Espionage and the Murder of William Dean REDUX

Warning. This episode contains details that some listeners may find disturbing. Welcome to a study of Strange. I'm Michael May. And I can't believe I have now been around long enough that I'm doing my first ever rerelease of one of my first episodes. Thank you to everybody who's been with me from the early days. And thank you to all the new listeners that I've been gaining.

I would be doing the show just for myself for fun, so I really appreciate that people tune in and the show has continued to grow. If you are new, please take a moment to follow, subscribe or review. Check out our website. Subscribe to our Substack to support the show. You know the routine. Now, this rerelease, this this episode is about the murder mystery of Dr. William Deane, A tale with murder, spies, conspiracies. It is one of my favorite episodes that I've ever done.

I've cleaned up the audio a bit and combined the two episodes that I did on this into one very long episode. So if you're new to the show and you didn't hear this before, I think it's a treat. And if you've been with me for a while, it is definitely worth a revisit because it is such a fascinating mystery. Now enough of my preamble rambling. Enjoy the show. April 1917. Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

An unrecognized plane was spotted circling the Portsmouth Naval Yard, which was building submarines for use in the First World War. Rumors of German spies were fresh on everyone's mind, which is why soldiers shot at the unidentified plane. But it escaped. This is not the only strange sighting in southern New Hampshire during the war that allegedly had to do with German spies.

For a while, people reported seeing flashing lights coming from mountaintops, These sometimes elicited more flashes from other mountaintops, seemingly a series of secret communications traversing the land in New Hampshire. But what do these rumors have to do with a murder? In August of 1918? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Today, we explore the murder of Dr. William Deane. This is a study of strange. hello and welcome to the show.

I'm Michael Mann. And today we're studying a very, very strange case of a murder of a Dr. William Deane in New Hampshire in 1918. And with me, a terror looks very excited. Is a husband and wife, Teri Perry and Jordan Wayne Long. They are filmmakers. Tara is also an actress and writer. Jordan is a director and artist. And so, so many other things. I can't list. But they're both with me today to help. So it's my first time having three people, including myself, on a podcast. Welcome, guys.

So this you guys. that's right. So there there are four. Your daughter is part of the show, so they have a wee little one. So part of having two of you guys on is actually very helpful in case in case your daughter needs something. So they have a newborn with them today in case anybody hears some baby sounds that don't have anything to do with the show. So, you guys, just real quick, we'll just plug a couple of things.

Most recently, you guys worked together on Ghosts of the Ozarks that I was fortunate enough to work on, too. So everybody check that out and they can pretty much watch that almost everywhere, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just Google Ghosts of the Ozarks. Also, a squirrel recently came out on tube, and it's also somewhere else, too, to be in Freebie. What is it? What is it? On? Got it. So it's on to me in Squirrel. I know it. Squirrel was actually.

This'll tie into why I wanted you guys on the show because our story takes place in New Hampshire, in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, which is very close. Yeah. Yeah. So. that's interesting. We'll have to do another episode about that. You need. So Jordan's family or I guess Tara's family, too, since you guys are married, owns a property there called the Aldworth Manor in Harris Mill, which is just down the road from Jaffrey, New Hampshire. It's where Squirrel was shot.

Also, Jordan's done a ton of work up there. You guys vacation up there, Your family's there. I also was up there recently, which I'll get into in a second. But that's why I wanted you guys on this episode, because you can actually lend some insight into what the little towns are like in the communities and and all of that good stuff. So I'm really excited about this. Yes. Yes. Actually, let me, if you don't mind, because I actually think that should be part of the story.

So I'll tell that how I came across this in just a second. Let me just do some housekeeping, some of the like podcast housekeeping stuff, which makes me sound cool. So thank you, everybody that's listened so far and subscribed. If you like this show, if you like these kind of topics, please make sure to subscribe, rate and review.

And you can also learn more on a study of strange tor.com and not while this recording is happening, but when the show comes out, I'm giving a giveaway out on Patreon For anybody that signs up on Patreon for like the next it's like 60 days. You can read about it on there. If you sign up, you get a free video message from moi. From me, you guys. You guys will probably want that because you don't you don't see me in real life. So yeah, yeah, I'm actually very excited about that.

So as of this recording, the show hasn't even been out a week yet. So thank you to everybody has been listening. It's been really fun to get some feedback and people seem to be enjoying themselves or everybody's just being nice. thank you so much. So let me tell you why I wanted to do this episode about Dr. William Dean and his murder. I'll give you the story of how he came across it, because I didn't know this. This is actually not a super well known story.

came across this story while I was at the Aldworth. Maynard Here is Phil, New Hampshire, because I was up there helping you guys with a documentary that you're producing, and I'm potentially writing not potentially. My myself and our friend Shawn were writing a script that would actually take place at Aldworth Manor.

So I was doing some research and while I was there, I procrastinated a little bit one day and I was like, I'm going to look up it, see if there's any kind of local And then they tied it in to where there was their spies. lore, local legends, local mysteries of the general area and sort of southern New Hampshire for my podcast. And I came across an article that I mentioned in the intro. So you guys haven't heard it, but there's an article that has this.

It's like a paragraph or two that talks about this plane that was unidentified flying over the Portsmouth Naval Yard in New Hampshire in 1917. And there was a lot of paranoia about German spies. So the local militia actually fired upon the plane and it kind of escaped and landed flying, flying back over land, and they never shot it. So that hooked me. There's strange lights that happen that are like signal lights, and they tie it into this murder. And so I was like, okay, I'm hooked.

I'm going to read more about this and see what I can find out. And it actually took me a while. There's not a ton there's a lot of information out there, but because it's not super popular, it's kind of buried, buried in the waves of the web. When you search the web. And I start reading about it more and I read about Dr. Dean and the stories talk about these strange lights at the tap at the top of Mount Monadnock. I always say that wrong. I have to say it slowly.

Yeah. So there's lights from the top of Mount Monadnock. They're sort of signal lights. They do various things. And also the the other mountains in the nearby area as well. There's these other signal lights. So it's almost as if people are communicating and no one knows who's doing it. And I'm reading this and I'm like, okay, wait, German spies in New Hampshire like that just seems weird. Yes, sorry. Go ahead. Join. Yeah. You know, it might be. I'll talk a little bit about that.

At a certain point in the part about why this area may have been prominent with some like German sympathizers or German ancestry, like people that have family from Germany. But when I was like, wait, why in New Hampshire? I looked into that the Portsmouth Naval Yard, which was mentioned in that article, it was they were building submarines for the use of in for the U.S. Army in World War One. So it was actually a very strategic base.

Not only that, but from the top of Mount Monadnock, you can see Boston on a clear day, and it's kind of a perfect corridor from all the mountains and sort of upstate New York through Vermont, New Hampshire, into Maine. It's a perfect place to send messages from inland out to sea to German ships or submarines. So, yeah, yeah, it's to Boston. Yeah. nice tie. And it'll come around to. interesting. Whoa. So one of the things. Yeah, You're looking great, Jordan. You look.

You look fantastic for your age. So your birthday that you just had this week. Yeah. 270. Yeah. Well, congratulations on making it that far. And you finally have a baby took you to kill. Yeah. So, anyway, what? While I'm reading about this story, I keep thinking to myself, these lights, they're an embellishment. It's some sort of local legends. It's. I'm going to read about it and find out it's not really anything.

This isn't going to be appropriate for the podcast because there won't be enough there. I was wrong. Like these lights were a very serious matter, so serious that they were federal agents investigating in New Hampshire and and around New England. That's what it's called. New England. So I was like, Holy, holy shit, this is amazing. And I hadn't even gotten to the murder mystery yet. So it was just it's very fascinating and I'm so excited to share this story with somebody or some people.

Yeah. Yeah. When I was when I yeah, when I was up there working on the documentary for you guys and we were interviewing, viewing this farmer he actually said it was the most climbed mountain in North America. I don't know if sure. It's in the top. Yeah, yeah, yeah. nice, nice. And it's more of a hike. It's not, you know, for those interested in climbing to see or where it's not, you know, hanging off a cliff side it is, it is more of a a nice hike, maybe a hard hike but it's, it's, it's nice.

So this story is. It is I you could tell by the way I'm talking my eyes went crossed researching this because there is so much information in there are still I'm pretty sure thousands of pages of like governmental documents. I read through a grand jury inquest like the whole transcribe of the entire trial, old newspaper articles, all this kind of stuff. So my eyes went a little crazy. So hopefully I do a decent job.

I will have to skip over a lot of information in these episodes, but it just to actually make sure we don't do 20 episodes of it in just a couple.

But what I want to ask listeners out there is if you are intrigued by this story today, right in a study of strange at gmail.com and tell me and what I'll do is I'll actually reach out to the Historical Society in Jaffrey that put together most of the information I use to research this, and I'll see if I can get an interview with somebody, something like that, because I did the only bit of information or research I haven't done yet is actually talk to people on the ground there.

This is still a very important story to the local residents of Jaffrey. And people have, you know, you guys know the small towns of New Hampshire, everybody's relatives and grandfather, they all knew each other. The same families are still in town. This is a really important story and they want it solved. And so I think they want people to know about it. So, yeah, so if there is intrigue in this this episode, please write and let me know and I will do a follow up of some kind.

Everybody. So yeah. All right, guys, let's let's actually dive into it. There was too much information, but I thought it was interesting how I came across it, so I did want to share that. Yeah. really? Yeah. Have you? So you've been up there, cool. Yeah. Yeah. And it was fun when I was when I first read about this. What was so surreal as I was staring at Mount Monadnock out the window and I was like, Wait, that mountain had lights. That was weird Signal lights during World War One. Holy shit.

Like it was. It was a bit surreal. It was really cool. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was the whole point, I would imagine, is they needed a place that people could actually see. So. All right, let's dive in. And I'll start with William Deane, who is the the sad victim of this case. So a little background on him. He was born on February 12th, 1855, in Delaware.

Some accounts you'll come across say he was born in Siam, which is modern day Thailand, but he was actually born in Delaware. And his family when he was five moved to Siam because his father was a reverend and like a missionary to China in Asia. And he actually became friends with the Prince of Siam when he was young and living in Siam, which is pretty, pretty cool. He moved back to the States when he was young and he started being educated by his uncle. A that's A, B, B, everybody.

It kind of sounded like a cat. Yeah. So he moved back to the States as a kid. He started being educated by his uncle, Dr. Henry Dean of New York. And Dr. Dean became a medical student and was studying in New York at the Rochester Hospital. An interesting fact of his life is he was actually put in charge of the hospital while he was still a medical student. So he was quite a brilliant a brilliant young man. However, he did not actually go into medicine.

