After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Witch of New York: 1840's Murder Trials of Polly Bodine

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

On Christmas night 1843 a mother and child were found murdered inside their burned out home. Suspicion fell on one Polly Bodine. Over the next three years, Polly became the most infamous person in America in a blockbuster series of murder trials that gave birth to a monster - tabloid justice.Our guest today is author Alex Hortis whose book The Witch of New York: The Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Justice is out now.Edited by Freddy Chick, Produced by Charlotte Long & Freddy Chick.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/ 

In 1843, Staten Island, now one of the five boroughs of New York, was still a mostly rural setting, just a ferry ride away from the bustling lower Manhattan. Granite Village, where our story begins, consisted of 300 or so people spaced out among rolling hills. It's a silent Christmas night, and inside their wooden-frame homes, Granite Village's close-knit community is savoring the peace but then smoke is seen billowing out from one of the houses a strange stench accompanies it the blaze accelerates as a now growing crowd looks on soon fire and flames fly out of a kitchen window. Cries of fire, fire shatter the calm. People pour from their houses and, together, quickly form a chain, passing buckets and pans full of water to fight the flames.

Soon, the hole is extinguished and the house sits dark and hissing. When its saviours step into the wreckage, treading carefully through the scorched kitchen, its walls dripping with molten resin from the wood, they are shocked by what they find. There on the floor are the remains of what must the remains of what must surely have been a sheep or is it a dog they move closer to inspect it then with nauseating horror they realize what it is they're looking at this is the contorted body of the house's occupant 24 year old emeline. What's worse, it's clear that she has been bludgeoned as well as burned. Beside her are the remains of her 18-month infant daughter. As the neighbours scramble, panicked, back out into that Christmas night, they meet each other's eyes. One question runs in all their minds. Who in the world would do this? Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony.

And I'm Maddie. Today, we're talking about the murder of Emmeline Hausman and her child, and of course, the woman accused of their murder, Polly Bedine. This is one of the first trial by media cases in American legal history. Joining us is Alex Hortus, author of a brand new book covering this history, The Witch of New York. Now, Alex is a constitutional lawyer and historian of crime, and he has appeared on AMC's The Making of the Mob, and his opinion has been regularly sought across numerous media outlets, particularly in relation to the history of true crime. So he is perfect to join us here on After Dark. He is also a featured

speaker at the New York Public Library, the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. Alex, thank you for joining us on After Dark. Thank you for having me. We're so thrilled that you could join us, Alex. And before we get into this case, Anthony, can you give us a little bit of context? We're in the 1840s here. Give us a sense, Alex, this is what we always do at the start of our After Dark episodes. We give our listeners a sense of what the world looks like in the time period we're speaking about. So Anthony, can you give us a sense of America, maybe a bit of Britain in the 1840s? Yeah, let's do some transatlantic

scene setting on this one. So in America, John Tyler is the current president. In 1843, he's the president of the United States. President William Henry Harrison had died in 1841, so Tyler takes over. In Britain, we have, of course, Queen Victoria on the throne since 1837, which marks a real switch in our focus as historians on different time periods. The Economist newspaper, again, in London is published. And then in America, we have Edgar Allan Poe, who is releasing The Gold Bug in America, while Dickens' novella, The Christmas Carol, is coming out in London.

Absolutely perfect. Let's talk a little bit then. We heard at the beginning about this chaotic scene. There's a fire on Staten Island in 1843. There is a young woman and her young child found dead. And we are going to talk about the victim today, but we're also going to talk about the woman who is accused of her murder. So Alex, let's start off by talking about Polly, because it's not a case that I'd ever heard of, but she has quite a remarkable moniker attached to her, right? She's called the Witch of New York. So can you give us a sense of who she is,

what her backstory is? So Polly Bidine led a very unconventional life for the era. She also led a difficult life. She was married when she was just 16 to literally a drunken sailor who abused her, spent all the family money, and eventually abandons her. So as a result, she is dependent on her parents. She moves back in with her father and her two young children, and she is stuck on a small island of gossips. She does not sort of sit by idly, though, according to the conventions of her times. She does drink gin. She's very independent-minded. And I remember reading the newspapers when they said independent, I thought, oh, they're complimenting her. No, it was actually a criticism. She's a very independent-minded woman.

