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E134: The Rhode Island Mail Order Murder
4.5k Plays4 years ago
A widowed millionaire was surprised with a bottle of whiskey delivered to her door after one of her lavish vacations. She had no idea that inside that bottle, there was a deadly poison that would claim her life. Her extravagant lifestyle left many wondering who wanted her dead and why? But just as extravagant as her lifestyle was the trial surrounding her murder.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
We are excited to announce that this episode is being sponsored by Zencaster, our very own podcast recording platform. Make sure you listen for more information in the middle of the episode and in the show notes to hear exactly why we love Zencaster so much and how you yourself can get a discount.
The Anthrax Attacks of 2001
00:00:19
Speaker
We have all heard of the anthrax scare. I vividly remember being a scared 10 or 11 maybe 12 year old watching news anchors talking about this mysterious male delivered package of death.
00:00:32
Speaker
The 2001 anthrax attacks, also known as a marathrax, which I learned from a quick Google search, occurred in the United States over the course of several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001, so only one week after America was turned upside down by the attack of September 11.
00:00:50
Speaker
Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and to two different senators. These letters were responsible for killing five people and infecting 17 others. According to
Historical Mail-Delivered Deaths
00:01:03
Speaker
the FBI, the ensuing investigation became, quote, one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement, end quote.
00:01:10
Speaker
What's surprising is that this idea of malordered death isn't really a new concept. While shocking, this is something that has happened throughout history. And in an almost Harry Potter moment, you know the one. The second attempt on Dumbledore's life where Horace Slughorn had the bottle of mead that he was supposed to give to Dumbledore but unknown to him. The person that had given it to him had actually poisoned the mead and this attempt was
00:01:39
Speaker
kind of thwarted when Slughorn unfortunately gave that poison mead to Ronald Weasley on his 17th birthday and Ron nearly died had it not been for Harry's quick thinking. That similar situation happens with her victim today who was given a bottle of whiskey and inside that bottle there was a deadly poison that would claim her life. She would fall ill and eventually die. Her extravagant lifestyle left many wondering who wanted her dead and why they wanted her dead.
00:02:08
Speaker
But as extravagant as her lifestyle was, the trial surrounding her murder was just as extravagant. This is the case of the Rhode Island male order murder.
00:02:52
Speaker
Welcome
Podcast Mission and Engagement
00:02:53
Speaker
to Coffee and Cases where we like our coffee hot and our cases cold. My name is Allison Williams. And my name is Maggie Dameron. We will be telling stories each week in the hopes that someone out there with any information concerning the cases will take those tips to law enforcement. So justice and closure can be brought to these families.
00:03:12
Speaker
With each case, we encourage you to continue in the conversation on our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast, because as we all know, conversation helps to keep the missing person in the public consciousness, helping keep their memories alive. So sit back, sip your coffee, and listen to what's brewing this week.
00:03:30
Speaker
Alison was lots of very similar sounding words there for a second. It was so funny because I could hear your excitement when you made the Harry Potter connection. You just started talking faster because you love it.
00:03:52
Speaker
I love it. It's an obsession. And I struggled writing this intro and outro, which you all of Sleuthounds do not know this, but oftentimes we do struggle because we're just so brain dead by the time we get to that part. But I was like, okay, well, we're talking about like things that happened in the mail and like,
00:04:16
Speaker
you know, people died from it. And then I was like, Ooh, anthrax. And then I was, I was, I was topping it. I was like, Oh, Harry Potter. And then like, I just was like, this is perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Any day it can come back to Harry Potter Wizard of Oz is a good day in Maggie's book. So yeah, but we have almost made it through the week. Yes. It is Thursday.
Community Updates and Live Events
00:04:40
Speaker
Happy Thursday. This has been closing week for my district. So
00:04:44
Speaker
But sadly, Allison, we did not have any new written reviews this week, which was a little bit of a bummer, but because it's summer break, I'm going to let it slide. That's right, because we have good things on the horizon. We did get some five-star ratings, though, even though they weren't written reviews, so definitely thank you to those listeners.
00:05:10
Speaker
We have coming up on next Thursday, so not today, but next Thursday night, we will be live with Cults, Crimes, and Cabernet on Facebook.
