Baby John: The Boy Who Lived Through Fire - Part 2

A burning barn in the snow finally breaks Isabella J. Martin’s control over her son. 

In Episode 2, Baby John is arrested—and for the first time in his life, separated from the woman who shaped every moment of his childhood. What follows is chaos inside the courtroom: Isabella acting as her son’s attorney, arguing with the judge, confessing to arson in open court, and then vanishing on the final day of the hearing.

As Baby John remains silent under her command, authorities begin to see the truth—this was not a criminal partnership, but a child forced into crime. And when Isabella disappears, the focus of the case finally begins to shift. The barn fire was only the beginning.

Transcript

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What do cows, cigars, and boots have in common? You're about 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 tales of vintage villainy that time forgot. This is the second episode in our Baby John series. He was the reputed son of Isabella J. Martin. If you have not listened to the previous episode, which is part one, you need to stop right now and go back. Yeah, otherwise you are going to be very, very lost. It's true. You have to start there. This episode will be here when you get back. Now, originally, I thought we'd only have two episodes, but while writing this episode, I got down to page 19, and I realized that I have to do a third. Because, I mean, there's just so much to share, and I have a really hard time leaving things out. Also, we have a special treat. Baby John's great-great-grandson, also named John Martin, is voicing the Baby John quotes for us. And he's actually just a couple years older than Baby John was at the time that he made these statements. So I think that's just really, really cool. And his mother, Baby John's great-granddaughter, is voicing the Isabella Martin quotes. Now, this is their first time doing any voice acting, all right? So go easy on them, all right? But it's pretty cool. So let's get down to it. Just after sunrise on the morning of Sunday, January 5th, 1908, a man by the name of Van B. Young in Trinity County, California, was hunting on what was then known as Brown's Mountain. He noticed a cloud of smoke in the sky and wasn't sure what its source might be, way out there in the wilderness. It was too thick to be fog. It couldn't possibly be winter mist. No, this was definitely smoke. After about an hour of looking for Wild Game, his curiosity got the better of him. Mr. Young began walking in the direction of the smoke through the rugged terrain for what turned out to be a few hours. To be about a quarter of a mile. When he arrived, he realized he was looking at the charred remains of a place he knew. This was the cattle barn owned by Mrs. Maggie Bowie and her sister, Mrs. Mary Morris. They had owned this barn for years. It had belonged to Mrs. Morris and her husband, James, long before James had passed away— just three weeks before. But now there was nothing left but collapsed beams and smoking ash. Whatever had happened here had happened fast, and it had happened in the dead of night. But that's not the only thing he noticed. There were footprints. There were clear footprints. sharp impressions in the untouched snow. Boot prints actually leading both to and from the ruins of this once massive structure. Van Young followed the footprints, one step at a time. They ran alongside what was known as the Testy Brothers' mining ditch. Charles and William Testy were two of the first to be found. brothers from Weaverville who owned a mine out there in that area. Mr. Young could tell by these pristine footprints that these tracks were made by heavy boots with very peculiar nails in the soles. They were peculiar because they were so very numerous, and there were two different kinds of nails used. He followed the ditch and the footprints as far down as a telephone line, and then Mr. Young veered off the trail and crossed over the hills into Weaverville. He went directly to the home of Mrs. Bowie's son, George Jumper, to tell him about the destruction of his mother's and aunt's barn, as well as the footprints he'd seen in the snow. Van Young didn't know it yet, but those footprints in the snow were the beginning of the end. The trail that would unravel every lie, every fire, every bomb, every secret that had been buried inside of a young boy. But the trail also marked the beginning for that boy. After alerting the son of Mrs. Bowie, Van Young notified Louis Junkins. Louis Junkins and another man, Dud Brady, went out to investigate. The barn was isolated. Off the main road and did not have a residence attached to it. There was a caretaker who was paid to go out twice a week to take care of the cattle and the premises. From that, the only inhabitants were cows. Inside the barn, there had been 40 tons of hay, as well as harnesses and other articles. The total loss from the fire was over $2, 000. In 1908, that would be equivalent to roughly $70, 400 in today's 2025 U. S. currency. Yes, and they did not have insurance on any of it. So, did they kill the cows? No, I don't think the cows were in there. It didn't say anything about dead cattle. Hmm. Then where are the cows in the winter? They must have just been out in the field. Interesting. It actually didn't mention anything about cows at all in any capacity other than this was a cattle barn. And it had lots of hay in it. Huh. Yeah. Interesting. So I don't know anything about where they were. I hope the cows lived. Yes. And hopefully they were able to find a new barn. Yes. So after Louis Junkins and Dud Brady found the heap of ashes where the barn once stood, they went back to town and reported it. It wasn't until the next morning, Monday, January 6th, that Sheriff Boyce and Deputy Hutchins went out to the scene. They easily found the tracks that led to and from the barn. Just as Van Young had done the day before, they followed them down Brown's Creek along the testy ditch. The sheriff and his deputy did not, however, turn off when they got to the telephone line. They wanted to find exactly where those tracks would lead, and they wound up right at the door of the cabin occupied by Mrs. Isabella J. Martin and her son. Baby John. The Trinity Journal reported that he was, quote, no longer a baby, but a good-sized youth of 16. Baby John and the boots that he wore on his feet were taken into custody. As he was being led out of the house, Isabella said to him, 'John! Don't speak a word. Stand mute.' Baby John was then taken into town, which was roughly four miles from the cabin. That first night, he was kept at the home of Sheriff Boyce, and he was questioned by the district attorney. But Baby John followed Isabella's instructions and refused to speak. Baby John was booked into the Trinity County Jail on Tuesday, January 7th. The next morning, he was formally charged with arson and brought before Justice H. D. Barber, who set bail at $5, 000, was unable to hire an attorney. The hearing was postponed to Thursday and then again to Friday. On Friday, January 10th, Isabella swept into the courthouse and declared herself her son's attorney. His preliminary hearing was set for the following Tuesday. Word spread fast. When January 14th arrived, nearly 180 people jammed into the courtroom, more than they'd ever seen, even for murder cases. Only four witnesses testified that day. The two women who owned the barn, the hunter who found the ruins, and Sheriff Boyce. Cross-examined them all, argued with the judge, and repeatedly answered her own questions, earning rebuke after rebuke from the bench. The next day, she can continued her interrogation of Sheriff Boyce. Then Deputy Hutchins took the stand. He described how he had matched Baby John's boots to the tracks in the snow, fitting the boots into the original prints and then making new ones for comparison. They matched perfectly. Mrs. Morris, one of the barn owners, testified next. She reminded the court that she had testified against Isabella back in 1894, during the infamous Martin Will case. Isabella had despised her ever since. The prosecution offered that history as motive. Isabella insisted it was that she and baby John were being framed. Court recessed until Friday. Isabella claimed illness, and with holidays and a packed docket, everything was... pushed to Wednesday, January 22nd. And that day was chaos. It was finally the defense's turn. Isabella tried to call... character witnesses. They admitted they barely knew Baby John. Then she had a couple shoe salesmen come up who only further damaged her case by admitting that she was a woman. Admitting that Baby John's shoe size, number nine, was very rare and hardly ever sold. That just made it more likely that the tracks were his. Now, there's something... interesting to note about these boots. In the February 21st edition of the Oakland Tribune, there is a picture of a piece of evidence which shows the bottom of the boots Baby John wore,