He never formally practiced it because he suffered from tuberculosis, which would come and go and his advice from doctors was to move to the country. And that's actually why he moved from New York to New Hampshire to Jaffrey, New Hampshire, and he married his first cousin, Mary Dean. More common, more common back then in the 1800s. Yeah, he was 25. She was older than him. I think two or three years.

And they lived off of her wealth primarily because I'm pretty sure it was her dad who was the father that educated. Dr. Dean. Yeah. Thank you. Yes. Yes. So in 1889, he bought what is the former Elijah Smith's farm in Jaffrey and Jaffrey in the early 1900? It's about 2000 residents. Today, it's only like 4000. It's still a small town and and on the property, they built a bungalow, which that's what they would call it, a bungalow. It's just a nice house.

And then they also built years later what they called the big house, which is a much nicer house on top of a hill. They kind of overlook things and had a nice view of Mount Monadnock. And in the coming this is like the 1890s by a decade or so later they actually moved out of the big house, lived in the bungalow and they would rent the big house out in the summertime.

And I don't think this has changed much for like places like Vermont and New Hampshire, but people from Boston, New York, the bigger cities in New England would vacation in places like New Hampshire and back then they would stay the whole summer. So it wasn't like, you get a hotel room for a week or whatever. They would rent a house, be there all summer long to enjoy the beautiful sights of lovely New England. Now, Dean was known around town as being a bit peculiar.

He was a very nice guy, very well respected in town, but he would wear like bright bow ties. His style was different. Yeah. Yeah, he's cool guy. He's cool guy. Yeah. And it's a it's a rural farming town, so that's going to stand out. But it doesn't mean anybody was, you know, had had ill will towards him. Right right. And he also did something very strange for a rural, rural, rural, verger Jr. Well, it's the area you know what is it. I forget what show that was to Verger.

That's got to be third rock from 30 or 30 Rock. Excuse me. There you go. So anyway, he would milk his cows at noon and midnight, which you don't do when you're a farmer. It was just an odd way of living. He would stay up late. He would sleep in in the morning because he's basically living off family wealth and occasionally renting out a home so he doesn't have to abide by normal schedules.

Now, in 1916, a man named Lawrence Cole Felt junior and his wife Margaret, and their stepdaughter or his stepdaughter, daughter, Margaret's actual daughter, they moved to the Jaffrey area. They originally stayed at a different place. And in around 1917, they moved into the dean's big house and how much do I want to share right now about Cofield? We will we will come back to him, especially in part two. Yeah. Yeah. It is important.

So Cole felt was similarly kind of peculiar in that he didn't have a job. He inherited money from his wealthy grandfather and people thought he was very strange because of that. Like, that just wasn't like a trust fund baby. Today we would be like, a trust fund baby. But back then it was kind of poo pooed upon and also, war is a come in by the time he moves to Jaffrey. And so people when you weren't doing anything to help the community or contributing to society, people really frowned upon that.

So yeah, he was considered very unusual. His family also stayed in town over the winter, which if you're not local, you do not stay in New Hampshire over the winter. That is a it's not fun. So why is someone doing that? He doesn't have a job, so why is he there? It was just a very unusual thing to do. Now, accounts say that in May of 1918, Dr. Dean kicked Cole felt out of the big house, and most of what I read says he gave him 24 hours to vacate.

I actually have contradictions to that, that he was not given 24 hours, but he was indeed kicked out. And so I'll just leave it at that, that that is something to remember. We will talk about. Cole felt much more later on in the show. Yeah. Now, at the time of William Dean's murder, Dean and his wife were not so much wealthy anymore. They had no steady income for decades now, and it was war time. And they they just they didn't have a steady income.

So that's another reason why it's kind of odd that Dr. Dean kicked out his only source of income, which was his rent or the coal fields. Also, Mrs. Dean wasn't in her I don't know how to properly say this, but like her usual capacities anymore, at the time of the death, she was suffering from dementia, some kind of dementia. They didn't quite nail it down specifically back in 1918. Yes. Go to Jordan. yeah. Yeah. That's. I mean, hey, that's interesting.

I looked the medicine wasn't where it is today in 1918. It's over 100 years ago now. So yeah, it's yeah, she, it we don't know. But the fact that she wasn't mentally there is a really important aspect of the case and something that it's a detail that we have to know when we think about what is what is about to come.

Now let me get your opinion, guys, that knowing the area and knowing the small towns of New Hampshire, what would a really a brutal murder do to a town Like what do you think people would react like? What do you think people are going to think? Yeah. What do you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That I mean, you're hitting it on the head. I think you mentioned rumors, which I will talk about a lot today. Terrified. Yeah. Paranoia.

And and still talking about they're still talking about the whole Jaffrey Historical Society again. They're the ones that compiled all this information and all the transcripts and all this amazing thing, too, because they still want it solved, you know, like, that's that's my feeling of it. I haven't heard it said that specifically, but I would imagine they're doing this because they want people I know. Yeah, yeah, that's it. So please, everybody write in.

Still your strategy, Malcolm, let me know if you want me to follow up with that culprit still out there. It's only. It's only been 104 years, so they might still be alive or she never knows. Okay, so before we get into the day of the murder, there are two big quick bits of gossip that I do want to notate. Dr. Dean had told a few people that he had received a threatening letter. We don't know what was in the letter. We don't know who it was from.

We don't know what it said. We don't know what the threat was. Dr. Dean, as far as we know, is the only person to ever have read it. No one has ever found it. Also, he apparently approached a local police officer named Lindsay and asked how he could get police protection if he needed it. So those are just two quick bits of of details that are interesting. Now, he knew something was up now on the day of the murder, it was August 13th, 1918, and it was around noon and a mrs. Morris.

And also side note, you've probably already noticed this. I keep referring to people as like. Mr.. Dr.. Mrs.. That's because almost all the old newspaper articles, the court transcripts, even people today that I've written stuff, there's this formal way of referring to people back then that just kind of has trickled down through the research. That's the way I think about them now. Yeah. So anyway, a mrs.

Morris then came by the Dean's property and she was with two other women, Mrs. Harrington and Mrs. Lynch, and they were asking for donations for a type of like rubbish sale to raise money for a local hospital. And it's 1918. The war is not over yet at this point. So their local hospital is very, very important in wartime, obviously, as well as anytime. So according to Mrs. Morison's testimony, she said Mr. Dean said that he would love to write a check, but he couldn't afford to.

So he basically offered anything in the house. He was like, yeah, find stuff. So they picked out some items in the house for the sale. And then Dean suggested that they go over to the big house, which was now empty because he had no felt. Felton moved out about a month. Yeah, a month or so before. So Dr. Dean and Mrs. Morrison walked over to the big house together. The other lady stayed behind with Mrs. Dean, and this is where we get to our first scene, ladies and gentlemen. So if.

Yeah, if you guys can open up the email I sent you with, it'll be Dean one. This is what I have called it. let me know when you have it. Sweet. Should we just keep. there you go. There you go. I love it. You have glasses on a baby in your lap. This is good. So do you guys want to keep it? Sort of gender norms for casting or do you want to mix it up? What do you guys want to do? Yeah, sure, Sure. So, Teri, you'll be Mrs. Morse and I'll read the the descriptors, the scenes settings and things.

I mean, I mean, back then. Back then I have I have no idea what they would have sounded like back then, to be honest, because it could have been more of that. Like, yeah, down the road. Yeah. Like it could have been that kind of. Yeah, yeah, you don't. You guys are under no obligation to do an accent. It is up to you see what happens. All right, you guys ready? All right, here we go.

So it's the exterior of the Dean property during the day, Dr. Dean walks alongside Mrs. Morrison at the path towards the big house. About halfway up, Dean stops. Well, you're from Arkansas. It's all right. So Mrs. Morrison leads Dr. Dean to a point in the yard and points up at Mount Monadnock. Dr. Dean points, puts a few stones and places them at their feet to mark the spot to see the location of the lights. Yeah. Yeah, it did.

So that is, these are actually quotes from Mrs. Morrison's grand jury testimony about the conversation she had with Dean. So you have the instance of the lights that have been seen from the mountains. She has seen them and will get to her a bit later. She actually was working with federal agents about the lights. And, yeah, he wanted someone to come investigate right away and this is soon after he got a threatening letter. Well, he couldn't. No women. It's too. It's too. It's too.

Yeah. Too dangerous for women. Yeah. So that is the day. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Good point. Yeah. So it's it's a really interesting scene and scenario that happened between the two of them. Now, where am I In my notes? There I am. I found it. So again, it's August 13th, 1918, the day of the murder. Mrs. Morrison leaves the property and the rest of the day for Dr. Dean went something like this.

He continued afternoon chores until the evening, and it's commonly known that he went into the town center of Jaffrey. Around 8:30 p.m.. There was a witness, Alice Burgoyne. I hope I'm saying that right. Who saw Dean in town around earlier than that at 645 or seven where there was like a town band playing a performance. And she saw him there, whether he was in town earlier than 830 or not.

I don't know if it matters to the investigation, but I want to share it just in case someone else there up there figures something out that I haven't. Regardless, he is in town at 830 to do shopping for the week. He drove his cart with a horse. Just one horse. Most people did not own cars in that time in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. If they did, they still had a horse and buggy because in the winter they wouldn't use her. They wouldn't use cars. They would use horses in the winter.

Stores in town stayed open till 9 p.m. on Tuesday because Jaffrey is poppin on a Tuesday night. Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting. So he buys some goods from a few stores, loads item into his carriage and I'll mention at the grocery store good nails or good nose. I don't know how to pronounce it. I'm sure locals Jaffrey will get mad at me for not knowing. Let me know. Brennan His entire bill for a week's worth of food was $3.75. So, yeah, I love that. Love that.

He then went to the junk Duncan's drugstore. It was around 845, and I should say there are a lot of witnesses because people are in town. So like, this isn't just like, you know, some some hearsay about what he was doing. Like there's a lot of witnesses for his shopping. There you go. There you go. Nice plug. Dunkin Donuts, please sponsor the show. So in the drugstore, he runs into Mrs. Ah, excuse me, Mr. Charles Rich's sister in law, Georgiana Hodgkins.

Mr. Rich, we're also going to talk a lot about today. He's a good friend of Dr. Daines. He worked at the local bank as a cashier, and he was also a magistrate for the court in a lot of the articles from back then. And today he's referred to as Judge Rich. He's he was not a judge. He had like a ceremonial title in the court, but a respected, respected man around town.

And Georgiana Hodgkins, who's in the drugstore with Dr. Dean, it's his sister in law, and she was staying in town sort of like this summer or something like that. Dr. Dean and Georgiana started talking. People saw them talking and, you know, hanging out a little. They knew each other very well. And Dr. Dean offered to give her a ride back to Mr. Rich's house that evening where she was staying.

