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