She'd be seen, you know, walking around with her green veil and her coat around St been rumors about her. In a lot of ways, rumors couldn't help but attach to a single but yet still married woman with children who was independent. And so she already, before the murders even occurred, she was already looked with suspicion and with rumors. So in this swirl of rumors then, and in this society in which she is standing out, potentially for all the wrong reasons, although some of those reasons sound somewhat appealing to us as modern listeners, she's definitely marking herself out as operating outside the rules and conventions of her society at that time. Tell us about what happens in this particular murder case then. So we know that her sister-in-law and her nieceisa. She actually delivered young Annalisa when the doctor showed up late. And she would stay over when her husband was out at sea. Emmeline was a timid woman, and she was afraid of staying alone in this kind of dark, isolated village. So she stayed over the week immediately before Christmas 1843. So on Friday, December 23rd, she stays over with Emmeline. And then unfortunately for her, Polly is the last person seen alive with Emmeline. When the bodies are discovered, people are shocked. And they're obviously looking around for suspects.

They start the coroner's inquiry, and it's not entirely clear how suspicion fell on her so quickly, but it did. She did give some inconsistent answers to the coroner's inquiry. She was the last person seen alive, and as we had talked about earlier, she had these rumors already attached to her. Captain Houseman had also brought home $1,000 worth of silver to the time where it's about $40,000 on his back through Manhattan. She had made a joke about it, you're going to need a wheelbarrow for all that money. And so there were suspicions that fell on her. The case kind of started to break when a pawnbroker, they had posted a notice and a reward, and they listed the items because Emmeline's valuable silver and a gold watch were pawned on Christmas Day, about nine hours before

the bodies are discovered. So the items could not have been stolen after the bodies were recovered. So whomever pawned those items, pretty damning evidence that they were involved in the murders. Pawnbroker identifies it as her. Also, the father of Emmeline, the victim, just simply said at the funeral, he turned around, he said, Polly is the murderer. It's not clear what he knew. He had consulted with a fortune teller. So the heat is on all of a sudden on Polly. It's so interesting that you say the heat is on because there's two things I want to pick out of some of the details you've given us there. One is, if you could give us a

little bit more detail about the fire itself, what do we know about that? What actually happened in it? And I'd just love you to go back over that detail about the pawnbroker again, because that's going to be important. I think it'd be really useful for listeners to just really sit with that information that is so vital in placing, potentially placing Polly at the murder scene. So yeah, if we can start with the fire, what we know about the fire. So the fire was set within the kitchen. It was extremely intense fire. The resin was melting down from the ceilings. There was resin oozing up from the floor. The walls were completely blackened and scorched. And it burned the bodies so badly that the mother was contorted like a hoop, and the child's head was actually seared off, which was why it was a nauseating experience when they discovered it.

The fire was extremely intense. It clearly had some kind of accelerants that made it go off. It was clearly intentional. It was intended to cover up, sloppily, cover up the body somehow and cover up the crime. The pawnbrokers on Christmas Day, there were items, there unquestionably were Emmeline items. They literally had E.H. Spoon on it and her family members identified it and kind of a distinct gold eagle watch with a thick chain. Everybody agreed that those were Emmeline's items. So the question then is, how in the world, nine hours before the bodies are discovered, do they end up in Manhattan being pawned at pawnbroker shops? There were, depending on the trial, there were

between three and five pawnbrokers that testified, and at least three identified Polly as the pawner. What they said was that on Christmas Day, it was actually people pawn a lot on the holidays because they need money over the holidays. So on Christmas Day, somebody came in, in a veil, in a hood, a woman. She gave her name as Ellen Henderson of Bergen, which the initials just happened to match the EH of Emmeline Hausman. And they identify Polly as being the Ellen Henderson of Bergen. Now, there's a problem with the pawnbroker testimony, not due to anything they did, but because of the way that the authorities handled it. When the pawnbrokers start to come forward and say, I do remember those items, they bring them down all at once to the cell. They have Polly dress up in the cloak and she's sitting

alone in the cell. And essentially they say, that's her, right? This is our suspect. And so they all say, yes, today in the US, you could never get away with that. It would be called unduly suggestive. That was not the law at the time, though, although the defense argued it, that clearly the pawnbrokers were just kind of going along with what they said. Now, the pawnbrokers said, look, we're trained to identify and evaluate the trustworthiness of people. We did, you know, look at her very closely. So the pawnbrokers come key witnesses in damning evidence against Polly. The defense, however, takes a pretty ruthless tactic towards them. Yes, Alex, let's get on to the defense. I mean, there are so many fascinating elements to this

case. There's the fact that it happens at Christmas. There's the fact that there's people consulting fortune tellers as part of this story. And you can see why it's going to attract such press attention. And we will go on to talk about that in detail. From where I'm sitting, it looks pretty damning for Polly already. And obviously, there are a lot of people who had made up their mind about her. You say the finger was pointed at her very quickly in this case. So how is she defended? What defense can she offer at this point? It's not looking great. So it's not looking great for her. Polly has the equivalent of a dream team of 1844, though. Her father is wealthy and bankrolls essentially the best defense that money could buy at that time.

