Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So this episode is
Speaker 1: the last of our Halloween group this year. It's not
Speaker 1: so much a fun Halloween romp as it is a
Speaker 1: horror story. Yeah. I mean, it's not a horror story
Speaker 1: in the fun Exorcist style. It's a horror story in
Speaker 1: the real humans or monster sometimes style. It's very violent
Speaker 1: and scary, and it's a story that I have been
Speaker 1: thinking about for the show literally for years, I would
Speaker 1: say the last three years at least. I've had this
Speaker 1: on my list and then backed off of it and
Speaker 1: been like, I don't know I want to talk about
Speaker 1: this one yet because it's upsetting. The material is very dark,
Speaker 1: and it's upsetting not only because it involves a murder.
Speaker 1: It'll also involves people speaking and behaving in a very
Speaker 1: cavalier manner about that murder. It also involves the fate
Speaker 1: of a young woman and the aftermath of what happens.
Speaker 1: There is also a pregnancy involved in this murder. So
Speaker 1: if you are very sensitive, or if you typically listen
Speaker 1: with younger history buffs. This is when I highly recommend
Speaker 1: pre screening first. I mean, we're not going to linger
Speaker 1: on any of the particularly gory elements, but just its
Speaker 1: bare facts are pretty troubling. Maybe for the little ones,
Speaker 1: go go dig up the old episode about Halloween candy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that'd be perfect. We all love a little Halloween candy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not the one, but it's one that, like
Speaker 1: I said, I have been backing off of it for years,
Speaker 1: but it keeps staying at top of mind, and it's
Speaker 1: for reasons. We'll talk about it at the very end.
Speaker 1: I just think it's a story worth telling, and I
Speaker 1: have some other thoughts on why. I kind of enjoy
Speaker 1: examining stories like this. Not trying to sound like a ghoul,
Speaker 1: but I have a reason. We'll talk about it on Friday, okay,
Speaker 1: But for now, we're going to tell you a very
Speaker 1: troubling story. On February first, eighteen ninety six and Fort Thomas, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: a young farm hand named James Hewling was walking along
Speaker 1: the fence line of the orchards of James Locke's farm,
Speaker 1: and he made a horrifying discovery. It was a body
Speaker 1: of what appeared to be a young woman wearing a
Speaker 1: light blue and white dress, and she had been decapitated.
Speaker 1: Hewling ran to Locke's house for help, and James Locke,
Speaker 1: his son, Wilbert Locke, in one of their hired hands
Speaker 1: named Mike Noonan all came from the house and they
Speaker 1: went out to the body with him. James Lock then
Speaker 1: went to Fort Thomas and alerted both the police and
Speaker 1: the commander of the fort. Soon police soldier from the fort,
Speaker 1: as well as members of the general public were also
Speaker 1: on the scene of this grisly discovery. In addition to
Speaker 1: that blue and white dress, the woman had been wearing
Speaker 1: tan gloves, black shoes which will become important, black and
Speaker 1: blue stockings, a blue underskirt and a union suit. Her corset,
Speaker 1: which appeared to have been torn off and had bloody
Speaker 1: handprints on it, and a piece of her dress were
Speaker 1: also found nearby. There was also half of a man's
Speaker 1: torn shirt sleeve at the scene. Blood was pooled at
Speaker 1: the neck, but it was also found all around the
Speaker 1: surrounding area. It appeared that the woman had been killed
Speaker 1: mere hours before the discovery. Some estimates put it in
Speaker 1: five to seven, but that was just the initial guests.
Speaker 1: The body was on a slope, the feet were higher
Speaker 1: up the slope than the torso the dress was open
Speaker 1: above the waist, and footprints suggested that a woman had
Speaker 1: been walking alongside of a man, but at some point
Speaker 1: had broken into a run by herself until that man
Speaker 1: had caught up. It was believed that she had physically
Speaker 1: struggled against him as he subdued her, and then it
Speaker 1: seemed like her throat had likely been cut. She had
Speaker 1: several knife marks on one hand, suggesting she had tried
Speaker 1: to block the knife, so the assumption was that her
Speaker 1: head had been severed from her body after the murder
Speaker 1: to try to hide this woman's identity, And while the
Speaker 1: body had not been touched by anyone before investigators arrived,
Speaker 1: as word of the murder spread and crowds came, almost
Speaker 1: all of the evidence that would have been found in
Speaker 1: the area immediately surrounding the body was trampled. Additionally, people
Speaker 1: took all kinds of souvenirs from the scene, specifically looking
Speaker 1: for things like leaves that had blood on them or
Speaker 1: stray hairs from the victim, even branches from the bushes,
Speaker 1: which would have potentially offered evidence of how the murder
Speaker 1: had played out were snapped off by people who wanted
Speaker 1: to take them home. It rained the afternoon of the discovery,
Speaker 1: and one report even stated that people gathered buckets of
Speaker 1: bloody mud as keepsakes once the victim's body had been removed.
Speaker 1: There were also people who went to the undertaker's office
Speaker 1: where it had been brought to try to see it.
Speaker 1: Some of these are people who had friends or family
Speaker 1: who had gone missing. They were hoping to see if
Speaker 1: this deceased woman was their missing person, but a lot
Speaker 1: of people just wanted to see the body at once.
Speaker 1: Theories started to circulate about who this woman might have
Speaker 1: been and what could have led to her horrific killing.
