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Speaker 3: You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 3: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 3: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 3: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 3: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening, a brilliantly research reinvestigation into the nearly forgotten
Speaker 5: century of old murder that inspired one of the most
Speaker 5: seductive mysteries in the history of television and film. In
Speaker 5: nineteen oh eight, Hazel Drew was found floating in a
Speaker 5: pond in sand Lake, New York, beaten to death. The
Speaker 5: unsolved murder inspired rumors, speculation, ghost stories, and almost a
Speaker 5: century later, the phenomenon of twin peaks? Who killed Hazel Drew?
Speaker 5: Like Laura Palmer, she was a paradox of personalities, a young,
Speaker 5: beautiful puzzle with secrets. Perhaps the even trickier question is
Speaker 5: who was Hazel Drew? Seeking escape from her poor country roots,
Speaker 5: Hazel found work as a domestic servant in a notoriously
Speaker 5: corrupt metropolis of Troy, New York. Fate derailed her plans
Speaker 5: for reinvention, but the investigation that followed her brutal murder
Speaker 5: was fraught with red herrings. While goose chases and unreliable witnesses,
Speaker 5: did officials really follow the leads or did they bury
Speaker 5: them to protect the guilty. The likely answer is revealed
Speaker 5: in an absorbing true mystery that's ingeniously reconstructed in every
Speaker 5: bit as haunting as the cultural obsession it inspired. The
Speaker 5: book that we're featuring this evening is Murder at Teal's
Speaker 5: Pond Hazel Drew and the mystery that inspired Twin Peaks,
Speaker 5: with my special guest journalists and authors David Bushman and
Speaker 5: Mark T. Gibbons. Welcome to the program, and thank you
Speaker 5: so much for this interview. David Bushman and mark T Givens.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having us.
Speaker 2: Dan, Yeah, it's nice to be here. That was amazing synopsis.
Speaker 2: I feel like going out and buying the book now myself.
Speaker 6: You know, a good story.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, Thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 3: Gentlemen.
Speaker 5: Uh, let's start about right off with how you both
Speaker 5: came to be what a little bit a bit about
Speaker 5: your backgrounds and as you say, your interested in Twin
Speaker 5: Peaks at one time. Tell us how this all came about.
Speaker 2: Mark, why don't you go first? Well flipping around this time?
Speaker 6: Oh jes off, Yeah, we kind of have our first time. No, no,
Speaker 6: I can keep it first ahead.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think both of us for long time david'
Speaker 4: chime and I'm sure, but we're a long time As
Speaker 4: you mentioned Twin Peaks fans, and for those who don't know,
Speaker 4: it was the show in the late eighties early nineties.
Speaker 4: It didn't last very long, the two seasons and then
Speaker 4: a movie. It was a big cult favorite. Mark Frost
Speaker 4: and David Lynch, who is you know, kind of a
Speaker 4: cult here, I guess, or a cult filmmaker. Anyway, we
Speaker 4: were big fans of that back in the day and
Speaker 4: it ended abruptly, and twenty five years or so later,
Speaker 4: as predicted in the show, it did come back for
Speaker 4: a third season, and I think we were both kind
Speaker 4: of rekindled our younger days or something more interest in it.
Speaker 4: So I started a podcast and then lead up to
Speaker 4: it and looking into you know, Twin Peaks. If you're
Speaker 4: not familiar, it's all about you know, puzzles and illusions
Speaker 4: and layers within the show. So that's that's what I
Speaker 4: was doing in my podcast. And started with the pilot,
Speaker 4: the first episode, which is kind of a a little
Speaker 4: two hour movie in and of itself, which is the
Speaker 4: Murder Mystery. And I was looking at the inspirations for
Speaker 4: David Lynch and Mark Frost and happened to wander into
Speaker 4: the Mark Frost side of things where he had mentioned
Speaker 4: in a couple interviews over the years, one or two
Speaker 4: back twenty five years ago and one or two in
Speaker 4: more recent years, I think at the USC Film Theater
Speaker 4: is one we definitely have on record where he first
Speaker 4: mentioned this kind of the origins of this the story
Speaker 4: that Hazel drew story which he would then go on
Speaker 4: to talking with David Lynch come up with Twin Peaks,
Speaker 4: which is a sort of a parallel tale of a
Speaker 4: young beautiful girl with all kinds of secrets and things
Speaker 4: like that, but her bodies found washed on the shores
Speaker 4: a small palm in a small town or near a
Speaker 4: small town, and then kind of the consequences of all
Speaker 4: her relationships and so forth.
Speaker 6: So they're kind of parallel tales.
Speaker 4: Although Mark Frost and maybe I can transition a little
Speaker 4: bit here to David who wrote a book with Mark
Speaker 4: Fross and can talk about some of the origins there.
Speaker 4: He didn't really know the details that we spent some
Speaker 4: time researching.
Speaker 6: He does now. He provided the forward for our book,
Speaker 6: but for him.
Speaker 4: It was more a ghost story that his grandmother had
Speaker 4: told him, a cautionary tale of stay away from that pond. Basically,
Speaker 4: he spent summers in the area where this where this occurred.
Speaker 4: So that's that's sort of the elevator, the intro speech
Speaker 4: out of David.
Speaker 6: If you have anything to add kind of how we
Speaker 6: got together and all of that.
Speaker 2: Good, Yeah, I just from a personal perspective, I was
Speaker 2: editing TV copy at variety of the Show Basins publication
Speaker 2: at the time that Twin Peaks was first released, and
Speaker 2: you know, we had stories about it almost every week
Speaker 2: because it was big news that David Lynch was coming
Speaker 2: to TV. That was like the first story. Then the
Speaker 2: second story was, you know, ab he just kept putting
Speaker 2: it off and putting it off and putting it off
Speaker 2: because the rumors that were going around were that the
Speaker 2: executives in New York were scared of it. They didn't
Speaker 2: know how, they were afraid it was going to just
Speaker 2: totally bomb because it was the word I'm looking for different.
Speaker 2: I guess there's one word. But and so eventually, you know,
Speaker 2: they did get it on the air, and so I
Speaker 2: was editing stories about it every week. Then at one
Speaker 2: point I was proposing book ideas to a company called
Speaker 2: hal Leonard or Applos Books, and one of the ideas
Speaker 2: we submitted was for twin Peaks. And then after I
Speaker 2: submitted the idea and was waiting to hear from them,
Speaker 2: that's when we everyone found out Twin Peaks was coming back,
Speaker 2: and so they picked twin Peaks as the topic. And
Speaker 2: while I was researching that book, I came across Hazel
Speaker 2: Drew and then I happened to be listening to Mark's
Speaker 2: Dear Meadow radio podcasts and he was talking about it
Speaker 2: and he was clearly really interested in it, and so
Speaker 2: was I. So I reached out to him and said,
Speaker 2: you know, would you like to co write a book
Speaker 2: about this? And that's what happened.
Speaker 6: Great.
Speaker 5: The first thing you talk about is the assistance that
Speaker 5: you'd had and your first visit to sand Lake and
Speaker 5: the whole area. To start off, tell us about sand
Speaker 5: Lake and this is a small place and its relation
Speaker 5: to Troy and set the stage for the places that
Speaker 5: are important the locations that are important in this story.
Speaker 2: Well, Troy, as you mentioned in your introduction, was a
Speaker 2: notoriously corrupt city. It was also a very vibrant city
Speaker 2: around the turn of the twentieth century, which is the
Speaker 2: period of time we're talking about it. It had a
Speaker 2: hugely vibrant commercial place. It had people came from all
Speaker 2: over to shop. There is largely because it's on the
Speaker 2: Hudson that it was a major transportation hub. They had
Speaker 2: a railroad station and a lot of people passed through it,
Speaker 2: servicemen and other people on their way north or south.