They left apparently a few minutes before 9 p.m. or a few minutes after, depending on which witness you talked to. But around nine and Dean was in town, this may not matter either, but I find it interesting. He was in town asking for batteries. So like every store he went to, he wanted to find batteries for his flashlight because getting home on the horse and buggy, there's no there's no headlights on those things. There's no street lights outside. He wanted the flashlight. Yeah, well.

Well, apparently not, because he couldn't find any, so he was asking around for us, so it was just harder to get. Yeah. I mean, I mean, a lot of wagons did. Yeah. Yeah. He wanted the lights to communicate, potentially. Who knows? according to Ms.. Hodgkins, he gave the ride to and the cashier at the drugstore. Dean drove Hodgkins back to Mr. Rich's house.

They arrive just a minute or so later as it wasn't far away, and Mr. Rich was apparently in his kitchen heating water to treat a wound to his eye. So the common story here is that he told people that his horse had kicked him and it's often confused. People think the horse kicked him in the eye. That's actually not the case. It kicked him like somewhere in the chest or stomach. And he was carrying a basket and he had a pipe in his mouth and like, he flung up like the basket hit the pipe.

Pipe hits his eye, gives him a wound of some kind. No, you're you're you're you're either dead or you're getting a doctor. So. Yes. So he. I don't I don't know how to reply to that. That's what's so funny. I go to for good for him, good for Roger. Good on good, good on him. Yeah, yeah. I think that's important. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. no. Dr. Dean gave Miss Georgiana Hodgkins a ride to Mr. Rich's house, and Mr. Rich is the one with the eye. Yeah. Now plead, please ask those questions.

Yeah, I. I don't know. I don't know. And actually, it's 1988. He might have been. Actually, he does have an anecdote or a story that he told people is that Dr. Dean was on like the patio or porch with Georgiana and and Mrs. Rich, and he went out and said, Hey, I'm sorry I'm not talking so much because I'm trying to treat this wound. And Dr. Dean had studied medicine, obviously, and he told him alcohol would do better than water, both on the outside and inside as well.

I made a little joke that he should he should have himself a cocktail. Maybe maybe so. The Rich's claim that Dr. Dean stayed hung out for a while and left around 11 p.m., I will say, because there's a lot of talk about time and you're going to hear times from me you already have people are like, well, this couldn't have happened because of this time and then this exact M.O., blah, blah, blah. All these are witness accounts. Witnesses never remember these specifically.

Also, it's 1918. Not everybody has a watch that everybody had a pocket watch, you know, where clocks and things, but not everybody had them everywhere. And no one has an iPhone to check. So everybody just guesses when they say, around 11, around 1030, around 930. And it's just important to note when I try to deduce what is going on. So Dean heads home around 11. He speaks to his wife.

When he gets home, he eats some currant buns that he had bought in town, had a glass of milk and then go and then he wanted to go milk his cow. So he takes his lantern and he tells Mrs. Dean he's going up to the barn amoxicillin. Remember, he milks late in the evening. Yeah. And he goes off to milk the cow. Mrs. Dean waits for him. Apparently, she prepared some food for him, and she's waiting and waiting and waiting hours go by. He's not coming home.

She starts to panic, but she doesn't want to go up to the barn herself. It is like it's a bit of a hike up to the barn. I mean, it's not far away, but it's not like just out the door. It is. I think it was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So at 7:30 a.m. the next morning, a young man named Arthur Smith arrived at the Dean farm. He had hired to mow hay for the deans, and Mrs. Dean ran out to him in a panic saying, my gosh, I'm sure Dr. Dean is dead and he's in the barn.

I'm not sure why or what Arthur did next, but I do imagine he checked the barn, didn't find a dead body. Mrs. Dean had checked the barn herself at 5 a.m. and all she had found was the lantern and the oil had been burnt down. But she didn't find anything. Around 8 a.m., Mrs. Dean calls a neighbor Barton, Garfield and she told Garfield to search. Can't find Dean. She's in a panic. She's in, you know, really frantic. And Garfield contacted others for assistance.

About 10 a.m., William and Peter Hogan, who were Jaffrey Selectmen. Well, I suppose I had to look this up. I'm not from New England selectmen or like town council. So it's it's the local authorities in town. Apparently it's a very New England thing and I had never heard of it. Yeah. And then also, Perley knows who was the acting chief of police. Three of them had arrived. They were all searching, trying to figure out what was going on.

Garfield and his sons were also at the Dean property to help and on the property there is a cistern in the ground. I think it's like 100 feet, 200 feet away from the barn. It's very low in the ground, has a heavy sort of circular top to it. And at some point in time they decided to search the cistern and it took a lot of work. They had to get a pole and a hook and dig around in there and at the bottom of about six feet of water, they found a body.

So here is a quote from Mr. Garfield as reported by Burt Ford, who is a a journalist that compiled articles in the 1920s for a book on the case. So here's this quote. We continued hunting around and went up to the barn again, and we happened to sit down on the barn steps. And the first thing my boy saw was a piece of Timothy Hay covered in blood. We then noticed blood on the step and the doorknob. About this time, the selectmen, Hogan and Coolidge and Perley Enos.

Then we started off to hunt again and it was agreed to look in the cistern and Wells, This was about noon. I went down by the wall and got a pole and went up and took the cover off the cistern. And I put the pulled down in this and soon felt a bag with a stone in it after discovering the object in the well to be a body, we built it back and covered over the cistern and the selectmen went for authorities. That was a longer quote than a realized.

So they covered it up, which I don't know if that's smart or not. I mean, probably it's better to not disturb a body, you know, but it's already in water and they don't know if it's dying or not. Like, yeah, it's just interesting that they waited for the authorities to pull it up. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll I'll explain that in just a second. So authorities arrived around to including Mr. Pickard, who is the county, and they were able to get the body out.

It took like an hour and a half and they found it covered in a horse blanket. The head was also additionally covered with a burlap bag. His hands were tied behind his back. His knees were tied. There was a rope found around his neck and it was Doctor William Deane. They also discovered he had a massive head injury. Like some somebody hit him really hard with something heavy.

And the horse blanket is thought to have been covered around him to actually stop blood from getting over absolutely everything. I should also mention there was a 27 and a half pound of rock in the burlap bag that helped weigh the body down in the water, in the cistern roof. So yeah, yeah, it was not I don't think aliens would use burlap. That's no, no, you are you are thinking the rock. You were thinking the right things.

Yes. We will get into this probably more in part two, but I think it had to be more than one person. Now share more my personal thoughts later. But yeah, you had to have carried them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gets slightly. Absolutely. You guys and I are on the same page. You win episode over. Thanks, guys. Thank you so much for being on. This has been a study of strange brought to you by Dunkin Donuts. So. So here's what was also found at the scene. There was hairpin found on the ground.

I can't definitively connect it to the murder, though. There was blood on the entryway, the sort of steps into the barn. There's blood on the door handle to the barn. There's some blood very little bit sort of spattered in the grass and hay nearby. A cigaret case was found in the cistern. Now there's a lot of hearsay about the case. There's a lot of articles, there's a lot of rumors.

It's hard to differentiate what was actually found and what people in town just kind of talked about over the years. However, apparently it was not Dean's cigaret case, so it could have belonged to a murderer. It was also not the brand of cigarets that Dr. Dean would smoke. He would roll his own cigarets and I guess in the cigaret case was a brand of cigaret. Yeah, sorry. Go ahead, Terry. What are you going to say something or were you just making. I don't remember. I exactly.

Good question, Jordan, but I actually don't know and I don't know if I ever read if they mention what brand of cigaret that is a good question. the milk pail that Dean had carried out to milk his cows has never been found. So that's interesting. Also, no murder weapon has ever been found or not murder weapon because he was actually strangled to death. But the thing that hit him on the head, some people think they found it, but it's not it's never been definitively proven or found.

No, apparently it's not the rug. Yeah, apparently it's not the rack. I thought that, too. Yeah, and maybe it was. I mean, look, it's been a hundred years. Criminal investigation, tools, science, all this has improved. That's one of the the, like, annoying things. Ooh, that is something I've thought about and that may lend some theories there to why they never found and why whoever killed him took it.

Because if it's got evidence on it that it was used as a as a weapon, they may want to take it away. So they could do fingerprints. They can do. Yeah, they can do fingerprints. It just wasn't as good as it is now. But yeah, they could search for fingerprints. You just can't do DNA. But they could do a lot of other things. Now, as far as we know, nothing was stolen from the barn. Nothing was stolen from the big house, which was empty. No, it was renting at the time.

Motive is a question and it's obviously important. And my theory and your guys's theory, motive kind of ties in to those, which is fine, which we'll get to later. It has been theorized that whoever did this knew that Dean would be milking cows late at night, like Tara said, knew his habits. And also my point of the sister and I think, Terry, you said it to to know the system is there because that can't be easy to see at night. So yeah.

So the wound on his head, it hit his left temple region and it left like a bit of like a triangle shape in his head. And the, the thought is, is that it did not kill him because the rope found around his neck did strangle him and it strangled they strangled him hard enough that it broke a vertebrae. So it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not not, not fun, not pretty. An autopsy did take place, though, Later. It was not right away. And they did find the current buns and milk.

And they estimated through that, through the digestion pattern that he would have died between 1115 and 1130. Somewhere in that range. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and I don't know how exact they were back then, but yeah, there we go. I mean, what they said. So. Yeah. Yeah. So some days later. Yeah, absolutely. So some days later, a man named Charles been search the barn and found a kind of a wider hand cultivator. Is the way it's described or something.

You know, you hitting the ground eventually plant things and it was found under a stone wall. I cannot find out what stone wall he means when he says he found it there. He claims that it could have been the weapon and he claims that blood and hair was on it. But the investigators kind of wrote it off. So I don't know if he was mistaken. And investigators kind of were like, no, that's that's good. Thank you for finding this. But that's not it.

It's just it's 100 years you know, So I don't know enough about that to also definitively say and we'll do a scene later about that. Now, serious as you can imagine, it started immediately and we'll dig in more into those in part two. Mrs. Dean, though, became a suspect right away. I don't I don't judge people too harshly for thinking of that right away, because you do look at the spouse immediately after a murder. She was not in a full capacity.

I will actually share a story right now because I was thinking about this when people, including myself, and we'll get more into this in part two about why she probably wasn't the killer. And a lot of that has to do with physicality and the amount of strength that would take. And she's late sixties When this happens. I had a neighbor growing up who suffered from dementia and her relatives found that she had ripped all of the kitchen cabinets off the hinges.

So I do think that there is a thing that can happen with like adrenaline that suddenly gives you a lot of strength. Yeah? Yes. I don't. I don't. That's why I write it off pretty easily. But yes, it is. It's worth kind of noting. Yeah Yeah. Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, let me look. I'm going to I was going to do this in part two, but let's kind of dive into her. I think we have plenty of time to do this because it doesn't take a lot.

