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