00:05:25
Speaker
So if you're interested, make sure you tune in because we would love to see you there joining us and read your comments and talk to you guys. So that'll be super fun. For the first time ever, right? Is this our first ever live? Yeah. Yeah. So that's exciting. And I would love, like I said, to finally
00:05:55
Speaker
interact with you guys in real time, instead of, you know, through messages or something like that on Facebook. Plus, we've got some new Patreon mini episodes that Maggie got posted just a couple days ago. So that's super fun. Make sure if you have not yet checked out
00:06:17
Speaker
patreon that you do and maggie and i were actually just talking about doing a giveaway contest for our patreon members yep any who join by july 7th because you know seven is a lucky number so it's seven seven july 7th we are going to be giving away seven
00:06:42
Speaker
coffee and cases key chains. So if you are not a Patreon member, sign up. It's only $5 a month. And everybody wants a key chain. These are limited edition coffee and cases key chains. That's right. All right. So
A Rhode Island Murder Mystery
00:06:58
Speaker
Alison, for this week's show, I thought we could maybe mix it up a little bit and cover a case that's pretty different from
00:07:06
Speaker
the standard cases we covered, which actually now that I think about it, I feel like we've done that a lot recently. We've had some mixed ones that aren't very standard to us. Yeah. But this one, I think maybe the oldest case we've covered, it's in the 1800s. Oh, I believe you're right. Yeah. And I think this is the only case we've done where the victim died via a piece of mail.
Historical Context of Providence
00:07:35
Speaker
Yes, that would be correct also. A piece of mail. Sometimes I get bills and I feel like my life can be over. Oh, yeah. Yeah, today Anthony brought the mail in and he was like, you have these three letters. I was like, yep, owe them money, owe them money and owe them money.
00:07:56
Speaker
So add that to the stack. Yeah. All right, though. So for this week's case, we are going to be in Providence, Rhode Island. And oftentimes we talk about the city that we'll be discussing. And so the history buff in me could not resist Googling Providence because we're in such a good time of history. So I had to Google it.
00:08:27
Speaker
And Providence, Rhode Island was actually settled in June of 1636 by Puritans, specifically the Puritan theologian, Roger Williams. And we know that Rhode Island grew to be one of the original 13 colonies. As a minister in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the founder, Williams, actually advocated for separation of church and state, which we would think would be kind of
00:08:57
Speaker
Really? Yeah. For a Puritan theologian. Yeah. And he actually also, as surprising, but bravo to him, condemned settlers from stealing, like he thought it was very bad that settlers were stealing Native American lands. Oh, that is good. So bravo.
00:09:20
Speaker
And he, because of his kind of, I guess, controversial for the time thinking, was actually convicted of hearsay and was banished from the colony. Oh, does that mean he was gossiping?
00:09:37
Speaker
Oh, you said here it was not hearsay. Oh, no, I did say hearsay. I was like, was he gossiping? Oh, my. OK, yes, heresy. So even more scandalous. Here, I thought he was talking about neighbors. He was talking about God.
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah, but he was, not from hearsay, but from heresy, banished from the colony. But he and a couple of others settled in another part of Rhode Island in 1636 on land that was given to them by a Native American tribe. But after they settled, the Plymouth colony was like, you are still within the bounds of this colony and you gots to move.
00:10:23
Speaker
So they moved down river and actually made a new settlement called Providence Plantations Has a pleasant sounding name at least yeah
00:10:35
Speaker
And we have the humble beginnings of Providence, Rhode Island. But unlike many other colonies at the time, Providence lacked charters. So the settlers kind of organized themselves. They allotted tracks for each other, roughly like six acre tracks for their homesteads to go on. And those extended from Town Street, which
00:10:58
Speaker
is now South Main Street up to Hope Street. And oddly to me, the settlement actually lacked an official religion, which seems very non pilgrim to me. Wow. But there was no church in that area until the 18th century. And that's when the very first church was established.
00:11:22
Speaker
But over the decades, this Providence plantation grew into a self-sufficient agricultural and fishing settlement. And we start to see a shift in architecture as well. So we're moving from the log dwellings that we associate with colonies into more gabled roofs and
00:11:47
Speaker
I don't want to say permanent dwellings because those cabins were permanent.
The Barnaby Family and Their Mansion
00:11:51
Speaker
In the late 18th and early 19th century, the city became the center for Chinese trade, which I thought was really interesting. It became one of the leading ports for direct trade with China.
00:12:03
Speaker
And so it had lots of US consoles coming in and out. And with this newly acquired wealth, many members of the merchant class started constructing large mansions near the area of College Hill. So today's story, while not on College Hill,
00:12:25
Speaker
does involve a mansion for a few bits, and we're going to talk about this mansion. It is a very much Maggie and Allison house. This mansion was built on Broadway, so not on College Hill, but we're going to be talking today about the Barnaby Castle.
00:12:46
Speaker
So the family that lived in this home, the Barnaby family, is obviously the center of today's case. And I looked up this home because if it has a word castle in it, I want to know what it looks like. Maggie, what's the lip there? According to the roach.