But one of the things I was going to talk about in part two is the the kind of the bricks that were around the system that held the lid on top were loose. And if someone dragged the body, it actually would have knocked them over, apparently. So someone had to lift up Dr. Dean to drop him into it. And so I do think no matter how strong someone is at that stage, I don't think that's plausible for her.

Also, motive, I notice she's suffering from from a degenerative mental state, but they were a loving couple people, talked about how much they loved each other. There are rumors that Dr. Dean was seeing other ladies in town. But when you actually talk to people that were close to them, they're like, no, no, they were. He was so devoted to his wife and her to him like it was. It's not a thing at all. So I think her yeah, I mean, he kind of was and and he took care of her like she was suffering.

I don't know when her, her dementia settled in, but he had been taking care of her for a long time and he showed no signs of wanting to slow down or stop how they lived their life. And I think it's his cousin or nephew or somebody talked about how much that he talked about her and would miss her when they weren't together and all this kind of loving stuff. So I just don't see a motive. Also, no money motive, which can happen between couples. They they did not have money at the time.

He didn't have life inheritance, you know, like or life insurance or an inheritance that she would have gotten. And same with her. It's not like she was protecting herself from anything. So, no, it's just I think I do not think it's her. But yeah, I was going to talk about that in part two, but I think it's so easy to write her off and there's a lot of people have talked about how the county solicitor, Mr. Pickard, targeted her and wanted her to be the murderer.

And when that grand jury inquest kind of targets her, that's not true. I read through the inquest. I don't think he did target her. And he even admitted in his own testimony in it that he's like, no, I don't think she could have done it. So I think it's like local rumors that that go into these old newspaper articles that kind of roll and other things that he, like, wanted to put it on her.

And he was even like, no, after learning, you know, investigating and looking at more of the evidence, I don't think she could have done it. as much as the theory did exist and does exist since everyone's now, yeah, I don't think it's her. So one of the first people on the scene, I'm going to rephrase that One of the people in the scene immediately assumed that German spies got to Dean. So this was such paranoia because of the lights, because the war people did immediately think they got him.

He saw something. He said he heard something, He got them. Mr. Rich, his friend, whose house he had visited till the night before, arrived at the scene that day to fresh with his black eye. And what we'll find is that there are conflicting witness accounts with Dean's comings and goings from Mr. Rich's house The night before. So some people say Dr. Dean never went to Mr. Rich's house. Others say yes.

But Dean and Rich's family are the only people to have seen Rich with his black eye before he showed up at the scene of the crime. And the only people that could corroborate, he did get kicked by a horse, and that's how it happened. And Dr. Dean, being one of those witnesses, is now dead and cannot corroborate that he was kicked by a horse, the thought being that Rich got the black guy while in a fight with Dr. Dean during the murder.

Yeah, but I think some people don't consider her credible because she's the wife and she wants to protecting him. Yeah, but it is a rumor, and people believed it wholeheartedly. And so to this day, there are some people that consider him the prime suspect. So Mr. Rich did become one of the prime suspects, as I just said, still is to this day. In fact, a grand jury inquest, which I have talked about already, was held in April of the following year.

Notes were transcribed from that inquest by Margaret Bean, whose family is still very prominent in Jaffrey in the 1970s. She actually found the court reporter's notes and spent years translating them into this document that we now have that I have read all of. And it took very long time and which people can find online if they're interested. So in this grand jury inquest, I think it happened because the public wanted something to happen and the investigation wasn't really getting anywhere.

Yeah. So I think yeah. So I think there was pressure to have this grand jury inquest, which was like, hey, here's some suspects, here's some of things. Do you jury people think we have a case and they eventually said no. Yeah. Jordan, go ahead. For many years, I don't know the exact date, but they Dean had lived in town since the 18 a late 1880s. And I think Mr. Rich had been there his whole life, if I remember correctly. So they had they've known each other a very long time. So meanwhile.

I'm sorry. Go ahead, Tara. Yeah? What are you gonna say? Yeah. Colville. Yeah, Yeah. We're going to get we're going to get into that. So yeah, the jury inquest was conducted by New Hampshire Attorney General Oster, Oscar L Young and Cheshire County solicitor Roy Pickard, who I've already mentioned, he was there on the day the body was found. The findings were inconclusive. And at the end of the trial, they basically just determined, yeah, Dean was murdered by someone unknown that was there.

That was their finding. Yeah, I could. I could have figured that out. Yeah. meanwhile, I'll go into this the day Dr. Dean was found dead. Mrs. Morrison, you guys did the scene with Wes in Boston, and she did not know that Dr. Dean had been murdered. And she actually went into the Department of Justice, the local office, I believe it was actually the international division of the Department of Justice.

And she brought the message that Dean had left her that someone should come to investigate in Jaffrey, that something had happened. He had found something. The only thing was they already had agents in the area. And not only that, Mrs. Morrison had helped some of them already, and they were familiar with not only people in Jaffrey, but the Dean property itself doen't it. we will, we will find out. So that is where we're going to end. Part one, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, yeah.

man. This the DOJ files. thank you. The FBI files. It was. It was actually the Bureau of Investigation back then. I believe it's actually confusing to find out who exactly was investigating because locals refer to it as a Department of Justice, which they're in charge of. But I do think it was specifically the Bureau of Investigation, if I'm wrong, if people know more specifically who is investigating, let me know.

But the files from the investigations are part of the FBI files today because they didn't exist back then and they are mad. It's so much fun to read them it. That's where my eyes went crossed researching because they're also not always in order. So you're reading stuff like Out of Awe. It's really confusing, but it is fascinating.

So next week we're going to look into the prime suspects, the contradictions of witnesses, and we're also going to dive into the spy flights, the signal lights from the mountains of New Hampshire. And we're also going to throw in a goofy con man, psychological criminal, as he called himself, a very annoying witness that we're going to talk about as well just for fun. So thank you both for being on. And we will continue this. Everybody tune in next week yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it.

Which one, Mr. Rich? Mr. Dean? Or that Carl felt not not necessarily. Not necessarily like he did, but he wasn't. We will find out after these messages or, you know, Where we left off. In part one, Dr. William Deane of Jaffrey, New Hampshire, was murdered around 11:30 p.m. on the night of August 13th, 1918. He had returned home from running errands and visiting with his friends.

Charles Rich's family had a snack of current buns and milk when he got home, and then he walked to his barn to milk his cows some 500 feet away near their big house on the property which he and his wife had previously been renting out. Dean was struck on the head upon entering the barn with something very heavy that left marks like a triangle in his head.

He was then tied up, hands behind his back, knees tied together, covered in a horse blanket, then further covered up on his head with a burlap sack in which was a 27 and a half pound of rock used to help weigh him down in a cistern on the property. He was discovered the next day. This is a study of strange. Well, You know, there are men who are Midnight Milker. I like it. I like it. It sounds good to me. No, actually, you bring up a good point.

The milk pail you brought, you brought up in part one. And I had not considered that before and because it wasn't there. So they may have taken it because it was covered in blood and thought their fingerprints are on it or something. The marks there are photos. I have seen them. It's not a perfect triangle. So I honestly think it's just something heavy. And it could be a rock. It could be a pail. Yeah, I don't know about Instagram because they are it is kind of. Yeah, maybe Patriot.

I'll definitely have links in the show notes. So if anybody wants to see them, there are plenty of links that will be in the show notes for everybody to check out. Excuse me. You know, milk jugs in 1980, it was wartime. You know, people had they didn't have milk jugs. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, man. Never, never. It's like wearing really nice Jordans on a basketball court. Don't do it because you might get robbed nowhere anymore.

But I grew up doing it, and that was like one of the rules when I would when I was like 14, 15. Playing a lot of basketball is people would like tell you because I had Jordans. They're like, don't wear those at that court right now. It's putting a target on your back, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. A study of Strange brought to you by Hocus Pocus two. that would be so amazing. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. All right, so a few suspects came in to the target of the residents right away.

We have talked about them in part one a little bit to introduce them. Dean's good friend, who Dean apparently visited the night of the murder and who many witnesses saw with a pretty bad black guy after the murder, leading to the question, did he get into a kerfuffle with Dr. Dean and that is Charles Rich. The other prominent suspect is Lawrence Cole Phelps, the former renter of Dean's big house, who many suspect was a German sympathizer.

Kaiser and May has been involved in the lights flashing on the mountains, lights the government was investigating during World War One. Jordan was giving a pump, a fist pump during learning school. Stuff I think he's got is. Is really? Yeah. now, before we get into them, I do want to diverge into a little bit of details about what happened right after the murder. So locals did try their best to investigate, but it is a tiny rural town in 1918.

There's not a lot you can do, You know, if you don't catch somebody in the act back then, it's really, really hard to prove. Yeah, it sounds I hate saying yeah like that because it sounds like I'm like, Yeah, good. I don't like it. I don't. I don't mean that. And it's not a positive thing. It's not a positive thing. So a local man named Richard Henchman came by and cleaned up the barn. I know. Henchmen. Yeah. Yeah, That's his real name. That is his real name.

He came by and cleaned up the house and the barn. This was approved, from what I can tell by the authorities, but there are a lot of articles from back then that claim that Charles Rich sent him to clean up the crime scene. But from what I can read, it was like, no, like it's it's they don't know CSI. They haven't you know, there isn't some special agency they go to to study how to investigate a crime scene. Back then, I think they were just like, you should clean up. That'll be helpful.

But obviously it makes it harder to investigate. Various witnesses came forward and if anybody wants to read more about this, see Burt Ford's book, which I will have a link to that claim that they saw and heard a wagon followed by a car on the night of the murder, head through town towards Dean's house around 1030, 11:00. One witness or actually multiple witnesses also saw a car coming through town, going the opposite way around midnight. One witness, Charles Bean, who also found a tool.

We'll talk about, mentioned that he saw a wagon, sermon notes. I can't decipher my own. I was going to say handwriting, but it's typed. But I can't decipher how I wrote this note to mention. Charles as Charles Bean excuse me, said that he saw the wagon he saw go through through town was not Dean's wagon or Dean's horse because he would recognize both of them. Other witnesses say the car that was seen in town was not a Ford. It's just important to note that it had a heavier sounding engine.

The car, if it was indeed the same car everybody was seeing, was leaving around midnight. So that would have been after the murder if he didn't indeed die at 1130. Yeah. There were not Volkswagen. They they weren't around yet. But you'll find out later. Cole felt had. Jordan looks excited. He owned a Marmon, which was a very expensive car, which I we'll talk about a little bit later on. Boom. It was it. Well, I might. I might change your mind later. Hang, hang on, hang on.