Speaker 1: A popular theory that emerged right out of the gate
Speaker 1: was that she may have been a sex worker who
Speaker 1: had been involved with a soldier from the fort, and
Speaker 1: this actually led to the fort's commander, Colonel Cochrane, to
Speaker 1: quickly launch his own investigation within the troops because he
Speaker 1: didn't want any kind of rumor like that circulating about
Speaker 1: the men under his command. And this invests pretty quickly
Speaker 1: shut those rumors down because Cochrane was rapid, but he
Speaker 1: was thorough. He had accounted for all of the troops
Speaker 1: whereabouts on the night of the murder in pretty short order.
Speaker 1: The head was not found. A nearby reservoir was drained
Speaker 1: in the hopes that it might be there, but it
Speaker 1: was not, and as police went through lists of missing women,
Speaker 1: they found over and over that they were not a
Speaker 1: match for their victim. There were several incorrect claims about
Speaker 1: who this was before the victim's true name was known.
Speaker 1: One was the claim that the body was that of
Speaker 1: Ella Markland. That claim was made by Ella Markland's mother
Speaker 1: after she'd been allowed to examine the body herself, and
Speaker 1: she was one hundred percent convinced that it was Ella.
Speaker 1: The mother, who's identified in accounts only as missus Hart,
Speaker 1: explained to police the specific characteristics of the body that
Speaker 1: matched Ella's. She said she hadn't seen her daughter since
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve, but this turned out to be a
Speaker 1: case of a family with poor communication. Ella Markland was
Speaker 1: really alive. She was working as a maid in a
Speaker 1: house in Cincinnati. Another claim was that the murder victim
Speaker 1: was Francisca Engelhart. She had recently married a man named
Speaker 1: doctor Kentner in Cincinnati after the two had become pen
Speaker 1: pals and Kentner had moved from South Dakota to be
Speaker 1: with her. Francisca had vanished and so had Kentner. But
Speaker 1: it turned out that that's because Kentner's other wife had
Speaker 1: traveled to Cincinnati and discovered her husband's bigamy, and then
Speaker 1: Ketner and his new wife had abruptly left for Kentucky.
Speaker 1: But it took a while to untangle that whole story,
Speaker 1: and there was a period of time where police were
Speaker 1: operating on the idea that this body was Englehart, and
Speaker 1: it was during that line of investigation that the initial
Speaker 1: post martem was performed on the body, and this revealed
Speaker 1: some troubling pieces of information. This woman was estimated to
Speaker 1: be about twenty years old. They didn't think she had
Speaker 1: been sexual assaulted, but she had been four to five
Speaker 1: months pregnant when the murder was committed. A second post
Speaker 1: mortem determined that she had not been decapitated after death
Speaker 1: as had been thought. She had been decapitated while still alive.
Speaker 1: But once the Englehart story was unraveled and that identification
Speaker 1: was deemed invalid, investigators were once again at a loss
Speaker 1: for who this person was. So all of that post
Speaker 1: mortem information was attached to an unknown victim. The case
Speaker 1: was finally cracked thanks in large part to a shoe
Speaker 1: store owner. Louis Puk owned a shoe store in Newport, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: and he was friends with James Locke's nephew. Locke, you
Speaker 1: will recall, owned the orchard where the body was found,
Speaker 1: and through that nephew, Poock heard about the discovery of
Speaker 1: the body and the lack of evidence. Pook's shoe store
Speaker 1: was close to the mortuary that the police had taken
Speaker 1: the body to, so he, being curious, like many people,
Speaker 1: locked up his store and strolled down there, And because
Speaker 1: he was very well known in town and very respected,
Speaker 1: police allowed him in to see the body. But even
Speaker 1: though he was as fascinated by this crime as a
Speaker 1: lot of other people, what really caught his eye was
Speaker 1: the victim's shoes. Her shoes were the one article of
Speaker 1: clothing that were of high quality, and they were uniquely small.
Speaker 1: They were a size three, and Puck, being in the
Speaker 1: shoe business, was curious. He looked at the manufacturer's code
Speaker 1: on the shoes, which was twenty two eleven sixty two
Speaker 1: four fifty eight. To most people, those numbers did not
Speaker 1: mean anything, but Puck understood them immediately. The twenty two
Speaker 1: referred to the size eleven was the number of the
Speaker 1: last that was used to form the shoe, and then
Speaker 1: the longer number, sixty two four fifty eight was a
Speaker 1: factory stock number. So suddenly there was a lot more
Speaker 1: to tail about these shoes, and Puke followed up on
Speaker 1: that himself. He was able to trace the shoes to
Speaker 1: a Greencastle, Indiana shoe store, so when detectives went there,
Speaker 1: it was short work to learn that they had been
Speaker 1: sold there in the Lewis and Hayes shoe store. But
Speaker 1: though there was information on who had bought most of
Speaker 1: that lot of shoes, two were sold without any customer information,
Speaker 1: and one of those two pairs of shoes was the
Speaker 1: one that was worn by the murdered woman. Incidentally, we
Speaker 1: don't bring it up later, but her name was in
Speaker 1: their register of purchase as buying a size three pair
Speaker 1: of shoes, but they hadn't attached it to the make
Speaker 1: of the shoes, so there was a little bit of
Speaker 1: data mismatch going on there. And simultaneously, as this shoe
Speaker 1: investigation was going on, the description of the woman's body
Speaker 1: and clothing had already been printed in papers all over
Speaker 1: the country, and then a woman named Susan Bryan, who
Speaker 1: was married to Alexander Bryan and who lived in Greencastle,
Speaker 1: started to think about the similarities in those descriptions to
Speaker 1: her daughter Pearl. Pearl was at that time visiting friends
Speaker 1: in Indianapolis, at least that is what she had told
Speaker 1: her family. Pearl's brother Fred telegraphed her friends in Indianapolis
Speaker 1: just to make sure she was okay, and they responded
Speaker 1: that she was not visiting them. This news was seen
Speaker 1: first by Western Union manager aw Early, who knew the
Speaker 1: second he saw it that the message conveyed even more
Speaker 1: than the identity of the deceased. Because of his own
Speaker 1: social connections to Pearl's circle, he knew who Pearl's likely
Speaker 1: killer or killers were. Coming up. We'll talk about who
Speaker 1: Pearl Brian was, but first we'll take a quick sponsor break.