She gets David Graham Jr., who pops up in all these major cases. And he's joined by Roderick Mortensen, the former district attorney of Staten Island. He's then later joined by a former congressman. So she has the best defense money could buy. Their tactics are to punch holes in the case and, interestingly, portray her sympathetically. This is way ahead of its time, and it kind of portends kind of tabloid justice. The great defense attorney Clarence Darrow once said that what you do as a defense attorney is get the jury to, if not sympathize, at least kind of like your client, and then you give them an excuse for reasonable doubt. And so what he does is David Graham Jr., first of all, tries to change

the narrative. The narrative was essentially slut shaming. I mean, to put it bluntly, they said she was this awful woman who had affairs. There's rumors she had seven or eight abortions that were run in the press. And he turns it around, portrays her essentially as a victim, as a fallen woman. So she has this awful husband or beater. This rake, George Waite, comes along, takes advantage of her, procures abortions for her. And essentially, she's a fallen woman. And she loved, everybody did agree, the motive is extremely weak for the prosecution. Everyone agreed that she absolutely loved Emmeline and Annalisa. She delivered Annalisa. Everyone testified that her father provided her with enough money. She wasn't poor by any means. And so why in the world would

you kill somebody over what amounts to less than $1,000 worth of valuables? They're worth something, but it's hard to believe that they're worth bludgeoning your sister-in-law and your niece over. And so that's part of their tactic. Question the motive, portray her sympathetically, and then they start to poke holes in the case. So they point out the pawnbrokers couldn't have possibly identified her. It was only a few minutes that they saw her, that they were led into identifying Polly because the police literally led them to her, pointed her out. So the pawnbrokers are not credible. And then sadly, they use anti-Semitic attacks on the pawnbrokers as well. So this gentleman lawyer always kind of appalled me. This gentleman lawyer who would portray himself as this

appellate specialist, a legal specialist, just got in the gutter. The pawnbrokers happened to be Jewish, which was not uncommon. And so they betrayed them essentially as receivers and just crooks and all these anti-Semitic attacks. So much so that the judge in the second case actually called out the defense for doing this and said, I don't understand what religion has to do with the credibility of a witness. And it was refreshing actually to read that. And so the defense is essentially arguing reasonable doubt, betraying her sympathetically. And crucially, Polly has no alibi on Christmas night. She leaves suddenly the home of George Waite. She visits her son

and George Waite on Christmas and then abruptly leaves that evening. And her son goes, well, where are you going? It's Christmas. He said, I'm going to see Elizabeth Strange. They call Elizabeth Strange as a witness and said, I haven't seen Polly in six months and she didn't come that night. So the defense, and this is David Graham, has this brilliant defense move. I don't know how ethical it is, but he says, well, Polly was out to conceal the circumstances of her pregnancy, which were euphemisms at the time for either seeking an abortion, because Polly was actually eight months pregnant at the time through George Waite, or at one of these homes, essentially, where you would give up your child. It's a very sad situation. But there's no evidence for this. Polly never testifies, but the defense just says

that. And it's brilliant because it gives Polly an excuse for not having an alibi, and it portrays her sympathetically. It's fascinating that Polly's voice is really lost in all of this, that there's all this speculation going on and there's a real sort of theater already happening in terms of the prosecution and the defense. And there's all this carefully choreographed dancing going on.

And, you know, the lawyers are really putting on a performance and showing their strengths in, as you say, questionably ethical and often racist ways. Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn. Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves. Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr. Six wives, six lives. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts

to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII, who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. one of the things that we were going to have to follow and one of the complications in a case like this and the reason it potentially is complicated is because there are some of these intricate defense points and prosecution points coming up is that this is one of three trials. Now we'll cover the other two a little bit later in this episode, but this is the first one. And if you're looking for a satisfactory outcome and an answer from this particular first trial, Alex, people are going to be slightly disappointed, aren't they?

