The Murder of Mabel Schofield

In 1899, Mabel Schofield was a 21-year-old young woman with big dreams and the whole world ahead of her. She had a great head on her shoulders, she had plans for her future, and she was going places. That is, until, some unscrupulous fellow with a selfish plan of his own snuffed out her life without a care in the world. Even the chief of detectives threw his hands in the air and gave up, but the good people of Des Moines, Iowa would not rest until the mystery was solved. It seemed like forever, but justice was finally served for Mabel!

Listen as we talk about the fallibility of eyewitness testimony and test your own facial recognition skills here: 

https://www.testmybrain.org/face-blindness/super-recognizers.html

Transcript

0:00

What do buggies, odd fellows, and unscrupulous doctors have in common? Stay tuned to find out on this episode of Forgotten Felonies. Welcome back to Forgotten Felonies. I'm Monica. And I'm Olivia. And this is where we take you back in time to rediscover the crimes of vintage villainy that time forgot. This time, we're going back to a murder that took place in 1899. We haven't gone back quite that far yet. I mean, we kind of did in our Kate Van Winkle episode. She was abandoned by her husband in 1884, and I'd say that was pretty messed up. But the bloodshed in that tale didn't take place until 1909, which was a decade after the murder that takes place in this story. So, Olivia, how did you find this story? So my great-grandfather was a district court judge in Iowa. Back in the earlier 1900s. I think. I think he retired in like 1960, 1970, around there. I was on newspapers. com and I was looking up. You know, judge, last name, cases. And then I found a different judge that like. Had the same last name, but... He was before my great-grandfather was born, and this case fell into our laps. Yes. I clipped it. And then I happened to see it in our clip. Clippings. I happened to see it in our clipped articles and I read it and I just got sucked into it and I read more and more. And of course, the most exciting part was that no one else had clipped these articles. And so no one has heard this story, which is surprising because it is a really good story with a lot of twists and turns. Or the only clippings were clipped by law students. That's true. Yeah, because it did wind up going to Supreme Court. So it wound up. It's something that they study. So if you Google it, it just shows Supreme Court articles. Yay. Yay. All right. So this story centers around a very innocent and truly lovely young lady by the name of Mabel Schofield. So will you please tell our listeners about Mabel and her family makeup? I would love to. So Mabel was actually named Florence Mabel Schofield when she was born on March 7th of 1878 in Greenfield, Iowa. Her parents were Adolphus Schofield and Parthenia Norman Schofield. Mabel was the second of six children. She had an older brother named Clyde who was two years older than her. The first five of the Schofield siblings were all born within a few years of each other, but the sixth sibling was actually born nine years after the fifth sibling. So Mabel was almost 18 years older when her youngest sibling was born in 1895. Mabel and Clyde, being the two oldest, had a very close sibling relationship, and as young adults, they spent every Sunday going to church together, even though they lived separate lives. You. So yeah, Mabel's family had lived in Greenfield, Iowa when she was born and when the first five children were born— actually. So she did a lot of growing up in Greenfield, Iowa. The sixth child, little Marie, was born in Madison, Iowa, but then the family moved to a small little town called Maxburg, where Mabel's father was a very popular physician. By 1899, the population was slightly over 200. So at least, you know, he had 200 patients on his load. But even people who lived outside of Maxburg would make the trip into town to see him. Does Maxburg still exist? Yes, actually. I looked it up. As of 2020, the population was 97. So apparently, Maxburg had a fire problem back in like 1899 and buildings kept burning down and they would never be rebuilt. So I think they lost a lot of their residential buildings and thus the population that way. I don't know. But yeah, it's very small. It's still there. So yeah, but yeah, so Dr. Schofield, he wasn't a wealthy man by any means, because it was, you know, a very small country town, but pretty much anyone who was coming from out of town to Maxburg was coming to town for Dr. Schofield. Well, look at him. Yeah, he was a very good physician with a great reputation and he was beloved by all. So he made a decent living and he was certainly a man of means, but not like a millionaire. He wasn't like pimping out his buggy or anything. What I find interesting is when I went on the census records, he was a carpenter before he became a physician. Oh, wow. So that's a big. Career Jump— Maybe he had to pay his way through school. So that's like what he was doing. That would make sense. Yeah. So by the year 1899, Dr. Schofield's oldest son, Clyde, was 23 years old. and he was attending Highland Park College in Des Moines, Iowa, to become a pharmacist. Maxburg and Des Moines were 53 miles apart. That is not very far from home, then, and I've been to Des Moines many times. Oh, wow. Well, so, yeah, it's not— it's not very far apart by today's standards, because, you know, by car, that's what, 53 minutes if you're driving 60 miles per hour. But back then, they were either traveling by a horse and buggy or they were going by train. So I Googled how long it would take a horse to travel 53 miles. If a horse was moving at a canter or about like 10 miles per hour, that would take about 5. 3 hours. And if a horse were to be walking at about four miles per hour, that would take 13. 25 hours. I'm so glad we have cars. I know. So yeah, back then that's, you know, a very lengthy trip. So when asked later, Dr. Schofield said that he would have put his 21-year-old daughter, Mabel, through college as well, but he could only afford to pay for work. One college education at a time. Because remember, he wasn't insanely wealthy, you know, just being a doctor in a tiny little country village, basically. But he... absolutely did support his daughter in whatever she wanted to do. What a good dad. A good father. Yeah. And I mean, he would have, you know, when Clyde finished school, he would have paid for her to go to college. Like, absolutely. Just he couldn't afford it at the same time. So anyway, if 21-year-old Mabel wasn't in college, you may be wondering what she was doing in 1899. Well, she wasn't in Maxburg. had big dreams. Mabel didn't want to be in that tiny country town. She had stars in her eyes and wanted to experience the big city life in Des Moines. Mabel was all but engaged to a young physician himself. Dr. Childs had finished medical school and in fact had just finished dental school and had relocated to Missouri to start his dental practice. He was getting himself established so that he could marry her and support a family. So when she was home in Maxburg, Dr. Childs had also been there for a time, and he would be over at the Schofield house every day spending time with Mabel. Mabel was a very smart young lady, and she was against what she called early marriage. She had seen a lot of young girls get married in their teens, and she thought that was just ridiculous. So she was determined to wait until she had done some schooling, you know, before she got married and she and Dr. Childs had talked about their plans to get married. However, he had not officially proposed yet. So they were, though, like certainly in love with each other. Everybody knew it. You know, they were going to be together forever. She was ahead of her time. Oh, yeah. She was progressive. I mean, her parents knew the plan and they were very proud of her and supportive and everything. So Mabel was keeping up her end of the plan. Plan. See, all the girls that she had gone to high school with and pretty much every young girl she ever knew of who had aspirations to go to college were going to school to be teachers. That was one of the few college degrees a female could get back in 1899. So if a girl wanted to go to college, like that was it. Now, Mabel knew that teachers were in abundance, and she likely wouldn't be able to secure a job with that many teachers graduating every year. So she was being sensible and she wanted to go a different route. The way she saw it, dressmakers were in high demand. If she were a dressmaker, she could make dresses no matter what. Where she and Dr. Childs were to move in the future. Any place that his practice took them, she could continue her dressmaking. She wouldn't need to apply for a position and just, you know, cross her fingers and hope that she would be picked from a hundred hopeful applicants. Her expert dressmaking skills would speak for themselves. So Mabel decided she would go to Des Moines and attend a dressmaking school to learn the trade. Now, her parents weren't quite on board with this. Their 21-year-old daughter, in the big city, like so far away from home, the thought of that was just terrifying. Mabel's father, you know, he made good money as a doctor in Maxburg, and Mabel really had no reason to work, but she wanted to. Mabel wanted to be a dressmaker more than anything. She wanted to leave the tiny country town that she'd grown up in, and she wanted to live in a big city. Her parents were wary about letting their 21-year-old daughter head to the city, but they felt more comfortable knowing that she was going to be staying with some family friends, the home of Jasper and Elizabeth Thomas at 1016 Woodland Avenue. They were a nice family with kids around the same age as Mabel. In fact, their son, Charles, was just eight months younger than Mabel. And they had a daughter, Lula, who was two years older. So Lula was the same age as Mabel's big brother, Clyde, who Mabel was very close to. So it was like a perfect situation. So that made Mabel's parents more comfortable with her going to Des Moines. And what made it even better was that Mabel's cousin Maggie Hammond was also going to move in at the Thomas house to room with Mabel. They rented out a couple spare rooms at the Thomas house and they settled right in. Mabel moved in around the beginning of September 1899 and started her dressmaking lessons. Still, her parents missed her terribly and wished that she would come back home. How's fistula and all diseases of the rectum cured without knife, ligature, or caustic? Read testimonial. Has perfect health. Kansas City, Missouri, December 22nd, 1897. Gentlemen, before you start entreating me for piles, I've been troubled for eight or ten years. I've not been bothered in any way since, and have perfect health, for which I give you credit. I'm always ready and willing to recommend you to anyone to whom I can. Yours very truly, G. O. S. Tamblyn. We guarantee to cure every case. Don't take one cent until patient is well. Send for free books to men. Also free books to ladies. Address Dr. Thornton and Minor, 9th and Wall Street, Kansas City, Missouri. Mabel's mother was a delegate to the State Lodge of the Rebeccas, which was the women's department of the Odd Fellowship. Please. Explain that to me. Okay. So the Odd Fellows is also called the Independent Order of Odd Fellows or IOOF. This was an organization. That was not political or anything, and it was a fraternal organization, so it was all male, and it actually dates back to the 1700s in England. In the U. S., the IOOF got started in Baltimore, Maryland in 1819. So it's like kind of like a club, I guess. And it's known for its focus on fellowship, charity, and social welfare. Members of the IOOF aim to improve the world around them. So a lot of times if you look up cemeteries, you'll see that a lot of cemeteries have the letters IOOF after their name, and it means that they were actually created by the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. I'm not entirely sure why they were creating cemeteries, but they were. That is where. From our Dynamite episode. That's where the first husband's buried in an IOLF. Oh, that's true. Yes, George Brown. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So the Rebecca's, which Mrs. Schofield and Mabel were a part of. This organization was actually called Daughters of Rebecca or the. International Association of Rebecca Assemblies. So they too were an international service-oriented organization and a branch of the Independent Order of Oddfellows. Now, initially, only wives and daughters of IOOF members could join. Today, though, women and men can join both the IOOF and IOOF. IOOF, and the Rebecca groups. And you don't have to be related to anybody in either group to join. As long as you meet moral, ethical, and age requirements for admission, anybody can join a Rebecca Lodge. Do we know why it was called Rebecca? Um, I'm not sure, but I, I know that the name Rebecca is in the Bible. So I assume. You know, I assume it has something to do with religion. Hmm. But I don't know. So yeah, in October of 1899, there was an event at a Rebecca Lodge at Waterloo. Mrs. Schofield wrote to Mabel to ask her to accompany her to the Grand Lodge. On Monday, October 16th, Mrs. Schofield passed through Des Moines. On the Chicago Great Western train,