Speaker 2: So it was really a vibrant house hopping community and
Speaker 2: also a notoriously krup one in terms of politics, which
Speaker 2: they actually produced some of the most influential politicians of
Speaker 2: the time, people like Frank Black who went on to
Speaker 2: be Governor of New York, and this guy Murphy who
Speaker 2: was a US Senator. Powerful powerful people, but also people
Speaker 2: who were deeply enmeshed in the political machines. Black a
Speaker 2: Republican and Murphy a Democrat, and so and you know
Speaker 2: that corruption sort of filtered down into almost every aspect
Speaker 2: of life. There was a very famous incident in eighteen
Speaker 2: ninety six there where a guy by the name of
Speaker 2: Batsha who was stuffing ballots for the Democrats, got confronted
Speaker 2: by a bunch of guys from the APA, which is
Speaker 2: the American Protective Association, this brillatly anti Catholic group. This
Speaker 2: is in Troy, and they were Republicans, and it led
Speaker 2: to the showdown where one of the APA guys got
Speaker 2: shot and killed, and bat Shae got executed for that killing,
Speaker 2: even though it seems by every indication that he was
Speaker 2: not guilty of it, but that it was a politically
Speaker 2: motivated execution. So and then Meme Fay, who was one
Speaker 2: of the it was a world renowned madam, had places
Speaker 2: in downtown Troy. They had huge color factories. The arrow shirt,
Speaker 2: which most of us have heard of, was produced there.
Speaker 2: Uncle Sam, the names the guy whom the country is
Speaker 2: named after, was from Troy. There's this really exciting place
Speaker 2: to be. It was big city, but at the same
Speaker 2: time a very kind of like a gain of inequity
Speaker 2: in a way and iniquity in a way. And it
Speaker 2: just all played into the It all played into the
Speaker 2: story that we were telling. And Mark, I'll let you
Speaker 2: talk about Sam Lake.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So it was kind of the tale of two
Speaker 4: different worlds, which really helped, you know, our narrative kind
Speaker 4: of flush things out, as Hazel was involved in both worlds.
Speaker 6: She was born out in the.
Speaker 4: Country near San Lake, where she was later found murdered,
Speaker 4: but she her family kind of bounced back and forth
Speaker 4: out of economics necessity at the time, her job that
Speaker 4: when her father had problems keeping a job, so at
Speaker 4: times they're living with her mother's brother, Will, who's also
Speaker 4: involved in this story, out in Sand Lake. So it's really,
Speaker 4: you know, it bounced back and forth and Troy as
Speaker 4: David went through in itself, so interesting. A thing to
Speaker 4: kind of add there is that you can go there today.
Speaker 4: It's not exactly preserved. There was to one of our friends, Dismay,
Speaker 4: a lot of in the seventies they did take down
Speaker 4: some of the buildings there, but relatively speaking, it's really
Speaker 4: preserved today historically, so you can see maybe not you know,
Speaker 4: you the big train station is gone, but there's other
Speaker 4: buildings around there where you can see the glass and
Speaker 4: the architecture of the time. Kathy Sheehan and Don Written
Speaker 4: were two historians that helped us out a lot showed
Speaker 4: us around the town there, and I know, for example,
Speaker 4: there's a new series on a Gilded Age, which I
Speaker 4: believe is set in New York City, but they used
Speaker 4: Troy for a lot of the filming, which they said
Speaker 4: they've done in the past as well, just because it's
Speaker 4: kind of preserved but a really neat place to visit.
Speaker 4: But we happened upon that, and then, as I was saying,
Speaker 4: to contrast that out fifteen twenty miles outside of Troy
Speaker 4: is sand Lake and the surrounding countryside, and it really
Speaker 4: is a different world then in today, I think, and
Speaker 4: that you know, we tried to put that in the book,
Speaker 4: but it's just different kinds of people, you know, a
Speaker 4: little wary of strangers, but once they know your name
Speaker 4: or whatever, they're the nicest people in the world. So
Speaker 4: many of the locals helped us there. In particular, we
Speaker 4: always have to mention Bob Moore, who's the Sand Lake
Speaker 4: historian who primarily would set up these round tables that
Speaker 4: allowed us to get together with like minded people and
Speaker 4: descendants of people involved in the case, and just really
Speaker 4: great fact finding resources. And you know, Bob also grew
Speaker 4: up in the area and was able to point us
Speaker 4: to all kinds of different locations.
Speaker 6: He took us to the where the pond was. We
Speaker 6: kind of found it all.
Speaker 4: Together, reconstructing it, and would introduce us to, you know,
Speaker 4: locals who, as I said, were descendants of people involved
Speaker 4: in the case.
Speaker 6: One other we.
Speaker 4: Should always always mention as Mark Marshall, who was kind
Speaker 4: of like, you know, a third collaborator with us really,
Speaker 4: and a lot of the stuff in the book that
Speaker 4: we uncovered what we uncovered together, and to be honest,
Speaker 4: he uncovered a lot of it. Would send these great
Speaker 4: long emails that would take days and weeks to unpack
Speaker 4: because they were so full of stuff. Sometimes a little
Speaker 4: stream and conscious, but a great community up there, which
Speaker 4: made this whole thing kind of fun just research. And
Speaker 4: I don't we lost track of really how many times
Speaker 4: we traveled up there, you know, just periodically it would
Speaker 4: be time to go visit the library and do some
Speaker 4: more photo copies and check in with the guy and everything,
Speaker 4: and they were they would be uncovering, you know, new things.
Speaker 4: We're always on the lookout for the records up there,
Speaker 4: so it would get a lead and didn't really make
Speaker 4: much hate in that regard, but Sand Lake itself did
Speaker 4: to just echo back to Twin Peaks. Briefly, it really
Speaker 4: felt like Twin Peaks to me. It's and again Mark Frost.
Speaker 4: We think of David Lynch usually if you're familiar with
Speaker 4: Twin Peaks, but Mark Frost was half of that at least,
Speaker 4: and this was where he, you know, kind of spent
Speaker 4: some formative time. And so it's all the trees and
Speaker 4: kind of remote and a lot of our where the
Speaker 4: murder took place, or where we think it took place
Speaker 4: up on this Tableton Mountain, kind of this sort of murky,
Speaker 4: creepy local.
Speaker 6: You know, just right out of Murder Mystery. So yeah,
Speaker 6: very even to this day.
Speaker 4: You go there and it's a bit timeless there in
Speaker 4: terms of the same names of the same people. But yeah,
Speaker 4: you can go see the pond where Hazel's body was
Speaker 4: found Hell's Pond, and just different. David and I both
Speaker 4: live in different cities, but I think we both really
Speaker 4: enjoyed visiting Troy and sand Mike and getting to know
Speaker 4: people there as well.
Speaker 2: Even Dan. Even sand Lake itself was dichotomous in the
Speaker 2: sense that you had the locals or the counties I
Speaker 2: guess people might call them, but and then you had
Speaker 2: it was back in the day. It was a very
Speaker 2: popular resort air and you had a lot of wealthy
Speaker 2: people coming out from places like Glandlake, like Glass Lake.
Speaker 2: Teddy Roosevelt was a frequent visitor there, but they'd go
Speaker 2: to from Albany or Troy or the city, New York City,
Speaker 2: and you know, there'd be very little interaction between the
Speaker 2: locals and these tourists or these people who had summer
Speaker 2: homes there. And in fact, one of the key UH suspects,
Speaker 2: I would say in our story is this guy Henry Kramarrath,
Speaker 2: who was a wealthy businessman from Albany who had a
Speaker 2: They called it a camp, but it was really like
Speaker 2: a resort for wealthy people out in the woods, not
Speaker 2: far from where Hazel was found. And there were all
Speaker 2: these rumors that there were these wild sex parties going
Speaker 2: on there and women being held against their will in
Speaker 2: these parties. So even sand Lake itself had this sort
Speaker 2: of dual identity, which was really interesting.