Speaker 1: Pearl Brian was the twelfth and youngest child of farmer
Speaker 1: Alexander S. Bryan and his wife Susan, who, as we said,
Speaker 1: lived in Greencastle, Indiana. At least seven of those children
Speaker 1: lived to adulthood, but specifics beyond that are a little
Speaker 1: bit unclear, and part of that is due to the
Speaker 1: Brian family being one of the largest in the area,
Speaker 1: with many many people having that name. Pearl's father, Alexander,
Speaker 1: was successful, and Pearl is often described as the family's favorite.
Speaker 1: In addition to being the youngest, Pearl is described as
Speaker 1: a young woman who everybody tended to adore. She was smart,
Speaker 1: she graduated from high school with honors in eighteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: and by all accounts, she was very beautiful. After she
Speaker 1: finished school, Pearl had started teaching Sunday School in Greencastle,
Speaker 1: and she's described as having an endless list of admirers,
Speaker 1: but also as a young woman who wasn't especially interested
Speaker 1: in romances with any of them. She wasn't easily impressed,
Speaker 1: and most of the young men who expressed their interest
Speaker 1: in her found themselves her friends, but nothing more. It's
Speaker 1: worth noting, of course, that these descriptions of her are
Speaker 1: from accounts that happened after her death, so the odds
Speaker 1: of it anybody's saying anything really negative about her were
Speaker 1: a little lower than they might have been. Otherwise she
Speaker 1: may have been as beloved and virtuous as everyone said,
Speaker 1: like the Bell of Putnam County, as she was called
Speaker 1: in one rite up, but we don't really have a
Speaker 1: way to verify that information, Like, we don't really know
Speaker 1: how much of this is the eulogizing of a person
Speaker 1: after they had died, Yeah, and how much is really
Speaker 1: what people remember. In eighteen ninety five, so around the
Speaker 1: time she was twenty one, Pearl met a young man
Speaker 1: named Scott Jackson. Jackson had recently moved to Greencastle from
Speaker 1: New Jersey with his mother. He had a sister that
Speaker 1: was already living in the area, and in Greencastle, Jackson
Speaker 1: became good friends with one of Pearl's close friends, a
Speaker 1: young man and her second cousin named Will Wood. Scott
Speaker 1: also enrolled in dental college in Indianapolis, and Will would
Speaker 1: often visit him in the city, and the two were
Speaker 1: known to carouse there and then in the spring of
Speaker 1: eighteen nine, twenty five, Will brought Scott to the Brian
Speaker 1: home to introduce him, and Pearl is said to have
Speaker 1: instantly fallen for Jackson. Will later said of the two
Speaker 1: of them, quote, Pearl was stuck on Jackson from the
Speaker 1: first time they met. Jackson would come and get my
Speaker 1: horse and buggy and drive over to Pearl's house. When
Speaker 1: they would often go driving together, Pearl was pretty and ambitious,
Speaker 1: but I never thought she would do wrong. Now I
Speaker 1: can see she was perfectly infatuated with Jackson from the start,
Speaker 1: so much that I am firmly convinced she was completely
Speaker 1: in his power and he took advantage of his influence
Speaker 1: over her. So going back to the telegraph manager aw
Speaker 1: Early that we mentioned before the break, Early was friends
Speaker 1: with Will Wood, and through Will he had learned that
Speaker 1: Scott Jackson and Pearl Brian were having a sexual romantic relationship.
Speaker 1: But though he was friends with Wood, Early told the
Speaker 1: police everything he knew about Wood and Jackson and their
Speaker 1: connection to Pearl, and specifically that he had seen a
Speaker 1: letter that Jackson wrote to Wood about the fact that
Speaker 1: Pearl was going to be a mother, and that the
Speaker 1: two men had corresponded about ways the pregnancy might be terminated.
Speaker 1: Allegedly some of those had been tried. There's some talk
Speaker 1: of medicines being ordered and would giving them to Pearl,
Speaker 1: but none of them worked. The next thing discussed in
Speaker 1: the letters was an abortion, and that Pearl was going
Speaker 1: to tell her family she was visiting friends in Indianapolis,
Speaker 1: while in reality she would go to Cincinnati for that procedure.
Speaker 1: With this information, the Greencastle police went to the Brian
Speaker 1: home with additional information and clothing samples to confirm that
Speaker 1: this dead woman was indeed Pearl. Then they sent word
Speaker 1: to Cincinnati police, leading to the arrest of three men,
Speaker 1: Scott Jackson, Alonzo Walling, who will talk about in a bit,
Speaker 1: and William Wood. During early questioning, Jackson said that he
Speaker 1: had last seen Pearl during the holidays, maybe January second,
Speaker 1: and that he and Pearl were quote only friendly. There
Speaker 1: was also the matter of a valise that Jackson had
Speaker 1: left in a saloon and then was alleged to have
Speaker 1: switched out for another, and how that valise was missing.