It's going to get good. It's going to get good. So no one recognized the car and no one recognized people in the car except for one witness, a young man named Daniel La Rose, who I keep wanting to read of the corner of my eyes, Daniel LaRusso. He was in town in Jaffrey around midnight. Apparently he was looking for like a lighter or matches or he was just hanging out one in a smoke. He saw the car and he thought Charles Rich was driving this car that came through town.

Yeah. Now, putting some some credence or validity to this car sighting. Tire tracks were actually found on a quiet road that circled behind the Dean property and a pathway seemed to be made from car through, you know, the land towards Dean's house to a rock wall. And it looked like rocks had been pushed over where people walked through the rock wall towards the barn in the big house of Dean's boom. Everywhere up there there are at my family's house in Vermont, too.

Yeah. The tool I don't know, because all I ever read is they found it under or he found it under a rock wall. I don't know what rock wall that. Yeah, Yeah. Maybe. Maybe. I think. I think we would know. I feel like that's such good detail that something would have come up with that. So if handful of days after the body was found, William Dean's brother, I think he was named Frederick. I didn't write his name down. I think it's Frederick Dean came up from, I want to say, New York.

I didn't write that down either. I apologize for my terrible note taking. He came up to town because obviously his brother has been murdered. He wants to know what's going on. He brought with him a psychic detect it or a criminal psychologist, as he called himself, a man named Vincent de Curler. I think he was Belgian. So I think it's vent not went to color. He was self-professed and all of his credentials and I built I won't beat around the bush.

This dude was a con man you know he was a con man and day killer. He he's he's a character, guys. He is such a character. Invented the killer. He had a huge ego. And like all con man, he just lied continuously, especially if people were asking him questions about what he was doing. He would have to cover up his own lie. So he would lie even more. He claimed to have been hired by Dr. Dean's brother to investigate, but not for a fee, because he's a he's a very good man just to cover his expenses.

And the expenses, by the way, were very, very high. And after Dean's brother left town, you know, in the days or weeks after the body was was found, the killer stayed on. And what I find really interesting is the town they were. So they really wanted to solve this. They were so eager to solve it that they him to stay on, to investigate. He didn't accept a fee, though. He's a good guy. So just the expenses, just as expenses, Right. Exactly.

So a few things that the killer found or claimed to have find. And by the way, he actually did, I will give him a little bit of credit. He did seem to really want to solve this, like legitimately, he wanted to be the man to solve the murder. So he did talk. He talked to everybody, ever even people. Investigators did not question. He went out and was questioning them and finding out information. PINKERTON Also work the case. I don't know. I never came across anything they ever found.

And I love when Pinkertons get involved. Yeah, so he did Killer claimed that he found marks on the entryway to the barn and marks on a rock that was near the cistern that were the same shape of the marks on Dean's head. So he was thinking that whatever hit Dean also fell or hit the floor of the barn. And then this rock or drug across this rock on the way to the cistern. Keep that in mind, because we're going to talk about that in a wee bit when we talk about Charles Rich as a suspect.

The also claimed that he was able to see faces in pictures of blood spatter and the faces the faces could be the killer maybe and the pictures were asked about at the grand jury and. QUEST And he claimed he didn't bring them because they served criminal justice purposes, because you can't prove that the murderer is in the picture. But you can see it all you can. I'll let you all look at it whenever you want. But of course, no one ever saw those pictures. I've never seen the picture.

I don't think anybody ever saw those pictures. Yes. So, so interesting. Interesting stuff there. And on that note, we are going to do a scene of vent to killer and on Dean to is what it's called. This is actually from the grand jury inquest. This is his testimony. I have pieced it together from three different parts because he goes on for many, many, many, many, many pages. So I just kind of pulled three different parts and combined them into one.

Tara, let's have you read Vent the Killer and let me pull it up myself here. Yeah. it's not I, I copied it from the transcript. So it's, it just wasn't spelled fully. So that's why it, it's not spelled correctly in that scene. Apologies. Let me know when you guys are ready. You know, a nice, nice deep rip. Yeah. So you're reading young Jordan. Thank God. All right.

this is the courthouse in New Hampshire during the day, The jury is tired, yet hangs on to every word of the eccentric vintage the killer as he's questioned by New Hampshire Attorney General Oscar Young. She has notes it. Just answer by yes or no. You either have an opinion or you haven't. Which is it? Yes. You can pardon me for demanding. I ask if you have voiced that opinion. I may have voiced. Is that your opinion now, or have you changed your mind? No. It was

And there you have it. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did make a few minor changes because I skipped I combine, like three different sections of his testimony. So I just added, like, a couple read things, But it's 99%. Yeah, I'm so famous. I'm famous. France, Italy, Scotland, Germany Bangladesh. I'm stained. I'm so famous everywhere. Yeah. And which means when he showed up, it's because nowadays when you read about it, just knows who he is. So they just refer to him as that.

But he must have shown up to town using a completely different name for. For what reason? You can't imagine, like. Yeah. So just the ego and the guy. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I have not done that. I actually find out because I always make jokes when people ask this, I'm like $482,000, but it's actually probably like 20. You know, it's probably more than that. It's a lot. Yeah. Find a territory is looking up everybody we're going to hold hold for terror calculating who?

that is so much more than I thought. Wow. Wow. Now, I didn't include every bit of interesting thing that he said, because we would literally be here for weeks because it's a long it's a long testimony. But I did want to give a just a hint because I think he's so interesting as to the way he talked about. Now, the lawyer, the young who was interviewing him, also Pickard, the county solicitor, did interview him some, too.

And Ticagrelor in just weird, weird, like combative kind of things every now and then when it's like simple things, it's just it's so interesting. And so it's I think it hurt the case, you know, when you have somebody like that involved, even if they really wanted to solve it and solve it legitimately, like they're just you can't trust what they say. You can't trust what information they compile. So it's kind of sad that that he was involved.

Now, my favorite part about him is that the locals have already said hired him. I just find it so that they they brought him on now. Now, a couple of clarifications I want to make. In case you read about this case, listeners out there, in case you're you're researching this on your own, lot of claims say that Pickard wanted Mrs. Deane during the grand jury trial. She he excuse me, he really wanted to pinpoint it on Mrs. Deane or that he really wanted to pinpoint it on Rich or Cole.

Felt like people have their own opinions about the way Pickard was doing his investigation. But when you read the testimony and you read the whole thing like I did, which took way too long and you read Picard's own testimony, he did not seem to have an opinion or want of one suspect over the other. He was very much just like, I don't I don't know who did it. Here's the information. What can we decide?

So he's not as opinionated as I think a lot of the local rumors and articles and things you come across read. We talked about Mrs. Deane a little bit in part one. We don't think she could have done it. We weren't going to go into that again, if anybody out there is listening and wants to review that, go into part one towards the end of that episode.

The other quick little thing we can go into before we get into the main suspects is some people theorize that it could be hoodlums like some kids or some young vagabonds were hanging out in the barn and Dean came in to milk the cow and they were panicked. They were like, yeah, we had been found and like hid them and tied them up and dragged them. Yeah, that's where that's where it doesn't time with my mind. Jordan, you're going to say something. Tara, Make sure he turns it off.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so anyway, that is one of the other theories is that hoodlums could have done it. I don't agree with it for the main reason Jordan just said, like Tara just said. Which one of you said it? I'm already losing my mind about the ropes. He said that? Okay. Yeah. I think you panic. If you hit somebody in panic and you kill them, I don't think you're tying them up by the knees. And the arms and the head and that like, Yeah, that's what, that's, that's part of my theory. It's like why.

Yeah. Yeah. It's By spice. So your your, your daughter fully agrees. Yeah. She's like I get you dad I back him If anyone disagrees with my reasoning to write off either Mrs. Dean or the hoodlums, please write me a study of a study of strange at gmail.com. Now I'll write that out of the way. We have the two main suspects confessed who was the lodger of the big house with his family and Charles, the friend. Who do you guys want to talk about first?

Okay, That means I have to scroll further down in my notes. Fine. All right, a quick refresher. Charles Rich is the bank cashier. In some articles you read, they call him a banker. He's just a cashier, but a very important job. He also worked at the local courthouse. Again, not a judge. You talk about that part one he's always referred to as judge. He's not a judge. Yeah. Yeah, Well, I think it's just people here. He worked in the courthouse and they're like, a judge.

And just and it just, you know, once one rumor happens or one mistake happens, people read it, pick up on it, and it turns into fact. So Dean visited Rich. They had known each other for years. They were friends. They would play billiards together. Sometimes the families, each other.

And Dean visited supposedly Rich on the night of the murder when he drove Richard's sister in law, Georgiana Atkins, back home that night, Rich had a black eye because he said he got hit by the horse and it made his hand jerked up, hit his pipe and his basket hit his eye. And he apparently got advice from Dean to put on it. And Dean apparently left Rich's house around 1030 or in that range. So that's the kind of the story we talked about, the common story when the rich's weird.

I'm going to I'm going to admit this before I say everything about him, there's some inconsistencies with him as a suspect. So even as I like glance at my notes right now, I'm like, how am I even going to tell this? Because I've got to bounce around a little bit. But that's that's just what we're going to have to do. I know. I really want to go through Jeffrey to. it's can't be that different. Yeah, yeah, just riches, riches. Hard to pinpoint it, my opinion.

So when I go over some of the facts about him and and details about why he's a suspect, I apologize if it seems like it's bouncing around. And that's my own fault of not being able to fully agree that he's a suspect. Sorry. The morning after the murder. Here's some things that that may that may make Rich look like a suspect, like he could have done it, not look like a suspect. He is suspect, but it looks it it's not good for him. So after the murder, Rich apparently went to the undertaker.

This is the morning that Dean was found and asked if he was going up to the Dean property. And the undertaker was like, What? But why? And Dean was like, Mr. Dead. And this is at 8 a.m. before they ever found his body. That's according to the undertaker. This is according to the undertaker. According to Mr. Rich, though Rich actually says no, it was 11 a.m.. And I never said Dean's dead. I said he's missing, and everybody's up there looking for him. Can you take me up in your car?

He wanted a ride up to the dean's property. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if Rich did it. I don't. He's not an idiot. Like, I don't think he's going to go in and be like, Dean's dead. Take me up there. It's like, What? No. So I think the undertaker is literally just mistaken. I don't think he's trying to, like, get rich to look guilty. I literally think just the undertaker is mistaken. The time of day it happened. And what exactly happened?

However, it's it's worth noting, you know, that the undertaker claims this. Now, one of my question I'm going to pose this to you guys again. It's why I have a tough time with Rich. You got to have motivation. Motivation is a big in any murder. What kind of motivation would someone like Rich, He works in a bank. He's a friend with a guy. If you guys are writing a script, like, why would someone like this want to kill Dr. Dean? Okay, cool. Yeah. Yeah, Because. Yeah, it's.