Speaker 5: Let's get to what you found about the real person,
Speaker 5: not Laura Palmer, despite some similarities, but tell us what
Speaker 5: you found out about Hazel Drew and her family.
Speaker 2: Well Mark sort of touched on it before she grew
Speaker 2: up in the countryside. She came from very humble background.
Speaker 2: Her father had, like Mark said, had trouble holding a job.
Speaker 2: Her mother was partly handicapped from polio. I think she
Speaker 2: walked with a limp and a keen and big family,
Speaker 2: a bunch of brothers and sisters who survived and then
Speaker 2: some of them who died very young, either in childbirth
Speaker 2: or whatever it was. But so, you know, they didn't
Speaker 2: have a lot of resources to go around. The family
Speaker 2: moved around quite a bit. When Hazel was fourteen, she
Speaker 2: moved out and left her family and got a job
Speaker 2: as a housekeeper or domestic servant is what they called
Speaker 2: it at the time with a man named Tom Hislop
Speaker 2: who was a very powerful, wealthy man in Troy, who
Speaker 2: was a city treasurer and ran for mayor and did
Speaker 2: not win. And but a big you know, a big
Speaker 2: time politician, a big time member of the Republican Party,
Speaker 2: and he uh during Hazel's time there, got involved in
Speaker 2: a rather highly publicized corruption case that resulted in there
Speaker 2: were missing city funds and they didn't trace it back
Speaker 2: to him. They traced it back to his assistant. Although
Speaker 2: there was subsequently I think he was sued civilly and
Speaker 2: you know, they they tried to prove and I think
Speaker 2: they did win some money that you know that he
Speaker 2: he had oversight and that he hadn't done his job.
Speaker 2: So and then from there she wound up with going
Speaker 2: to two other jobs before eventually quitting just like a
Speaker 2: couple of days before death. But the other two people
Speaker 2: also very powerful people, a very rich coal merchant and
Speaker 2: then the city engineer who was a professor at RPI,
Speaker 2: also involved in something of a scandal. So somehow she
Speaker 2: had insinuated herself after coming from this background into a
Speaker 2: wealthy circle of employers in Troy.
Speaker 5: What happens to her? July eleventh, nineteen oh eight, and
Speaker 5: tell us about the subsequent investigation and the characters that
Speaker 5: arise in that investigation.
Speaker 4: Mark, Yeah, and July eleven, forgive me the dates are more,
Speaker 4: David maybe, But what happened was in a hazy summer
Speaker 4: day Saturday in the afternoon, some locals from sand Lake
Speaker 4: their names escaped me, but some teenage boys camp out
Speaker 4: in the area where this Teals pond is on the
Speaker 4: local Fund of Willa Teals property. They spend their weekends
Speaker 4: out there hunting and drinking and you know, doing whatever
Speaker 4: they do to blow off steam. Well, Saturday, as they're
Speaker 4: I think they're walking, one of them is leaving the
Speaker 4: camp and they had earlier seen on their way in
Speaker 4: something sort of floating in the in the pond that
Speaker 4: they just took it for some refuse, some rags, that
Speaker 4: it kind of bunched up together. But this time they
Speaker 4: get a better look and they he calls his friend
Speaker 4: and together they get a local farmer they know close
Speaker 4: by and haul it in And at first it's, you know,
Speaker 4: it's it's clearly a body.
Speaker 6: I can tell.
Speaker 4: Once they get it ashore and the local authority start
Speaker 4: to show up that it is a female, but it's
Speaker 4: really hard to identify because the body. It turns out
Speaker 4: later they find out that I've been in the pond
Speaker 4: for a better part of the week. And I think,
Speaker 4: as I said, it was a hot, you know, particularly
Speaker 4: hot summer that week, and the skin had started to blacken.
Speaker 6: The body itself was.
Speaker 4: Bloated kind of beyond recognition that when her father eventually comes,
Speaker 4: he hears kind of puts a few things together and
Speaker 4: thinks that could be his daughter. When he comes to
Speaker 4: identify her, he can't he can't recognize her because of
Speaker 4: the shape the bodies, and she does have gold fillings
Speaker 4: which he remembers, and he sees those, so he thinks
Speaker 4: that's her, But it takes other family members to kind
Speaker 4: of come and see the clothes and everything, I think eventually,
Speaker 4: So that's, you know, kind of the kicking off point.
Speaker 4: I think you also, you know how the investigation.
Speaker 6: And the initial suspects and so forth.
Speaker 4: And I say initial because if we start going through
Speaker 4: every suspect, that's kind of one of the great or
Speaker 4: interesting things about this story is the amount of suspects.
Speaker 6: Most of them get off.
Speaker 4: The hook or red herrings, but there's twists and turns,
Speaker 4: and again, the case was never solved at the time,
Speaker 4: so you have to kind of go back and look
Speaker 4: at the investigation again. So I can just lead off
Speaker 4: a couple David can can jump in and chime in
Speaker 4: on the investigation itself.
Speaker 6: But then the last people besides.
Speaker 4: In all likelihood the murderer or murderers to see Hazel
Speaker 4: alive or two of these locals out in sand Lake,
Speaker 4: Frank Smith, who's a teenager and kind of I have
Speaker 4: to use the proper word these days.
Speaker 6: But in the parlance at the time, he's basically called.
Speaker 4: A bumpkin, an idiot, the town fool pretty much by everybody.
Speaker 6: With all the newspapers report that.
Speaker 4: We kind of spect that made into the book that
Speaker 4: maybe had a learning disability, you know, not recognized at
Speaker 4: the time, but that's how he's characterized at the time,
Speaker 4: and anyway, he's kind of the local kid running around.
Speaker 4: It turns out he did know Hazel and had a
Speaker 4: little bit of a crush on how much of one
Speaker 4: you know, that plays into motive and.
Speaker 6: Him as a suspect.
Speaker 4: But in any event, on that Tuesday evening where it
Speaker 4: is he and his buddy Rudolph Gundrum, who's a farmer,
Speaker 4: another local, also a charcoal burner, which is sort of
Speaker 4: this arcane method of making charcoal out there that we
Speaker 4: did learn, but it's a little hazy. We learned so
Speaker 4: much doing this book. I can't remember exactly all it
Speaker 4: goes into charcoal burning. But Rudy Gunderum, the charcoal burner,
Speaker 4: another quite a character and.
Speaker 6: All likely he didn't know Hazel. We don't think he
Speaker 6: had anything to do with it.
Speaker 4: He's brought in in questioned right away, but they kind
Speaker 4: of let him go pretty soon, whereas Frank Smith they
Speaker 4: keep coming back to. He's a suspect, they keep returning to.
Speaker 4: And in any event, they're kind of rumbling down this
Speaker 4: Tableton mountain Tuesday evening, I want to say, around seven o'clock,
Speaker 4: seven fifteen, and they passed Hazel, who's completely and again.
Speaker 4: Hazel is a twenty year old considered a beautiful young
Speaker 4: girl by just about everybody. We had pictures of her.
Speaker 4: She did seem quite attractive, but she's all kind of
Speaker 4: dialed up, like she's gone out on a date, and
Speaker 4: she just kind of has a bit of a swagger
Speaker 4: to her, it seemed. And you know why, she's climbing
Speaker 4: a mountain as the sun's fast setting. You know, it's
Speaker 4: getting dark, and it's you know, we were up on
Speaker 4: this mountain even to this day. It's not a great
Speaker 4: place you want to be. It's a rough road and
Speaker 4: we know how she ended. But in any event, she's
Speaker 4: strolling like she's going to meet somebody for a date
Speaker 4: and just kind of says, hey, Frank, how's it going,
Speaker 4: and he's and that's the last inning and sees it
Speaker 4: her and then less than a quarter of a mile
Speaker 4: where they pass. That's where that Saturday, about a week
Speaker 4: or so later is where her body is found. So
Speaker 4: that's the kind of entry way into the investigation with
Speaker 4: your two suspects right there. And then if you've read
Speaker 4: the book, Dan, you know, kind of goes all over
Speaker 4: the place, and I could fill out the rest of
Speaker 4: the hour here on it.