Speaker 1: Jackson said that he had loaned this suitcase to somebody
Speaker 1: and that it had not been returned. Jackson was strip
Speaker 1: searched and there were two significant scratches on one of
Speaker 1: his arms, as well as some blood spatters on a sleeve.
Speaker 1: To explain, he told police quote, I was bothered by
Speaker 1: bugs the other night, and I scratched myself. He also
Speaker 1: said that he would like to be guarded while in
Speaker 1: the jail, and at one point asked, quote, hasn't Walling
Speaker 1: been arrested yet? At that point they had not considered
Speaker 1: Walling a suspect, but that resulted in Walling's arrest. While
Speaker 1: in custody, Jackson was examined by Sergeant Kiffmeyer from the
Speaker 1: Cincinnati Police Force. Kiffmeyer used a system of measurements known
Speaker 1: as the Bertial system to assess Jackson's physicality. So this
Speaker 1: system was kind of a precursor to fingerprinting and mugshots,
Speaker 1: and that it created a database based on data collected
Speaker 1: from an individual of criminal identities. This was like specific
Speaker 1: measurements of parts of their body and that sort of
Speaker 1: made a profile of their physicality. But kiff Meyer seems
Speaker 1: to have applied this same kind of system to the
Speaker 1: kind of analysis that we would more associate with phrenology.
Speaker 1: So instead of just measurements built up to identify a person,
Speaker 1: it was more like this person's head as a murderer's head.
Speaker 1: And today phrenology is recognized as not being a real science.
Speaker 1: At the same time, kiff Meyer's assessment of this suspect
Speaker 1: was really damning. At the time, he said of Scott
Speaker 1: Jackson quote, every man's head tells its own story. Jackson
Speaker 1: is another H. H. Holmes. Jackson has the cunning to
Speaker 1: plot and plan and to conceal. Jackson is a mind
Speaker 1: far beyond the ordinary. He has a head such as
Speaker 1: Napoleon would have. Jackson knew fully and realized what lay
Speaker 1: before him in the murder of Pearl Brian. Jackson is
Speaker 1: absolutely incapable of any expression of remorse. The only appeal
Speaker 1: that can be made to Jackson is through his fear
Speaker 1: of punishment. Jackson's skull is abnormal and unusually long in
Speaker 1: proportion to its breadth. It is abnormally developed on the
Speaker 1: right side in front and on the left side in
Speaker 1: the rear of the head. Jackson is a natural monster
Speaker 1: or monstrosity, whichever you will look at. His portrait is
Speaker 1: that the face of a criminal. Jackson has other peculiarities.
Speaker 1: His fingers are disproportionately long to his height. Jackson has
Speaker 1: all the characteristics of a criminal by nature. So if
Speaker 1: you have long fingers, hide them from the Kiff Meyers
Speaker 1: of the world. Yeah, I'll also note the guy that
Speaker 1: developed this system of measurements. We're gonna do an episode
Speaker 1: on him. We are, yes, Okay, He's come up in
Speaker 1: a past episode, although we did not name him specifically, Right,
Speaker 1: should we tell listeners what that was he was the
Speaker 1: person that did the handwriting analysis in the Dreyfus affair, Yes,
Speaker 1: which will come up yeah in a very soon episode.
Speaker 1: All Right, Knowing the horrific outcome of their relationship between
Speaker 1: Scott Jackson and Pearl, it's easy to envision him as
Speaker 1: like a mustache twirling villain, particularly after you hear this
Speaker 1: description from this police analysis. And while he was undoubtedly
Speaker 1: evil and apparently lacking in a conscience, his potential for
Speaker 1: violence was not at all apparent to anyone close to
Speaker 1: him or Pearl. Her parents are said to have really,
Speaker 1: really loved him, and surely they and others thought that
Speaker 1: the two might make a future together. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of writings about how they were totally fine with
Speaker 1: the two of them sitting in the parlor alone together
Speaker 1: because they knew nothing would happen. But it's also likely
Speaker 1: that because Pearl had not been involved with anyone else
Speaker 1: romantically up to that point, she was easily manipulated by Jackson,
Speaker 1: who seemed much more worldly than her. By all accounts,
Speaker 1: Scott Jackson was charming, and he seemed to be a
Speaker 1: fine and upstanding young man to everybody in Indiana. But
Speaker 1: it turned out he had been in serious legal trouble
Speaker 1: before he met Pearl Bryan. He'd concealed his past when
Speaker 1: moving from New Jersey to Indiana. When he arrived in
Speaker 1: Greencastle with his mother, it was after he had been
Speaker 1: involved in an embezzlement scandal as an employee of the
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania Railroad Company. His job there had included opening and
Speaker 1: routing mail, and it turned out that he, along with
Speaker 1: a partner named Alexander Letz, had been keeping checks that
Speaker 1: came into the railroad and cashing them for themselves. By
Speaker 1: the time this racket was discovered, they were estimated to
Speaker 1: have stolen thirty two thousand dollars. They used the money
Speaker 1: to live a life of dreams, thinking, betting on races
Speaker 1: and sport, and generally just partying. When the railroad discovered
Speaker 1: this missing money, it was apparently pretty obvious that Scott
Speaker 1: Jackson was guilty. He cut a deal to turn state's
Speaker 1: evidence and testified against his partner in the scheme, Alexander
Speaker 1: lets Once the trial was over, Let's was in state
Speaker 1: prison and Jackson was on his way out of Jersey City.