They might be disappointed, but it is entertaining. So what happened was in the first trial, there was an eccentric juror. He was sort of a wealthy farmer named John Decker. And he was a pain in the ass from the very beginning. He didn't want to take the oath. He didn't want to sit. He was threatened to be held in contempt. But because they were having such difficulty getting jurors, they had to take him. He's a holdout juror.

He's a runaway juror, literally. During the proceedings, he escapes, jumps out of the window of the courthouse and tries to run away because he's a lone holdout. He said, I've had enough. I'm leaving. They round him up, though. Today, there would have been a mistrial, but they round him up and they force him to deliberate, essentially. And he holds out. He said, I will never reach a verdict unless I get circumstantial evidence in the third degree, meaning he has to have three eyewitnesses that actually saw the murder committed, which is extremely rare and is legally gibberish. There's no such thing as circumstantial evidence in the

degree. So he ends up causing a hung jury in the first trial. So we've moved from the first trial now. And Maddy, I believe you're going to give us some details about the first trial. So we've moved from the first trial now. And Maddy, I believe you're going to give us some details about the second trial. In 1845, Polly Bodine is on trial for a second time for the murder of Emmeline Houseman and her child. The trial is being held in an ornate courtroom at City Hall in Manhattan. It's the hottest ticket in town. Each day, Manhattan's elite come to watch the show, each wearing their best hats, coats, gloves and hoop dresses, the bright reds, yellows and oranges of the ladies' fashions,

competing against one another in this carnival where being seen is everything. They bring food with them, treating this like a night at the theatre. As they bustle, elbow to elbow, for the best seats, those who fail to fight their way to the front rows are relegated to the back, spilling out into the passage behind, now electric with whispered gossip. Journalists thread their way through the crowd, flexing their fingers, licking pen nibs, and frantically scribbling their observations, ready to race each other back across the city to file their copy. Tonight, the printing presses will run hot and constant. In the morning New York will awake to the news of Polly's trial. A blanket of black

and white will envelop everyone with papers piled like snow on the corners of the streets, heated under butler's irons, gracing breakfast trays and spread crinkled on tea room tables. Soon there'll be no one left who does not know Polly's name. Right, so Alex, we've heard an awful lot there about how this case, particularly in the second trial, even more so than the first, is bleeding into popular culture through the newspapers. Can you tell us a little bit about how, in specific due to the press coverage, they transfer the case to Manhattan, the very belly of the beast of the penny press. Within a couple of blocks, the Sun and the Herald buildings are located. And so the reporters can run back and forth with updates from the trial. It becomes an enormous social event.

from the trial, it becomes an enormous social event. We know that Walt Whitman, a young Walt Whitman, saw Polly along the streets and was horrified by how ignatiated she looked like. We know that Gotham's elite, the mayor sat in on the case. Wealthy, well-to-do women dressed in these ornate, beautiful, colorful hoop dresses would crowd in and fight to get into the get chairs. On the first day of the trial, there's a near riot and the police have to beat down people with staffs in order to hold them off. So it's a complete circus. And then it literally becomes a circus because P.T. Barnum sets up a wax museum, a wax work of Polly essentially portraying her. She's a third-year woman, portrays her as an elderly witch-like figure. And that's only two blocks away.

The penny press is ultimately responsible for this feeding frenzy. So there are two ruthless publishers that are competitors. One is James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald. The other is Moses Yale Beach of the New York Sun. And they would try to scoop each other. They would print false rumors. They would buy stories that were false. A lot of the aspects that we've later seen in some tabloids, it's all present here. People project their pre-existing beliefs, present here. People project their pre-existing beliefs, their politics, their social beliefs onto the case. They take sides based on scant evidence before there's testimony. People divide up. Women in particular, it's not clear why, but women in particular really detest it, Polly. There

was something about the case that the women in particular, at times the courtroom would be filled entirely by women except for the lawyers and judges and jurors. And the penny press, this is just an absolute bonanza for them because it had only been invented in the 1830s. And while there were a couple of other cases, there was Helen Jewett, Mary Rogers case, which Edgar Allan Poe was interested in. This is the first trial where a woman is put on trial for first-degree murder in a media circus. And so the dynamics of that make it even more hot. Her sexuality becomes an issue. The fact that she allegedly had multiple abortions. The fact that she openly was having an affair. Everyone knew that she had an affair. In fact, was pregnant by George Wade at the time of the alleged homicides. And so she becomes a kind of early Rorschach test. And the petty press exploits it. Their circulations go up as a result of this