Speaker 5: There are some characters that come to like the obviously
Speaker 5: the district Ernie O'Brien, and you say, all of these
Speaker 5: people had definite ties to the Republican Party, which were
Speaker 5: very powerful in that area and influential, and the couple
Speaker 5: detectives that were very prominent. Maybe you can tell us
Speaker 5: about these people in law enforcement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, in terms of the investigation. Just before
Speaker 2: I get to that, almost every single mystery or unsolved aswer,
Speaker 2: almost every single mystery about this case never was publicly answered.
Speaker 2: Whether or not it was privately answer or not, I
Speaker 2: don't know. But I can just run off a couple
Speaker 2: of them for you. This is to me, why, I mean,
Speaker 2: this investigation just seemed, you know, horribly amiss to me.
Speaker 2: Hazel wanted was very eager to go to Lake George
Speaker 2: the weekend before her death, and for some reason she
Speaker 2: was going with her aunt Minnie, and for some reason
Speaker 2: they wound up going to Schenectady and said, I mean,
Speaker 2: she was eager about it to the point where she
Speaker 2: stayed at her dressmakers till eleven o'clock the night before
Speaker 2: on Friday, waiting for the dressmaker to finish her shirt.
Speaker 2: Your dressmaker said like, you know, i'll, you know, want
Speaker 2: you to come by tomorrow or whatever, and it's like, no, no,
Speaker 2: I have to have this shirt for going to Lake George.
Speaker 2: So why did she want to go to Lake George
Speaker 2: so badly? And why did they wind up not going
Speaker 2: to Lake George. Then there's like when they came back
Speaker 2: from Lake George from Schenectady rather, which is where they
Speaker 2: wound up going instead. The next morning, her employer, missus Carrie,
Speaker 2: asked her to do the wash, the family wash, and
Speaker 2: she says no, and she quits. And according to everybody
Speaker 2: we spoke to or we read about rather, including missus Carrie,
Speaker 2: that that took them by surprise. She didn't have another
Speaker 2: job lined up as far as anybody knew. Her mother
Speaker 2: didn't know that she quit, her her best friend Cherrie Weaver,
Speaker 2: didn't know that she quit. Many another close friend didn't
Speaker 2: know that she quit, at least that's what Minnie said
Speaker 2: and me had a real talent for not telling the truth.
Speaker 2: But so why did she quit without another job? Nobody
Speaker 2: officially knows. Why was she? Where was she Monday night?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 2: We believe she was killed on Tuesday. Why where was
Speaker 2: she on Monday night? Nobody knows. Nobody ever stepped forward
Speaker 2: to say, Hazel was with me all almost all day Tuesday?
Speaker 2: Where was she? Again, nobody stepped forward to say Hazel
Speaker 2: was with me. So it's just and what was she?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: Mark said, what was she doing? Dolled up? What was
Speaker 2: she doing in sane and Tabor in the Tableton Woods
Speaker 2: at seven thirty at night as dark was approaching, in
Speaker 2: an area that was known to be not safe?
Speaker 6: How did how did she get to the box?
Speaker 2: How did she get to the pond? Right? Did someone
Speaker 2: take her there? How was she planning? She was she?
Speaker 2: She had left her suitcase at the train station in Troy.
Speaker 2: She didn't have anything with her, How was she planning
Speaker 2: to get back to Troy to get her suitcase?
Speaker 6: All?
Speaker 2: None of these questions were ever satisfactorily answered. So to
Speaker 2: me that that in the cat's that either we were
Speaker 2: dealing with either an incredibly incompetent bunch of investigators or
Speaker 2: we were dealing with investigators who had reason to keep
Speaker 2: some of these things secret. And you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 2: this is an area where Mark and I may not
Speaker 2: see eye to eye, but Jarvis O'Brien was was a
Speaker 2: very prominent He was the district attorney of who was
Speaker 2: leading the investigation. He was very prominent in a Republican
Speaker 2: Party politics there in Troy, and you know, a pretty
Speaker 2: powerful guy, but deeply deeply embedded in the party. I
Speaker 2: mean he had worked at a law firm coming up
Speaker 2: through through his professional career, he had worked with a
Speaker 2: guy who was head of the party at one point,
Speaker 2: and his top lieutenant was a guy named Duncan k
Speaker 2: who was almost definitely a member of the APA, which
Speaker 2: I had mentioned to you before, and was definitely had
Speaker 2: some involvement in that melee that I again that I
Speaker 2: talked about with with with bat Shay in eighteen I
Speaker 2: think it was eighteen ninety six in that election where
Speaker 2: there were bout where there was ballot stuffing going on,
Speaker 2: because I think he was actually a high school classmate
Speaker 2: of Shades, but he was a member. He was coming
Speaker 2: from it, at it from the other side. He was
Speaker 2: a member of the APA, was in the crowd of
Speaker 2: Republicans who confronted the ballot stuffers. So and then you know,
Speaker 2: we found other connections like that too, and who just
Speaker 2: seemed like these two components together had us wondering what
Speaker 2: was really going on.
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Speaker 5: the smartest way to hire Now, David and Mark, we
Speaker 5: were talking about the the investigation so far. The O'Brien
Speaker 5: and his detectives focused on and spoke to numerous times
Speaker 5: and thought there was something amiss. Speaking to Minnie Taylor
Speaker 5: and also William Taylor, the uncle of Hazel. Tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit about a little bit more about what
Speaker 5: the uncle had to say and some of the beyond
Speaker 5: bizarre behavior that he exhibited. After Hazel was discovered. Before
Speaker 5: we talk about the media and its influence and its behavior.
Speaker 2: Well, Williams, Hazel came from a very strange family. I
Speaker 2: think there's no question about that. I mean, like I said,
Speaker 2: the mother was considered, if you believe the press, very cold.
Speaker 2: The fire was considered something of a near duell. And
Speaker 2: Mini was this sort of irascible, cantankerous woman who was
Speaker 2: constantly withholding secret or withholding information from police and refusing
Speaker 2: to cooperate and saying things like I can't tell you
Speaker 2: that because I don't want to get Hazel's friends in trouble,
Speaker 2: and barking at the press to leave her alone, and so,
Speaker 2: and you know, Minnie had information that she was not
Speaker 2: not releasing. So there was Minnie and supposedly very close
Speaker 2: to Hazel, and I mean like very close, a traveling companion.
Speaker 2: And even though they were like twenty years age difference,
Speaker 2: they were very close. And you know, nobody had reported Hazel,
Speaker 2: even though Minnie supposedly saw Hazel, you know a couple
Speaker 2: of times a week, as I recall, nobody reported Hazel missing.
Speaker 2: She was last seen on Tuesdays, Mark said on the mountain.
Speaker 2: They found her body on Saturday, nobody reported or missing.
Speaker 2: Minnie said Minnie saw her on Mondays, so, the day
Speaker 2: before she was last seen, and said that right right
Speaker 2: after Hazel had quitter job, went directly to Minnie to
Speaker 2: drop some stuff off. Minnie insisted that she didn't know
Speaker 2: that Hazel had quitter job, which you know is possible
Speaker 2: because he's a little kept secrets, but or else it's
Speaker 2: not possible because many kept secrets, so you don't know.