but the caption reads: 9:35

'Rubber shoe soles worn under his regular walking footwear by Baby John Martin when he set fire to the Morris barn.' The thongs on the side were used to fasten the false soles to his shoes. So he had fake soles on his boots? Yes. So apparently it was kind of like adding chains to your tires when there's going to be snow and ice on the roads. So these were... Rubber soles that the nails were nailed into for extra traction. And then these thongs that are in the picture, they look like long strings of leather that were used to tie them onto his regular boots. Ron Giesek from the Box Number 7 podcast sent me a picture of the boots that are in a museum in Weaverville. And I can tell in the picture that there are not— extra rubber soles tied onto them. So for any of you who visit the museum, if you were to look at the bottom of those boots and you do not see all the nails, don't be discouraged. It does not mean that they're not the correct boots. It just means that a major piece of evidence was not preserved. And that is unfortunate. That is unfortunate, but we will post the picture of these rubber soles and all of the nails in them in our Facebook group. And the other socials that we have. If our family can preserve a drum from the Revolutionary War, so can they. Preserving boots from 1908. Yes, that's true. And by our family, she means the Applegate family that we descend from. Also, the courts did not preserve trial transcripts for this, for any of this, if you can believe that, which is wild. Anyway, back to this preliminary examination. Next on the stand was Mrs. Morris, one of the barn owners. She had testified previously, but Isabella wanted her back on the stand. Her testimony was technically for the defense this time, but she became the star witness for the prosecution without them even having to cross-examine her. Isabella started off by saying something like, 'I've had you over to my house several times over the years and we've always been friends. Isn't that right?' And then Mrs. Morris basically said, 'Well, yeah. Yeah, but that's only because my husband said I needed to stay on your good side to prevent you from doing any damage to us since our property was so close to yours.' She also testified that she believed... Isabella had a heavy influence on baby John and had probably told him to burn down her barn. And that really upset Isabella and caused a bit of an uproar in the courtroom. And then Mrs. Bowie, the sister of Mrs. Morris and the other owner of the barn, she was called to testify as to Isabella's character. Now, remember, this is supposed to be to be for the defense. So Isabella is trying to prove that they've always been friends and that there would be no motive for baby John to break up. Well, Isabella, for reasons I will never know, asked Mrs. Bowie if she had ever heard the rumors that Isabella had poisoned her husband, John Martin. Mrs. Bowie said yes. Then Isabella asked her if she'd heard that Isabella had burned down her own house in Weaverville back in 1890, that big fire that had caught all the other buildings on fire, too. Mrs. Bowie said yes, she had also heard that rumor. And then Isabella J. Martin admitted in front of the entire courtroom that she did in fact burn down the house herself and that she had done it with an oil lamp. What an idiot. She didn't say anything at that time about having poisoned her husband. But later on in a different trial, she said, but I didn't poison him. That was natural. causes. Who knows? I think, I think it probably was not natural, but she never admitted to that. So anyway, admitting this, this caused a huge uproar in the courtroom. Isabella then asked Mrs. Bowie if she considered her a dangerous woman, and Mrs. Bowie said yes. Isabella then asked if she was afraid to have Isabella in her house, and she replied, 'not while I had my eye on you.' Then there was a bit of an argument between District Attorney D. J. Hall and Isabella over that ferry boat incident in which she had followed the District Attorney and had horsewhipped him. When he was boarding. Oh, I forgot about that. That was a crazy day. Yeah. Not her best moment. Anyway, so the next day, it wasn't all that exciting, but some interesting things came up in the afternoon. A man named Horace R. Given was called and asked about the case of People v. Isabella J. Martin from three years prior, which I am not familiar with, but she was apparently charged with dynamiting. The more ditch when Mr. Given was the district attorney. So he'd previously been the district attorney. So she also asked him whether or not Postmaster A. L. Paulson had tried to get a warrant for Baby John's arrest on a charge of assault to commit murder two years prior. And I know nothing about that. I didn't see anything about that. But D. A. Hall objected to this line of questioning, and Judge Barber sustained the objections. So they didn't go into detail. So, yeah, I have no idea if. if that happened. I don't know, but I am sure that she dynamited the ditch. That is 100% Isabella. Yeah, well, she did love having people blow things up. Yes. And burning things down herself, so. So after this, Isabella said she wasn't feeling very well and she wished to adjourn the trial until the next morning, which would be Friday, January 24th. And that was fine with the judge. But when Friday morning rolled around, Isabella was nowhere to be seen. Baby John stood and read a motion for dismissal on the ground that the court had no jurisdiction to hear the examination. The motion was denied, and then the judge asked Baby John three times if he desired to proceed, and Baby John said nothing. Until, like the third time he was asked, and his reply was simply, 'I stand mute.' So yeah, he said, 'I stand mute.' He was then asked three times if he desired counsel since his mother was missing, and he just would not respond. He just refused to speak. According to the Trinity Journal, he was sitting and grinning. The result of the preliminary examination was that he would be held over for trial on those charges of arson. But everything was just about to change. Have mercy on your wife. Don't let her wear her life away doing her sewing by hand or on an old, worn-out machine when we are selling new ones at the rate of 10 cents per day. We have the singer, Wheeler and Wilson. white, new home, and all other standard makes. We have a few of the latest Drophead Singer, Wheeler & Wilson, and new home machines that we will sell for $25. $30 and $35 in order to make room for more. Also a Wilcox and Gibbs with all attachments complete. $35. 50. Where can you beat this? We also rent, repair, and exchange all kinds of machines. Yours for business, Singer Sewing Machine Co. 1321 Park Street. On that Friday, January 24th, which was the final day of Baby John's preliminary hearing, Isabella had left Weaverville altogether. She was heading to Oakland to secure bail to get Baby John out of jail. She took a stage from Weaverville to Reading, where she would be able to get on a train to head south. She arrived in Reading in the evening. Just after stepping off the stagecoach, she made her way to the Hotel Lorenz to register for a room. This is when Deputy Sheriff Wilson placed her under arrest for arson, the same charge faced by Baby John. Deputy Wilson first took Isabella to get some dinner, and then she was housed in the Shasta County Jail. Sheriff Boyce, over in Weaverville, had contacted the sheriff's office over in Reading through telephonic means, that's what the paper said, to let them know that a warrant had been issued for her arrest. Sheriff Boyce left Weaverville the next day, Saturday the 25th of January, to head to Reading to serve his warrant and collect his prisoner. Isabella was arrested on charges of arson 18 days after baby John had been taken into custody. As soon as she had been arrested by Deputy Sheriff Wilson, her baggage was searched. You want to know what they found? Please tell me. What did they find? I'm on the edge of my seat. They found three one-pound cans of phosphorus, two bottles of cyanide of potassium, three pounds of sugar of lead, and a whiskey flask of a mystery. mixture that they couldn't identify, as well as a small bottle with an unidentifiable dark liquid. The phosphorus was especially significant because apparently it comes in sticks and it's kept in water because it will ignite spontaneously when it's dry. So it's kept in cans of water and they're sealed. You take one of these wet sticks from the can and you throw it somewhere, it will obviously slowly dry out. And when it gets to the right point of dryness, it will ignite into a spontaneous flame and burn very fiercely. The paper says that the period required to ignite just depends on the temperature and the climate. So it just depends how long it takes to become dry enough. Yes, exactly. So Sheriff Boyce picked her up and got her back to Weaverville by Monday, January 27th. She had tried to delay the trip back to Weaverville by saying, 'Oh, but I don't feel well.' But he was like, 'Suck it up.' and got her back there anyway. They arrived at about 7. 