case. James Gordon Bennett portrays her as a witch-like figure. He has this really inky, black woodcut. She's a 35-year-old woman, but when you look at this woodcut, she looks like she's about 70 and is a witch and with deep, deep... And the portrayals of her looks change depending on the time of the case, which we've seen with later defendants. Sometimes she's considered ugly, once had beauty, still can see beauty, a witch-like figure, weary, bone weary. The descriptions change depending really on the mood of the publishers and the public, which happens with a lot of female, high-profile female defendants. Their appearance becomes very important to the

press coverage and to the case. Let's get into that a little bit more, Alex. I'm really interested in Barnum's waxworks because we've covered on this show before the 1888 so-called Jack the Ripper killings in Whitechapel. And one of the things that we looked at there was the incredible press response, but in particular, the waxworks that were made horrifyingly of the crime scenes and the victims once they'd been killed,

which is just completely unfathomable now. But, you know, that was the situation. And it's interesting to see that that was happening on both sides of the Atlantic. But I'm fascinated. I just want to pick up on what you said there about women in particular being drawn to this case. And I wonder if part of Polly's depiction in the media is that she's taken to these extremes of sort of at the opposite end of the spectrum of ideal femininity, I suppose, you know, that she's shown as being elderly, as being, on the one hand, an old woman who is physically repulsive. She's shown, as you say, in the New York Herald image, which is the

famous image of her as this very, I mean, she's sort of in shadow, and she has this black cap and veil on, and she has this wrinkled dark face you know at the same time she's shown as being someone very overtly sexual and sort of productive as well in terms of these you know supposed abortions that she's she's constantly having and i wonder if part of the i don't want to say appeal but maybe the fascination for women in this time period is that Polly is a yardstick by which to measure themselves and to sort of aspire to the exact opposite of what she's being shown to stand for. Do you think that's a fair analysis? I think that's really interesting. I never really thought of it quite like that. I'll say this. I think if you went back in time and you interviewed them at the time,

their answers were, and we know this from some of the statements that the women did make, she's an awful woman. She was not chaste. She lacked character. And she killed her sister on her knees. And so let's condemn her. I will say this too. I have noticed in the past some sentiment that maybe Polly is a feminist. You know, she leads this independent life and drinks. I'm not seeing any evidence of that in the record. The way that she, the times that she is quoted, she's very kind of haughty, upper class. She's very proud of her kind of class.

There's never any hint of, I'm leading an independent life or I should do this. She just was leading her life. But, you know, we also, the women's right movement, Seneca Falls doesn't happen for another five years. And so like, I'm always resistant to turn her into some kind of feminist icon, because I don't think she even she would say anything like that. And so this is trial two, Alex, right? So what is the outcome of trial two? And how does that take us to trial three? Why is there a trial three?

outcome of trial two and how does that take us to trial three? Why is there a trial three? So trial three is extremely lengthy. There's over 75 prosecution witnesses. It's close to two months for that time. Most murder trials were a couple of days. It was hard to keep jurors together even, but they hang together after very long deliberations in the heat of the summer in City Hall, this stuffy, beautiful but stuffy and extremely hot building where they're sleeping on pine boards, they do come to a guilty verdict with a recommendation of mercy. So the idea was there was some discussion that some of them would have gone for manslaughter. Perhaps they thought it was a fight or something, or perhaps they were just compromising because at this time, first degree murder meant hanging. Like that was the penalty for first degree murder, especially of a woman is extremely rare. So they they convict her of first degree murder.

much paid attention to the appeal because one thing about tabloid justice, they're not too interested in legal intricacies at all. They just want drama and results. But it goes up to the New York Supreme Court. The New York Supreme Court issues a lengthy decision. This is where David Graham's appellate kind of genius comes into play. He literally wrote the book on appellate procedure and procedural law. And he just goes at it, like comes up with all of these potential errors. But what was sort of overriding, it's clear, is that the Supreme Court justices knew about the press prejudice. They were reading the same newspapers. There's even a mention of people reading accounts. That was, to me, clearly the overriding issue. And so they win, I think, almost all of the exceptions. And the New York Supreme Court orders a new trial. But because of all the

prejudice, it gets sent back down to the trial court in Manhattan. And absurdly, they try to find a juror. They question 4,000 people over two and a half weeks. And I cannot imagine that. I've seen voir dire's there a couple of days. I've never, I can't imagine going through, you know, they were literally going word by word, rounding people up. The sheriff was literally, you know, hauling people into court, sealing the door shut. And these poor people, because you had to be, remember, you had to be male and a property owner.