Speaker 2: So that's Mini. She was like not cooperative, she was
Speaker 2: withholding information and she was a very sort of cantankerous,
Speaker 2: unpleasant woman. We talked to one of her descendants who
Speaker 2: said that nobody in the family who actually remembered many
Speaker 2: from when she was a very little girl. She said
Speaker 2: nobody in the family looked forward to Minnie's visits because
Speaker 2: she was a real busy buddy who got involved in
Speaker 2: everybody's life. And the children were told when Aunt Minie
Speaker 2: was coming over, they were told, never beat at Many
Speaker 2: at dominoes, always let at Mini win. So a character,
Speaker 2: William Teller was so Many was the sister of Hazel's mother, Julia.
Speaker 2: William was there. William Tell was their brother, and he
Speaker 2: was another another character, and he his farmhouse was very
Speaker 2: close to the pond, and so for a while they
Speaker 2: thought that she was there going to visit her uncle.
Speaker 2: But it turns out that she did not have any
Speaker 2: kind of relationship with her uncle, and in fact, nobody did.
Speaker 2: The guy was just had no friends and you know,
Speaker 2: was a very socially awkward, unpleasant person. So they pretty
Speaker 2: much ruled that out. But Mark, I know you like
Speaker 2: talking about William Tell, so I'll let you. Uh, didn't
Speaker 2: dive deeper into him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's he's another good character. Him and many, as
Speaker 4: David said, Hazel had kind of these strange characters in
Speaker 4: her family tree. But his the chief suspicion upon him,
Speaker 4: and he was kind of with Frank Smith, really the
Speaker 4: two out in sand Lake that the investigators kept going
Speaker 4: back too.
Speaker 6: They'd invest you know, they they.
Speaker 4: Drill him, and then a day or two later, after
Speaker 4: some other leads had tried up or something else had
Speaker 4: turned up, they would return and.
Speaker 6: Drill him again. But yeah, he's this cranky older guy.
Speaker 4: He was a widower at the time and reportedly at
Speaker 4: one point had attempted suicide. I think it was after
Speaker 4: his wife had died. He was prone to bout and melancholy.
Speaker 4: Then the night Hazel's you know, they're they're drilling him
Speaker 4: again and again and asking these questions, trying to get
Speaker 4: in the crack, and all he would say the night
Speaker 4: he didn't have an alibi, But the night of the murder,
Speaker 4: he just said he was out on his porch smoking
Speaker 4: by himself, and he just wouldn't change his story.
Speaker 6: Right, There were some questions.
Speaker 4: I think this was maybe drummed up by the press
Speaker 4: about his relationship with Hazel. But then again, he did
Speaker 4: seem kind of like a weird guy. I don't know,
Speaker 4: there was some weird quote about he wasn't I don't
Speaker 4: I can't remember off the top of my head. But
Speaker 4: the it was a little bit of a question, I guess.
Speaker 4: You know, sometimes the press is backing into look for
Speaker 4: a motivation. So yeah, he's a great character just to
Speaker 4: kind of plug this little part of the book. The
Speaker 4: way we ended up writing it, you know, when we
Speaker 4: happened upon this case and did all the research and
Speaker 4: had all this great story kind of lay it out
Speaker 4: in front of us, was how to present it?
Speaker 6: And we went back and forth.
Speaker 4: I think David and I had different visions at first,
Speaker 4: and we kind of came up with a hybrid approach.
Speaker 6: But as part of that, if.
Speaker 4: You remember, Dan just kind of randomly throughout and we
Speaker 4: tried to kind of use them to pep the story up,
Speaker 4: or just because we liked the little scenes. But it's
Speaker 4: called creative nonfiction, so everything you know is based on
Speaker 4: we were you know, our publishers really wanted took us
Speaker 4: a task on the fact checking, but we would create
Speaker 4: these scenes that we knew happened, and we might even
Speaker 4: have some of the dialogue reported out in the press,
Speaker 4: right because if this was the time and we get
Speaker 4: I guess we'd get into that to the press, but
Speaker 4: was you know, kind of blossoming or you know, the tabloids.
Speaker 6: And everything was happening at that time.
Speaker 4: They were for the first time using photographs and all that,
Speaker 4: so it was kind of becoming a whole thing.
Speaker 6: And sorry I lost my train if out there.
Speaker 4: But for the creative now fiction, we would put these
Speaker 4: little scenes in and characters like Mini and Uncle will
Speaker 4: because you know, we got to know them through the
Speaker 4: reporting at the time, talking to their ancestors, you get
Speaker 4: more color attached to them and just knowing the background
Speaker 4: and everything, we could put these little scenes in like
Speaker 4: the investigators going out to the farmhouse to meet William
Speaker 4: Taylor and you know, they got a kind of a rough.
Speaker 6: You know, a rude awakening when they knocked on the door.
Speaker 4: So that kind of we tried to also bring the
Speaker 4: investigation alive, you know that we were undergoing and exploring
Speaker 4: these kinds of things and uncovering was part of that.
Speaker 6: So yeah, those those.
Speaker 4: Of her family and sort of suspicious characters, as David
Speaker 4: kind of outlined, many, we don't seriously think that Many
Speaker 4: was a suspect, at least in our in our eyes,
Speaker 4: and we definitely didn't see anything that the police held
Speaker 4: her as a suspect, but always that she wasn't telling
Speaker 4: everything and just a you know, a busy body at
Speaker 4: a gossip but kind of wanted to control the gossip
Speaker 4: for herself.
Speaker 6: So yeah, that that was a big part of the story.
Speaker 4: The characters that not just Hazel herself, but just you know,
Speaker 4: back to two Peaks, which I always want to do,
Speaker 4: but that's you start, That's how twin Peaks starts. You know,
Speaker 4: the main character Laura is dead. Now you meet her
Speaker 4: family and meet her friends and their enemies and all that.
Speaker 4: So definitely a big part of our career.
Speaker 2: Too, and just to piggyback on William and then I
Speaker 2: unfortunately got to got to run. But he had early
Speaker 2: indications that that the dead body that they found at
Speaker 2: the pond was was Hazel and and one he didn't
Speaker 2: go down to the he went to the undertaker to
Speaker 2: confirm it. He had this because he was told by
Speaker 2: by Frank Smith's father actually that Frank that Frank was
Speaker 2: pretty sure it was Hael, and he never went down
Speaker 2: to identify it. He never went down to check on
Speaker 2: to see whether it was in fact his niece. He
Speaker 2: never called his sister or notified his sister that her
Speaker 2: daughter might be dead. He supposedly they asked him, like
Speaker 2: what he did that day, and he said he went
Speaker 2: into town to get his haircut. You know, this is
Speaker 2: right after he's told that, in all probability is his
Speaker 2: sister's daughter, who's like twenty years old, was murdered in
Speaker 2: his backyard essentially, and not only did he go to
Speaker 2: get a haircut, but he went to a hotel that
Speaker 2: had a phone, and he could have called and let
Speaker 2: her his sister know, but but he didn't. So there
Speaker 2: was also like really weird behavior on his part, and
Speaker 2: he liked Mark said he did not have an alibi.
Speaker 1: He his people who.
Speaker 2: Lived the ranch, the farm hands who lived with him,
Speaker 2: were out that night in town, in San Lake and
Speaker 2: in Ava Park. He claimed that after he smoked his pipe,
Speaker 2: he went to bed so and then when his farm
Speaker 2: mans came home that night, they didn't see him, you know.
Speaker 2: They the next morning he said, you know, I was sleeping,
Speaker 2: So he had no alibi, and you know he was there.
Speaker 2: And plus I know this is another type of that
Speaker 2: Mark really likes to talk about it. It's a good point.