which arrived at 8: 14:46

15 p. m., and Mabel was waiting for her at the train station. She boarded the train and continued on with her mother until the train reached Waterloo around midnight. The next day, October 17th, they attended their meeting of Rebecca's, and then on Wednesday, October 18th, Mabel went to visit with her friend, Miss Hostetler, whose parents reside near there. Ms. Hostetler was attending the Iowa State Normal School, which was a college for women who were studying to become, wait for it, teachers. Whoa. Which I could not find, so I don't think they wound up in the newspaper. Yeah, I couldn't either. On October 19th, Mabel returned to Waterloo and attended the Rebecca Lodge. Mabel and her mother left Waterloo on Friday morning, October 20th, reaching Des Moines. Around noon that day. They went straight to the home of Jasper Thomas at 1016 Woodland Avenue, where Mabel was living. That afternoon, she and her mother visited with some friends in North Des Moines, they did some shopping, and then they just spent time together at the Thomas home before going to sleep. On Saturday, October 21st, Mabel's mother was heading back to Maxburg. She wanted her daughter to come back home and give up this big city dream of hers. She again pleaded with her. We can take care of you. You don't have to work for a living. Please just come back home. But Mabel was determined. She was very independent and she was proud of how much she had learned. She was excited to be able to make those fashionable dresses, and she was excited that she had excelled so quickly. She'd been a novice just six weeks ago, and now she was more advanced than an apprentice. Well, dang. Yeah. She was doing really well. She'd actually already gone from her first school to the next school because they weren't able at the first school to hire her on afterwards. Like they would have, but like at the time they didn't have a position open. So she had moved on to another school to work as an apprentice there. And then she had advanced there. And so she was actually looking for just a paid position somewhere. Wow. Yeah. She was like, she had excelled very quickly. She was doing really well. She was doing the thing. Yeah. So that's what she was doing. She, that day she was like, 'I'm going to go. look for a paid position.' Like she's like, you know, a fully fledged dressmaker. So that's what she was going to do that day. And her mom was like, 'No, just come home. Just come home.' So she said, 'Well, give me a few more days. Just let me try.' I'm going to spend the day job hunting. And I promise, if I don't find a higher-paying job after a few days, I will consider coming back to Maxburg. So she gave her mom a kiss and she said, 'Goodbye, mother.' Kiss my brothers and sisters for me. And so, at seven o'clock in the morning, her mom's train began to pull out of the Union Station. Mrs. Schofield watched as Mabel walked north on 5th Street and disappeared around the corner. And after that, the details of Mabel's Saturday are up for debate. Because all we know for sure is that Mabel didn't wind up showing up to pick up the phone. The money she was owed by Miss Driscoll, where she had worked recently. She had said she was going to show up on Saturday to pick up her last check. And we know that she... didn't wind up finding other employment like she was looking for. And we know that she didn't wind up going to sleep in her bed that night either. Mabel Schofield seemingly vanished. G. O. W. Ruling. Dealer in staple and fancy groceries. 203 West 2nd Street. Country and garden produce a specialty. All orders promptly delivered. When she was leaving with her mother that morning, she had told Mrs. Thomas, whose house she was staying at, that she was going to be coming right back to the house afterward. Thomas left shortly after they left, so she didn't know if Mabel had come back or not. And none of Mabel's friends had reported seeing her. Nobody could say where she'd spent her day at all. Or, that is, nobody would say.