Speaker 1: And now we get to Alonzo Walling. Alonzo was from
Speaker 1: Mount Carmel, Indiana to the east of Indianapolis. He had
Speaker 1: worked in a glass factory as a child, and when
Speaker 1: that factory had closed, his mother arranged for him to
Speaker 1: attend Indianapolis Dental College. It's there where he met Scott Jackson.
Speaker 1: You're wondering why he was working in a glass factory
Speaker 1: as a kid, is because his father died when he
Speaker 1: was very very young and the family needed the income.
Speaker 1: So Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling also roomed together in
Speaker 1: Cincinnati later on, and Alonzo was aware not only of
Speaker 1: Scott Jackson's relationship with Pearl, but also so that he
Speaker 1: had gotten her pregnant and that he intended to kill her.
Speaker 1: And Walling confessed to all of this when he was
Speaker 1: brought in by police. In a statement to police, Walling
Speaker 1: said that on Christmas Day of eighteen ninety five, so
Speaker 1: a little more than a month before the murder quote,
Speaker 1: Jackson took me into a corner of the room and
Speaker 1: told me that he and Billy Wood had gotten Pearlbrian
Speaker 1: into trouble and that he must get rid of her.
Speaker 1: He suggested two ways in which it might be done.
Speaker 1: One of the plans he suggested was to take her
Speaker 1: to a room and kill her there and leave her.
Speaker 1: Then he spoke up quickly and said, no, I have
Speaker 1: a sudden thought, as something often tells me when I
Speaker 1: am on the wrong idea, it would not do to
Speaker 1: leave her there, so I will instead cut her to
Speaker 1: pieces and drop the pieces in different vaults around town.
Speaker 1: Walling was also examined by kiff Meyer, and kiff Meyern
Speaker 1: analyzed his head measurements too. Of the second suspect, the
Speaker 1: sergeant stated quote, Walling's head is that of a I'm
Speaker 1: in place criminal. He's just the opposite of Scott Jackson.
Speaker 1: At the same time, Walling is utterly void of any
Speaker 1: ability or cunning to plot and plan and to conceal.
Speaker 1: Jackson knew fully and realized what lay before him in
Speaker 1: the murder of Pearl Brian. Walling had not realized the
Speaker 1: enormity of the crime and is supremely indifferent to the
Speaker 1: consequences and to the crime committed. No appeal, not even
Speaker 1: the fear of punishment, will have any impression on Walling.
Speaker 1: We kind of said this earlier, but I'm just going
Speaker 1: to say, you can't know these things for measuring a
Speaker 1: person's skull. No, are you sure Tracy, can we measure
Speaker 1: our skulls and find out that I'm a monster? I
Speaker 1: hope not. Probably. I don't need a skull measurement to
Speaker 1: tell me that. Uh. Walling also said that Jackson asked
Speaker 1: medical students about fast acting poisons, and that he told
Speaker 1: Waling he had a combination of arsenic and cocaine in
Speaker 1: a syringe which he intended to use to kill Pearl.
Speaker 1: Walling also said to police, quote, I don't think it
Speaker 1: killed her at once, and that she tried to fight
Speaker 1: him off when he went to cut off her head.
Speaker 1: Walling also mentioned that valise we brought up earlier, and
Speaker 1: the particularly unsettling detail that quote, I think it was
Speaker 1: after midnight. He came in with the valise and I
Speaker 1: saw him open it and say you are a butte
Speaker 1: you are? He thought I was asleep. He told authorities
Speaker 1: that he thought that Jackson had buried the head, but
Speaker 1: Jackson told his own version of the story and that
Speaker 1: placed the blame on Wood and Walling. He said it
Speaker 1: was Wood and not himself, who had gotten Pearl pregnant,
Speaker 1: and that woold masterminded the murder. Jackson told police quote
Speaker 1: Wood wrote to me telling me of the trouble and
Speaker 1: asking me to assist him out of it. I showed
Speaker 1: the letter to Walling and he volunteered to undertake the job.
Speaker 1: It was then planned to bring the girl here. She
Speaker 1: arrived on Tuesday of last week, and what I saw
Speaker 1: and know of her after her arrival here I have told.
Speaker 1: And of course William Wood told yet another version of
Speaker 1: the story. Under questioning, He indicated that both Jackson and
Speaker 1: Pearl had confided in him about their sexual relationship and
Speaker 1: about the pregnancy. He confirmed that an abortion had been discussed,
Speaker 1: and that he had been the one to tell Pearl
Speaker 1: about that plan, and that a friend of Wallings was
Speaker 1: to perform the procedure. It was later determined by police
Speaker 1: at Walling was the one who intended to perform it.
Speaker 1: Wood also said that he had intended to accompany Pearl
Speaker 1: to that appointment, but that his father had requested him
Speaker 1: at home that day. Wood was, according to accounts of
Speaker 1: the day, registered by police, but not detained at that time.