Speaker 2: They were really focused on him for a while, and
Speaker 2: the people up in Taburton and sand Lake were really
Speaker 2: convinced that the investigators were going to try to pin
Speaker 2: this murder on somebody from that area rather than somebody
Speaker 2: from Troy, because there was this whole I was talking
Speaker 2: before about the dichotomy between the tourists and the locals,
Speaker 2: and that existed. There was this resentment of these wealthier
Speaker 2: people who were coming in from Troy and leading this
Speaker 2: investigation and asking all these questions about their neighbors and stuff.
Speaker 2: And Taylor was weird, but he was one of them,
Speaker 2: you know, And so I think that they kind of
Speaker 2: rallied around him in a way. So but you know,
Speaker 2: he's he's definitely a suspect.
Speaker 5: Definitely their behavior complicated the case immeasurably, certainly, Minnie and
Speaker 5: William Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, guys, So I've got it at this point. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: I wish I could stay and talks more, but I've
Speaker 2: got a run. But Dan, You're in great hands with more.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, David. Oh, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate your reaching out and it was a
Speaker 2: great conversation.
Speaker 6: So thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 5: Mark.
Speaker 2: I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 5: So, Mark, we have what I had asked was and
Speaker 5: this is a big part of this book. We talk
Speaker 5: about yellow journalism and the state of journalism and at
Speaker 5: that time, but also a very fascinating character comes into
Speaker 5: play named Clemens, claiming to be this master criminologist and
Speaker 5: also has his fingers in the media as well. So
Speaker 5: if you could tell us what was the influence of
Speaker 5: the media even before this, Clemens comes into Troy and
Speaker 5: wields his influence or tries to.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So just to take a step back, I guess
Speaker 4: I would say in a way at not maybe level
Speaker 4: of effort or energy. But our research into this was
Speaker 4: kind of in two distinct phases, and the first was
Speaker 4: establishing the facts, you know, of the investigation at the time.
Speaker 4: So that was just pouring through every newspaper we could
Speaker 4: find at the time, and it was extensively covered coast
Speaker 4: to coast.
Speaker 6: It was in the New York.
Speaker 4: Times, LA Times, Washington Posts, headline kind of stuff for
Speaker 4: about two and a half weeks, I guess. So it
Speaker 4: was almost like, you know, in the fact gathering stage,
Speaker 4: you're getting different versions, almost like the Gospel, you know,
Speaker 4: the different gospels each you know, sometimes.
Speaker 6: The facts didn't quite add up. So in that first phase,
Speaker 6: it was just gathering as much as we could. Anytime
Speaker 6: you find a.
Speaker 4: New source, you know, it would have a lot eighty
Speaker 4: eighty ninety percent of the same thing, but it would
Speaker 4: just have some new you know, quotes or facts or
Speaker 4: some wouldn't be completely relevant to the investigation, but it's
Speaker 4: just you know, for the story and everything. So yeah,
Speaker 4: it was and then as we kind of all, right,
Speaker 4: now we have the basic facts what happened in the
Speaker 4: two and a half weeks, So with the big suspects
Speaker 4: we're looking at, you know, a couple of things there's inconsistencies.
Speaker 4: So you know, you just start to naturally go through
Speaker 4: the papers and are at the New York Times. I
Speaker 4: mean not to get political or anything but that, but
Speaker 4: you kind of assume that's a trusted source in nineteen
Speaker 4: oh eight, right, And so you kind of start from there,
Speaker 4: and you start to see differences in reporting that became
Speaker 4: really relevant in the solution. Actually, and we don't like
Speaker 4: to kind of talk about that for those who haven't
Speaker 4: gotten through the book yet, but we started to see
Speaker 4: I think David alluded to, for example, and this is
Speaker 4: we're not being partisan at all here. For one thing,
Speaker 4: the politics of the time were completely different to the
Speaker 4: modern day. But it just so happened the investigators were
Speaker 4: all Republicans at the time, and that was because they
Speaker 4: were from the county, which the Republicans controlled, whereas the
Speaker 4: city of Troy was controlled by the Democrats. So it
Speaker 4: was just at that time, you know, back and forth,
Speaker 4: and only we got into a lot of research because
Speaker 4: a lot of our characters. Three of Hazel's employees, as
Speaker 4: David said, were Republican employees, I'm sorry, Republican officials. Two
Speaker 4: had run for mayor, one was the city treasurer while
Speaker 4: Hazel was there. So you can go back and look
Speaker 4: at the press of nineteen o eight, so not just
Speaker 4: following the investigation, but you can go look at the
Speaker 4: elections and get a better sense at these people.
Speaker 6: And I think David said.
Speaker 4: There were we found scandals that were going on at
Speaker 4: the time, you know, thinking about motivations, what Hazel might
Speaker 4: have come across.
Speaker 6: So anyway, yeah, we had to.
Speaker 4: Kind of almost take a step back and consider our
Speaker 4: sources and say and do a deep dive. The more
Speaker 4: we found out about Troy, how everything was politics.
Speaker 6: You know, you wanted to get a.
Speaker 4: Job, then you had to be in the right party
Speaker 4: to you know, blah blah blah. And same with the newspapers.
Speaker 4: The newspapers were affiliated with either Democrats or Republicans. So
Speaker 4: we did and again not to give to give away
Speaker 4: too much, but when you get closer to the solution,
Speaker 4: Republican owned papers and again not an artisan statement. This
Speaker 4: is nineteen o eight, completely different Republican party. But they
Speaker 4: were certain things they did not report that the other
Speaker 4: papers just did, and some of those were pretty significant
Speaker 4: and led us to what we think of is at
Speaker 4: least partial of the solution. And then there was also
Speaker 4: a Dave was right. I kind of looked deep on
Speaker 4: this because it became sort of necessary for the solution
Speaker 4: to kind of understand the sources. But you would also
Speaker 4: have the difference between the local Troy papers and the
Speaker 4: tabloids from New York who were more sensational and making
Speaker 4: things that you know, just weren't true.
Speaker 6: The names are wrong and things like that.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, they would turn things up
Speaker 4: that were relevant to the case, and you'd kind of
Speaker 4: have to verify it independently. So I think I think
Speaker 4: you also, you know, alluded to one of the characters
Speaker 4: who kind of epitomizes you know, we put him in
Speaker 4: their front and center in one of the chapters because
Speaker 4: he had epitomizes all those things. I was just talking
Speaker 4: about the sort of yellow journalism at the time and
Speaker 4: the reporter being part of the story. This guy, William
Speaker 4: Clemens shows up in town, you know, a few days
Speaker 4: into an investigation. He's reporting for the New York World,
Speaker 4: which I'm a little rusty I think William Hurst was.
Speaker 4: There was two kind of big newspaper magnets at the time,
Speaker 4: and one of those, Clemens kind of reported to you know,
Speaker 4: not personally citizen Kane, you know what I'm talking you know,
Speaker 4: a little bit of that district. But anyway, he bursts
Speaker 4: into town. He's billed as he reports for the New
Speaker 4: York World, but he bills himself as the world's greatest criminologists.
Speaker 6: You know, No, he has no training in this matter
Speaker 6: or anything like that.
Speaker 4: This is quite a character though, you know, he seemed
Speaker 4: like he had a lot of I mean I kind
Speaker 4: of did a deep dial on him. Just his life
Speaker 4: isn't you know, He's in all kinds of different pots.
Speaker 4: This was just a brief sort of error for him.
Speaker 4: But he shows up in town and somehow he inveigles
Speaker 4: his way. Initially he's there with the UH and with
Speaker 4: like embedded with the investigators. Like another paper mentions him,
Speaker 4: you know, oh, famed William Clemens has joined the investigators.
Speaker 4: And then two or three days later he finally comes
Speaker 4: out with his first reports and it's, you know, this
Speaker 4: big bombshell that basically slams the investigation for being incompetent.