짠짠짠짠 At around 3: 19:07

30 on the afternoon of Sunday, October 22nd, 1899, two brothers identified only as T. D. and G. G. E. Munger, who lived on Main Street in Des Moines, Iowa, were fishing along the bank of the Des Moines River. They were about to go home when G. E. discovered something floating in the river about 10 feet from the shore. He turned to his brother and asked, 'What is that thing out there?' I don't know. It looks like a dead dog. Come on, I'm going home. Not a dog. No, it doesn't look like a dog. It looks like a swelled water snake. Throw your line out there and drag it in. No, I'm going. Why do we care what it is? But G. E. Munger finally convinced his brother to cast his line toward the unidentified object, and on the third throw, it caught. He pulled it in, and when it was within a few feet of the bank, he realized it was the body of a young lady. The hook had caught the skirt of her dress. The two men drew it up to the bank, and T. D. Munger remained with the body while G. E. Munger ran to the house of Will Marshall. Will went to the James Watts house and telephoned the police station. The wagon and coroner Ankeny returned in a few minutes, and they took the body to McDermott's on 6th and Grand Avenue. Word spread like wildfire that the young woman's body had been fished out of the river and hundreds of people passed through the morgue throughout the evening. But no one recognized the body until about 5 p. m., when a man finally pushed through the crowd, uttered a scream, and said, 'My God, that's my sister.' This man was Clyde Schofield. Every Sunday he came to pick up his sister to take her to church. He had no idea that, instead of going to church, he would be identifying his 21-year-old sister's body. After pulling himself together, he made the trip home to his parents in Maxburg to break the devastating news. His mother had been there visiting with Mabel just the day before, and this would surely come as a shock. One would think, after finding a body floating in a river, that the person had drowned. But that's what made this such a big mystery. There was no water in Mabel's body. lungs, or stomach. Her glands were not swollen in her neck or breasts. Her skin was not discolored. Her flesh was firm and smooth. Bodies that have been in the water a long time are just the opposite. There was no sign of trauma to Mabel's body whatsoever. Her clothes were in perfect condition, other than being covered in cockleburs and Spanish needles. Her gloves were still on her hands and her very fashionable coal scuttle hat was still firmly pinned to her head. It was clear that she was dead before entering the water. But from what? And how? How did Mabel Schofield wind up dead in the Des Moines River? The papers were buzzing with theories immediately. Basically, it could be an accident, suicide, or murder. The accident theory was debunked pretty quickly. Because it required her having been blown off the bridge by wind, basically, or falling after being startled by an oncoming car. But there was actually a net between... that location where she was found in the river and the bridge for the very purpose of catching objects that fall or jump from the bridge. So, I mean, that was... out. Suicide was, of course, possible, but they knew she did not drown. Any poison that she might have taken, that would have not yet been in her stomach, would have had to be the type and in such a large quantity that she would have been paralyzed before she would have been able to wade out into the river. So she had to have been placed there because it was clear she was dead before she was put in the water. So it was just very clear that this was murder. Also, the autopsy showed that she was a virgin at the time of her death, which was proof to them that she was not in any sort of condition, or pregnant, that would have left her despondent or depressed. That's what they decided. She was, quote, pure. They did wonder, however, if maybe she was bitter about not being able to go to college. But we know that this is nonsense. She was very happy, she was bright, she was jovial, and she was looking forward to her future. There were, you know, bright things in Mabel's future. But who would have killed her and why and when and how? Well, there were a lot of mysterious sightings and tips that started to pour in. Mrs. Hattie Dean turned out to be a pretty amazing witness. Hattie Dean lived at West 2nd and Ridge Street. She was married to a man who worked at the fire station. It was his job to run a continuous kiln, so he had to work seven days a week. Well, he had to be there by five in the morning. So she woke up really early in the morning to get up with him and, you know, probably to make him breakfast and make him lunch. What wives did back in 1899. Well, as Hattie explains it, she was also a very nervous lady. So after her husband would leave the house, she would be just, you know, on pins and needles, jumping at every sound. So at around five in the morning, she heard the sound of a buggy outside and she assumed it must be her husband, undoubtedly returning, because he must have forgotten something. Well, knowing that she was such a nervous person, her husband would always call out her name from a distance, just so she knows that it's him. Coming so as not to scare her. So Hattie cracked open the door a bit and listened for her husband's voice, but she didn't hear her husband after all because it wasn't her husband. There was a buggy stopped in front of her home. It contained two men and a woman. The woman was between the two men, and she looked very limp, as if she had fainted. One of the men had his arm around her shoulders like he was supporting her. And the men began to argue while the buggy and its horse were standing still on the road. The men, she could hear, were arguing about which road they should take. Should they go north or east? They seemed very excited, she said, like agitated. And finally they drove on north. Hattie said the girl's head was thrown back and she seemed to be slipping off the seat and, like, falling down into the floor of the buggy, despite the man's efforts to hold her up. The moon was bright that morning. It was very bright. And Hattie was able to get a very good look at the girl's face. Hattie was awfully worried that she must have been very sick, and she was worried about her all day. Hattie also took note of what all three of them had been wearing. She told her husband all about it later, and after a woman's body was found that afternoon, she told a friend named Cub Brewer. Cub Brewer told a policeman and then the police contacted Hattie because they realized this was likely very important information. When shown a picture of several girls from Mabel Schofield's high school graduating class, Hattie Dean immediately pointed to Mabel, having never seen her before. She said, of course I can't be certain, for the hair is dressed differently here, I think, and the girl I saw had a hat on, but from the figure and the face, I should say this is the girl. Now, another witness came forward. It was a man named Michael William Garrity, who people referred to as Doc because he was in the pharmaceutical industry. And he swore up. and down that he had seen Mabel Schofield at the corner of 4th and Locust Streets on Saturday night between 8 and 9 o'clock. Now keep in mind that it was Saturday morning. At 7 a. m., that she said goodbye to her mother and nobody saw her all that day. And Doc Garrity says he saw her that night between 8 and 9 p. m. on a street corner talking to two men. He says that one was tall and one was short, and he described their clothes and hats and everything, and Hattie Dean said that those descriptions matched the descriptions of the men she saw in the buggy on Sunday morning. Now I must say this caused an uproar. No pure good girl would be out that late in Des Moines on a Saturday night, and they certainly wouldn't be in the company of two men without a proper chaperone. Oh, brother. This was absolutely not like Mabel Schofield. Mrs. Thomas, who Mabel was living with, even said that this was preposterous. All of Mabel's friends said this could not be true in the slightest. There was simply no way Mabel would be in a situation like that. Doc Garrity didn't actually know Mabel. He says that he recognized her face only and didn't know her name. He says he had seen her around because she worked in that area, near where he worked. He had seen her often, like, you know, because she'd been in that area for about six weeks. So he knew who she was. So when he saw her that night, night, he recognized her as that same girl who he saw, you know, who worked nearby. Now, what made his story stronger and more believable is that he claims that he stood in the doorway of his establishment and supposedly watched Mabel talk to these two mysterious strangers for 15 to 20 minutes. And he swears it was the very same Mabel Schofield that he later saw in the morgue when he went to view her remains. A couple days after the body was found in the river. Now near the river where the body was found, there was some evidence collected. There was a handkerchief found that was soiled and had been soaked with drugs, according to a report in the Muscatine News Tribune. Now this was the one and only article. With this report, so I'm not entirely sure of its accuracy. There was also a man's hat located, and there were some buggy tracks made from rubber tires. Now, the tracks ran along the river and north to a distance of probably 300 yards, at which point it came to a boat landing and stopped. Now, it was surmised that the men probably meant to throw the body into the water at that point. But the water there would have been too shallow for anyone to have believed that the woman had drowned, and the men likely would have realized this, so they then probably dragged the woman through the timber and along the bank to a point closer to where the body was found, which would account for the presence of all the cockleburs and Spanish needles that were all over her dress up to her waist. Thank you. On October 30th, just eight days after Mabel's body was found, the news rang out that Chief of Detectives George McNutt was taking up the case. Beloved chief of detectives had finally returned from Canada after he had gotten his man. There had been a criminal in Des Moines who had burned down a building for the insurance money and then jumped bail, running off to Canada. He had been captured in Canada, so McNutt had gone up there to get him. Something had gone wrong with the paperwork, and McNutt was determined to stay there until it was all worked out. It took seven weeks, but he would not leave Canada without his man. He was determined. He really was. He came home a hero, and he immediately took over the Mabel Schofield mystery. Now, right off the bat, he, quote, exploded a number of false clues, and that is spelled C-L-E-W-S. So the papers were funny back then. And he vowed to, quote, throw much light on the stories of Dr. Garrity and Mrs. Dean. Now, he talked a really big game, that McNutt. But then he seemingly decided that the case was to remain a mystery forever. Now, one person of interest that he took a good hard look at, though, was someone who had very close access to Mabel. Now, she was living in the home of Jasper Thomas, right? And he had a son who was Mabel's age, Charles Thomas. Charles was 20 at the time of Mabel's death, and he was working as a hack man. What is a hack man? So basically, he drove a taxi. He worked at a livery stable, which is where they had horses and buggies that people could rent if they needed. Like a ride somewhere, or if they needed a place to board a horse, they could board their horse at the livery stable. But they could also call a livery stable and arrange to have someone give them a ride somewhere, kind of like calling a cab or an Uber. But they called them hacks. So that's what they called taxis. Basically, back then they were hacks. So you would call a hack or you would arrange for a hack. And the driver of the hack was a hack man. Pac-man yeah but hackman so yeah so Charles Thomas was working as a hackman for a man named Mr. Press and he worked at a place in town that was called the Kentucky Livery Stable. So even though this was Iowa, but it was called the Kentucky Library Stable. Well, they are known for their horse races. So anyway, Detective McNutt had questioned Charles, which makes sense. I mean, considering he lived in the home with Mabel. And Charles said that on the morning of Saturday, October 21st, he was sent by his boss to drive someone to a funeral. And when Detective McNutt questioned Mabel's cousin, Maggie Hammond, who also lived in the home, she said that she saw Charles asleep in the front room at 5 a. m. on Sunday morning. So he clearly couldn't have been busy, you know, dumping Mabel's body in a buggy at the river. So Charles's alibi was super tight. So after about a month, sometime around like Thanksgiving of 1899, it was all just a mystery that could not be solved. And the police stopped investigating. So not. Yay, McNutt takes the case. So anyway, they said that the best theory to account for the death was that she had probably been acquainted with a man who had exercised a powerful hypnotic influence over her and caused her to commit suicide. You will commit suicide. Yeah, that was their best guess as to what had happened. Oh, McNutt. Yeah. So anyway, the good people of Des Moines were not okay with it not being solved at all. So around the beginning of December. Three members of the community took charge of the investigation. They were like, 'We will take this into our own hands.' Thank you very much, McNutt. Right. Help you are. So Reverend I. N. McCash, and then a bank cashier named C. A. Crawford, and then a real estate dealer named Joseph E. Fagan, they started to look into things and they actually hired a man named Detective Pierce. And Detective Pierce made some serious headway and he found some very interesting information. He pierced his way through. Nice one. So Detective Pierce took the information he found to Justice Tress on January 9th of 1900. And four warrants were written up. And these arrest warrants were written for a man named Hugh Rau, Guy Howell, Frank Bender, and wouldn't you know it, Charles Thomas. Whoa, who would have thought? Now, Hugh Rowe, 20 years old, was arrested at his workplace, which was a pharmacy, and he was taken to Des Moines and put in the Polk County Jail. He was held there for 35 minutes. He was given no supper, and then he was released.