30 in the evening, and she was put in the very same jail that baby John was in. They were, of course, in two different cells, but in the same building. And it wasn't long before they decided that they wanted baby John and Isabella to be further separated. And so they moved baby John to the detention ward of the county hospital. On January 30th, Sheriff Boyce went out to Isabella's cabin to conduct a search, and he brought back a whole buggy load of poison. Among the... hall was a grain sack full of Paris green and a large assortment of cyanide of potassium. She had to wait a while before her preliminary examination. And meanwhile, she's sending letters to the newspapers to complain about the conditions in the jail. The judge isn't giving her paper. She didn't have fresh water for two days. She was alone in the jail without a fire from 9 a. m. until 5 p. m. She was so cold, her fingers were stiff, and hardly any sunlight comes into the jail, etc. Oh, no. Yeah, well, things were about to get really exciting. So her preliminary examination began on Friday, February 7th. The Oakland Tribune... described her this way, Mrs. Martin is said to have been a woman of striking appearance some years ago. She was then of willowy build, of medium height, and had a wealth of dark, golden hair. Her skin was pink and perfect. Her nose was long, thin, and inclined to be Roman, while her eyes were large and clear blue. Although she has failed within the past few years, there are still traces of beauty in her features. Anyway, the preliminary may have begun on February 7th, but it was Monday, February 10th, when the most sensational testimony completely blew the top off this case and off of Isabella's entire foundation. So let me tell you what happened over that weekend. There was a man named George Joninon, who was an attaché of the Trinity County Hospital, where baby John was being held. So this guy, let me just say. George Joninon. He was very hard to find because his last name is French. And apparently, even though he was born in California, but his parents were from France. The way he pronounced his name, the newspapers did not know how to spell it. There were like eight, like eight different ways that they spelled it. And it was impossible to figure this out. But Olivia did it. His mom was from Wales. Oh, okay. His dad was from France. Yes. And so... Anyway, we finally found the correct spelling, and it's J-O-N-I-N-O-N, and I don't know how he pronounced it, having been born in California. We're just going to call it J-O-N-I-N-O-N. He was George. Okay. So we're calling him George. And when they say he was an attache of the Trinity County Hospital, he just, he worked there. So he was an employee. All right. So George was employed to watch over a man who was insane at this hospital. And baby John's cell was across from the cell of this insane man. George sat on a couch that was between the two cells, and he'd usually just pass the time by reading. But sometimes he and baby John would have conversations about life in general. And it turns out that George himself came from a background of abuse and neglect. And he told his own tragic story to baby George. and apparently that struck a chord. On the night of Saturday, February 8th, Baby John was standing at the bars of his cell while George was reading on the couch. Ouch. Baby John asked him to come over to the bars, but George declined at first because he just wanted to keep reading. Baby John then said that he wanted to tell him something important. So that piqued George's curiosity, and he went over to the grating of the cell. Baby John talked from 9 p. m. that Saturday night until 3 a. m. Sunday morning. It was around midnight, about halfway through, when George opened Baby John's cell and had him sit with him on the couch for the rest of the time. The story included everything. Every single thing. Bombs. Dynamiting ditches. Setting homes on fire. Crimes planned for the future. The barn. And mass poisonings, the destruction of a man's team and wagon, and he even mentioned the plan for using hellfire to burn down every home in Weaverville. Hellfire is something that Bella learned about from the hairy orchard confessions. He said it was made up of stick, phosphorus, bisulfide of carbon, benzine, alcohol, and spirits of turpentine. After this is mixed together properly, when thrown on anything with force so as to break a bottle, it will immediately be a flame of fire. Harry said that you had to have the mixture in bottles with glass stoppers because it would burn through a wooden cork. Wow, that's crazy. I feel like maybe it was a mistake to publish all of that for the public to see. Let's hope no one finds it these days. Yeah. We probably shouldn't have put that in here. Yeah, when I first saw that, I was like, what's hellfire? And I looked it up and it was like, oh, they're just referring to this big fire that had happened. And I was like, oh, so she's just saying she said a big fire. But then I actually saw later on, they showed parts from the magazines in the trial later. And this was part of it. And I was like, oh. So yeah, he's telling everything. So he's saying things that they had done, things they hadn't done yet. He even shared Isabella's plan for the murder of... District Attorney D. J. Hall. Isabella was planning, like, wait till you hear this. I mean, keep in mind, these two hate each other because that one time that she had left baby John alone. And then district attorney Hall was like, oh, we need to put him like in the hospital here because he doesn't have anyone watching him. And then, you know, she horse whipped him and all that stuff. So she was planning to somehow entice him to go to their cabin, and she was going to seduce him and make love to him. And these are the words coming from baby John. Okay. She has said this to him. She was going to make love to him and then poison him with a substance that would not take effect immediately. He would then die on the road on the way home. And then there would be no proof against her. So after he tells this whole story to George, it was conveyed to District Attorney D. J. Hall. Baby John had made a full and complete confession. He no longer wanted anything to do with Isabella Martin, and he was willing to go on the stand and tell everything he knew. Now, by the time it rolled around on February 10th, it was as if she somehow knew that baby John had changed. Maybe there was just a... shift in the air. I don't know. People in 1908 were convinced that Baby John was actually under a hypnotic spell, and they even printed big pictures of one. of Isabella's eyes to show the powerful, hypnotic eye that had compelled this boy to do such terrible things. And so maybe she felt her hypnotic pull was lessened. Or maybe she just realized that his being away from her influence for 35 days by that time was a dangerous thing. Or maybe she just heard the rumors that startling revelations were expected when he took the stand. Whatever it was, she seemed to know that her goose was cooked. Flambéed even. Yeah. Roiled. As soon as baby John walked toward the stand, Isabella said, 'Don't talk. Don't say a word.' And she continued to plead, 'John, don't you talk.' John was determined. Throughout his testimony, he held his hand up to the side of his face to shield his eyes from the gaze of his mother. When he was asked, 'Did you set fire to the Morris Cattle Barn on Browns Creek on January 5th, 1908?' he responded, 'I did.' She told me to do it. She made me do it. So yeah, he totally just admitted to it right there on the stand. And