Season 06 Episode 26: Under the Rocks and Stones (Pt.2 of 2)

the Lake Canus Road. It had just gone nine a m. On the morning of Sunday, November tenth, nineteen twelve, when a Missus Olivier looked out of her kitchen window toward the home of her neighbor opposite, John Robert, and noticed something unusual. The sixty three year old Robert was known to be a man of regular habits and being a farmer, was a committed early riser that morning. However, come nine

a m. Mister Roberts curtains had yet to open. Mister Gabriel, another of Robert's neighbors, had also noticed this unusual occurrence, and after waiting another hour and a half with still no sign of movement from Robert's house, he went over to investigate. To get to the front door, it was first necessary to walk through a small greenhouse that had been built on to the side of the property, which

was always locked when Robert was home. That morning, however, the door was open, with all about seeming unusually still. Mister Gabriel pushed at the greenhouse door. It opened with a loud, metallic creak, and Gabriel stepped forward into the space beyond. He was just about to call through for mister Robert when the words caught in his throat sprayed out below him. On the floor of the greenhouse was Robert lying face down in a thick puddle of darkening blood.

There was blood sprayed across the wall and the window above him too, and from what Gabriel could make out from the mess of Robert's head, the entire back of it had been smashed open. At twelve thirty, Constables rob Yard and Ogier from the Guernsey Police arrived, accompanied by a doctor Joseph, to analyze the scene. Judging by the extensive damage to the back of Robert's head, Joseph had little doubting the man was dead. As he made the

regulation check of his pulse before formally announcing it. Then he turned the body over and gasped in horror. Five strange wounds had been inflicted on the head, two substantial holes at the front, penetrating deep into Robert's skull, one each at the top and side, and another on the back. Robert had been wearing a peaked cap at the time of the assault. It had been carried out with such ferocity that whatever had caused the wounds had driven the

material deep inside his skull. His head had also been beaten with significant force numerous times, long after he was already dead. The police made cursory search of the property, but found no sign of a murder weapon or any evidence even of an intruder. With mister Robert being a man of such regular habits, it was a fairly easy task to piece together his last known movements, As he had done every Saturday night since as far back as

anyone could remember. Robert had spent the evening before at the home of his cousin Nicholas Robert, about a ten minute walk away. Nicholas, who had a solid alibi for the evening, stated that the deceased had left him completely sober around eight thirty pm, assuming that he walked straight home. The police and doctor Joseph estimated the attack to have

taken place sometime around nine pm the following Monday. After an official inquiry was opened into the cause of mister Robert's death, his body was taken to the mortuary at Town Hospital in Saint peter Port, where it was viewed

by members of the Royal Court. At one thirty pm, John Roberts's remains were placed in a polished pine coffin and taken by hers to his home, where it was received by friends and family, before being taken on to Saint Sampson's Church on Guernsey's East coast an hour later. The hundred mourners gathered there, many still in shock, watched on solemnly as mister Roberts's body was committed to the earth. Over the next few days, police continued to make inquiries,

but had little to show for their efforts. John Robert was not known to have any enemies, and with no witnesses to the crime and no significant evidence or motive to work with, the police were at a loss to

explain the shocking murder. Their best guess was that mister Robert had entered his greenhouse freely and made it as far as the window sill beside his front door, where he was known to keep his key, before the assailant, who they believed had likely been hiding in a small utility space to the right side of the greenhouse, attacked him. To some the likely identity of the attacker was obvious.

On November sixteenth, an editorial column in The Guernsey Star titled Petty Causeret confidently voiced this opinion, pointing the finger at an all too often supposed bogey man, stating that a few years ago a burglary in the island was almost undreamed of, and to this day many people are most casual on the subject of locking up at night. Yet nowadays Oldham, a month passes but we see that some house or shed or store has been broken into.

It is rather deplorable, and one would be glad to know the reason for this falling off in public morals. Though it seems to me that as long as the dregs of the Breton population continue to drift this way, and French peasants of the lowest class are allowed to herd in our midst we cannot expect to maintain our high standard others. However, as reports regarding the excavation of the Dolmen in Lelee continued to crop up in the news, began to wonder if something a little less tangible and

far more disturbing was responsible. On that same November sixteenth, the police at Saint Helier in Jersey received a telegram from the Constable of Saint Sampson in Guernsey requesting that they at a man who was heading their way on the latest faery in connection with the John Robert murder. A short time later, a small team of Jersey officers watched on from Saint Helier Harbor as passengers disembarked from the Guernsey Ferry and quickly spotted the man who Guernsey