Speaker 1: He was eventually indicted with a betting an abortion, but
Speaker 1: not murder, and then he kind of vanishes from the
Speaker 1: historical record. The missing valise was brought to the police
Speaker 1: by a saloon keeper named John Coogle, and that valize
Speaker 1: was used in the questioning of Jackson. Jackson said it
Speaker 1: had been filled with miss Brian's things that those were
Speaker 1: now in the river. He also said that it and
Speaker 1: another smaller valise that had been found sitting in a
Speaker 1: barber shop that both Jackson and Walling often went to,
Speaker 1: were both Pearls. The proprietor of a pub frequented by
Speaker 1: Walling and Jackson was also questioned, as was a black
Speaker 1: employee of the pub named Alan Johnson. This sounds like
Speaker 1: a strange scenario where the suspects were also present during
Speaker 1: these witness interviews. Obviously, police work has changed a lot
Speaker 1: since eighteen ninety six. Both men stated that Jackson, Walling,
Speaker 1: and Pearl Brian had been in the saloon and that
Speaker 1: Jackson had ordered a whiskey for himself and a sasprilla
Speaker 1: for Pearl, and that they left in a carriage together
Speaker 1: around seven pm. They also said Jackson was back the
Speaker 1: next night by himself, in an odd mood and complaining
Speaker 1: of a headache, with a valise. Yeah, there's the whole
Speaker 1: secondary part of this, for that Selen may or may
Speaker 1: not have also been a brothel, and that Alan Johnson
Speaker 1: had also implicated another man as having been the carriage driver,
Speaker 1: which turned out to not be true. It gets very complicated.
Speaker 1: This is one of those stories where I'm trying to
Speaker 1: pare down an awful lot of information for clarity. So
Speaker 1: if you go looking and you're like, why didn't that
Speaker 1: get mentioned, That's why. There was also a letter that
Speaker 1: was intercepted within the postal service. This had been written
Speaker 1: by Scott Jackson to Will Wood. It had actually been
Speaker 1: written the day he was arrested, several hours prior to
Speaker 1: being taken in. In this letter used a code that
Speaker 1: the men had worked up, referring to Pearl as a
Speaker 1: man named Bert. Jackson explained this code to police, and
Speaker 1: this letter instructed will to write to the Brian family
Speaker 1: as though the letter is from Pearl and say that
Speaker 1: she has found work in Chicago or somewhere else and
Speaker 1: will write more later. The letter has instructions to burn
Speaker 1: it after it's been read, and concludes with quote stick
Speaker 1: by your old chum, Bill, and I will help you
Speaker 1: in the same way. Sometimes. There is also a PostScript
Speaker 1: that reads quote be careful what you write to me.
Speaker 1: When questioned about this letter, Jackson very casually confessed to
Speaker 1: writing it, but then he said that Walling had made
Speaker 1: him write it, and Walling, of course denied that. Basically,
Speaker 1: both Jackson and Walling told the story repeatedly and with
Speaker 1: ever changing details between the two of them, They gave
Speaker 1: several different locations for the missing head, none of which
Speaker 1: proved out when investigated. They both continued to blame the
Speaker 1: other and will Wood for Pearl's murder. The papers ran
Speaker 1: new confession after new confession as each man added to
Speaker 1: the story. At one point, Walling had stated quote. For
Speaker 1: several days before the murder, Jackson would sit about our
Speaker 1: room and read a medical dictionary to try and learn
Speaker 1: all about the effect of poisons. He finally selected cocaine
Speaker 1: as the most suitable for his purpose. At last, you
Speaker 1: to four grains of cocaine and put in sixteen drops
Speaker 1: of water. He told me that he was going to
Speaker 1: give the cocaine solution to Pearl and make her drink it,
Speaker 1: and that it would kill the vocal powers. She would
Speaker 1: be unable to scream or talk, and then he was
Speaker 1: going to cut her head off. Jackson admitted to purchasing cocaine,
Speaker 1: but said that he gave it to walling. Even when
Speaker 1: put in a room with the corpse of Pearl Brian,
Speaker 1: both men continued this just really bickery rhetoric, that the
Speaker 1: other one was lying. But as the two men had
Speaker 1: tried to lay blame on one another, they had both
Speaker 1: implicated themselves so deeply in the murder that to most
Speaker 1: people the fine points of who did what hardly mattered.
Speaker 1: Articles ran in paper under headlines like both are guilty
Speaker 1: from early on in the reporting of all their various statements. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of becomes like a matter of degrees of like, well,
Speaker 1: I bought the cocaine and took her in the carriage,
Speaker 1: but I didn't actually kill her, and the other guy
Speaker 1: did and he said the exact opposite. It was clear
Speaker 1: they were both involved. Nobody was really all that concerned
Speaker 1: about like who did exactly what part of it. Coming up,
Speaker 1: we are going to talk about the legal proceedings that
Speaker 1: were held regarding the murder, but before we do, we
Speaker 1: will take a break and hear from stuff you missed
Speaker 1: in history classes, sponsors. So all of the things that
Speaker 1: we have talked about up to this point happened in
Speaker 1: the course of less than a week. Pearl had been
Speaker 1: found on February first. Jackson had been arrested on February fifth,
Speaker 1: and Walling had been taken into custody in the very
Speaker 1: early hours of February sixth. Then there was this moment
Speaker 1: of a very strange confession, not from any of them,
Speaker 1: but from a woman named May Hollingsworth, and that happened
Speaker 1: shortly after both men had been arrested. Initially, Hollingsworth made
Speaker 1: a statement to police that she had met Pearl at
Speaker 1: Union Station by chance, and that she had procured drugs
Speaker 1: for Miss Brian, presumably to end the pregnancy, and then
Speaker 1: promised to meet her again two days later, but May
Speaker 1: said she stood Pearl up for that second meeting. The
Speaker 1: next day, Hollingsworth said she had performed an operation presumably
Speaker 1: an abortion on Pearl Brian on January thirty. First. She
Speaker 1: said this operation had gone wrong and that Pearl had
Speaker 1: died as a consequence, and that the body had been dumped.