when he made that startling statement, Isabella collapsed and she made no further attempt to stop him from talking."My mother wanted me to burn the barn on Friday, January 3rd. But there was snow on the ground that morning. I told her that they could tell by the tracks in the snow who had been to the barn. They can't convict anybody on the tracks, she told me. They must see you in the act. The next day was Saturday, and there was still some snow on the ground. And I did not like to go that day. But when Sunday morning came, my mother said, 'We must have no more ifs and ands about it. You must go today.' I took three matches with me. When I got to the barn, I tried to set fire to it from the outside, but I couldn't. I then went up into the loft and touched off a match in the hay." So he's on the stand and he says, you know, she wanted him to burn it down a couple of days before he had. And he was resisting. He was saying, 'No, no, they're going to catch me because I'm going to leave tracks in the snow.' And she's like, 'They can't convict you on footprints. You're fine.' So he went on to say that she had threatened to put him in a tunnel and blow him up if he wouldn't follow directions. His confession about the barn fire lasted until the recess at noon, and when it picked up after lunch, District Attorney Hall asked him if he was aware that his mother had 10 pounds of cyanide. He said he was. District Attorney Hall asked him what she planned to do with it. Among other uses, she had for it, she said she would put in the town's reservoir from which Weaverville receives its war supply. She said it would kill every man, woman, and child who drank the water. So she was planning... To poison everyone in Weaverville, everyone who lived below that waterline, so they would all die. When asked why he hadn't put it in the water, as she had requested, he said that she told him they needed to wait until spring when the water would be lower so that it would be more concentrated to get better results. Also, he confessed on the stand was that a fire at the Testy brothers' home more than a year before had been started by him on his mother's orders. He had thrown three sticks of phosphorus up on the roof. The brothers had discovered the fire in time to put it out, so their house wasn't completely destroyed, and one of them had actually found one of those sticks of phosphorus in the yard because it had rolled off of the roof. Asked if he was afraid of his mother, John said, 'Yes, I was. She would abuse me and beat me and threaten to take me up to the tunnel on her mine and blow me up if I didn't do her bidding." He talked about more bombs, more people who she wanted to die, even a miner named H. Price, who she wanted Baby John to follow to a creek, then shoot to death and throw into the water. At some point during his testimony, Isabella, who had noticed John would not look at her, exclaimed, 'John, look at me. You know you are not telling the truth.' Finally,

at 2: 31:01

30 that afternoon, Isabella herself took the stand. She immediately said that Baby John had a head injury at the age of four and had not been right mentally ever since. Yes, if he had a head injury, it was from her beating him with a broomstick. She broke his nose. You know, she also beat him with a poker, like from a fireplace. And she whipped him all the time, too, with that giant black horse whip that she had. But he later said that she had bent pokers from beating him. Like, I mean, and that's impressive. And also, broomsticks had broken during beatings as well, so she's just vicious. Anyway, she said that they should just subpoena Dr. Austin Flint from New York. That specialist she took him to, to prove that he was a born criminal. He could clear it all up, she said, and tell them that baby John was a degenerate and he was the only criminal in the room. The judge said he was satisfied with all that he'd heard already. He didn't see any reason to subpoena anybody else. So he ultimately ruled to hold her over for trial and he set her bail. At $40, 000. Woof. That's like $1. 4 million today. Yeah. Well, I mean, this is a dangerous woman. She planned to poison the entire- town of Weaverville. And I didn't even get into all the bombs and her entire hit list, but revelations just kept on coming out as baby John kept talking. And what's interesting is that he started referring to her as Mrs. Martin. He wouldn't even call her mother anymore. He completely separated himself from her. Good for him. That was just 35 days too. That's impressive. No kidding. I think it would take the average person a lot longer to detox. A situation like that, especially when the overlord is also your parental authority figure, and that's all you've known your entire life, you know, up to that point. So. I mean, it just goes to show he was a very strong young man. So at some point, George from the county hospital, he had Baby John stay with him at his house. I don't have an exact date for when this first happened. It could have been right after he had confessed everything to the police on February 9th. So they like knew that he had flipped on his mother, but according to the San Francisco Call Bulletin article on February 12th, George was deputized and was now a sheriff's deputy in charge of Baby John. He was still technically under arrest and in police custody, but he got to live in a home with a trusted guy to look after him, and he got to play with children. For the first time in his life. He was treated with respect too. You know, when he would have meals with Isabella, she would suddenly get mad at him for like no reason and strike his hands with knives, literally cutting him. And he didn't have to do anything. I mean, he would just be sitting there minding his own business, eating food, and she would just chop on his hand with a knife. Like that came out in testimony later. So to sit at a dinner table with a person who is kind to him and wants the best for him and to be asked if he wanted seconds or to be asked if he'd had enough to eat or even to be asked, you know, how his day was or whatever. What an incredible change that must have been for him. So I imagine it was very, very enlightening. Now, during the day, baby John would accompany George out around town and women out in the community would see him and approach him, you know, with sympathy. They would try to give him cakes and candy, but as a prisoner, he was not allowed to accept any of it. Having this experience with George and being part of the Weaverville community, for the first time, it really had a profound impact on him. Just interacting with George, I mean, just that had this big impact on him. Even when he was still behind bars in the hospital. And so, just, I mean, gaining new perspective was really all he needed. And his whole life changed so dramatically. So, anyway, remember at the end of the first episode when I mentioned a Judge Samuels and a giant bomb made with 7 sticks of dynamite? Well, that whole story came spilling out during the preliminary examination as well on February 10th of 1908. Baby John confessed that there was an elaborate plan for placing this bomb at the home of Judge Samuels in Oakland, California. There was a bright street lamp across the street from Samuels' home, and they were worried about being seen by someone while placing the bomb. So Isabella had befriended the judge's son, Mervin, and visited him. He was seen at his office sometime in December for a long, friendly chat. She asked if Mervyn would write her memoirs, and she also asked to borrow one of his college annuals, promising to return it to him very soon. So, four nights later, baby John showed up at Judge Samuels' home at 1267 West Street with the book. He was supposed to ask if his mother could borrow the book. A little bit longer. And that was the whole plan, requesting to keep it longer. That was the excuse to go over to the house and then place the bomb. If anyone saw him at the house before the house exploded, he could simply say that he had come back to ask if Isabella could borrow the book for a little bit longer. So borrowing the book was the alibi. Yes, exactly. So the next morning, after he had gone back to ask about the book, the Samuels family found this big... hole dug in the corner of their front yard in the angle made by the wall of the house and the front steps. They said it was a pretty big hole too and they assumed that a dog like a neighbor's dog had dug the hole. So they just filled it in. But there was another larger hole the next morning again. So anyway.