00:13:04
Speaker
Yeah, I want to live there and according to the road tour it says quote this extravagant pile of was designed in two phases in 1875 and 1888 by renowned Providence architects stone carpenter and Wilson so very bougie house we got going on here so
00:13:31
Speaker
The person that built the house, we're gonna call him JB because his birth name is very... Jirathmal? Yes, very... I don't even know like the right word to... I just feel like very 1800 rich person name. Like it's just very like a prompt, like he needs to be fancy.
00:13:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yes. JB Barnaby. Yes. And he was sort of almost like a king of Providence. He was very well renowned in this area. He had a massive department store that was downtown. He was known for
00:14:14
Speaker
racing horses. I think I actually read that he bred horses. He and his wife had two daughters. He had a bunch of mistresses. Oh, no. Just a very extravagant lifestyle. Yeah. So he's like retail mogul, kind of. But he's living the fast life, both with his horses and with women.
00:14:42
Speaker
Yeah, and it's almost very great Gatsby-like. The more that I read about him and his family in an article in Small State Big History, we get even more detail about the house, both more about when it was built and what it looked like on the inside. So to anyone who knows anything about architecture, which is not me at all,
00:15:06
Speaker
This Victorian mansion was actually kind of a mesh of architectural styles. It was a little bit Gothic. It was a little bit of just all the styles that he liked, not necessarily sticking with the time that the house was built, if that makes sense. Yeah. So it was eclectic.
00:15:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good word. It was a four story house and even had one of those towers, which I want a house that has a tower. Mm hmm. The goal. Like a turret. Like the round.
00:15:45
Speaker
And there were like stained glass windows. There were curved windows. It was very ornate. And he obviously was, this house matched his personality because he was over the top and ornate as well. And according to road tour, the house, like I said, was built in 1875 on the street.
00:16:11
Speaker
that was then being colonized by like the industrial and merchant class of the city because they're gaining wealth and they're not scared to show off the money that they have in these elaborate homes.
00:16:26
Speaker
that article goes on to say that the house was built for entertaining which we're going to talk about some of those parties and you're going to see why it was very great gatsby-ish but he entertained politicians he entertained aristocrats um and in those articles
00:16:47
Speaker
They interviewed, she's like the caretaker and event planner for the castle. And her name is Caitlin. And so she went into lots of detail about that. So in this kind of castle in downtown Providence is JB Barnaby, his wife, and a couple of daughters. Is that what you said?
00:17:11
Speaker
Yeah, so there's JB, his wife Josephine. They have three daughters, I believe, but really we're only going to talk about two of the daughters. Okay. So that same website said that the first four now you can tour to the public. That started in like 2017.
00:17:32
Speaker
Um, but that this place had, um, a 14 foot tall mirror with carved wood frame. And that's what you're going to see on the tour. If you go, and now I want to go because I need to be there. But you can see that's pretty excessive. Like nobody needs a 14 foot tall mirror.
00:17:58
Speaker
Yeah, unless you're the jolly green giant and you're trying to shake your word over Andre the giant. Do you remember that wrestler? Yeah. Even he wasn't that tall. You know, he was like seven foot bride. So he only needs one half that size.
Family Dynamics and Wealth
00:18:11
Speaker
That's right.
00:18:13
Speaker
The house also had elaborately carved sideboards all through the dining room. The walls were hand carved mahogany. The ceiling had touches of gold leaf in the ceiling. The floors were oak with cherry inlays which
00:18:31
Speaker
melts my heart. This is, this should be my house. There were seven fireplaces, each with a different style. There was an astounding 118 windows, 14 of which are stained glass. I mean, come on now. Yeah. I know. Except to clean all of this. Nope. Hiring somebody.
00:18:53
Speaker
Yeah, but if you can afford that house, you can afford someone to clean it. Yes. That's my dream. Yeah, same. Um, so I said that the house was meant for entertaining and it was. So JB's oldest daughter, her name I think is so very 1800s was Maybelle.
00:19:13
Speaker
Aww, that's sweet. So adorable. I do too. She got married in the castle to John Henry Conrad in one of the grand public rooms is what one of the articles I read called it. Which I thought was very fancy. Yeah. A local newspaper at the time described the literal
00:19:40
Speaker
blankets of flowers that perfume there, hundreds of candles reflected in mirrors, copious amounts of food, copious amounts of drinks that were being consumed by thousands of guests while three different orchestras played at this wedding. So honestly, these people sound like, I know, they sound like they should be friends with the people in the Bridgerton series on Netflix. Like these people are living the life.
00:20:09
Speaker
Yeah, this is like if you went to a music festival and it's the entertainment at someone's wedding. Yes. Yeah. And the journal even appraised the value of some of the wedding gifts, one of which at the time was valued at $27,000. It was a diamond bracelet from the groom, which means this would be like, yes. Yeah. So in today's time we'll be like,
00:20:37
Speaker
a million dollar bracelet pretty much. Wow. And her dad gave her a diamond and pearl necklace that valued at $25,000. Wow. And we've said we're happy with Raisin Cane's chicken tenders. Yeah. Maybe we need to up our expectation. Yeah.