Speaker 1: After that, she claimed to have a letter that was
Speaker 1: written by Scott Jackson explaining that Pearl had died in
Speaker 1: his room and that a black man had cut off
Speaker 1: her head to try to help hide her identity. Police
Speaker 1: came to the conclusion that Hollingsworth was probably addicted to
Speaker 1: opium and was an acquaintance of Jackson and Wallingen, that
Speaker 1: what was going on here was she was trying to
Speaker 1: save them whatever was happening. Her confession was thrown out.
Speaker 1: The Indianapolis Journal article relaying this story says glibly quote anyway,
Speaker 1: Miss Hollingsworth is a study. When the coroner's inquest was
Speaker 1: held on February eleventh, the facts of the case were
Speaker 1: laid out based on what had been confirmed through investigation.
Speaker 1: The most damning for Jackson and walling was that while
Speaker 1: they had been seen getting into a cab outside Wallingford's
Speaker 1: saloon on the night of January thirty first, no one
Speaker 1: could account for their whereabouts from seven pm that night
Speaker 1: until the next morning. The coroner's jury announced their conclusions,
Speaker 1: which were that the body was Pearl Brian, that she
Speaker 1: had been given cocaine quote for reasons unknown, that she
Speaker 1: had been decapitated while alive, and that she was last
Speaker 1: seen with Jackson and walling The next step in the
Speaker 1: justice system was the convening of the Grand jury of
Speaker 1: Campbell County, Kentucky, and this quickly resulted in an indictment
Speaker 1: against both of the suspects. At this point, both men
Speaker 1: were being held in Cincinnati, Ohio, so there was a
Speaker 1: little bit of legal lag as the paperwork was done
Speaker 1: to get them transferred to Kentucky. The defendant's council wanted
Speaker 1: them to stay in Ohio because they felt they would
Speaker 1: be lynched in Kentucky before the trial could even take place.
Speaker 1: The governor of Kentucky at the time, William O'Connell Bradley,
Speaker 1: assigned the entire state militia to the Campbell County Sheriff,
Speaker 1: Julius Plumber to try to keep the prisoners safe. The
Speaker 1: defense council continued to find reasons to delay this transfer,
Speaker 1: but finally, on March seventeenth, the two men were moved.
Speaker 1: A crowd witnessed them departing Cincinnati, and another crowd witnessed
Speaker 1: them arriving in Newport, Kentucky. Yeah there, Throughout all of this,
Speaker 1: the police departments involved were constantly just glutted with people
Speaker 1: who wanted to witness some of this. Jackson and Walling
Speaker 1: were arraigned on Monday, March twenty third. Both men pled
Speaker 1: not guilty four days after the arragnmant Pearl Brian was
Speaker 1: at last laid to rest almost two months after her death.
Speaker 1: Pearl's parents wanted to wait even longer. They were adamant
Speaker 1: that she should not be buried without her head, but
Speaker 1: Pearl's siblings begged their parents to just let her body
Speaker 1: be interred until they finally acquiesced. The day of the
Speaker 1: burial at Greencastle's Forest Hill Cemetery, a huge crowd gathered
Speaker 1: to see Pearl interred, as requested by her parents, at
Speaker 1: the highest point in the cemetery. Scott Jackson's trial was
Speaker 1: set to start on April seventh, and wallings would start
Speaker 1: as soon as Jackson's was concluded. Although hundreds of onlookers
Speaker 1: had attended the arraignment, there had been a decision to
Speaker 1: limit who could watch the trial, so the crowd inside
Speaker 1: the courtroom was small. Even so, Jackson was kicked by
Speaker 1: a woman who was seated in the courtroom as he
Speaker 1: walked by. In the court of public opinion, he was guilty,
Speaker 1: but the trial didn't start that day though Jackson's a turn. L. J.
Speaker 1: Crawford had been given two weeks from the arraignment to
Speaker 1: prepare for the case. He was insistent that he needed
Speaker 1: more time. He wanted a month. He got two more weeks.
Speaker 1: One of the concerns was the testimony of William Wood,
Speaker 1: which Crawford said he had not had time to prepare for,
Speaker 1: and that he had witnesses he could call that would
Speaker 1: indicate that Wood was not trustworthy. He just needed more
Speaker 1: time to arrange for that. Finally, on April twenty second,
Speaker 1: the Jackson trial began. During the trial, the prosecution made
Speaker 1: the case that Scott had charmed Pearl into a relationship
Speaker 1: that resulted in pregnancy, that he had arranged for her
Speaker 1: to travel to Cincinnati, that he was seen with her
Speaker 1: in the two days leading up to her death, that
Speaker 1: he had been in possession of pearl satchel after her death,
Speaker 1: and that he had been seen showing off a dissecting
Speaker 1: knife in the weeks leading up to the murder. One
Speaker 1: surprising witness was included. That was George H. Jackson. He
Speaker 1: was a black Surrey driver who said he had been
Speaker 1: hired by Alonzo Walling the night of the murder to
Speaker 1: take the trio of Walling, Jackson, and Brian from Cincinnati
Speaker 1: to Kentucky. He had approached police after the coroner's inquest
Speaker 1: with this information, but newspaper coverage at the time indicated
Speaker 1: that his story had been deemed untrustworthy. According to George
Speaker 1: Jackson quote, he heard a noise that sounded like a
Speaker 1: woman suffering, and they moved around and shook the carriage,
Speaker 1: and they broke a glass. And then I was scared,
Speaker 1: and I put my left hand out and my right
Speaker 1: hand on the lantern, and it kind of bent down,
Speaker 1: and I started to jump off, and I said, there
Speaker 1: is something wrong in the back part of that carriage,
Speaker 1: and I don't care anything about this job. And I
Speaker 1: went to hand the lines to him. And when I
Speaker 1: went to look at him, I was looking at a gun.