Baby John said later that the plan was: 36:46

if placing the bomb didn't work on, you know, one particular occasion, he would just continue to go back to ask if his mother could borrow the bomb. The book a bit longer, you know, for the sake of the alibi. But unfortunately, that first time he had gone to the house to ask, Mervyn said, 'Tell your mom she can keep it as long as she wants.' So basically, the plan was foiled. Yeah. So you go, Mervyn. Yeah, so this all took place in December of 1907, and they planned to try again, you know, until they could get that whole Samuels family blown to smithereens, but something came up. Isabella realized they had to tend to their mining claims in Trinity County, where her cabin was located just outside of Weaverville. If she didn't do some kind of specific... work on the claims by January 1st, then the government was going to take back the claims or something was going to happen. I'm not entirely clear on those details. I don't know how that worked, but it was December 28th and someone needed to hustle and get back up to Trinity County. John was initially supposed to go by himself, leaving the 29th, and Isabella had two tasks for him while he was up there. He was supposed to burn down the Morris Barn, and he was supposed to poison the Weaverville Reservoir so every member of the population living below the waterline would die. But at the last minute, Isabella decided she would go with him to Weaverville, and so off they popped. They arrived in Weaverville on December 30th. Ultimately, Isabella decided that they should wait until spring to poison the reservoir so that it would be a lot more concentrated, because the water would be lower and then it would work better. So that didn't actually happen when they were there in December or January. With the Samuel's bomb plot on hold, what to do with this giant bomb in the meantime? They decided that they'd better bury it for safekeeping. John said it was slightly dismantled, with the biggest part being buried under one of their burned houses. And the other part was buried in a lot somewhere around 16th and Peralta streets. Now, remember when I mentioned that they were currently living in a duplex sort of situation? They were in the upstairs part of a house in Oakland, and this home was literally right next door to the home they used in. Yes. And that home that they used to live in could no longer be lived in because Isabella had baby John burn it down for insurance money. Remember that? Go on. Well. Well, Isabella decided that it would be a great idea to bury the giant bomb underneath the rubble of that burned out house located at 1534 West Street in Oakland. Apparently, they could still get down into the basement of that structure, and so they buried it about a foot beneath the foundation. Some years ago, but not many, pictures were put in monstrosities, and it was called picture framing. The most artistic subjects became horrors. Now, all is changed. Frames are made to harmonize with the subject. We have the largest stock of artistic molding in Alameda, and we believe we display taste in the selection of frames for framing pictures. C. P. Magagnos, 1358 Park Street. Kodak developing and printing. So all of this comes out on the stand in Weaverville on February 10th. That evening, District Attorney Dan Hall sends a telegraph to Sheriff Frank Barnett. In Oakland to let him know there might be a giant bomb buried under the burned remains of 1534 West Street. Sheriff Barnett, Deputy Sheriff Burton, Brown, and police detective St. Clair Hodgkins went straight over there and went down into the basement. But it was too dark to see, so they had to go back the next morning, February 11th. And what they found was absolutely astounding. They removed a foot of earth and found the bomb, which contained 25 pounds of stick dynamite encased in a wooden box. Reports vary on the size of the of the box. Some say it was 12 inches long. Some say it was 15 inches long, but it was also eight inches wide and 10 inches deep. So it was just— it was very sizable. It had a layer of dynamite sticks standing on one end, squeezed in so tightly that there was no way another stick would fit in there. Then on top of that was another layer of dynamite lying flat. Some of the sticks were broken so that some of the clay fell into the spaces between the sticks. And this made it solid dynamite from end to end. And it would have been able to blow up the largest part of a whole city block in Oakland in 1908. The top of the box was made of one-inch boards, and there was a hole that was an inch and a half in diameter in the top. There was a small bottle encased in plaster of paris, so it was kind of glued in place, but to make it lie flat. And it had its nozzle directly over that hole. It had some sort of liquid—probably nitric acid. And through the cork of the bottle was an eyelet. And from this eyelet was a wire which would be connected to a string that would have been tied to the bottle. To the gate of Judge Samuel's fence. When the door swung back, the cork would be pulled and the acid would have spilled through the hole down onto several caps embedded in the dynamite. And this was exactly like the bomb that Harry Orchard had built to murder Governor Stunenberg from Idaho in 1905. Yes, she used his confession from those... magazines that came out in the fall of 1907 as a blueprint and told John to build that bomb exactly. Now, just for some complete transparency, there are some articles that say that the bomb for Judge Samuels was going to be used with the fence, like I just described, but there are other articles that say that the one that was going to be hooked up to the fence was going to be used for a Judge Bartlett, and the one for Judge Samuels was going to be set off with a clockwork mechanism. And so... I've seen it both ways, so I just want to be clear that it could be wrong. Maybe they weren't going to use the gate for Judge Samuels, and maybe there was a... clock that they were somehow going to use. So just wanted to, to let you know. So here was this bomb just where Baby John had said it would be. And now the officials in Oakland and Weaverville realized there was truth to what he was saying. And that's not all he revealed. You see, after John directed the police to the Samuels, bomb, he also told them about a whole lot more dynamite and caps that he had hidden in a public park called Defremory Park in Oakland. And he's still in Weaverville when all this is happening, right? Yes. So he's still in Weaverville. He's still living in the home of George Joninon, but I do have bad news. It was so... difficult to keep strangers away from Baby John by this point because, you know, all of these confessions had come out and everything was just so sensational. George decided it was a little bit too much for him. So D. A. Hall had a long chat with Baby John on February 12th and let him know that he would need to move back to the Trinity County Hospital. The newspapers say that Baby John cried because he was going to miss playing with all the kids. No. Yeah. But when he got to the hospital, the paper said he settled in pretty quickly, and soon he was the hospital pet. And everyone there just adored, you know, the 16-year-old boy. Um... So George, Joninon did have family. He himself did not ever get married, from what I found, or have children. But he was child six of seven. Yeah, he had a lot of siblings and they were mostly older. Yeah, so initially the reason I was looking for him so hard is because I wanted to find out if he actually... had kids living in the house and if this was a situation where Baby John was part of a nuclear family while he was living there, because that would have really, really like, you know, made a huge impact on him. And so that's why I really wanted to find out more about George. So since he did not have his own kids, I can only assume that these kids that Baby John was playing with were just neighborhood children. But keep in mind, he had never been allowed to play with children ever. So it didn't matter who they were. This was new and novel and awesome. On February 13th, an affidavit of Baby John, which he swore out and he signed in Weaverville, all about the bombing of Judge Ogden's home, which had happened almost a year prior at this point, this affidavit was received in Oakland. Officials there decided to send some representatives up to Trinity County to bring Isabella and Baby John to Oakland within 48 hours so they could both stand trial on felony charges. There's an article in the San Francisco Chronicle that has an interview with Judge Ogden himself, and I find it pretty amusing. He was saying that his wife always suspected Isabella had been behind it, but he himself had only been positive that it had been a woman. In this interview, he said, 'Such a deed would hardly have been committed by a man. By nature, man is a protective animal, and he revolts at the idea of destroying innocent children and women." Yeah. Tell that to the 95% of family annihilators. He obviously wasn't a consumer of true crime. He should have had a newspapers. com subscription. He could have used our code