00:20:57
Speaker
Yeah. Maybe we need, I need this $25,000 diamond necklace. Your sweetie just got you a big gift, not $25,000. Not $25,000, but it is nice. He did surprise me with a Mac, a Mac book because they were on sale at Costco. And because I almost snapped my other computer in half when I was trying to edit those Patreon episodes that I posted. So the next day he was very grateful, but then she also texted me hashtag credit card debt.
00:21:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. A real hoe. Just keeping it real over here on Coffee and Cases. Right.
00:21:39
Speaker
JB, even though this is very extravagant, he did work hard to get his family to the point that they could enjoy these amazing things. He was born in Massachusetts. He moved to Providence as a young man and he became rich pretty quickly. His estate was valued at over a million dollars at the time that he died in 1889, which now would be
00:22:06
Speaker
way more money than a million dollars. Oh yeah.
JB Barnaby's Death and Aftermath
00:22:09
Speaker
And like I mentioned earlier, he became rich because he established a store that was at that time the largest store in Rhode Island. So he worked hard to get his family where they were.
00:22:22
Speaker
He also dabbled in state politics. He ran for city council a couple of times and he only lost by a very small margin, only 600 votes. He even tried to run for Congress the following year and lost by an even smaller margin. He's a well liked and well respected guy and he's entertaining all these politicians and businessmen.
00:22:47
Speaker
throwing parties and racing horses and, you know, maintaining a household and a mistress. So, you know, he's got a lot of stokes in the fire. Life in the fast lane, to quote the Eagles.
00:23:02
Speaker
But he would die very suddenly in 1889. He had been dealing with Bright's disease for years and I had no no clue what that was. So I googled it and apparently it is like not a term that we use it now but
00:23:20
Speaker
Essentially, it is inflammation of the kidneys caused by toxins, infection, or an autoimmune condition. And it isn't strictly a singular disease, but rather a condition with a number of types and causes. So I'm assuming he died from something regarding this disease that he had.
Josephine's Challenges and Independence
00:23:42
Speaker
Right. So he's not really a part of today's case, but he's important because
00:23:51
Speaker
you have to know how Josephine the wife got to be where she is. Okay. So J.B. dies in 1889, but today's case we're going to focus on his wife Josephine and Dr. Graves. So let's meet both of them before jumping into the happenings surrounding these two individuals.
00:24:19
Speaker
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00:24:38
Speaker
Zencaster is what Maggie and I use each week to record our episodes, and it is extremely easy to use, even if you've never used a recording platform before. You don't have to download a thing. I go to the website zencaster.com, create the session for which you can record audio, video, or both, and then email Maggie the link. She clicks it and that's it. We're ready to hit the record button and start.
00:25:06
Speaker
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00:25:34
Speaker
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00:25:38
Speaker
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00:26:04
Speaker
That's zen.ai slash coffee and cases pod zero. It's time to share and easily record your story. So Dr. Graves actually served in the Civil War before setting medicine at Harvard. So I think very nice resume for Dr. Graves. Oh, yes. Trustworthy.
00:26:31
Speaker
Yeah. By 1886, he had established himself as a doctor in Providence. He opened up his practice actually across the street from where JB and Josephine lived. And he soon became known for obviously serving more well off clients because he's in the bougie part of town. And he specialized specifically in nervous disorders.
00:26:55
Speaker
which I think is kind of an old fashioned term, but that's what everything I read said that he specialized in nervous disorders. He was known to have maintained a mail order business where he kept his clients in their medications, most of which he had patented via mail. So again, he's a, he's a business guy.
00:27:19
Speaker
But you know, I mean, a lot of businesses, like I, my grandma had a book that was like sales and sales, Sears and Roebuck. Like what became then, you know, just what we call Sears. And it was like mail order. You could get everything from pencils to a car. I always loved their Christmas catalogs. So it sounds a lot like that, except he was doing it with medicine.
00:27:50
Speaker
Which now I feel like, how would you do that now? Because I feel it would almost be... It's like Amazon. Oh, with medicine. I guess it could be like, oh... Yeah. Which I guess it would be like over the counter though. Right. Like how I could order Tylenol from Amazon. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, that makes me feel better about this whole situation. He was Amazon's predecessor.
00:28:10
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So he is keeping his business with his clients in Rhode Island and he's doing this mail order business and now we enter JB's wife Josephine.
00:28:24
Speaker
Josephine was born on March 6th, 1836 to Joseph Reynolds and Rebecca Anthony. She was only 21 years old when she married JB. And honestly, from everything I read, she spent most of the marriage overwhelmed and intimidated by him. And honestly, I think I would have been the same. He seems like someone who would overwhelm me by the lifestyle that he lived and the social circle that he had. Like, I just don't think I could have kept up with that.