police had described to them. The man, who arrived with his wife, was at a loss to explain why he'd been suspected of the crime, and after a few hours of questioning, he was eventually let go. A wire back to the Sat. Sampson's constable explained that the man's answers had all been satisfactory and there was no reason to

suspect that he was the murderer. The following week, a reward of a hundred pounds about thirteen thousand pounds in today's money, was put up for any information leading to the capture of the killer, who, much to the horror of the Guernsey community, was still presumed to be at

large on the island. John Robert's inquest, which concluded on November twenty third, offered little comfort, having failed to establish anything the police didn't already know, and soon the rumors began to grow that something ominous and strange was happening

to the island. On the evening of Friday, November twenty ninth, Charles Druet, who also lived in Lake Cappelle like John Robert, was walking Larute to Coutanchey when two men were said to have sprung out in the darkness from behind a gate and knocked him violently to the floor before running away. No reason for the attack was ever established. That same night, the young son of Margaret Leticier was woken by a strange sound coming from outside his bedroom window in Cornet Street,

Saint Peter Port. Opening the curtain, he was confused to see his mother underneath the moonlight, stumbling around on the roof outside his confusion turned to horror when she then suddenly fell from the roof and crashed through a skylight into the family's back yard. Missus Letitier was found to have broken her neck from the fall and likely died instantly.

The abundance of bizarre and horrifying incidences taking place so close together left many and no doubt that the recent uncovering of the prehistoric grave site in Lelee had unleashed a malignant curse on the island that was terrorizing the local community and in some cases seemed to be possessing people to do malevolent things. Could the spirits of those ones buried there, they wandered, be seeking some kind of

retribution for the disturbance of their final resting place. It later came out that only a few weeks before, Margaret Laticier had been found in a state of distress by her children, having apparently just seen the ghost of her husband William sat at the foot of her bed. The man had been dead for five years, having hung himself in the wash house close to where Margaret's own body

was later found. All of which seemed only to amplify the growing sense of dread that some kind of unknowable darkness seemed to have the island in its grip now a word from our sponsor Better Help. It can be tough to train your brain to stay in problem solving mode when faced with a challenge in life, but when you learn how to find your own solutions, there's no better feeling. A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, making it easy to accomplish your goals, no

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you so wish. When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there, visit better help dot com. Slash unexplained one zero today to get ten percent off your first month. That's better help dot com. Slash unexplained one zero for those of a less superstitious nature, disregarding all the other unsettling events, there still remained the very real issue that John Roberts murderer, regardless of whether they were human or not, was very much still at large.

With many of the island's country roads and streets yet to have lighting installed, many became too frightened to leave the house at night. Doors and windows that had once nonchalantly been left open were kept firmly shut and locked, with many people who lived alone choosing to stay with friends or family for added security, and still the seemingly random acts of violence continued. On the evening of Friday, November thirtieth, mister Green from Saint Andrew's was knocked down

and stunned in the Torbot Valley. The following morning, a mister Neville was attacked shortly after leaving his home in Long Cress and had two pounds stolen in the process. The following week, a missus d Garis was walking with her daughter along Bouboney Road, just south of Lilay when a figure sprung from the shadow of a tree. The figure attacked her with a stick and tried to make off with her bag. The woman screamed, attracting the attention of men in a nearby farm, and the attacker dashed

off into the night. De Garis collapsed from shock when she and her daughter finally made it home to safety. A little later that night, two miles away in castell A, mister Maschon was woken by his daughter after she'd heard suspicious noises coming from their back garden. Much like everyone else, Maschon had found it hard to ignore or the talk of a wave of terror that was said to be sweeping the north of the island, and had taken to sleeping with a loaded rifle by his bed. That night,

he leapt up, grabbed the gun and dashed downstairs. He opened the back door and without even looking, fired a warning shot into the darkness. After waiting a few minutes, having heard nothing untoward, he quietly closed the door and went back to bed. It was early in January the following year that two previously unreported clues regarding the ongoing investigation into the murder of John Robert were remarked upon

in The Guernsey Star under the heading Strange Rumors. One was the discovery of a rope found at the murder scene, tucked underneath the deceased mattress. The discovery had caused quite a stir at the time, but was later discarded as having no relevance to the crime. The second regarded a letter written in French and by an unknown hand, which arrived at mister Robert's house shortly after he was killed.