So what happened was: 35:11

Judge Tress had been notified when he was arrested, like, 'OK, we got him, you know,' and here he is. And Justice Tress, actually, after he had issued the warrants, then he sat and thought about it for a second. And he was like, you know, I don't know if that evidence is enough. It's probably not. Maybe I should like cancel this. I don't know what to do. And so he actually changed his mind. So when he got the phone call saying that Hugh had been arrested and was in jail, he was like, 'Yeah, actually, just let him go.' Nevermind. Psych. Yeah. He was having a hypnotic influence. Yeah. Maybe so. So he changed his mind, actually let him go. So they let him go. They canceled the whole thing. Guy Howell had also been arrested. Immediately dismissed. Charles Thomas, when they went to go arrest him, they couldn't find him right away. So he wasn't arrested before they were told, nevermind, don't arrest him. And then Frank Bender, they hadn't even like attempted yet. So they were like, nevermind. Now, I don't know what they had against Guy Howell or Frank Bender. Thank you. And their names don't come up again. So I don't know what the deal was with that. All I know is Hugh Rowe worked at a pharmacy. And you might find out why that is important later. And you will hear a lot more about Charles Thomas. So stay tuned. Anyway. Oh, are you wondering what evidence he uncovered? Well, here it comes. So here's what they found out. Charles Thomas purchased poison? What? What? That's wild. And McNutt didn't figure that out? I don't know. That's weird. Some hero he is. The chief of detectives missed that? I don't know. When they found a drug-soaked handkerchief? She must have just been hypnotized. Weird. Anyway, Charles Thomas purchased poison from Hugh Rowe at the pharmacy where he worked on both of the two days before Mabel died. Isn't that something? The poison that he bought on October 19th was chloroform. What? And the poison that he bought on October 20th, the day before she went missing, was chloral hydrate, otherwise known as... Knockout drops. Now, they had not yet exhumed her body to analyze her stomach, so maybe that's why Justice Tress thought it wasn't enough to arrest him yet, but they did eventually exhume. Wait, so... They buried her. And then exhumed her. Yeah. They didn't do like any sort of autopsy. Um. Well, they did because they said she didn't have water in her lungs. Right. They knew that her lungs and her stomach were completely dry. But they didn't like scientifically analyze like the lining of her stomach or anything. Scientifically for that time, right to like do traces because eventually they had actually sent her stomach to that highland park college, um, to have them where they where her brother was in school to be a pharmacist, but they had them actually look um for traces of poison. Ádám! College. Interesting. Yeah. So yeah, they hadn't done an in-depth autopsy before. So she was exhumed later. So anyway, you would think finding out that he actually purchased poison, you know, knockout drops the day before she died or went missing, that things would move along quickly at this point. But did they? Never. No, they did not. So that almost arrest was in January of 1900. Well, in August of 1900, there was still seemingly no movement. A man named Alderman Fagan, over in Maxburg, which was Mabel's hometown, he was on some sort of Mabel Schofield committee. He issued a statement on August 7th saying, quote, 'We have sufficient evidence to warrant us in saying that Mabel Schofield was murdered.' Mabel Schofield was murdered. Because see, prior to this, the coroner's verdict, like official verdict in Des Moines, was that she must have committed suicide somehow. So August of 1900 must be right after she was exhumed and they realized that there were traces of chloral hydrate and chloroform in her stomach. Best for the bowels. If you haven't a regular healthy movement of the bowels every day, you're sick or will be. Keep your bowels open and be well. Force in the shape of violent physic or pill poison is dangerous. The smoothest, easiest, most perfect way of keeping the bowels clear and clean is to take candy cathartic caskets. Pleasant, palatable, potent, tastes good, do good. Never sicken, weaken, or gripe. 10 cents. Write for free sample and booklet on health. Keep your blood clean. Now that they knew it was murder without a doubt, this committee in Maxburg had collected $500 to be paid out as a reward to whoever brought in the evidence that would lead to a conviction of the murderer. The committee was issuing a public plea for Des Moines to also raise funds to add to it. Then on August 24th, Des Moines answered the call and the reward was raised to $2, 000. Olivia, how much would $2, 000 in the year 1900 equate to in 2025? $76, 142. Okay, that's not bad. Well, again, you would think now that we know Charles Thomas bought poison and now we know that Mabel had poison in her stomach, things would move along rather quickly. But they didn't because Charles had that darn alibi. Nonetheless, evidence was brought before a grand jury for a preliminary hearing in January of 1902. So... August of 1900 was when they were like, 'Oh, she does have poison in her stomach.' And then it's January of 1902 when it finally goes before a grand jury, right? This is taking forever. So anyway, goes before your grand jury. Now, all of this might get a little confusing for those of you listening, because it was confusing for me just reading it. There are several people involved with the title of judge who are not sitting on the bench acting as judges. So I was very confused. Sitting on the bench through all of this are called justices. The only person who has the title of judge who will keep coming up is actually acting as the prosecutor. So I actually called a friend of mine this morning. So shout out to Erica to ask her about this. She has a law degree. And she said that, basically, Judge Spurrier, who is the prosecutor, likely had the title of judge because he would have been a judge in another court, perhaps, and was just like. acting as the prosecutor for criminal court or just for this case or something. But since his highest title was judge, he still would have been referred to as Judge Spurrier. So I just wanted to clear that up. So when I refer to Judge Spurrier, he is the prosecutor. So he's not the guy sitting on the bench. Anyway, so that it may sound confusing and I apologize. So anyway, Judge Spurrier himself, the prosecutor, had actually declined to prosecute this case prior to 1902 because he personally didn't believe that Mabel had not committed suicide. But finally, by January of 1902, he had seen enough evidence to convince him that this was, in fact, a murder. So Judge Spurrier agreed to take it to the grand jury to try to get an indictment against Charles Thomas for murder. Yeah. So some really amazing things happened during this preliminary hearing with the grand jury. Brought before the grand jury was all the evidence. Proving that Charles purchased the poison. He said that he was buying it for Wells and Ante's undertakers. And he said it was because that's where he was. Employed in October of 1899. And he said that it was because they had told him to buy it for them. Well, they came up and testified that he did not work for them until much later than that. And they had never tasked him with purchasing poison when he worked for them anyway. So that's weird because, you know, he worked at a library stable. He was a hack man. Yeah. Also, remember that super tight alibi? He told everyone that he had driven someone to a funeral that Saturday, so he couldn't have been murdered. Murdering anybody that day. Well, his old boss at the library stable took a look at his records and realized that the funeral was actually Sunday, October 