00:28:52
Speaker
Right. I'd be physically drained. Yeah, me too. And nervous all the time because I would just feel like I had a certain expectation that I had to live up to. Following the birth of their third child, Josephine started experiencing this partial paralysis in one arm and would sometimes stutter or have trouble finding her words. And it was then that she met Dr. Graves in 1887.
00:29:16
Speaker
Dr. Graves would prescribe her a series of tonics to treat her various ailments and illnesses. And when JB died, so she meets him in 1887, he died in 1889. She finds out that he only left her like a mirror
00:29:42
Speaker
tiny, tiny sum in what she would have been used to in his will. And he justified this by saying that she was quote, too flighty to handle a substantial sum of money, which, okay, one, the flighty thing, I think is very
00:30:04
Speaker
true to how women were viewed in society at that time. Like we're nervous and flaudy and can't handle many and you know all of those stereotypical things. But to kind of play devil's advocate for him he did leave the majority of his money to his kids.
00:30:20
Speaker
But she rem... So basically the gift he got his daughter was more on that one day than what he gave his wife for a year. Yeah. Yeah. And you're going to have even more to say about that here in just a second when you learn this other detail.
00:30:45
Speaker
Dr. Graves and Josephine had become you know, good friends and so she turns to him for advice and he is like honestly you This settlement is unfair. You should sue your daughter Mabel and her husband John and your other daughter for a larger sum of money because they find out that JB left his mistress around a hundred thousand dollars
00:31:13
Speaker
I mean, this is not like every year, but yes. Oh, no. No, sir. Oh, I'd be mad. Wow. So she actually follows his suggestion under that pretense of this generous amount that was given to his mistress.
00:31:36
Speaker
and she takes her two oldest daughters to court and they are horrified at this idea of having to publicly fight with their mother about their money. So they quickly settle and give her, I think it was like $105,000 just so that it's ended and they can all move on.
00:31:58
Speaker
So, which that makes me want to say that he was just giving her about $2,500 a year. Because if it's $25,000 a year, then you wouldn't settle for $105,000. Right.
00:32:10
Speaker
But after the settlement, Josephine is like, maybe I do need help with my affairs. And so she gives power of attorney of her estate to Dr. Graves, who at this point is still treating her. And so for his help, she's also paying him an annual stop into $2,500 to manage her affairs. I'll handle them for you.
00:32:36
Speaker
So he would serve as her kind of go-between and make sure that the funds were going where they were supposed to be and she wasn't overspending and all of that type of stuff. So with her newfound freedom and now her newfound fortune, she's like, you know what I could do with all this free time I have? I could start to travel, which when you think about it was probably no small feat at that time like it would be today. It's not like she can go to
00:33:01
Speaker
airport and get a flight to somewhere or rent a car i'm assuming she's doing a train or possibly buggy at that time well and as a woman to travel that's even a bigger yeah also scandalous yes and a lot of people would say that
00:33:26
Speaker
Her doings on these trips were scandalous. One particular trip she took to the Adirondacks, which I did not know was a place. I just thought that was a chair, but I was learning so much today. But apparently on this particular trip, witnesses said that they saw a drunken Josephine
00:33:49
Speaker
Carrying on with a married tour guide and his name was Edward Bennett on Like this is super scandalous but on the floor of like an ice house Some accounts said that they were actually lovers
00:34:06
Speaker
on the floor, rolling around in the sawdust. Yeah. It's not like she's just farting with him. She's like, uh-huh. Yeah. Yes. So some people say that they were lovers and that Josephine and Edward had actually discussed the idea of Josephine buying a cottage or cabin for him to renovate and paying him to renovate it. Yes. Again, where are these people?
00:34:36
Speaker
like buy me a car and then pay me to put gas in it? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, please. And it was also during this trip that Dr. Graves threatened to have her declared incompetent and put her in an asylum if she ended up buying this cottage for Edward because he's like, you know, I'm in charge of your affairs. If you can't handle yourself,
00:35:01
Speaker
you're gonna be like I'm gonna declare you incompetent and you're not gonna be able to spend this money the way you want to and she is not happy about this at all because now she's like a free independent woman and she actually contacts her lawyer to have her will changed because she had left a large chunk of money in her will to graves and so she contacts somebody and she says we need to change this will and
00:35:27
Speaker
Yeah. She's like, no, no, no. You want to tell me what to do? I'm changing that. Yeah. Cutting you off, sir. That winner, Josephine went west to tour California health spas with her friends, with her friend, Florence. Again, just so bougie, but you go Josephine and Florence.