It's kind of the only motivation I can think of as well, because money wasn't a motivation. Like, he didn't like Dr. Dean Didn't. No money. The guy, Dr. Dean was over drafted at the bank, but, like, by a few dollars. And apparently that would happen every so often. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So this is just to clarify that it was his sister in law that he that he brought home, not his wife. So Mrs. Dean was home.

But that is, that is also a good motivating though Tara is like was it was there some floundering going on. But Mrs. Rich, Mrs. Dean, like all these other people that are super intimate with these, basically shut that down. But that's yeah, it's kind of like money, which I don't agree with. The thing is, he didn't.

Dr. Deena No money philandering which everybody's like now and the potential of like in cahoots with some other people related to spice and that's the only that I think has any chance of being true if if Mr. Rich was involved. Now, I mentioned the car seen by witnesses earlier and that this guy or this young man saw Rich driving a car that had two other men in it that he could not identify. Witnesses also saw a carriage go towards Dean's before the murder. That was followed by a car.

And one witness who slept on has slept on his porch because his wife had tuberculosis, although he still called it consumption. So I love his testimony when they say that apparently porch sleeping was very common for people with tuberculosis and people that would move to the area of the country on purpose. So he slept on the porch and saw from Rich's house his carriage leave around ten, 1030, something like that, and claimed it was rich.

So why is he leaving the house why didn't he ever tell people he left the house? Because he said he was home all night. Someone saw him in a car. He also has a black eye. That's kind of also a big deal to some people to color our good friend, psychic detective. The caller kind of thought Rich did it and he invited people, including Rich, up to the Dean property when Day Killer was investigating and the killer had drawn the shape of the hit on Dean's head on a piece of paper.

And he looked at rich. And the story goes that he took the paper and slapped it on Richard's face by his eye, where he still had some marks. And the killer claimed it's the same marks. So, like therefore, he did. It was kind of his suggestion when this happened, Rich didn't defend himself, but as Rich says he was he was just in shock. He was like I was I was just baffled. I was thinking I was just in shock of what happened.

But so some people put some validity into this idea of like, the marks on Dean's head match Rich's I, I don't think that's actually true. I think Ticagrelor is just nut and I, you know, like slapping a piece of paper on someone's face. It's just it's so bizarre and weird. if they Yeah, well, also, most people say he didn't have marks on his. I just feel like he just had a black eye. He didn't have marks. So I really feel like Ticagrelor just trying to invent something there.

Rich actually filed a libel suit against newspapers after the murder in the years after it, because so many people claim that he did it, that he was actually like, You're ruining my life. This is libelous. So he and he won the case. So he actually won this this court case? Yeah. Now there are questions about Dean going to Rich's house the night of the murder. Some people saw Dean leave town alone. Others saw him leave with Georgiana Hodgkins.

So I think it's just he said she said, and I think witnesses are also not great. They're not great for evidence. They're great to hear, but they don't always see and remember things correctly. So I'm not sure what to believe in whether he went to Rich's house or not. And also, I question what does it even matter with the murder? Like it? Because if he went to Rich's house, did they get into a fight? But if he didn't go to Rich's house, why was rich going over there later to kill him?

Like, I don't know. I just it just doesn't seem to fit me. So I actually do think Dean went to the rich's house also, Mrs. Dean, she said that Mr. Dr. Dean came home at 930, which means he would not have gone to Rich's house. But the people that say this don't take into account that she was suffering from dementia and in other times that she was asked, she said 1030 and another time she was asked, she said he went to his friend Rich's house.

So I think she just she we can not rely on her for information and time. I don't think we can rely on anybody for time in these stories, especially especially her. So, my question, where's. Yeah, yeah. And so similar to this is why I'm going to say why not Rich I've already kind of gone into that. When I brought up stuff similar to Cole, felt his testimony, and I'm going to talk about Coalfields testimony later to Rich's testimony in the grand jury hearing. Just it just makes sense.

And when I was working on my shows and I was researching stuff and just my my own love of stories like this, the more bizarre a story is, the more it's likely that there's lies in it.

Like things have to kind of line up when someone tells the truth and everything, Mr. Rich says in his testimony lines up to me like everything about his horse, the time Doctor Dean coming over and hanging out on the porch like Mr. Rich didn't talk to him a lot because he was trying to treat his eye like every thing he talks about Seems very earnest, very authentic, very real. Obviously, I'm just reading it. I'm not hearing. But still, it seems. And also it just all makes sense.

There's no inconsistencies about what he says. And I think a lot of what he went through as a suspect and still goes through as a suspect is, just local rumor. I think if rumor spreads, it grows and grows and grows and grows. And and that's where it is. They were friends. These are guys that would hang out. They would talk a lot. Mrs. Dean and Mrs. Rich knew each other very well. Obviously, Dr. Dean went over to hang out that night, you know, like that is true. I don't think the rich's are.

There's a lot of dissonance with the Dean family and and other families. There's also some videos on YouTube that were done in like the early nineties that people shared with two gentlemen who were alive back then. And one of them even saw Rich with the black guy. Yeah, yeah. But from my account of the videos, I saw them and it doesn't sound like they think Rich did it either. So yeah, they were friends, they weren't enemies. The only way.

The only, only way I think he would ever have been involved is if he was friends with somebody that was a spy like one of these people trying and also money. He would have had to be paid like you'd be able to find it. And no one ever like he didn't move into a bigger house. He didn't, you know, go on vacations to Tahiti, Like there he was. He, you know, stayed in town and did his job. So, yeah. So I'm not a big Charles Rich proponent as a as a rightful suspect.

I think you can write him off. I get my opinion. But that's that's where I'm at. So let's get to Jordan's buddy Cole felt content. So why is Cole felt as suspect? I'll I'll do a little review and no, actually, I'm going to know Tara's counting using her fingers. She has lots of reason to think I'm actually going to talk about the signal lights to give some background to that because that does tie in with Cole felt as a suspect.

around the time Lawrence Cole felt moved to New Hampshire was around the time that the lights actually started. Not exact, but it's around that time, as you've heard me say, there have been many reports about these strange lights coming from the top of Mount Monadnock and other pack, Monadnock and Temple Mountain and all the other mountains in the area. There's there's many reports of lights. And they generally start before the U.S. got involved in World War One.

But they ramped up as soon as the U.S. did enter the war formally. And no one was ever caught doing this in the area of Jaffrey. Right. Well, specifically say there's just rumors and sightings. People did try to investigate the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Investigation. I think they sent investigators out there to find out what was going on. And I do apologize. It would just hit my microphone.

I do apologize because, again, if you heard me say this earlier or in part one, the FBI files are very confusing. So I just I just hope I do it justice explaining kind of summarizing different things that are in it because there's just so much detail. But they investigated the shit out of these lights. They would camp out, they would find places to be.

There were a few instances where they saw people that they thought could be going up the mountain, but then they would lose track of them like there's a lot of different interesting things in these investigations and there's a lot of it like a lot of investigating. A lot of the pages you read are like, we got breakfast and then we watch the mountain and then, nothing happened. And I think there's a lot of that too. The lights have been described.

Yeah, there have been a lot of descriptions about the lights because they're not consistent. They're flashes like, Yeah, they're flashes like Morse code. Some people have described them kind of like meteor showers. But on the mountain.

However, to differentiate it and to validate being real lights, there were flares sometimes like actual flares, there were lights would like be signal lights where they would shine really bright, then maybe move a little bit, kind of move back, maybe move up and down, and it would disappear. Then there'd be lights on other mountains. So they were there were different lights, meaning that there could have been different codes, different kinds of lights could mean different things.

Yeah. There's also yeah, yeah. A long time. They like to. And also it's, it is and it's but it's unlike a text message, it's untraceable. You can't decode it unless you know what the code is. So this is, you know, this is World War One, not World War two is there was no what's the German code thing? They had a break the day with typewriter. So it's always in movies and stuff, but there's none of that. Like you just have Morse code type of stuff.

You also have the beginning of numbers stations, which I'm sure you guys have heard about this weird radio signals that just count things. I think the I think the earliest ones were during World War One. So it's like a form of like, we're just going to send a signal. Someone's got to know how to how to, you know, figure out what it says. But there's only probably one person who knows what it says. It's really interesting. It is so interesting.

There's also this is not in my notes, this is just from my reading. There was somebody that was actually captured like a fisherman or somebody like that by a German sub at this time off the coast of New England. And apparently the captain of the sub had been to like a Broadway show the night before. So they were able to get people on and off, you know, secret back then without being seen. So, yeah, yeah, it's, it is fascinating.

Yeah. Yeah. So in order for lights to work though, you have to have people local that are either reading them, creating the code for them, putting them up. And actually let me read I'm going to read this thing. This is from Bert Ford's book that I mentioned earlier. He he's a journalist that compiled a lot of stories in the 1920s about this. It says automobiles were seen in lonely sections of the mountains equipped with two rear lights as powerful as headlights.

These lights were used as signals by covering them with colored disks of red, blue and green. It is suspected, but has not been established by direct evidence that dynamos and wireless apparatus conveyed from point to point in automobiles. So that's just an example of like some of the things people had seen or thought about lights, they were usually seen on Friday nights between 1045 and 1120, not always, but usually. So there was it seemed to be like a designated time.

The signals in the vicinity of East Jaffrey and Dublin and Harris ville and area we were talking about in New Hampshire, there were actually many persons of German blood or pro-German sympathies that lived in the area. And apparently I cannot find corroborating evidence for this. But I read that somewhere. Apparently this move to this area started because there was a composer named Edward McDowell, who was American but had studied and lived in Germany. do you guys know Edward McDowell?

Look at your face. yeah, it is. It is the same. He bought the farm where it is to this day in like 19. no. I think he died in eight. I think it was 1800s when he bought it. So apparently because he had lived in Germany and France and stuff, but he was very famous over there. That's why a lot of German immigrants would be in the area. They would go to shows and like concerts and stuff. He passed away before this murder, I think ten years before it.

But that's one of the reasons why there might have been some influence for people of German ancestry to move to the area. That's really funny. I love that you guys are able to react to that. It's perfect why I want to do so. These signals also attracted international attention. Letters have been saved from France and the UK, corresponding with authorities here in the US that the signals need to be investigated because of potential spy activity.

A local gentleman named Frank Humus, Dean of Jaffrey, who would serve in the war, has a story where he would see these dashed dots and dashes and flares at night and he tried to investigate himself. And he tells a story that one night while he was trying to watch the mountainside, he had a he had his horse with him. This car pulled up near him that didn't have its lights on. And people got out and he heard something along the lines of, this is the place.

And then they saw his horse and they kind of scattered. They get back in the car and drive away. And he kind of on his horse was near them and they yell at him like, what are you doing out here? State your business. And He was like, Turn on your headlights, idiots or whatever. And they kind of drive off.