22nd. The day the body was found. And then, you know, Mr. Press remembered that on that Sunday, he had asked Charles why he hadn't shown up for work the day before. And Charles had told him he had been in Highland Park attending a sick girl. So Highland Park is another area of Des Moines. So this proves he actually had no alibi at all. And furthermore, it turns out that there were two other young ladies found, daughters of prominent families in West Des Moines who had previously been drugged by Charles Thomas. Would you look at that? And they reported that they had been unconscious from 10 to 20 hours. Charles. And obviously, I mean, they didn't say this. This wasn't in the papers. But I would assume this means they must have been sexually assaulted because why else would he have done it? I mean, was he just watching them sleep? Like, I mean. He's Edward Cullen before Edward Cullen was a thing in Twilight. Okay, I haven't seen those, so I'm like, what are you talking about? He would go into Bella's room. while she was sleeping and just watch her sleep. Mmm. Okay. It's bizarre. It was supposed to be romantic. Wow. Watson. That is so creepy. Okay. Who knows? Maybe he had some weird thing where he just wanted to like... Smell their feet or something. I don't know. I don't know. But I mean, I think the papers probably wouldn't say. What? You know, wouldn't say that because obviously like that would be. That could ruin their prospects of ever getting married. You know what I mean? Back then. So they probably wouldn't print that to say what was happening. But yeah. So Mabel, however, was found not to have been sexually assaulted, you know, during the autopsy, probably because, you know, she died. So he was too busy panicking. And was probably not into necrophilia. Thank goodness. Yeah. Um, anyway. Now, on top of that, a man who worked at a restaurant came forward and related an experience when Charles had been there with a group of people and a married woman who was with them narrowly escaped a drugging. So I don't know if, like, someone witnessed Charles putting drops in her drink, and was able to stop her from drinking it or what happened, but somehow she was able to avoid being drugged and knew about the attempt. It really is crazy that... drugging has been going on for so long. Yeah, I was surprised that knockout drops existed in 1899. I had no idea. Wild. Yeah. So on January 18th, after a lot of testimony, the court went to recess. There were huge crowds of people wanting to. to catch a glimpse of Charles Thomas. So by this time, he's 23 years old, and he's potentially facing charges for a murder that had been, you know, on the lips of Des Moines people for... two whole years. There were 1500 people jammed in the entrance to the courtroom. And he's just laughing with his attorneys like, 'Oh, you know,' like, 'whatever.' Well, Charles didn't like Justice Tress. And so he's the one who is presiding over this preliminary hearing with the grand jury and everything. And Charles thought he was biased against him. So at 10 o'clock that morning, there was a hearing about getting a change of venue. And their request was granted immediately. And the new presiding judge was Justice Duncan. And then an incredibly shocking thing happened on Tuesday, January 21st of 1902. Justice Duncan dismissed the case against Charles Thomas entirely. He said that the state had failed to establish that a murder had even happened. He said the evidence against Charles Thomas was far too flimsy to even stand, and so Charles Thomas was free to go. Idiot. Yeah. So that failed attempt at taking this to trial happened in January of 1902. And that is a big disappointment. But is this case over, Olivia? Please no. No, it isn't. It is not over. Now, a crazy thing happened in 1903 that is worth mentioning. I found like this really interesting article. An inmate named Clarence Keeble had reached out from the penitentiary and said that he had information that would help solve the Mabel Schofield murder. He was working with the warden of the penitentiary and he said that he had a friend who knew firsthand that Charles Thomas was guilty. Well, in April of 1903, a man named Arthur Perry attempted to murder his ex-girlfriend, Miss Bruce. Shot her and she wound up surviving, but he shot her and then he shot himself. You know, he committed suicide. And it turns out that Arthur Perry was the man that the inmate, um, had said this info was going to come from. That, you know, Arthur Perry had all the info. So Miss Bruce, who Arthur Perry had attempted to murder, was actually very, very close friends with the gal who Charles was now married to. Now, I tried to find when Charles got married and who he was married to. I couldn't find it. I know by that time in 1902, he and his wife were living in Nebraska. I do know that because he had to get on a train from Nebraska to come down to that grand jury's preliminary hearing in 1902. But anyway, so yeah, it sounds like they all knew. It's kind of like this whole group thing going on. It's kind of bizarre. But anyway, so at the time they were like, you know, Arthur Perry took the secret of Mabel's death to his grave and now we'll never know what happened. So, yeah. But anyway, luckily that's not how it ended because in August of 1904, the Polk County Grand Jury was asked to again consider the famous Mabel Schofield case, because something new came to light. Something really, really sinister. Something that made me want to say swear words and prompted me to send you a lot of texts with a lot of capital letters. And you sent me some really big eye emojis. It was December 31st of 1904 when the grand jury finally found true Bill against Charles Thomas. In the murder of Mabel Schofield five years later, citing new evidence. And I'm not even going to beat around the bush because I'm so excited, I have to tell you. It turns out a Dr. William L. Taylor has now sworn an affidavit saying that Charles Thomas told him that he had given Mabel Schofield too much poison. Now, listeners, you may be thinking to yourselves, oh, maybe a year or two later, Charles told this doctor what he had done, or maybe he confessed after the fact. Act, right? Or you might be thinking, perhaps this doctor is a psychologist that he confessed to. Maybe you're thinking something along those lines, but trust me when I say you are not prepared for this. Okay. Are you ready to be really outraged? Okay. All right. When I saw this, you guys. I thought for sure this had to be made up. This had to be one of those wild stories that the old newspapers got completely wrong. Didn't I say I wasn't going to beat around the bush? I'm beating around the bush. Oh, okay. Man, I thought they were like blowing this out of proportion. Are you ready for this? All right, everybody, take a deep breath and sit down. Charles Thomas. would talk to Dr. Taylor about the use of poisons for the sake of drugging and violating young ladies. He sought advice. from this doctor about how much poison to use to get the desired result. He sought advice as to which poisons were the right ones. We're talking dosage. So Dr. Taylor told him how to drug women. I'm sorry. What? What? What? Taylor. Taylor. Taylor. Mm-hmm. Charles Thomas purchased the poison in advance knowing full well he was going to drug Mabel that day. She came home after seeing her mother off at the station at 7 a. m. and it was just Just the two of them. He must have made her some tea or coffee that morning, but he put in a few extra drops that she was not expecting. To Charles' dismay, it wasn't enough. wasn't like when he had drugged the other girls. Something had gone horribly wrong. He called Dr. Taylor's office, but Dr. Taylor was not in yet. Dr. Taylor's colleague, Dr. Dykes, rushed over to the Thomas house, but there was nothing he could do. Dr.