FORGOTTEN20 to get 20% off a six-month subscription. Yep, there's our shameless plug. Because of the affidavit they received from Baby John, a couple of guys from Oakland had gone up to Weaverville to interview him and Isabella and to gather evidence to see if they even had enough to charge Isabella with a crime in Alameda County. One of these men was Detective Hodgkins from Oakland, who had been there when the gigantic Samuels bomb was dug up. It was under the burned house. He and assistant D. A. Donahue had gone up to Weaverville in the middle of February and spent quite some time questioning witnesses to see they could build a good case. See, Isabella was charged with arson in Weaverville, located in Trinity County, but now that John had told them about the bombing of Judge Ogden, that was actually a much more serious charge than burning down a barn. If Oakland had enough evidence and felt that they could secure a conviction, Weaverville would hand her over in a heartbeat. She'd be locked away much longer for bombing an occupied home in Alameda County than for burning down a barn that nobody lived in in Trinity County. And I think the number one priority was getting her locked up for the longest time possible, no matter which county was able to do it. Yeah, so back to the dynamite that was hidden in Defremery Park. You may remember I mentioned that on the night of the Ogden home bombing, the first thing he did was hop on his bike and take the rest of the dynamite over to Defremery Park to hide it. I mentioned that. Now, Defremory Park was pretty big, and despite John trying to give detailed verbal directions to the exact bush that was concealing the dynamite, the officers down there were coming up empty-handed. They decided they needed to bring baby John to Oakland so he could find it for them. So John arrived in Oakland on Wednesday, February 26th with D. A. Hall along with him. They arrived in the morning, he was taken directly to the city jail, and then within just a few minutes, they ushered him over to Defremory Park, along with a couple detectives and a police captain. He went straight to the hiding place in the west end of the park, and right there beneath a bush, concealed by branches, leaves, cobwebs, and a year's worth of dirt, John uncovered a black lacquered tin box that was 18 inches long, 5 inches high, and 8 inches wide. It was packed tightly with dynamite, a quart bottle, that was two-thirds full of muriatic acid, a long roll of fuse, and a whole bunch of screw eyes for hanging the fuse. And there were 40 sticks of dynamite in the box. Now, interestingly enough, Chief Wilson later told reporters, 'We knew all the time where this dynamite was buried and have been carefully guarding the park for some time. We did not dig the place, but awaited the arrival of Martin for the reason that we wished, for the sake of conclusive evidence, that the boy should take us to it and dig it out himself. What a bunch of bollocks.' So he's saying they knew where it was the whole time and they just left it in the park. And some child could go find it. And they just wanted John to find it so they knew for sure that John actually knew it was there. And yeah, none of that makes sense. I know. I mean, because if he's telling them, 'Hey, it's there, here's how you find it,' and then they find it. Clearly, he knew it was there. So it's just. It's just dumb. He just wanted to be like, 'Yeah, well, we knew. We knew where it was. We totally knew the whole time.' Yeah. Didn't want the people to know that they couldn't find it on their own. Funny. I didn't want to do the work. Why should a law-abiding sheriff do the work? So at the time that this was found, the police had no idea what this particular bomb had been meant for. But what they did know was that everything Baby John had confirmed Festu on the stand during his mother's preliminary examination in Weaverville was likely true. Every word of it. So here are a few more things that he had told them. Prior to planning the murder of Judge Samuels, Isabella had planned to kill Postmaster Paulson in Weaverville. Baby John was supposed to build a miniature bomb to put in an envelope and then put it in the post office. And once Paulson stamped the envelope, it would cause it to explode and he would die. That's a very elaborate thing. Yeah. And I don't, I mean, I guess people can make itty-bitty bombs. Um, there was a man by the name of, I don't know how to pronounce it. It's L-A-U-K. So maybe Lauk, Lauk. Yeah. So there is this man by the name of Lauk who she. He planned to poison. He lived on Browns Creek, and that's the same creek that their cabin was on outside of Weaverville. And they were going to put poison in the spot where he drew his water from. But they couldn't follow through because he got in trouble with the law first, and he went to prison for life on a rape charge. Oh. Yeah. Well. Would that poisoning really have been that bad? Yum. All right, and we cannot leave out W. J. Dingy, president of the People's Water Company. Isabella made three attempts to blow up his house in San Francisco. This information was revealed much later, actually, on March 2nd of 1908, and it just kept pouring out of John the longer he was away from her. It turns out... that Isabella did not like to pay her water bill. When bill collectors would be sent to her house, she would actually point guns at them from the window. It became a whole big thing. There was a special note on her account after a while saying that she was allowed to pay whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, because it wasn't safe to send anyone to her house to collect payments. Well, at one point, her water had been turned off, and this was absolutely unforgivable. So for this, Mr. W. J. Dingy needed to die. She'd started sending him threatening letters on an almost daily basis, most of which he just threw in the trash without reading. Two times, Isabella attempted to place the bomb at the same time. House on her own with Baby John in tow, and each of these trips was late at night, but every time there would be a pesky police officer or a pedestrian in the area that made placing the bomb impossible. The third attempt was made by Baby John alone. He had first been at the Palace Hotel, where he changed into girls' clothing for the sake of a disguise, and when he got to the house to place the bomb, he saw a police officer outside. This scared him away, and so he couldn't place the bomb after all. The dynamite caps and fuse that were found hidden in Defremory Park were those that had been meant to send Mr. Dingy and his whole family into eternity. Baby John had hidden that bomb in the park on the same evening that he bombed Judge Ogden's home, March 19, 1907. Based on the evidence and witness testimony gathered by Detective Hodgkins and Assistant D. A. Donahue up in Weaverville, the grand jury down in Oakland decided on March 2nd that there was enough to go to trial. Isabella was officially indicted for the bombing of Judge Frank B. Ogden's home and her bail was fixed at 50. They did not indict Baby John. Under Section 26, Subdivision 8 of the Penal Code, people who committed criminal acts—such as threats or had reasonable cause to believe that their lives would be in danger if they did not commit the acts— could not be held responsible for the commission of the crime. Baby John was innocent as far as Alameda County was concerned. Now, all they had to do was go back up to Weaverville to collect their prisoner and put her on trial. When Isabella found out that Baby John wasn't going to be charged, she was not happy. She found out she was going to stand trial in Oakland, and she said she would be just fine getting life in prison as long as Baby John got the same treatment. She'd been saying all along that he was the criminal between the two of them, and she'd been trying to keep his criminal inclinations under control his entire life. What a bunch of— bullocks. Just to be clear, though, while Baby John was not being charged in Alameda County for the bombing of Judge Ogden's home, there were still charges of arson against him. In Trinity County. They decided not to drop those charges just yet so that they could keep him in protective custody and probably so he'd still have a place to live in the meantime. Up to this point, the Oakland officials had told Baby John not to give any interviews or to make any statements to the press. On March 4th, two days after the incident, after the grand jury indicted Isabella, the Oakland Police Department gave him permission to give his first interview. When asked if he knew if what he had been doing with his mother was wrong, he had this to say. I knew it was bad all the time. It's foolish to say that I didn't understand, but I had Mrs. Martin over me all the time, and she made me obey her. I made up my mind to tell the police as soon as I could get away from home. So yeah, he says he knew that it was wrong, but he had to do it because she was always there. And, you know, so it's true. Let me give you guys an example real quick. When he had been asked about the day of the Judge Ogden bombing, the officers asked if Isabella