Speaker 4: And then in the press, back and forth, him and
Speaker 4: Jarvis O'Brien kind of trading shots back and forth, you know,
Speaker 4: just taking cheap shots at Clemens basically saying he should
Speaker 4: be solving this, and O'Brien defending himself and you know,
Speaker 4: two bits out of out of state, reporter, out of
Speaker 4: the area kind of thing. So yeah, he comes in
Speaker 4: and very flamboyant he's gonna solve it and all this,
Speaker 4: and he does again like you kind of have to
Speaker 4: fact check in when he's making these claims, like is
Speaker 4: not in any of the other reports, and some of
Speaker 4: it you can you kind of discredit, and then there's
Speaker 4: other things. In particular, he was the first, maybe one
Speaker 4: of the only to point out this period the winter
Speaker 4: before Hazel died. She died in the summer, so this
Speaker 4: was winter nineteen seven. She spent a mysterious I think
Speaker 4: it was two weeks. But at that uncle that we
Speaker 4: spoke about, the kind of creepy uncle Will Taylor. She
Speaker 4: was there with the mysterious illness. Her brother's wife attended
Speaker 4: to her. Uncle Will kind of let it be, and
Speaker 4: when they asked him about it, he said he didn't
Speaker 4: even know what the illness was.
Speaker 6: But there were theories and Clemens.
Speaker 4: Kind of put forth that she had gotten herself pregnant,
Speaker 4: you know, was pregnant and was either there having an
Speaker 4: abortion or having a baby and something like that.
Speaker 6: Now there's no any other proof of anything.
Speaker 4: We you know, it's in the be included in the story,
Speaker 4: but it's there's no proof of any of that.
Speaker 6: Clemens. That's kind of one of.
Speaker 4: His final accusations that he throws out there, and then
Speaker 4: he just kind of disappears before the end the inquest,
Speaker 4: near the end of the month, which kind of wraps
Speaker 4: up the investigation and he's off to you know, like
Speaker 4: I said, I did some more research on him. He's
Speaker 4: solving some other case down the road, some spy thriller
Speaker 4: or something like that.
Speaker 6: But yeah, just a very interesting character.
Speaker 4: A lot of a lot of characters like that, and
Speaker 4: you're the you know, potential wormholes that you know, you're
Speaker 4: not writing about the life of William Clemmings right now,
Speaker 4: but definitely helped, I think, you know, kind of keep
Speaker 4: the story interesting and going.
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Speaker 5: Now? You talked about the inquest, this investigation, you you
Speaker 5: take and detail this. It's a fairly short investigation with
Speaker 5: lots of events and characters like this Clemens coming into
Speaker 5: the story. But what does O'Brien really want to do
Speaker 5: with this inquiry that he can't get through the investigation
Speaker 5: or the inquest? Pardon me?
Speaker 6: Yeah, and that's that's you.
Speaker 4: You're reading all out of this secondhand in the different
Speaker 4: press accounts, so we yeah, we're a little curious about
Speaker 4: that too. Nothing, you know, it's it's kind of build
Speaker 4: up actually for the weeks of the investigation.
Speaker 6: There's pressure on him when things are.
Speaker 4: Stalling, or someone's hot suspect to some kind of arrest,
Speaker 4: or they start calling for the inquest when there's no
Speaker 4: you know, sort of definite suspect. And my memory is
Speaker 4: of Brian's resistant to it for a while because I
Speaker 4: guess because you know, that's that's what ended up happening.
Speaker 6: Nothing really came of it.
Speaker 4: I think they again, so David's not here, he did
Speaker 4: get his his comments and before he left, but me
Speaker 4: and we did disagree on some things and O'Brien as
Speaker 4: an investigator and how effective he was. I was a
Speaker 4: little more generous or charitable with O'Brien's effort. Obviously it
Speaker 4: did go and solved. But I think David, at least
Speaker 4: at the start, you know, he's he might have been
Speaker 4: accusing O'Brien of being the murderer at one point, I
Speaker 4: can't remember, so we kind of had to compromise on that.
Speaker 4: But I did have a more favorable opinion of you know,
Speaker 4: David said they didn't he didn't solve it, and at
Speaker 4: the end of it didn't. But that does happen at times.
Speaker 4: And uh, you know, even after all these years, you know,
Speaker 4: have we solved it? You know, so with all the
Speaker 4: resources we had, but they did. It was kind of
Speaker 4: the grand finale. They after all the suspects had been
Speaker 4: brought in different theories and got something in the press
Speaker 4: near the end.
Speaker 6: Of the month.
Speaker 4: They ended up having a two day inquest, and I
Speaker 4: think at the end, I think, like I said, O'Brian
Speaker 4: kind of kept pushing it off.
Speaker 6: I think they had felt like they had investigated all.
Speaker 4: The leads they had, and the idea was to get
Speaker 4: everybody back in the room, in the public and try
Speaker 4: one last ditch effort to force out something new. But reportedly,
Speaker 4: the questioning, you know, it was the same old questions.
Speaker 6: Basically.
Speaker 4: There may have been one or two little hiccups, but
Speaker 4: nothing really came out of it.
Speaker 6: They did a day in sand Lake and a day in.
Speaker 4: Troy, I think, so again, kind of dividing the different characters.
Speaker 4: And then after that the coroner, who you know, mysteriously
Speaker 4: somehow officially sat over this.
Speaker 6: I think in name only presided.
Speaker 4: Over the inquest, not O'Brien, but he issued his final report,
Speaker 4: which is basically, you know, she was killed with a
Speaker 4: blow to the back of the head by a persons
Speaker 4: and methods unknown.
Speaker 6: And that was the end of July.
Speaker 4: And then, like I said, there was a plethora of
Speaker 4: reporting for two and a half weeks, and then come
Speaker 4: August it's like, you know, just fell off the face
Speaker 4: of the earth. There's one or two mentioned you can
Speaker 4: find about I think there was about two weeks after
Speaker 4: the inquest, there's a couple of reports of this young
Speaker 4: man returning, prominent young man returning Detroit, and allegedly there
Speaker 4: were some letters or something connected into Hazel. But there's
Speaker 4: like a report of that, and then again nothing goes
Speaker 4: blank after that. So yeah, the inquest in the end,
Speaker 4: it's kind of like, you know, it fits the end
Speaker 4: of the investigation, the big dramatic reveal, but it was
Speaker 4: a complete bus fortunately and just kind of went out
Speaker 4: with a wimper.
Speaker 5: We won't give your, as you say, the solution or
Speaker 5: your conclusions away, but you did think that, you did
Speaker 5: write that you and Mark, pardon me, you and David
Speaker 5: felt that there was an angle somehow missed in this,
Speaker 5: maybe even a piece of vital evidence overlooked. What again,
Speaker 5: I don't want to give anything away, but what was
Speaker 5: your idea in terms of the mistakes made at least
Speaker 5: in this investigation that were obvious to you? The missteps?
Speaker 6: Yeah, and again David might give you a different answer
Speaker 6: in terms of the mistakes.
Speaker 4: And I don't want to give too much away, but
Speaker 4: I thought, you know, on the whole, the investigation was
Speaker 4: fairly thorough without a.
Speaker 6: There was all kinds of will oars and gossips, and
Speaker 6: you know, they found chest of letters with people's initials
Speaker 6: on at one point. But there was a lot of
Speaker 6: smoke and no real fire at the end of the day, except,
Speaker 6: as you said, there was one angle we don't I
Speaker 6: just need to get into it because it's near the
Speaker 6: end of the book and it's important.
Speaker 4: But that just seemed mysteriously to not be followed up
Speaker 4: on thoroughly.
Speaker 6: I mentioned some.