Dykes was there when Mabel died around 8: 53:38

40 in the morning. Dr. Dykes was still there when Dr. Taylor arrived 20 minutes later at around 9 a. m. Now came the matter of what to do with Mabel Schofield's dead body. At some point, Charles's brother-in-law, August Hast, arrived at the house. We can only guess that Mabel's body was put in an empty room in the house for the remainder of the day. We know from witness testimony that the entire upstairs part of the home was completely unoccupied, and in fact there was a door to the upper floor that was shut and kept locked. So literally nobody ever went up there. And then, early the next morning, her body was spirited away by horse and buggy and deposited in the Des Moines River. Baby carriages, baby cabs, and baby go-karts. We have a large line of these goods in new styles and lowest prices. Stein Furniture Co. After dumping her body, Charles Thomas went to work driving a hack. He told one customer that Mabel Schofield had left town for good that day. It was odd because there was no conversation preceding it. To another customer, he said that Mabel Schofield had died, and this was six hours before her body was found. All of this came out in the trial in February of 1905. Did Dr. Taylor and Dr. Dykes face charges or any sort of scrutiny? Not that I can find in any newspaper. In the closing arguments, Dr. Taylor was accused of making it all up in hopes of receiving the reward money. Apparently, earlier in his career, he had forged something for someone. To get $14, which is like $533 today, the defense attorney said that was proof that he would certainly lie to get $2, 000. That was a very good point. But what doctor would go on a witness stand to make up a story about helping a 20-year-old drug and rape woman when that would more than likely make him lose his license and potentially put him in prison alongside the murderer? I find that unlikely. Like, I think it would be more likely that he would have pointed the finger at someone else. But let me tell you how the Dr. Taylor story surfaced in the first place. Dr. Taylor had a very young daughter, Bertha Taylor, who had been just 13 when Mabel died in 1899. She had heard him say that Charles Thomas had killed Mabel Schofield. I don't know if she overheard him having a conversation with someone, maybe an argument with her mother. Because her parents, Dr. Taylor and her mother, got divorced in September of 1901. But Bertha heard her father say it. Bertha was working as a maid in the home of a carpenter by the name of John Wales while she was in her teens, and she told John Wales what she had heard her dad say. Now at the time, Dr. Taylor was both a doctor and a paper hanger. So I assume that means wallpaper. So he must not have been ultra successful as a doctor. Like in my imagination, I feel like. If he had to be hanging wallpaper on the side, then maybe he wasn't as successful of a doctor as he had hoped. I mean, do you get that idea as well? Unless he just really, really loved to hang wallpaper? Like, I don't know. It's his hobby, his pastime, please. It's the passion of his, like, I don't know. I don't know. Some men collect trains. Some men hang wallpaper. Maybe. So, yeah, John Wales, you know, here's young Bertha mentioned this and he was very curious and he wanted more information. So John Wales, who had been a. Carpenter he gave up carpentry and decided to go into the paper hanging business just so he could take jobs alongside Dr. Taylor to get more information and by doing this he got the whole story out of him. Loose lips sink ships. Yes, they do. Baby! So John Wales took what he knew to the police and John Wales eventually got the reward money, which had gone up to $2, 500 by the end of the trial. Because the governor added another 500 to sweeten the pot. Okay. Yeah. And also by the end of the trial, John Wales had become a detective. So, yeah, it turns out he really liked the undercover sort of work and he turned it into a career. So go, John. Like, that's my kind of guy. You know, he found his calling. From carpentry to wallpaper to detective. Yeah, I think that's really cool, honestly. He's like, you know, like an armchair detective. Like he was like, 'I'm just going to do this thing.' Yeah, that's pretty cool. He wanted justice. Yeah, and he got it. It's awesome. So anyway, just the fact that that's how the story came out. It wasn't like the doctor was just like, 'Oh, I'm going to make up this story and I'm going to, you know, to try to get this money.' Like it came out from someone else, you know. So obviously I don't think it was fake.