So that was he suspects could have been people trying to to send signal lights as an example of people that were actually arrested because this did happen just not around Jaffrey a doctor, Rudolph Hutz, who was a Boston, was arrested for espionage the same month Dean was murdered up and Pine Island in Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. And it was because he was placing signal lights in his windows of his summer home in New Hampshire. A count? Yeah. Also a count.

Johann Heinrich von Baron Stauffer, who was a German ambassador to the U.S. for a while. He was known to visit Dublin, New Hampshire, which I actually drove through when I was in town. Yeah, he went to Dublin to have a meeting with other Germans, and so he had some strange meetings. Apparently, depending on what you read, he either went multiple times to Dublin to have meetings or once. But why is the ambassador for Germany in a small town in New Hampshire?

Yeah, that's what it's what you would expect. Yeah. So there's some specific experts from the excerpts excuse me from the FBI files, which are kind of mentioned because they're very interesting. There's a it was reported by an agent named Norman Gifford that says Mr. R.C. Nash was sent to investigate he was an attorney, but he had considerable experience in the woods, which is important in New Hampshire. And he worked with other agents and met with a doctor.

Louis Bell, who was an expert on signal lights. And they determined that there is there is some likelihood that they that signal lights were being experimented in New Hampshire. There's a report from June 11th, 1918, which is pre-merger, and it says that The country surrounding Mount Monadnock and including Peterborough and Dublin has every facility for pro-German operations. It would be very easy to establish a chain of signal points.

There is much wildland abandoned farms and passable but disused roads which could be utilized for secret communication on lonely lakes from which hydro airplanes might operate, are numerous. The farming population has not awakened to the dangerous possibilities. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something like that. Yeah. They had the mountain circled. Yeah. So a report from June 5th of 1980 18 mentioned being taken to Dean's farm.

And this is pre his murder because agents believed it might be where a signal light came from on April 19th of 1918, as reported by witnesses and agents on the ground, Dean's farm had an excellent view of west to southeast so Cole felt our suspect lived on Dean's property on April 19th, when they suspected a signal light came from that area. The investigation also multiple times talks about Mrs. Morrison, who you guys did the wonderful scene with in part one.

Mrs. Morrison actually lived on a property that had good view of a lot of lights. She witnessed a lot of them, and agents would show up at her house and be like, Can we can we come see it? So she would like let them sit on her porch and, watch the lights and things like that. So she's in a lot of reports, which is why I think she was in communication with agents. Yeah, possible. Possible. Now, I'm going to tie it in. Just wait. Just wait.

Because we are not done, though I will tie it more to tickle felt. So you will like this. just a quick refresher. But if people want to hear more, tune into two Part one He Caufield moved to New Hampshire in 1916 from I think it was in Boston originally, but his family live in New York and he would eventually move back to New York. He didn't live at the Dean's property right away. They lived somewhere else for close by.

They allegedly moved to the area because their daughter or his stepdaughter was at college. She went to Radcliffe, which is in Boston. So it's hours away. But definitely closer in New Hampshire than where they were on New York. He's from New York. So there you go. There you go. So they they moved up with two cars because remember, he was wealthy, his grandfather was wealthy. And he was he was basically a trust fund baby. He had two cars.

But when he moved to town, he sold them and bought a Marmon. I don't know exactly what model of Marmon he had, but if you look at today's dollars with a marmon back then, most of them were over $100,000 in today's today's money. So he would spend the equivalent back then to buy a car. Yes, Yes, exactly. A good second Dick earlier I think. I think it's how you say it. So he was a wealthy dude and he became friends with Charles Rich and.

He also did become friends with Dean and he would move into the dean's big house. In 1917. His rent was $40 a month. I just love looking at those numbers. I wish there was rent now. Well, yeah. Mean, it's a nice house. Yeah, for a very nice home. Now it's co felt would play billiards with Mr. Rich and Dr. Dean from time to time. So they were very friendly. The coalfields, though, were known around town as being very odd, mainly because of their wealth.

I talked about this in part one a little bit. Coal felt did not work, which everybody thought was super weird and the CO felt stayed in town over the winter, which is also something you do not do if you are not local in New Hampshire. So the coalfields also received mail at multiple different post offices, so they didn't get their mail at one post office. They would go to like three or four of them to get mail, which is also very odd.

There is a local rumor that coal felt would seem to to really make sure people knew that he was American. Like he would talk about it quite a lot. He was his ancestors were Irish, and he would make sure everybody knew. Now, again, that's a rumor. So I don't know how much of that is actually true because he's odd and the war was going on and there was a lot of paranoia about Germans. People thought he was German.

In fact, a an employee of his named Frank Romano told people that coal felt was German. I don't know why Romano said it. I don't know why Romano knew it. I will make a short tease that Romano is actually a suspect in a lot of stories that you read about this. We do not have time, nor do I want to go too into him. So it's one of those things if I do a follow up, I will talk about Romano. But some people think he may he may have done it. I don't that's why it's my podcast.

So I'm just not going to take the time to do it. But I will. In a follow up, as I've mentioned before, the call felt moved out of Dean's house in 1918, in June, and we don't know why Dean kicked him out. Dean said they couldn't stay there anymore. Rumors persist. It's because Dean found something out about Cole Phelps and wanted him out of the house. And that's why. That's why he was talking to Mrs. Morrison. Yeah.

So the Cole Phelps stepdaughter, who was in college, like I said, they found after the murder, when they were cleaning out things in the big house, the Cole fellows had left a box and in that box was a lot of pictures of teddy bears that their stepdaughter or his stepdaughter, Mrs. Rich's daughter, would take. And people because people are people, they just immediately went, that's code. Those are all like spy messages. All the different pictures of the teddy bears mean different things.

So it's spy activity. I don't know if I believe that, but I thought I'd still share because people do think that's a thing. I think it I think it was I think it's the same teddy bear. I think not 100% sure. And I have not been able to find the pictures now, allegedly. And it depends on what report you read.

The big house was found once the Cole Phelps moved out with some sort of chemical treatment on the windows, like treatment that would like make if it was raining, the water wouldn't stay on the window. So to make sure it's like clearer. Yeah. See, let's some reports also say again, it on what reports you read that either the screens, the windows or the windows themselves were discolored like a hot light would shine through them and like burn or discolored the screen or the window.

I will I will come back to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. George just left the room. So for various reasons. Primarily, though, the paranoia of German spies and rumors that Cold Felt was German, he is the main suspect, he and Rich, but he is considered kind of the main one today. And don't forget, the Dean told Mrs. Morrison that he had proof. Now he needed federal investigators come up because he finally he finally had proof and he had recently kicked girlfriend out. Yeah, absolutely.

So question any questions before I get into some some more details about CAUFIELD anything now you got you guys just you're ready you're ready to say he did it. So I'm going to bring up now that Jordan left because he will not want to hear this. I'm going to talk about why during Jordan just stood up and left. Okay. you just ran. That's hilarious. He just ran by in the back.

And then any name, any I'll wait for him because I want to hear this All right, so now that Jordan is amped up to prove or not to prove, but to get excited, that cool felt did it. Let's talk about why it's not go felt or why I don't think he did. You can still think he did it though you're under no obligation to agree with me I don't think he did it in a go. No no I don't I don't I don't even think he's is fair. But you please disagree with me.

Let me know. And all the listeners disagree with me. Write in your opinions, please. It's very strange, America. So yeah why not call felt His testimony during the grand jury hearing, like Rich's that I mentioned before, everything seemed to make perfect sense. He wasn't defensive. He didn't beat around the bush on things. He everything had a clear reason. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, there you go. So, yeah, No, no, absolutely.

But also what you're saying actually is valid to like, if he is very good, he knows how to handle himself. But my, my whole thing is and I don't, I don't want to relate myself to Columbo because I am not a detective. I am not trained. But like Columbo, he would always figure out things because he would just find something that didn't fit. There was an inconsistency.

It could be as simple as like a book being opened when all the other ones are closed and it would eat at him until he was able to like piece everything together. There's no inconsistencies and Caulfield that I can find. And by the way, I'm not talking to him. I'm just reading transcripts so I could be wrong. So here's some other some other bits of information. So he was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, when the murder happened.

He was working for a ship builder because he, as he said in his testimony, it was war time. He felt bad. He wasn't doing anything. He didn't need the money. So he signed up for work. I actually have a reason for why I think he went to work before dawn and says his thing. I don't think it's because he felt bad he wasn't working. He wanted to do something. Wartime. I think he was afraid of being drafted. I think he wanted a job so he didn't have to go fight. So that boom, there you go.

There's the other there's the other way to do it. Also, because he could still be involved. Right. To disprove my own thing. He could be setting it up, sending other people to go do it. And he's got the alibi. so but he was he was legitimately out of town when it happened. He did work for the thing. There's pay bills, there's receipts, there's witnesses. He was out of town. Well, he he just had them on him because he needed them. And also witnesses. There are like he works with people.

It is a very specific it was like a 7 to 5 p.m. job or whatever. There's people on the ground. Also, his car was in town. He drove his car there. His car was there at a garage. Yeah, I think he got a job to get out of Draft. Yeah. Fancy car.

It was not the one seen in town because it was in not Portsmouth but like a little town next door to now as to why he was kicked out of Dean's house, Dean said to Mrs. Morrison, a man like Cole felt young and strong who will not do useful work at this time is not the man I want in my place. This, by some, has been taken that, like Dean thought it was a spy. I think it means he wanted somebody to because he had actually said this at other times.

He wanted someone to actually use his land for agriculture. And Cole Felt did it because didn't want to do the work. So this is the other thing. It's often reported that he kicked him out and gave him 24 hours. Apparently, he actually told him to leave in May. He didn't move out until June. So it's not like he packed up overnight, which is you've read that a lot. So I think local rumor and what actually happened does blend. And people think he left right away.

I think it took month for him to move out. He also he didn't move far away. He didn't like run away from town. Even after the murder they lived. I forget where because I didn't write it down. But it's still in the same, same area. It just wasn't in Jaffrey, but it was nearby. Where am I? Yeah. So he would what he did is he started the job. He would go stay for the week in Portsmouth, come back on the weekend because it's only like an hour and a half, two hour drive. So at the time.

So he would go stay for the week, come back. And it was just during the course of the war. So he only worked there a few months because I think the U.S., the war was over a few months after the murder happened. So it wasn't like a job to do forever, which is also why I think he did not have to go fight because the war ended and he stopped working. So also, when Dean says he wanted someone useful to work at the house, I think he wanted someone to work the land.