Speaker 1: He said, if you don't drive this horse, I will
Speaker 1: blow you to hell. Of course I understood and began
Speaker 1: to drive the horse. George said that after he saw
Speaker 1: the two men disembark with a woman in between them,
Speaker 1: he fled the scene in a panic, although he had
Speaker 1: been instructed to wait on the road and listened for
Speaker 1: them to whistle for a pickup when they were ready. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that person he's referring to when he said he tried
Speaker 1: to hand the reins to him was Alonzo Walling, who
Speaker 1: had sat up on the seat with him to direct
Speaker 1: him where to go. So it seemed surprising to me that,
Speaker 1: after his testimony had initially been talked about in the
Speaker 1: papers as though it was worthless, he was kind of
Speaker 1: an important witness in the actual trial. The rest of
Speaker 1: the trial relayed the various accounts given by people connected
Speaker 1: to Jackson, including Wood and the investigators who had questioned
Speaker 1: both men. We've gone over a lot of those details already,
Speaker 1: and on May fourteenth, Scott Jackson was found guilty of
Speaker 1: murder in the first degree. Walling's trial took place the
Speaker 1: following month. It included a lot of the same information,
Speaker 1: and on June eighteenth, he too was found guilty of
Speaker 1: murder in the first degree. Both men were sentenced to death.
Speaker 1: Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling were hanged on March twenty second,
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety seven. Even up to the last minute, Scott
Speaker 1: Jackson was changing his story. He briefly claimed before heading
Speaker 1: to the gallows that Walling was innocent. He said this
Speaker 1: with so much conviction that the governor was contacted. The
Speaker 1: governor indicated that if Jackson stated on the gallows that
Speaker 1: Walling was innocent, that the execution of Jackson could continue,
Speaker 1: but that Walling's would be stayed, but after counting down
Speaker 1: the clock, Jackson said he could not say that Walling
Speaker 1: was innocent, No, and they were both hanged. One of
Speaker 1: the things that's jarring about this entire case, if you
Speaker 1: start looking at it, is the way that Pearl is
Speaker 1: kind of sidelined in almost all of the writing about
Speaker 1: it from the time. Whether that's due to the unsavory
Speaker 1: idea that a woman that everyone perceived as innocent had
Speaker 1: become pregnant, or because the gruesome nature of her death
Speaker 1: was just too much to handle. People talked a lot
Speaker 1: about the logistics of the murder and the suspects, while
Speaker 1: not really talking about Pearl Brian much at all. The
Speaker 1: odd nature of Pearl's death and the trial was summed
Speaker 1: up in the opening of a Chicago Chronicle multi page
Speaker 1: analysis of the story that appeared on May tenth, eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety six, so as those trials were wrapping up, and
Speaker 1: it read quote, Pearl Brian's murder will always be a strange,
Speaker 1: empathetic story in the annals of crime by reason of
Speaker 1: all that sprung up in connection with it, almost daily,
Speaker 1: running into the very last days of the trial of
Speaker 1: one of the accused, Scott Jackson, some of which fell
Speaker 1: to pieces as rapidly as they had been constructed. The
Speaker 1: chains of circumstances which often seemed complete, only to be
Speaker 1: broken in a moment. The previous life of the girl
Speaker 1: in Greencastle, Indiana, where she grew up without a whisper
Speaker 1: of suspicion against her reputation until her headless body was identified,
Speaker 1: the story is without parallel. There was something in connection
Speaker 1: with the butchery of the victims of Holmes that was
Speaker 1: so revolting that the public nearly forgot to bestow that
Speaker 1: sympathy which usually follows such cases. I'm sorry this is
Speaker 1: not a fun Halloween episode. I promise I tried for
Speaker 1: fun ones, and this one has just been lurking and
Speaker 1: lingering there. It really has, and we can talk more
Speaker 1: about it in behind the scenes. But I do have
Speaker 1: a very brief and fun and very Halloween e listener mail,
Speaker 1: which unfortunately is really a description of a picture. This
Speaker 1: is from our listener Brandy, who sent us the cutest
Speaker 1: Halloween card of her puppies, Merle and Luca. One I'm
Speaker 1: not sure which is which. One is a little fluffy
Speaker 1: beebe who is black, and one is a much larger
Speaker 1: dog who is black and white, and they're both dressed
Speaker 1: as males, and it just is a big trigger treat card.
Speaker 1: It's the cutest thing. Brandy, Thank you. This was like
Speaker 1: a delight and I actually opened it after I had
Speaker 1: finished writing this episode outline and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that was exactly what I needed. So hopefully that's exactly
Speaker 1: what listeners need to contemplate adorable dog stressed as snails
Speaker 1: and looking pretty relaxed about it. I must say. So.
Speaker 1: There's a Halloween stinger on the end of this not
Speaker 1: very fun episode. If you would like to write to us,
Speaker 1: send us all of your pet Halloween costume pictures I beg.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us, you can
Speaker 1: do that at History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You
Speaker 1: can also find us on social media as Missed in History,
Speaker 1: and if you have not subscribed, you can do that
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app or wherever else you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows. Stuffy Missed in History Class is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.