So also another thing is: 58:49

I don't think Dr. Dykes had any idea that Dr. Taylor was that shady, because, you know, Dr. Dykes gets this frantic call from Charles Thomas. And I mean, he was trying to call Dr. Taylor who wasn't there, and was just like, 'You have to come here.' You know, I. gave her some poison and she's not doing okay. So Dr. Dykes showed up and was just like, 'I can't, I can't do anything, you know, that I, it's too late.' And then he was there when she died. And after that, Dr. Dykes left town. He was like, 'I'm out.' Cause he was probably. Like, what have you gotten me into, you know? Mm hmm. Damn you, Taylor. You know, like, what have you gotten me into? You know, and so he just he moved and they actually had to track him down. And he did come from Kansas City. To back up Dr. Taylor's story, because Dr. Taylor got on the stand and just admitted everything, like, yes, this happened, yes, this was true. Um, and Dr. Dykes backed him up, but I couldn't find any any direct quotes or anything in the papers from Dr. Dykes, just the fact that he was going to be testifying to corroborate the story. So anyway. Craziness. So during the trial on Saturday, February 11th, some very damning evidence came to light. So remember I mentioned that there were hoof marks in the sand by the river? Well, it was clear that one of the horse's feet was deformed. It looked more like that of a mule. And because the foot was deformed, the horseshoe... had to be specially made for that foot. And it undoubtedly left like, you know, a different sort of hoof mark. So this was noted in the evidence notes. Well, interesting. Enough, Charles Thomas's brother-in-law, August Hest, owned just such a horse with a deformed foot, and he kept it boarded at the very same livery stable where Charles Thomas worked at the time of the murder in October of 1899. You would think that they'd be smart enough to be like, 'Maybe we shouldn't take the one horse. With the one foot.' That could really give us away. Hmm-mmm. But maybe they weren't thinking about, you know, footprints in the sand. Like, I don't know. I don't know. Now, of course, the defense insisted. insisted that Mabel had committed suicide because it had been such a back and forth thing for all these years. So that was the whole defense— nope, it wasn't even murder. It wasn't murder. So they brought up an expert to say, well, just eating table salt would have left those same traces of chloral in her stomach. And they brought up doctors that said it would have taken... and at least four hours for her to die if she had been poisoned the way that they said she was. And they brought up witnesses who said, you know, I saw a young girl walking along the banks of the... river alone that day so it must have been her and she committed suicide. They even had witnesses that said that when they pulled the body from the river, a whole gallon of water poured out of her mouth. That's why her stomach and lungs were dry during the autopsy. So, I mean, they had all kinds of things to argue. But how did August Hest's hat? wind up by the river? And what about the deformed horse print? And what about the purchase of two poisons on the two days before she died? And what about the lies about where he said he had been the day that she died? And what about telling customers that she was dead before her body had even been found? And what about Dr. Dykes and Dr. Taylor both admitting having been there with her body and with Charles and August on the day that she died? So both sides gave their closing arguments and made very good points. But Judge Spurrier gave a very passionate closing statement. So listen to this for yourself. Let no housewife hereafter ever say that Mabel Schofield suicided. The doctors who held the autopsy say that she was not drowned. As long as time shall endure, let no doctor ever say that Mabel Schofield suicided. It is said that by the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every fact be established. Two horsemen say that the defendant told them that Mabel Schofield was dead six hours before her body was found. Hereafter, let no horsemen say that Mabel Schofield suicided. Mr. Press, the honest horseman, says that Charles Thomas did not drive one of the hacks to the collar funeral on that fatal day. And gives to you the names of all the men who drove for him. And he was the defendant's witness whom they refused to call because they could not force him to swear to a lie. Hereafter, let no businessman dare say that Mabel Schofield suicided. Mrs. Jarvis says that Maggie Hammond told her of the conditions which existed at the Thomas home that day and night, which shows that Maggie Hammond knew that Mabel Schofield had been foully dealt with. And thereafter let no woman in this land, no matter how low she may sink, be heard to say that Mabel Schofield suicided. Maggie Hammond has said upon the stand that she would not tell this jury all she knew. No matter how much she may think of Charlie, I hope that she will never again intimate to anyone or anywhere that Mabel Schofield suicided. In view of all this, a veritable mountain of testimony, hereafter let no human being of high or low estate, of any country or nationality, or clime, as long as time itself endures, hint that Mabel Schofield suicided. And if it must be said in that great eternity to come, while the clock shall strike its eternal one. Let it be when heaven falls and virtue perishing shall yield her precious form to lustful vice and the prince of darkness shall command them. meanest of his clan to scale the zenith of all cruelty by act or deed, to sound of depths of hell, with rivalry, then let that darkest, sleekest, crimson-colored devil of them all rise slowly up and, with pretended sage and serious air, hiss out with his double-bladed tongue, hiss out that Mabel Schofield suicided, and lash his forked tail in ecstasy. The jury began deliberations on Friday, March 3rd at 3 p. m. and they were out all night. Finally,

at 11: 1:05:23

15 a. m. on March 4th, after 20 hours, the jury had a verdict. They filed back into Justice McVeigh's courtroom and handed the clerk the verdict. Charles Thomas was guilty of the murder of Mabel Schofield, and his sentence was life imprisonment. Yes, he was. Charles's mother and wife both shrieked and fell to the floor, and his wife was tearing at her hair. He was taken to jail, and he made a statement. I am not guilty and the men who have been prosecuting me know it. I will get a new trial and prove my innocence to the world yet. I am only sorry that I can't return to my Nebraska farm now and get to work on it. Fast forward to Friday, March 24th of 1916, and there is an article titled, 'No Opposition to Pardon,' in the Sioux City Journal.