00:35:51
Speaker
By April, they had come to Denver to stay with Florence's son, Edward. And when they arrived there, there was a package for Josephine. And so she's like, oh, maybe this is my medicine, right? Because she's getting these mail ordered medicines from, yeah.
00:36:08
Speaker
So when she opens it and there's a bottle, she's like, yes, this must just be something that Dr. Graves has melt in me. And there's a note in this package that says, quote, wish you a happy new year. Please accept this fine old whiskey from your friends in the woods, end quote. Uh, from your friends in the woods. Hmm. That's weird. And I don't think that Providence, Rhode Island is the woods.
00:36:38
Speaker
Yeah. So she was like, you know, could this bottle be from maybe Edward? Could this be from Dr. Graves? Obviously. She bought him a cabin. I think of cabins in the woods.
00:36:54
Speaker
Right. So she's like, you know, we've been talking about buying this cabin. So could this be from Edward? Is this just medicine from Dr. Graves? And so she's like, you know what, both of them know I love whiskey. So whoever it's from, thank you. So she takes the bottle in. And her and Josephine actually no she's Josephine. Her and Florence actually drink the whiskey and Florence says while they're drinking like this whiskey is nasty.
00:37:24
Speaker
I'm not drinking anymore. Something is wrong with this. She actually got sick and immediately started throwing up. Okay. Well, if I'm Josephine, then I'm also stopping. Yeah, but she doesn't though. She doesn't. She's like, you know what? This is fine and continues to drink.
00:37:45
Speaker
But Allison within hours, she was sick and I'm not talking sick like Florence was sick. She's throwing up. I'm talking like sick, sick. And over the next five days, she was in such agony because of how sick she was. Man.
00:38:12
Speaker
And yes, and she actually passed away on April 19th. So just a few days after drinking that whiskey, I think they drank it on April 13th. And so she passes away and people are like, what has happened to this woman? Right. Yeah. Cause she's living her best life right now.
00:38:33
Speaker
Yeah, she's traveling. She's doing everything that most women dream that they could do.
Murder Investigation and Trial
00:38:40
Speaker
They do do an autopsy because they're like, you know, how could this woman just randomly get super sick and die? And through that autopsy, they realized that she died of arsenic poisoning. And
00:38:56
Speaker
When they investigated further, they found out that the whiskey was actually laced with arsenic. Oh, so whoever sent her this whiskey, they had it out for her. Yes. And I feel like it's going to have to be somebody that's close to her because I think you have to have a very like specific palette to drink whiskey and they would know that she liked it. Right.
00:39:25
Speaker
Yeah, because I don't think normally a woman in the 1800s who'd be like, I need to get her a gift. What should I get? Whiskey. No. Yeah, alcohol. Yeah. So I actually was curious because I think we've talked about maybe even recently arsenic poisoning. Have we done that? Wasn't that in a case recently? I know that we've talked about, you know, arsenic poisoning before in some of our cases, but I was
00:39:54
Speaker
I'm curious as to what one experiences when they're poisoned with this. So again, Google searches on our computer. I'm like, how many people a year die by tampered mill? How many deaths? How do you die from arsenic poisoning? What is an anthrax?
00:40:18
Speaker
Great. Yeah. So if the government is looking at my computer, they're like, okay, she's a psycho, we need to watch what she's doing. But according to several different websites that I read, one was Britannica, which, you know, is just a good little go to the
00:40:40
Speaker
symptoms of arsenic poisoning can vary from person to person. And I didn't know this, but some people have been known to develop a tolerance to certain doses that would kill other people. Because I guess certain professions, you're exposed to it more than you are in others.
00:40:58
Speaker
But it said poisoning may result from a single large dose, so we could have acute poisoning or from repeated small doses, so chronic poisoning. So that would be like if you're exposed to it at work every day. But symptoms of acute poisoning, which would have been what she had, is nausea and vomiting, burning of the mouth and throat, and severe abdominal pain. Which you get burning of the mouth and throat if you drink whiskey in the first place.
00:41:28
Speaker
Yeah. And I can see why they everything I read described her as being in excruciating pain because that all sounds horrible. Yeah, but it actually went on to say that circulatory collapse can occur and can be followed by death within a few hours. So for her to live a few days, I think was a miracle.
00:41:49
Speaker
Got some strong genes. Mm-hmm. It says the outstanding effects are destruction of red blood cells and damage to the kidneys with chronic exposure the more common effects include gradual loss of strength diarrhea constipation I mean just a bunch of things to your nervous system and it says that
00:42:11
Speaker
It's colorless, which I didn't know. And that sometimes it can be tasteless, which I also didn't know. Well. Oh, now I remember the case that we talked about that had the arsenic poisoning. It was with the bottles on Patreon. It was the Patreon episode. Yes. Well, I don't want to ruin it.