had gone anywhere, like, earlier in that day. And he said, yes, she had left. She was gone until... about 4 p. m. The officers asked where he was during that time when she was gone, and he said he'd been locked in the kitchen. She had literally locked him in the kitchen when she left the house. I mean, he couldn't just run off to the police station. Anyway, the reporters asked him if she had hypnotized him, and he said he wasn't sure, but he said that when she was angry, she would force him to look straight at her. And then it looked like she was looking through him and her pupils would open and shut like a cat. And he said he wasn't sure if it was hypnotism, but he did feel compelled to obey her when that happened. Hmm, very interesting. The idea of hypnotism was really big back then. They believed it was real. They really did. There was a lot actually in the papers about, like, oh, he's hypnotized. They said, like, after three weeks, he started to show signs that he was recovering from her hypnotism. It was crazy. Anyway, so the reporters also asked him whether or not he had realized the risk he was taking in handling such giant bombs. He responded and said that, for the last five years, he was learning how to handle dynamite in the mines up at Weaverville, so he knew how to be careful with explosives. There were some topics that were off-limits. In this interview, though, and one of them was the abuse that he suffered at the hands of Isabella. The article I read said that while they weren't allowed to ask him about it, they could see the evidence of it on him because it was obvious his nose had been broken at some point, and they knew that he had told the officers it happened when he was a small child. Now, something very interesting to note about this particular article in the San Francisco Chronicle from Wednesday, March 4th, 1908, it's talking about this interview, but the report... is taking subtle jabs at baby John. In this article, the reporter says that he is, quote, employing all his native and acquired cunning today in the task of making amends for his past offenses against society. So he was saying basically that baby John was being deceitful. Yeah, and that he was using both the skills of manipulation and deceit that he was born with, as well as what he had learned from Isabella. And this becomes a theme. In the papers for a little while. They began with horror, right, at what he had been through, and then it started to subtly change, depending on which paper you were reading. Some of the jabs were small, like that one, but some were huge, and we'll get into that in the next episode. Sorry, ma'am, but we'll have to fumigate the house. You'll soon be rid of the smell. But if you'll take my advice, you'll burn the bedclothing. Burn nothing! She'll wash them with Felsnaptha soap! In that case, it's all right. For Fel's naphtha kills disease germs. Dirt is the greatest enemy of the human race. A large part of every woman's life is spent in fighting it. Water is her chief ally. The next in importance is Fell's Napa the Soap. Bell's Napa makes quick work of dirt wherever it is. Clothes washed with Velsnaptha in cold or lukewarm water are cleaner and fresher and last longer. Try it and see. Be sure to follow directions on the red and green wrapper. While baby John was in Oakland, he was having a whole lot of fun. Based on previous news coverage, everyone in Oakland was expecting to see an effeminate, timid young boy in knickerbockers with long curly hair, but instead they saw a manly, almost 17-year-old, fairly stocky at about 145 pounds, looking pretty athletic and somewhat tan, young man. It says in the papers that he actually wore a wig of short curly hair because he'd had his own hair cut really short when he had typhoid fever upon his return from New York. On the morning of February 28th, a reporter from the Oakland Tribune was talking to him outside of court and showed him a picture that had been printed of him. In a San Francisco paper. Baby John immediately said, 'Oh, that's rotten.' And he asked the Tribune reporter to call their photographer over to get pictures that actually looked like. So they got several shots of him with his hands in his pockets, and they are really good pictures. They look very handsome. But then the Oakland Tribune printed an article. telling about how you could easily see the vanity that was instilled in him by Isabella in that moment. Because he's like, 'Oh, take more pictures.' So they were totally judging him for that. That. And I just want to say that I call Bolsheviks on that. This is a boy who just separated himself from the most wicked woman on the planet. When he looks at the pictures of himself from before, he's not seeing a picture of himself anymore. He's seeing a lifetime of abuse. He's seeing horrible memories. And anybody who has been through a traumatic time period knows what I'm talking about. You can see pictures of something from your life that took place during that time period, even if it's not directly related to the trauma, and it will evoke something uncomfortable in you. So John was a new person. At this point, and he needed new pictures. The papers referred to him as the police department pet because he was there every day and he even got to go on calls with them when there were emergencies or just general mayhem. So he was really enjoying himself. It was March 6th, 1908, when baby John, D. A. Dan Hall, and Detective St. Clair Hodgkins left Oakland and headed up to Weaverville. Hodgkins went to collect Isabella to take her back to Oakland. D. A. Hall was simply going back home, and baby John was taken back to the county hospital where he would once again... be an inmate. He got to play with a lot of kids there who were younger than he was, but it was noted that they seemed to be on the same social developmental level. Just before Isabella departed for Oakland, she asked if she could see baby John, and he agreed to it. It was March 10th, and she was in the Weaverville jail. jail. They hadn't spoken since she was arrested and when she saw him, she said, 'John, you have bought your freedom at the cost of my own. They will send you to reform school someday for this. He responded simply with, 'No, they won't. He treated her respectfully, but didn't try to make any excuses at all for having confessed all of her dastardly deeds. Isabella had been a chain smoker.' She was smoking cigars like crazy while she was in jail. It was talked about in the papers a lot, actually. sat in one of the smoking cars on the train from Reading to Oakland. And she was smoking her cigars the whole time. She was talking jovially with Detective Hodgkins the whole way. And she also had her beloved dog, Kruger, on the train with her. He was a mastiff, so he's huge. And he had his head rested in her lap during the trip. And at some point during the trip on the train, the dog died. What? Yeah, he died on the train. He died. So they moved his body into the baggage car and she kept asking like every 10 minutes if they would please bring his body back to her. And she insisted, you know, someone must have poisoned him. The dog. Well, when she got off the train in Oakland, she was so sad, you know, and depressed about Kruger's death because she said he was the only person in the world who had actually loved her. And I have a really, really good picture of her actually when she got off the train. Apparently it's the only picture they got. And she really looks so sad. So heartbroken over that dog. So we'll share that picture too. They registered her at the Oakland City Jail as being 45 years old. They put her in a cell with three black women, which she was really unhappy about. Now, it didn't say that it was a racial thing, but it made it sound like she just, you know, didn't want to share space with anyone because she's like better than everyone. And she continued to smoke her cigars all day and she did not get along with her cellmates. She told one of them one day to cook her some eggs because she was able to buy eggs while she was in there. The cellmate said, 'Okay, I'll cook them for you if I can also have one.' And that seems, you know, like fair. And it turned into this huge argument. Also, Isabella would get up at 2 o'clock every morning and start smoking her cigars and pacing in the... and that just really upset the other ladies. They're trying to sleep, right? So she was just impossible to live with. Isabella wanted a judge by the name of A. L. Frick to be her defense attorney for the preliminary hearing, but she needed $2, 500 to retain him. That's a lot. That's a lot. That's equal to about $90, 000 in 2025. That's crazy. That is insane. She got in contact with her older son, Henry K. Hoffman, to ask him for the money, and he was apparently able to provide it for her. I have no idea what he... did for a living. But anyway, her attorney was pretty good. He was known as the best criminal lawyer in the West, actually. And the first thing, the first thing that he did was get the grand jury's hearing overturned. Isn't that when she was indicted? So does that mean she's not under arrest or charged? Yes. He got it thrown out on the