It says: 1:06:13

'Des Moines man serving a life sentence for murder of Mabel Schofield, known as Iowa's costliest convict, as his conviction cost $26, 000, is likely to be pardoned because he has been a model prisoner.' Good grief. So, $26, 000— that is, how much was that in 1905? Let me look. $806, 819. 29. Wow. That was pretty costly. Holy cow. So yeah, even those who were against him at his trial in 1905 came before the board and urged it to grant his pardon. Even the warden, Warden Sanders, was hopeful that he would be pardoned. So here's a quote from the article. Two weeks ago, the warden's little girl was bitten by a dog. Thomas, who is a trustee, hurriedly placed the child in an automobile and raced to a doctor's office. It had been feared the dog that bit the child was mad, but later it was found not to be. The warden says Thomas has proven a model prisoner and is now ready to take his proper place in society's ranks. New evidence to the effect that Mabel Schofield committed suicide by drowning was presented to the State Board of Parole at the hearing today. So yeah, now they were trying to say, 'Okay, she committed suicide after all.' So what does it mean to be a trustee? Because it sounds like he could just leave. Yeah. I believe he went when you're a model prisoner, you can earn certain freedoms and stuff. So basically, he probably had. Had earned the privileges to be able to leave, but he had to be back at night. I mean, just different prisons do different things. Like some jails even. Like you, you can leave and work like a work release program and then you just have to be back at night and stuff. So. Yeah. Apparently he was able to drive and be around the warden's daughter. So that's crazy. Yeah. Pretty wild. I bet it's not like that today. But anyway, so that new evidence that they found was the following. Quote, C. O. Reinerson, a streetcar conductor, testified that a girl answering the description of Mabel Schofield was a passenger on his car the day before her body was found floating in the Des Moines River and that she got off at a point near the river. That was the evidence that she probably killed herself. That a girl who fit her description rode a car that day and got off somewhere near the river. Hmm. Yeah. That's not going to hold water. Oh, no. Too soon? Sorry. It won't hold a gallon of water. Man. Anyway, so ultimately, Charles Thomas was successful with his parole board. They commuted his life sentence to a 30-year sentence with the possibility of parole. And on December 1st of 1917, he was finally set free. Okay, so what I'm hearing is it sounds like a lot of people feel like they saw Mabel in a lot of places. Wouldn't a lot of girls in that time— period match that description? She was a white girl, brown hair up in a bun, wearing a dark dress. Every girl wore her hair like that. Every girl. wore dresses like that. Didn't they all basically match that description? And the streetcar conductor is remembering something from 16 years ago. So is he really going to remember it that well? Could anybody remember it that well from... 16 years ago, especially that Doc Garrity guy. Why was he so sure that he saw Mabel Schofield when he couldn't have? He couldn't have possibly seen Mabel Saturday night because she was dead by Saturday morning. Why was he so sure he saw her Saturday night? Well, let's talk about eyewitness testimony. So I do love talking about this with my psychology students. Eyewitness testimony is very unreliable, actually, especially when it comes to identifying people or like remembering facts about events that we didn't know we were going to. Need to remember later. So it's called selective attention. And there are two types of selective attention. We've got inattentional blindness, which refers to our inability to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere. And we've got change blindness, which is the failure to notice changes in the environment. And there are really fun videos that you can watch on YouTube that will demonstrate your inability to notice things that you are not looking for. And they're really fun. I love playing them in the classroom because the students, I mean, they're just shocked at what they missed. And it was seriously right there on the screen in front of them. And they completely missed it. Um, so for all of you listening, I just head to YouTube and look up 'change blindness' and'inattentional blindness', and you just watch the videos. You will be shocked. It's, it's awesome. Just to see what you don't see. It's great. There's also this phenomenon called the 'misinformation effect'. So you might be present when an incident happens. Right. Which you didn't know was going to happen, or something like, you know, let's say someone's, you know, just walking down the street and walks by, and then a cop comes up and says, 'Hey, did you see that guy that walked by 10 minutes ago?' And you're like, 'Yeah.' What was he holding in his hand? You didn't know you were supposed to be paying attention to what he was holding in his hand. So you don't know, you know, I don't know, you know, because you didn't know you needed to know that. Um, so anyway, when you're questioned, depending on how you're questioned, you might have little tidbits of information planted in your head that will shape the way you remember things. So, if you saw a little fender bender take place, right? And then the officer asks you, did you see the yield sign from where you were standing? Now you're going to think there was a yield sign at the intersection, even if it was actually a stop sign. And then later on, when you're asked to describe the intersection, you might say that there was a yield sign. And you might actually remember it that way just because they had asked it that way. You know, weird things like that. So, in this story, when we heard the part where Dr. Garrity and Mrs. Hattie Dean. Oh, I don't think I mentioned that they actually got together to talk about it. I didn't mention that. So Mrs. Hattie Dean, she was talking about, you know, the buggy that had been in front of her house. The two men were arguing, and there's, you know, the limp girl between them. And then Dr. Garrity was saying, 'Oh, I saw her on the street talking to these two men.' So the police actually got them together and said, 'You know, well, did you see the same people?' And so they were like, 'Oh, yeah, one was tall and one was short.' And Dr. Garrity was like, 'Well, yeah, and the tall man was wearing this, and the short man was wearing this.' And Hattie was like, 'Well, yeah, I do remember that he was wearing this. He was wearing that. Yes, I did see that hat. Yes, he was wearing that. And so they were talking about it. And the interesting thing, and it's unfortunate, is that Doc Garrity was leading the conversation and saying what the men were wearing. And it was Hattie saying, 'Oh yeah, yeah, I do remember that.' So it's highly possible that Hattie, who did see Charles Thomas in August Haste with the body of Mabel Schofield. She was led to misremember the clothes that they were wearing because Doc Garrity was describing two completely different men that he had seen the night before, but insisting that they were with the same girl. And now, as far as Doc Garrity being so sure about recognizing Mabel's face, we do know— there is another girl in Des Moines who looked almost exactly like Mabel and could have passed for her sister. So we do know that. And I would say... he had to have seen this other girl who looked just so much like her. But, um, Listeners. How good do you think you are with faces? I love doing this in the classroom. I love sending my psych students to take the super recognizers facial recognition test. If you go to Google and you just type in 'super recognizer face test,' you will find a couple actual research studies that you can participate in. In. And you'll go through a series of these online tests where they will test your ability to recognize faces. And you may be shocked at your ability or your inability to differentiate between faces. Some people are just not able to distinguish between faces very well. And I don't want to brag, but I did come up as a super recognizer, which I thought was pretty cool. I haven't taken it yet, so I don't know. Yeah, it's really neat. The one that I did was through a university in the UK. And at the end, it was like, you know, you may be a super recognizer. We would love to study you more, you know, blah, blah, blah. But because I'm in the US, you know, there was no follow up or anything. It was really cool. One of my students this term actually did too come up as a super recognizer. So Mason, if you're ever listening to this, like, woohoo, welcome to the club. But anyway, it's really fun because I walk around the classroom and I'm like, 'What did you score? What did you score?' And it's so interesting to see the variation because some of them score way below average. Some, you know, are much higher, some are right there on average and stuff. So it's just really, really interesting to see the variation and how well people, you know, recognize faces and some people are just so much better than others. But when I Googled it, um, yesterday to try to find exactly the one that I use, I mean, I'd have to go specifically into the notes for the presentation I use in my class to find exactly that one. But I found one through Sydney, Australia as well. So I want to do that one too. But yeah, if you just Google 'super recognizer test', then I'm sure you can find one and see. See, you know, just test your ability to see faces, but, um, anyway. If I had to guess, I would say that Hattie Dean was probably a super recognizer because she only saw Mabel in the moonlight for like a couple minutes while they were arguing about which way was the fastest way to get to the river. And then she was able to pick her out of a group photo. From high school, which, I mean, this was a couple years after she graduated, but she was able to pick her out of a group photo a few days later. But then Doc Garrity, I would say, say was not a super recognizer because he'd supposedly been seeing her around for like six weeks and still couldn't pick her out from someone who just looked similar. So he had some form of facial blindness, I would say. But I don't know, even after staring at her for like 15 to 20 minutes straight. Thinking it was the same person. I don't know. But yeah, anyway, so yeah, listeners, if you go test your ability to tell the difference between faces, you should share it with your friends and loved ones as well and just compare your scores and look at the differences between them and just marvel at the differences. And then I want you to think about how... How reliable you would be as a witness on a witness stand trying to identify someone you had never seen before. The Innocence Project actually... Um, when they. Looked at all of their exonerated cases, like by DNA, where they have proven by DNA that the person is not guilty and they've gotten them out. And then looking at what it was that actually convicted the person, like why were they convicted? About 75% of them were convicted on faulty eyewitness testimony, where it was someone incorrectly saying, like, 'I saw them with my own eyes.' That was the person who did it. So eyewitness testimony is not very reliable. And yeah, so it's very interesting that we can be fooled by our eyeballs. Hmm. Anyway, that's it. That is... That's our story. We're sticking to it. Well... Shout out to Ancestry. com, FamilySearch. Com, Newspapers . com. Send us some fan mail. Follow our socials, Forgotten Felonies on Facebook and Forgotten underscore Felonies on Instagram. Um... I was interested in this best for the vowels one. Mm-hmm. And I love the baby carriages, baby cabs, and baby go-karts. Baby go-kart. Yeah, that's crazy. Man, they—are not diseases of the rectum cured without knife jeez Oh, these are crazy. We used to be Ha ha ha ha. Thank you. Baby go-kart. I don't know, so that one that has the Ayers or Ayers pills or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Above it, if you open up the whole image. There's a couple above it too. Like many people, cannot drink coffee at night and then, but short of conscience. Short of conscience. Sort of conscience. Man is merely a gorilla with a conscience. If there is any semblance of truth in his theory, then there are a lot of men who are just plain gorillas. Yeah, like I don't even know what that is. Yeah, what is... Oh man, 10 cents for every package. Oh, just, oh, okay. I like the Ayers one. Dizzy? Then your liver isn't acting well. Piles fistula and all diseases of the rectum cured without knife, ligature, or caustic. I do, yeah. That's perfect health. How would we do that one? So yeah, that piles fistula one because then it has read testimonial. So it would need to be kind of a different voice. I would do a southern accent for that one. Gentlemen, before you treated me for piles, I've been trouble for eight or ten years. I don't know. That'd be awesome. Because...