Speaker 4: Of the papers covering certain things, and again the investigators
Speaker 4: were aligned to a certain political party as well as
Speaker 4: Republican party at the time. So yeah, there are hints
Speaker 4: of a cover up in a conspiracy. If you're interested
Speaker 4: in that kind of thing. I think it's you know,
Speaker 4: what we uncovered as legit, And I would say the
Speaker 4: reason is, you know where we were doing this, looking
Speaker 4: into this for six or seven years, and the first
Speaker 4: couple of years we're looking at this, the solution that
Speaker 4: we're kind of alluding to here, it was not on
Speaker 4: my radar at all, and I pretty much discounted it
Speaker 4: when I mentioned David and one of our sort of
Speaker 4: collaborators up and saying, like Mark Marshall, he was the
Speaker 4: one kind of throwing this sort of political conspiracy angle
Speaker 4: in my mind is like you're just you guys are
Speaker 4: just streaming. Yeah, that sounds cool, but he would you know,
Speaker 4: he's And then I started looking into it and we
Speaker 4: would uncover you know, it's all in the book. There
Speaker 4: the things that we uncovered that just going add up.
Speaker 4: You know, you might let one or two of them go,
Speaker 4: but there's definitely a pattern there that that's our solution basically,
Speaker 4: that that leads us to that.
Speaker 6: So it was it wasn't us coming in with pet theories.
Speaker 4: I can only really think of one other suspect that
Speaker 4: I considered.
Speaker 6: I can't think, you know, like we considered them all.
Speaker 4: But as we're researching and that maybe is like getting
Speaker 4: you know, a couple of years into this, I'm like,
Speaker 4: we probably need a period or suspect here. So there
Speaker 4: was one other one I was considering because there was
Speaker 4: a couple of you know, unanswered questions. But we really
Speaker 4: just tried to you know, fact find and keep an
Speaker 4: open mind the whole time. I don't think David really
Speaker 4: ever had a serious PET theory other than what we
Speaker 4: came up with in the end.
Speaker 5: When you talk about Hazel Drew though, and you talk
Speaker 5: about the time that prostitution was illegal, but it happened,
Speaker 5: and people looked the other way. And you say at
Speaker 5: that time that maybe somebody could turn a trick for
Speaker 5: up to fifty dollars, whereas they would work for twenty
Speaker 5: or thirty dollars per week. And you say that some
Speaker 5: people led secret lives and did some prostitution when the
Speaker 5: need arose, whereas they held down regular jobs. I don't
Speaker 5: want to give anything away, but in this investigation, who
Speaker 5: was Hazel Drew? And how could she afford the vacations,
Speaker 5: the trips, the expensive clothing.
Speaker 6: How could she do that?
Speaker 5: As one of her girlfriends asked, how could she manage that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was definitely a question in the air and
Speaker 4: something we had to consider. And you're thinking about motive
Speaker 4: and you start putting two and two together, I will say,
Speaker 4: you know, getting back to the press and yellow journals,
Speaker 4: they pushed that angle at different times, you know, quoting
Speaker 4: her friend that you.
Speaker 6: Just did, which could have been an instant aside.
Speaker 4: I And again, this could be an area that David
Speaker 4: and Mark and the other Mark Marshall and others maybe
Speaker 4: have different ideas of Hazel herself, which really is the
Speaker 4: central question to the mystery. When you can't figure out
Speaker 4: motive and all that, it's like, well, what was she doing? Yeah,
Speaker 4: so you're just trying to figure out what in her mind.
Speaker 4: And you know, we all looked at it and did
Speaker 4: varying degrees have a kind of image or perception at Hazel.
Speaker 4: And I can just speak from me personally, is I
Speaker 4: don't see the prostitute thing at all. She was an outgoing,
Speaker 4: sociable young woman. Everyone said that, everyone seemed to love her.
Speaker 4: None of her family or friends alluded to anything like that.
Speaker 4: She worked as a domestic servant all day long from
Speaker 4: the age of fourteen to to twenty, so she's there,
Speaker 4: you know, sometimes taking care of kids and stuff. I
Speaker 4: don't know if she would have been able, it's possible,
Speaker 4: but that's that's a lot, you know, that's a lot
Speaker 4: for someone to also be on the side. I guess
Speaker 4: it doesn't take that long if you want to be
Speaker 4: a prostitute. But I didn't see any tangible evidence of that,
Speaker 4: now circumstantial. I just said, you know, she's young, outgoing,
Speaker 4: she does seemingly have clothes, you know, does these trips,
Speaker 4: But that's if you read the actual the newspaper counts,
Speaker 4: they'll both type that thing up. I spoke to a
Speaker 4: historian up there and Troy Kathy. She she said, you
Speaker 4: know trips at the time, that's what young people did.
Speaker 6: You know, That's something cheap they could do.
Speaker 4: Actually, you know, you hop on the trolley, you find
Speaker 4: a YMCA, or you have a friend, and you.
Speaker 6: Don't have to spend money.
Speaker 4: Really, you know, you can go suicights in Boston or whatever.
Speaker 4: So I can't you know, there's definitely room for speculation there,
Speaker 4: and you're right, it's included in the book, but I
Speaker 4: personally I didn't see that side of Hazel.
Speaker 5: It is just fascinating just the role of the media
Speaker 5: in this story and in this inquest and in the
Speaker 5: investigation itself. You say, different newspapers had different theories, and
Speaker 5: in the big cities they took much more liberty with
Speaker 5: the facts, and so sensationalism was just, you know, an
Speaker 5: understatement in these stories that appeared definitely.
Speaker 6: Absolutely.
Speaker 5: I want to thank you so much for talking about
Speaker 5: this murder at Teal's Pond, Hazel Drew and the mystery
Speaker 5: that inspired Twin Peaks. Can you tell our audience when
Speaker 5: this book is to be released and any Facebook page
Speaker 5: or website set up for this.
Speaker 4: Yes, So the book is out there now in hardback,
Speaker 4: paperback and audio. You can order it at your favorite
Speaker 4: online seller, Amazon, Barnes and Noble check bookstores. You might
Speaker 4: have to get them to order it, but it's yeah,
Speaker 4: it's been out for a month or two.
Speaker 6: In terms of websites or Facebook. David does have a
Speaker 6: I think it's.
Speaker 4: Called Hazel Drew, the real story that he maintains. As
Speaker 4: I mentioned earlier, I kind of started into all this
Speaker 4: throughout podcasts that I do called Deer or I used
Speaker 4: to do called Deer Metal Radio, was really about Twin Peaks.
Speaker 4: I have been thinking about and threatening of reviving Deer
Speaker 4: Metal Radio because as we did this investigation, and we
Speaker 4: literally had dozens and dozens of interviews with historians, these
Speaker 4: round tables I mentioned, with descendants of the of the
Speaker 4: people involved in the case, and just all kinds of
Speaker 4: interesting conversations. So Deer Metal Radio I keep threatening to
Speaker 4: one day bring back in sort of a new form
Speaker 4: with these format for these new co or these this
Speaker 4: kind of catalog of conversations that would you know, sort
Speaker 4: of support the story. You know, in some cases the
Speaker 4: round table gets a little off track and you're you know,
Speaker 4: but to me it's you're getting color and character.
Speaker 6: And all that.
Speaker 4: So I think they're they're really good. So yeah, look
Speaker 4: for that Deer Meta Radio and you can go put
Speaker 4: your thing now. There is an episode on Hazel True
Speaker 4: that was done many years ago. It's probably completely inaccurate,
Speaker 4: but for for me, Dear Metal Radio is my There's
Speaker 4: a Facebook page, there's a Twitter handle, and again the
Speaker 4: podcast that's your own iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, thank you so much, Mark T. Gibbins, Murder at
Speaker 5: Teals Pond, Hazel drew in the mystery that inspired Twin Peaks.
Speaker 5: It's been a fascinating interview. Thank you so much, Mark T. Givens,
Speaker 5: and thank you so much. It's an absolutely pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 5: Good night,