Any suspicions that it was written by someone involved in his death was soon dismissed, however, when it was found to have simply been delivered to the wrong address. All in all, by the end of January nineteen thirteen, Guernsey police had made no further headway in solving the mystery. However, on January twenty ninth, another mystery was picked up by The Guernsey Star concerning the unknown whereabouts of Guernsey resident

Clifford Nikol. The news was buried in the back pages, just below an article regarding yet another bicyclist thrown head first from their bike. Under the heading the missing Man. The paper reported that Nicol had seemingly completely vanished and had been missing from the island for the best part

of a week, and still the peculiar events continued. One young man, while walking up the Rohee on the outskirts of Saint peter Port late one night, became suddenly aware of another presence watching him from the other side of the street. As the man continued up the road, he noticed the figure slipped from out of the shadows and begin to follow him. The young man continued along Victoria Road until he became suddenly spooked again and turned to find the man behind him, once again watching him from

a little further down the road. Having been spotted, the stranger, who was described as being powerfully built, quickly pulled his cap down over his eyes and scurried back off into the shadows. Just to add a further bizarre spin to proceedings, in early February, the people of Guernsey were alarmed to

see a mysterious airship flying over the island. The vessel, which was said to be carrying brilliant lights, was thought to be the same as that which had been seen skirting the coastline of the United Kingdom only weeks before. Though some ridiculed the reports, others speculated that the craft could well be the German airship known as the Hanza. A portent, perhaps, along with everything else that had happened of the all too earthly events of the First World

War which would soon ravage the continent. It was around the same time, as if things hadn't be bad enough on the island that something else mysterious began to reveal itself. Beginning with a fever, cough and sore throat, the symptoms of diphtheria can develop quickly and drastically. Before long, the bacteria that caused the infection can destroy healthy tissue in the respiratory system and create a membrane of dead tissue

that can make it difficult to breathe. In previous outbreaks of the disease, as many as ten percent of those infected had died, and by the end of Febry, Guernsey

was hit by an island wide outbreak. It was made all the worse by the significant number of residents who decided not to seek treatment against the disease on account of their beliefs and superstitions, leading one local doctor to remark it is still believed in Guernsey that the consequences of diseases like diphtheria and scarlet fever are due to witchcraft or the opening up of dolmen against which it

is useless to fight. With so many affected by the outbreak, people steadily began to forget about the peculiar spate of violent attacks and disturbing incidents that had so preoccupied them over the last few months, and with police overstretched by the outbreak and the unusually high number of assaults that had been occurring, investigation into John Roberts's murder eventually petered out in early March nineteen thirteen, according to writer Glynnys Cooper,

whose two thousand and six book Foul Deeds and Suspicious Murders in Guernsey also examined this case. The Guernsey Star reported that missing man Clifford Nicole might have simply sailed out of Guernsey without telling anyone. It isn't known if Nicol had any connection to John Robert, or if indeed his sudden disappearance was picked up on by police as possibly being related to the crime. Either way, having seemingly hit a dead end, the investigation into John Robert's murder

was closed soon after. As Glynnus Cooper says in her book, it was almost as though in the end the law preferred to allow Islanders their belief that dark powers had killed mister Robert and that he was murdered by someone or something unknown. His death remains to this day unexplained. As for the Leelay Dolman, it remains just as it was when it was uncovered, hidden away in the small, unassuming patch of ground just off the corner of close to Sablon for any one wishing to take a look

at it to day. Now, there's just one thing before I go. I don't mean to unsettle any one, but during my research for these stories, I came across an article written by Juliette Pouteaux for the Guernsey Press back in September of this year titled Secrets of Dolmen and Stone Circle could be unearthed. The article concerned the Levart Dolmen, which is situated on Long Crest Common, said to be

one of Guernsey's richest archeological sites. As the article goes on to say, Levart was rediscovered in eighteen eleven after centuries filled with sand and bone fragments and pottery was found, with the Lucas family exploring the sight in the summers of eighteen thirty seven to thirty eight. Standing the highest point of Long Crest, it is one of the island's most visible dolments, but it still holds secrets, with the site having been covered significantly by sand and vegetation since

it was first uncovered. A team of archeologists led by doctor Phil de Jersey, were hoping to find evidence of the stone circle that the Lucas family had previously recorded. Due to the extensive sand cover that has covered much of Long Crest Common since the seventh century, to Jersey is hopeful that there could be even more ancient relics to discover in the years to come. I don't know if the excavation went ahead as planned or not, but

perhaps something to keep an eye on at least. If you enjoy Unexplained and would like to help support us, you can now do so via Patreon To receive a SYS to add three episodes, just go to patron dot com forward slash Unexplained Pod to sign up. Unexplained. The book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never before been covered on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones,

among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain smith. Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com.

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