I don't think he kicked him out because he was a spy. I think he kicked him out because it's like, look, I want a tenant that's going to work the land. There were also some other arguments they did have. They had apparently been fighting about chickens and some other stuff. Yeah, joining him. Good point. No, no, it's a good point. Yeah. I mean, I can't I can't disagree. I can't disagree under the bus. I mean, they're they're long dead, so you don't have to to worry about sending in.

And, you know, it's true to note that Jordan was going to say something. You're just pointing now. You know, you don't you're good at. So they had also, you know, they'd been fighting about some chickens and some like other things around the barn. Apparently there was like Cole felt wanted to pay for hay and Dean was like, hey, pay me for the hay. And of course that was like, Yeah, I need a bill, though. I need like I need a receipt.

And Dean wouldn't send him the bill, so I wouldn't pay for the hay. And it was this whole rigmarole. My point is, I think they were fighting and arguing and Dean wanted them out because a very tenant landlord stuff. I don't think it sounds like he discovered that was a spy. I think, well, I have the pressures pressures on. So we're not we're not done with calls yet.

So apparently the the the screen and the lights and the chemical treatment and all these things about like windows in the big house having been affected by signal lights up to the mountain. I've never found any way to validate that there's no pictures of light. There's also that they're like contradicting evidence of like, it's chemical treatment. No, it's like the screens have been burned. No, the windows were discolored. It all just seems like local stories that spread.

No, no, that house is not still there. There's other houses from the story that are still there, but not the big house. But no, I've never been able to validate something happening to the windows. So I do think that's just rumor. Even in the grand jury testimony, if that was real, I feel like that would have been brought up. It never was. So yeah, now there's also another story about Kornfeld. I forgot to mention that I work, so there is there's pros and cons to it being of him being a suspect.

But when he moved out, he had a big box and no one saw the inside of it and he was really worried about it. When it was being moved, he wanted to make sure it was really well taken care of. He didn't want it bouncing around when it was being transported. And so a lot of people think that it was holding wireless communications. I'm going to be very careful because it was some sort of generator or communication device that he was using and spy activity.

He said it was a Victrola, which is basically a record player. It's a stereo. So when I hear that, I'm like, Well, yeah, of course he was trying to take care of his stereo. Like that's what even today, TVs and stereos are like when I move, those are the things I'm worried about. So I, I don't I think people still worry about those things when they buy new ones. Jordans face Yeah so that's, that's my that's my reasoning for why he was worried about the box.

I don't think it was a communication device. I think it was a Victrola and he wanted to take care of it. Now, as to him being German, his family was most definitely not German. He was from Pennsylvania. His family lineage goes back many generations on both sides. His grandfather was involved with business and politics in Pennsylvania. He has relatives that fought in the Civil War. He was definitely he loves being American. He was also of Irish ancestry.

Now, could he have been a German sympathizer? I don't know. But it definitely doesn't point to that federal investigators did investigate him and they actually just found him to be very pure blooded American. You know, like they found nothing in his activity or his family or anything he did to be connected with Germany in any way. So those are my those are my reasons to sort of exonerate. Thank you for the good word.

So my theory I will share my theory, dive into it, because I actually think you guys will agree with me. I think the killing was very brutal. It seems like someone is something someone would have to do with multiple people. I think people were waiting for Dean or approached him at the barn, which means they knew his his activity. They knew he milked his cows late at night. They knew that the land, they knew the cistern. They knew how to get there. They did not take anything. Nothing was stolen.

There's no sign that hoodlums were, you know, drawing graffiti or having a campfire like this. Looks like somebody was specifically there to attack. Dean. Also being tied up. I think he was hit on the head to kind of like get them to, you know, just the initial like sneak up and hit him. Yeah, tie him up and then potentially what is there and not not ask questions. What is there is a word interrogate. I think they tie him up to interrogate him, find out actually how much he really knows.

And as he's talking, they're choking him. If he's not saying what they want to hear and not saying what I want to know. And I think that's how he died. And then they, you know. Yeah, go ahead. You know, I have none. And that is something to look into. I did look up other like spy activity in the area, but mostly it had to do with lights and signals. There were no murders that we can find that was like, this is an international conspiracy of someone doing that. So I think he's the only one.

He's like the sole light guy, like victim that we have to even look at. But just the nature of the murder makes me think it's not Charles Rich I can't see a guy like that that worked in the bank and helped at the cord, and he did other, like, things around town to help things out and had these like. Like that just does not seem like the kind of guy that would kill somebody in this manner. Also hiding them in the cistern. Whoever did it knew he'd eventually be found.

So that can be sent as a bit of a message to like, hey, you know, don't you know, be quiet, this could happen to you kind of thing. And I keep thinking as I think about this, who would who would actually assassinate him? And I do think spies, you know, this rural doctor that didn't become a doctor, that just kind of farmed his land and rented a house. He's got if he had enemies, they're not going to kill him in this manner. This has to be spy activity.

And as I was thinking this, as I'm learning this researching, I keep thinking now it's too it's too Hollywood. It can't be that. It cannot be it. But the more I look into it, the more I'm like, No, this has to be. He came across something. He saw something from his house. Yeah, Yeah. He got a threatening letter. Yeah. Yeah. Just tell Mrs. Morrison, like.

Yeah, Yeah, Like I overheard Joe talk at the, you know, General store the other day, and he's speaking German, and I've been saying, you know, like, I wish he had said something to Mrs. Morrison, but she was a woman. When women can't handle dangerous things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. that's. who. Yeah. Yeah, that is. yeah. I mean, look, as much as I kind of write off conflict, I think that is it's a good point. You know, he could have been a mastermind behind this.

And even if he wasn't German, like I said, he could have had sympathies. He could have been paid off. He could have, you know, someone could have come to him, been like, Yeah, yeah, send it. He's staying up late, sending up lights. It's true and it's true. Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah. Now, would you rather be out there? Yeah. Would you rather be out there in the winter or during mud season. stumped. Yeah. Or black sliders. Yeah. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I haven't either.

I've got to get to try it out. So it sounds like. yeah. Is there anything else you guys want to add to this? Any other series that you brought up? Sorry about? Yeah, I solved it. Jordan solved it? Guys. Ooh. my God. That'll be so fun. That would be so much fun. Yeah, I think it was a variety. I think it was always a variety of things. I don't think it was always the same thing. And that's kind of what made it hard. Yeah, And honestly, I don't think you got to think back then.

I mean, it's still rural, there's still not a lot of light pollution, but back then even less lit, much less light pollution. So you actually don't need something super powerful. And if you're just sending a signal from the top of the mountain to the other mountain to the Pacman, not Monadnock, it's always hard to say for me. is that what it's called? yeah. If you're sending that, it's not. Yeah. I don't think you need something super powerful, you know, like you really don't. Yeah. That's good.

That's good. Direct, direct information from the land there for the story. I love it. I love it. Yeah, man. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I do. Boom. Yeah, I've got to look into that next. Yeah. No, I mean, look, when I started this, guys, when I reading, at first, I was like, It's not going to be enough here for a story, because these, these lights, they're not going to be anything. And then I look into it, I'm like, these lights are something.

And then I get more into the murder and I'm like, these this is really good mystery. And then I but I never expected at the end to actually come to the conclusion that I think he actually came across some spy activity. And that's got him killed. I literally never expected to have that conclusion. I was like, Nah, it's someone in town jealous of them or whatever, like it normally is. And it's like, No, I actually came to the conclusion. I think it's spies. Yeah, Yeah. Megan Younger.

Yeah. From mountaintop to mountaintop. yeah. Yeah. And that's the other thing, too. Just if people do question the lights, a lot of people that it is are investigated or were talked to when people are investigating the lights is in Europe they were using similar type coding and signals so it just it fits it's just it was the best way to send signals that you didn't want people to or translate and. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To come across people. Yeah, yeah. It's dark and it's dark.

That's what he says that he heard. Yes. Or something like that. Who knows? They could have been picnicking. They could have been having, you know, an orgy, you know. Yeah. Yeah. We don't, we don't know. But it is, it is, you know, it's the coincidence of the lights on and him investigating the lights and seeing a car with no lights on hiding from people. Yeah, it definitely seems like that was the battery thing there.

But I actually do think he legitimately wanted a flashlight to see home because there actually is talk that the the rich family gave him a lantern on his way home the night that he died. So I do think he just was like, it's dark outside. It's hard to see the roads. You know, I think he just wanted that. But it is it does. I have the same question. I'm not saying that it's 100%.

I think he could have may have wanted his flash the work to try to like respond back to a light and see if he could get some sort of like, you know, provoke something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See what happens. yeah. Poor guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, thank you all. You both. It's better I said yeah, because you guys are from Arkansas, so I always go to like, Yeah, well, thank y'all. Yeah, exactly. Well, thank you for doing this. Thank you for doing it with a wee wee babe at home.

Yeah, but yeah, yeah, I. Well, me. Hey, me too. But I do think we've, we've been able to come to a conclusion that actually helps because I don't think everybody thinks about the spies. And I actually, I've gone through every, the only thing left to do is talk to more people locally. That's it. But I'm like, I'm so leaning in that like, it's like I know I've got to. And on that note, please. Yeah no, on the other note, listeners, please, if you enjoyed this story, you want to hear more?

Message me at a study of strange at gmail.com. Let me know because I will I will do a follow up if there's enough of a of an eagerness out there and see if I can interview people in Jaffrey that are part of the historical society that have compiled all of this amazing research. I cannot thank them enough. They don't even know I did this. And yet, if you are listening, thank you so much for your research into this.

I have spent countless hours reading, reading so much, but it's been it's been really fun. And but I'd love to interview you if there's enough interest, so please message me and then let's tell everybody to to watch Squirrel and Ghost of the Ozarks to see work from Tara and Jordan. And in myself too. I'm involved in this thing too, that goes to the is out for rent everywhere you had the hunted woods and on squirrel you will see a landscape from this area.

So if you watch squirrel just know it was all filmed right around where this story happened and that is on to be that is on to be for free. Yeah. And it is Yes you will. Again, I forgot that the mountain itself. It's so amazing to think about that. Well, yes. Thank you all again. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Well, And that concludes the bizarre murder of Dr. William Deane.

it seems like most of my first episodes have involved people named William from William Herbert Wallace, William Butler, and now William Deane. That's an interesting coincidence. Anyway, please hit that subscribe button. Or as my son would say, smash that button. Leave a review and tune in for more.

A study of strange show notes and more information for our Patreon, which has a very special giveaway going on right now, can be found at WW dot a study of strange Dcoms and stay up to date was releases by following us on Instagram. And also lastly, you heard me say it in the show. I am very serious that if there's enough interest in this particular topic of Dr. William Dean, send me an email. A study of strange at gmail.com. Yeah.

If there's enough interest, I'm definitely going to be reaching out to people in Jaffrey and seeing if I can get an interview or something like that to do a follow up, so let me know. Otherwise, thank you and good night.