: want to see justice, and he wanted the glory of
Speaker 1: his tabloid being, you know, the vehicle led.
Speaker 3: To that justice.
Speaker 1: You know, tabloids are very they could be very righteous
Speaker 1: and even sanctimonious in their causes when they believe in something.
Speaker 1: You know, even today, especially in Great Britain, we see this.
Speaker 1: You know, tabloids they go on crusades, sure, and they
Speaker 1: advocate for things, and sometimes, you know, they they achieve
Speaker 1: some very good things the Only News has done. You know,
Speaker 1: they've they've won Pulitzer Prizes in the years that followed,
Speaker 1: you know, I think and even even the most the
Speaker 1: tabloids we think of as the most ridiculous or or
Speaker 1: you know, got you know, trash gy. I mean, the
Speaker 1: National Inquirer has even broken stories that had that were
Speaker 1: a public service, that had big public impact. And the
Speaker 1: tactics they employ are not the same that the traditional
Speaker 1: press would use.
Speaker 3: But sometimes they.
Speaker 1: Do achieve, you know, an honorable result or at least
Speaker 1: that that has public import And I think that is
Speaker 1: the thing about tabloid newspapers that can get lost because
Speaker 1: we do just think of them as kind of this
Speaker 1: trashy you know, sort of down market scandal sheets or whatever.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think of something like the National
Speaker 1: Inquirer when they broke this story about Jeff Bezos and
Speaker 1: his affair, and then it was later revealed that they
Speaker 1: had seemed that they had been bribing him with the
Speaker 1: threat of releasing a very indecent photograph of his other regions.
Speaker 1: You know, I think of like Phil Pain but hiding
Speaker 1: behind that curtain, you know, like when when they were
Speaker 1: trying to entrap.
Speaker 3: This this poor guy into confessing to a crime.
Speaker 1: You know, I see a through line, but I don't
Speaker 1: think there's always an ill motive at play. And I
Speaker 1: don't think that Phil phil pain because he was you know,
Speaker 1: he did have honor. He's someone that he had physical
Speaker 1: impairments that prevented him from being able to fight in
Speaker 1: World War One, but he volunteered with the Knights of
Speaker 1: Columbus Warriors Service and he became, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: correspondent out out there, and you know, he champions a
Speaker 1: lot of young women at these tabloids that might not
Speaker 1: have been able to rise to prominence in the other
Speaker 1: traditional broadsheets of the day.
Speaker 3: You know, he was he was.
Speaker 1: He was mischievous, he was a mad cap, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't like a terrible guy.
Speaker 3: I think he had good intentions and was well meaning, and.
Speaker 1: I think he got probably caught up to an extent
Speaker 1: in this this quest for more glory and more circulation
Speaker 1: and ultimately more power.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I want to thank you very much, Joe Pompeo
Speaker 5: for coming on and talking about your new Blood and Ink,
Speaker 5: the scandalous jazz Age double murder that hooked America on
Speaker 5: true crime. Do you have a website and do any
Speaker 5: other social media and when was this book released or
Speaker 5: to be released?
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not sure when your podcast will come out,
Speaker 1: but if it's after September thirteenth, they will have been
Speaker 1: released on Tuesday, September thirteenth from William Morrow and HarperCollins.
Speaker 3: Listeners. You can go to Blood and Dot Inc.
Speaker 1: Which has you know, lots of stuff on there about
Speaker 1: how to order the book and some other good things.
Speaker 1: And I'm also doing a newsletter which they could find
Speaker 1: at Joe Pompeo got substack dot com. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: every once a week offer some sort of like bonus
Speaker 1: content or special outtakes and things like that for fans
Speaker 1: of the story, and also keep people up to date
Speaker 1: with recommendations on other historical true crime and narrative history
Speaker 1: that's coming out. So that's Joepompeo dot substack dot com.
Speaker 1: Or you can also go to bloodd dot Inc. You
Speaker 1: can also find my substack newsletter there. It's probably the best,
Speaker 1: the best way to follow me find out how to
Speaker 1: follow me.
Speaker 4: Great.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, Joe Pompeio Blood and Ink The
Speaker 5: scandalous jazz age double murder that hooked America on true crime.
Speaker 5: Been a fascinating interview. Thank you so much and you
Speaker 5: have a great evening. Joe Pompeo, thanks thanks for having me.
Speaker 5: Good night,