00:42:40
Speaker
You'll have to sign in to Patreon to check it out. There was an accusation of a mom poisoning her children.
00:42:54
Speaker
but there's a twist. Yeah, it's good. You need to go listen. After this, hop on over to Patreon. That's right. Someone obviously of the wealth and status of Josephine was not going to be murdered and forgotten about because she is a staple in society at that time. Her son-in-law, John Conrad, the one that married the daughter,
00:43:19
Speaker
has both the will and the resources that he is going to pursue Josephine's killer and he does. He was also a millionaire cattle rancher and he was a mine owner of some mine in Montana
00:43:35
Speaker
And he and Mabel, remember, were the ones that had the fancy wedding with the roses and the $25,000 bracelet and all of that stuff. But they hire the Pinkerton detective agency to pursue this case. And this detective agency quickly settled on Dr. Graves as the prime suspect. Well, yeah, especially since she was paying him money, he was against her relationships.
00:44:05
Speaker
didn't want her to go traveling around. That would make sense. Andy would know her well enough to give her whiskey. Yes. And honestly, a lot of people felt the same. It just made the most sense. And the case against him was pretty cut and dry, Allison. Like you said, there's lots of
00:44:24
Speaker
reasons that it could be him. Attorneys argued that Graves was after Josephine's money because, you know, he would know the types of funds that she had because he helped manage her estates and he would know that he was part of her will because he helped manage all of that stuff. She and Graves were close friends at one point, but remember what she said after the little cabin cottage incident?
00:44:49
Speaker
Well, that she was going to take him out of the will. Remember? Oh yeah. So that to me is almost motive for him because their relationship is now on the house and she's taking him out of her will. Yeah. Like I'll show you, I'll kill you before you have the chance to do that.
00:45:08
Speaker
Andy mailed her stuff all the time. Yes, that's what here I say. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for him to mail her these concoctions that she likely would just accept without question because he's her doctor. Not looking good, Dr. Graves. Not looking good.
00:45:28
Speaker
And like I said, he is in her will and she has it written to leave him $50,000, which at that time was even bigger, a bigger amount of money than that sounds in this context. So he would have pushed her, you know,
00:45:51
Speaker
I think he would have had reason to give her this poison whiskey. We know that he pushed her out of buying that property. He was angry because he's getting written out of the will. She's considered replacing him as the advisor in charge of her money. So it was her son-in-law's point that because of all of these developments, Graves has sent the whiskey to kill Josephine.
Trial Outcomes and Theories
00:46:19
Speaker
Makes sense.
00:46:21
Speaker
The trial hinged on that and a couple other small points. They were able to determine that the whiskey had been mailed from Boston, which at the time Dr. Graves was in Boston. And like I said, Dr. Graves knew that Josephine liked whiskey, which was an acquired thing. Yeah. Not for me. No. To each their own, but like, I mean, I have never drank
00:46:49
Speaker
horse pee, but I feel like, and I know whiskey and beer are not the same thing, but I feel like beer looks and smells like horse pee. So why would you want to drink that? Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I'm not judging you if you do. I'm just saying, just give, if I'm going to drink something that is out of the norm for me, just give me a Mountain Dew.
00:47:16
Speaker
I'm going to be bouncing off the walls for like four hours after that. Give me a chocolate milkshake. I don't need alcohol. I just need caffeine. Right. Yeah. Sugar. Yeah. But the most compelling was this testimony from the son-in-law and one of the detectives that as crazy as it sounded, they claim that Graves actually admitted to mailing Josephine the whiskey. So this is an open and shut case then? If he did say that.
00:47:46
Speaker
And the only problem is they can't really prove that because it was in a private meeting between the men. So he denies it when he's in front of the jury when he's on the stand.
00:48:03
Speaker
So Graves' lawyers, they're like, this is not looking very good for us. So we're going to have to come up with something to kind of help our client over here. So they start painting Josephine in a not so flattering light. Which for women at the time and what she was doing probably was easy for them to do.
00:48:24
Speaker
Oh, yeah, because they're like, we have all these details about her lifestyle or the supposed lifestyle. We're saying that she's anything but lady like she's on all of these crazy vacations. She's caught naked with this man. She gets drunk with multiple men on all of her trips. She's no lady of 1800 society, right? So all of these things, they're kind of pointing towards
00:48:54
Speaker
It could be anybody, right? She has made multiple enemies through this new lifestyle that she has. It could been, yeah, the wife of the man she was tesseling in the sawdust with. Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it could have been anybody. It could have been, yeah, his wife, it could have been
00:49:16
Speaker
Maybe his, he could have even had a mistress. It could have been anybody. And if she's doing this with multiple men, that broadens it even more. Right. And that's the point that Dr. Graves and his people were trying to make. And he actually testified that he and his wife had been guests at this same
00:49:38
Speaker
I guess vacation when she went to the Adirondacks. And he says that he actually saw them tussling through a crack in this like little warehouse, ice house place. And that the two were drunk and doing some type of transaction in his words. Oh.