grounds that one of the jurors on the grand jury was prejudiced against her. Aren't we all? Yes, we are. But they were able to re-arrest her like right there in the courtroom. So she didn't go free. Thank goodness. She wasn't out on the streets of, of Oakland. Um, and then Baby John had, to come back down to Oakland from Weaverville to swear out another complaint against her. D. A. Hall came with him again, and when Isabella saw the two of them together, she was absolutely livid because, remember, like D. A. Hall is her archenemy. So she she wanted to keep them apart. And she said that D. A. Hall had baby John under his spell and that D. A. Hall was the cause of all of this trouble. She was indeed indicted a second time, and the preliminary examination began on April 30th. She kept interrupting her attorney, A. L. Frick, throughout the whole thing. At one point, after she called the judge a thickhead, Frick said he would put a muzzle on her if she wouldn't shut up. Good for him. On the stand, Baby John talked about receiving beatings while living on Brush Street in Oakland, and then about burning down the home for his mother. He wouldn't look at her in the courtroom, and he sat sideways so he couldn't see her. Every time he said something she didn't like, she would sigh loudly. And as he goes on with the story about Judge Ogden, suddenly she starts to weep. And she later says, 'I never believed until this morning that John had really blown up Judge Ogden's home or that he had made the confession in which he implicated me. The truth has overcome me.' John was on the stand for a long, long time. On day four of his testimony, it was said that he replied to the questions with an unusual slowness. One paper said that he would wait about five minutes before starting to answer a question. One thing that he revealed on the stand was that he didn't know what school even was until 1902 when he was 10 or 11, and she told him he couldn't go because she was afraid he would get her into trouble. Also, while on the stand, he rolled up his sleeves and he showed many scars that had been inflicted by her with knives and the rawhide whip that she always carried. One on his head that he got from a steel poker. She interrupted him on the stand and said, 'Now, John, you know you got those cuts in your arms from chopping wood.' On May 7th, John reveals three more of Isabella's intended targets for bombing. Judge Henry Melvin and Attorney E. W. McGraw, both in Oakland, and Judge Bartlett in Trinity County. Isabella still could not control herself and her attorney would yell 'shut up' at her. He shouted. That means what I mean. It means 'shut up.' If you want to help the prosecution, keep on talking. I love that. On May 13th, Isabella said she wanted to get up and question John herself. She said she was the only one who could get him to tell the truth, and if they wouldn't let her, she'd... Take it to superior court. The district attorney said, 'You should not talk that way.' And she said, 'I'll talk if I feel like it.' Then her lawyer said, 'You won't talk if you feel like it.' You shut... I told you you were going to love her attorney. He's a hoot. It was that day, May 13th, that the preliminary exam came to an end and the judge decided that they definitely had enough evidence to hold her over on trial on a 50... thousand dollar bond. She went back to jail to wait for trial, and on May 25th, Isabella received word that her mother had died in New York. She was heartbroken, which is understandable. And six days later, she insisted that she needed mourning gowns for court. She needed to go into mourning. Morning, like they did back in Victorian England, she didn't want the female jailer, Mrs. White, to buy the gowns for her because she thought that she might not have good taste, she said. Isabella wanted to buy them herself. I never did see who bought the morning gowns, but from that point on, all Isabella would ever be seen in was. Black from head to toe to mourn her mother. So all of the court pictures show her dressed in these elaborate solid black gowns with black veils. And that is why, because she was in mourning for her mother. At least she's consistent. It just seems really dramatic when you see the pictures, but I mean, that's why. Isabella's attorney from the preliminary examination did not want to be her attorney in the trial. Isabella was a headache. She reached out to lawyers all over the place throughout June of 1908, even her lawyers from the Will trial from back in 1894. And everyone was busy. Everyone was busy, you say? Washing their hair that month, or a month, or doing their yearly bath. The judge finally said that if she couldn't find a lawyer on her own, he would have to just appoint whoever it was that she wanted. On June 20th, the... weirdest woman surfaced. This was, this was so weird. Her name was Mrs. Coles and she arrived from New York to help Isabella. She was well-versed in criminal law, apparently, and she was also trying to coach Isabella on her courtroom behavior, which was necessary. She said that if she continued to insist on handling her own case, and cross-examining baby John, nobody would agree to represent her. So apparently, you know, she's saying this is why no one wants to be your attorney because you're, you know, making these demands. Mrs. Alice Coles, she's also known as Mrs. Bly Cole. I'm not quite sure about her at all because she also approached the prosecutor. and offered to, quote, fix witnesses for them so that she could help send Isabella to prison. So the prosecution was like, WTF? Right. Whose side are you on? Yeah. So they said that they were going to have to keep an eye on this lady because she seemed like a criminal herself. They referred to her as a. Mrs. Martin in the papers. Mrs. Coles said she was a tomb's angel, and she told reporters that Isabella was totally innocent, and John was a bastard, and he would be the one going to prison, not his mother. Sure. Yeah. Okay. Back in 1908, there was a Tombs Angel Monument in New York City honoring Rebecca Solem Foster. Rebecca was a compassionate volunteer for prisoners in the jail known as the Tombs. People who advocated for inmates were therefore called Tombs Angels. Yeah, so that's why Mrs. Coles was there, to supposedly fulfill her angelic duty, depending on which side she was playing that day. I don't know. The trial was set to begin on September 23rd, and ultimately her attorneys were— Burt J. Wyman, and Judge A. L. Frick. That poor, poor man. And that is where we'll leave things for now. Baby John has finally spoken. The truth about the fires, the bombs, and the years he spent under Isabella's control has come pouring out. And now, the entire- entire nation is watching. The next chapter of this story doesn't belong to baby John at all. It belongs to Isabella J. Martin, the woman who spent decades manipulating the courts, burning her own homes, forging documents, and just overall bending the world to her will. And now she's about to face a courtroom she cannot control. In our next episode, we'll step into Isabella's trial, the accusations, the spectacle, the way she turned on everyone— everyone around her, even baby John. We'll hear from the witnesses who came forward, the people she tried to intimidate, and the judge who finally handed down her sentence. And then we'll follow her past the courthouse doors, into San Quentin, into the walls where her mind began to unravel, and into the newly unearthed— that reveal what truly happened to her behind bars. We'll also look at what became of baby John, the boy who survived her, the boy she tried to break, and the boy who finally stepped out of her shadow. All of that, the trial, the prison records, and the ending neither of them ever thought was coming, is coming in the next episode. Yay! Yay! Don't forget to follow our social media. On Facebook, it is Forgotten Felonies. On Instagram, it is... At forgotten underscore felonies and on threads it is at Forgotten underscore felonies. And shout out to Ancestry. com. Findagrave. com. Newspapers. com. Mike Detweiler, Wendy, who we met through Find a Grave and hooked us up with a Martin family tree. Ron Gieseck from Box No. 7 Podcast, who has helped hook us up with even more information about this case and a few pictures. Check out his podcast. It's a historical podcast. We love those. My brother Christian Nilsen for doing our commercials. And Holly and John Martin for being the voices of Isabella and Baby John. Yay! I feel like it was kind of boring. It wasn't. Be sure. Yeah. Okay, I just have ADHD. No, I don't mean like for you, but I mean for the listeners. You think they'll be bored. Não. Because it's finally the juicy details of the trial. Right, this is all the preliminaries. Now, this is their first time doing any voice acting, all right? So go easy on them, all right? But it's pretty cool. So let's get down to it. Let me check some more. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Thank you. That was my voice acting. I might actually use that if I can't find anything good. That was so good. Do you need some more? Yes. If anything, that's going to be in the fade out. All right.