00:50:02
Speaker
not of the financial kind. Yeah, not of the financial kind. And he told the jury that he felt Josephine was being blackmailed and that the whiskey was sent to her
00:50:19
Speaker
as more as a threat and not with intentions to kill her, but that somebody, not him, sent this to her in a blackmail way, which is what we said, right? This could have been sent from anybody. We have more testimonies during this trial. One came from, this name should sound familiar to you, Allison. Henry Tricky.
00:50:46
Speaker
because I'm pretty positive. Wasn't he like involved in the Lizzie Borden trial? He sure was. And he testified that Josephine was a vile woman and had vile lovers and that she had a strained relationship with her husband, but that was like all on her, not really on her husband. He was sorry he ever met her and that she was not a woman that he would ever admit into his family circle.
00:51:13
Speaker
I mean if he really felt that way I guess I could explain why he didn't leave her any money. That's true but Graves through all of this says you know despite all this riffs that we have I have never mishandled her money I've always been honest with her um and he says
00:51:34
Speaker
that he thinks he's believing that he's being persecuted by john as almost kind of a threat to him and he says that john actually like paid the cost of all these witnesses to come to the trial and that it just was not a fair trial on his behalf because there's just too much political stuff going on here and that this was a
00:52:04
Speaker
I don't even know the right word, but basically bull crap from the beginning. But the trial does end in 1892 on January 1st. And after only an hour and a half of discussion, the jury did find Dr. Graves guilty of murder by mail.
00:52:23
Speaker
Graves did appeal the conviction and the higher court threw it out because of errors by the trial judge. They eventually got the first verdict dismissed on the technicality and a new trial was promised while Graves remains in jail. So, you know, there's a lot at the end of his tunnel perhaps.
00:52:46
Speaker
But on September 2nd, 1893, Graves was visited by his wife in the in the jail, almost at the hospital. He was not in the hospital. And she came to see him almost every day. And it was recorded that when they parted, he said, goodbye, darling, promise you'll come back early tomorrow morning. So he's making plans to see her tomorrow. At nine o'clock the next day, he didn't come for breakfast. So the guard went to check his cell.
00:53:17
Speaker
And Dr. Graves was dead. Oh. He left several letters, one of which was to the coroner, and it said, please do not hold an autopsy upon my remains. The cause of death may be rendered as follows. Died from persecution, worn out, exhausted. What? Which obviously was not the cause of death, because you don't feel that one coming. Right.
00:53:47
Speaker
So he, up until the end, maintained his innocence in several of those letters. He maintained his innocence. He blamed Mr. Conrad and the corrupt Western justice system for basically putting him into his grave. So he commits suicide. And in the aftermath of his trial, his widow actually gained that money that Josephine had left in the will. Could she have sent the whiskey?
00:54:17
Speaker
I know that's what I was thinking. Like obviously people are going to say that it's graves because
00:54:24
Speaker
right that's just the easy thing to say but i wonder how their relationship was right could it have been her because i'm always thinking you know of the what-ifs obviously again he does seem logical but so does her lover that she wanted to buy the cabin for because he could have felt jilted you know and he's upset because she was going to buy that but then
00:54:52
Speaker
so easily let someone convince her not to. So maybe he's upset and he was thinking, well, she told me she was going to change her will to take Dr. Graves out of it because she's mad at him. Maybe she put me in it.
00:55:09
Speaker
You know, and so it could have been him and he's just hoping to benefit or it could have been Dr. Graves wife. Cause she could have been like, you know, they're getting a little close and what, why is he giving her, you know, love advice for that's not part of how this works. Josephine had this like reputation as being scandalous. Then she could be like, you're not getting my man back up. Right.
00:55:39
Speaker
drink some whiskey. Yeah. And maybe she didn't mean to kill him or kill her. She just meant to scare her. Because Graves died before we could have a retrial, we are left with an unsolved case.
Listener Engagement and Community Involvement
00:55:53
Speaker
There are many who believe that Graves was responsible for the death of Josephine, but there's enough speculation to keep people wondering if it could have been someone else.
00:56:02
Speaker
Sadly, sleuth hounds, I do think too much time has passed for us to really know what happened to Josephine and who was behind the Rhode Island mail order murder. All we're left with are questions and a lingering distrust of the United States postal system.
00:56:16
Speaker
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00:56:46
Speaker
Stay together. Stay safe. We'll see you next week.
00:57:09
Speaker
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00:57:26
Speaker
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