And so that eliminates some of it. And of course, the press coverage by now just has prejudiced virtually everybody in Manhattan. Everybody had an opinion. Everybody had read about it. There was two full-blown trials at that point. And so it proved impossible. And so eventually, they both agree, both sides, for a change of venue. And for reasons that aren't entirely clear, it gets sent upstate to Newburgh, New York, which is about 60, 70 miles northwest of Manhattan in a tiny, you know, kind of a small city.

It wasn't tiny, about 9,000 people called Newburgh, New York. It's a beautiful river town, by the way. And so this is the third trial at this point. We're in 1846 by this. So this is, I mean, this has been going on now for several years of Polly's life. And the press coverage hasn't really let up during that time. So what is the verdict of the final, the third and final trial? Do we know what happens to Polly in the end? So when the case goes upstate to Newburgh, Newburgh is a very different place. Essentially, farmers who are selling fruits, vegetables to Manhattan, kind of a bucolic river town, very, very, very few Jews.

And so the Jewish pawnbrokers, there was undoubtedly some prejudice there. Witnesses also start to fall away. Because like you said, we're going on now, this started in December 1843. Now we're in April of 1846. Polly is emaciated. Walt Whitman saw her and predicted that she wouldn't survive the trial. In the third trial, she's catatonic, essentially. She's sort of staring straight ahead or at her feet.

And so people are simply worn out. But this time, instead of having, you know, nearly two month trial, it ends up being about 10 days for the trial and the tide turns. In Newburgh, people were so revulsed by the press coverage from New York City. There was a pamphlet that was handed out that was sold in Newburgh. It's called The Early Life of Polly Bidai. and it's essentially an elaborate slut shaming of her. And kind of the low point of it, there's a graphic where they portray supposedly the hairs of the seven children with their names and their genders that George Wade supposedly aborted. Complete fiction. This never happened.

But it's one of the most lure things I've ever seen in any era. And so people become really turned off. And she is acquitted. She's acquitted a dramatic Saturday night. The entire kind of town comes. Again, courthouse is packed. They sit there and we said, not guilty. Everybody screams. And then Polly bounces up, turns to her defense attorney, so can't we sue Barnum now? Because she detested Barnum's witch because a betrayer is this vengeful,

old, witch-like figure. I'm on Polly's side. I can understand why Polly would want to do that. I'm on her side on this. Before we go, Alex, I want to ask you two things. First of all, do you think Polly is innocent or guilty of this crime? And also, where does this case sit in amongst other really famous 19th century murder cases? I'm thinking about the assassination of Lincoln or the Lizzie

Borden trial, which I think comes in the 1890s. Is this up there in terms of those cases? which I think comes in the 1890s. Is this up there in terms of those cases? Yes, I would take the second question first. To me, I'm amazed that no one had written a full-length book of this, because when you read the coverage, people as far away as Montana, New Orleans, were reading this case. The former president had noted it in one of his books. There are all kinds of famous celebrities, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, P.T. Barnum, obviously, later James Fenwick Cooper's last novel is based on this book. I believe, and I think I could show this, that this was the biggest case in American history up until that point in time, up until 1846. It attracted the biggest following. It certainly

sold the most newspapers ever and was the biggest case in American history up until that point. Later, it does become eclipsed naturally by the Lincoln co-conspirators trial and then later by Lizzie Borden. And many, many, many more people know Lizzie Borden case. And I've often wondered why they know about Lizzie, but not Polly had some theories about that. I think the main answer is that there were graphic photos in the Lizzie Borden case, and the press was even more kind of institutionalized at that point. I still think it would qualify as a top 10 case ever in American history. Now, the first question, the first question is difficult, and I have to answer, it's complicated because I'm a lawyer too.

So I'm going to give perhaps an unsatisfactory answer, but then I'll give you the answer you want to know. So I will first say that as a lawyer, I have to say that as a legal matter, we have to respect the decision of the Newberg jury. We weren't there. I didn't see how the witness performed in the final trial. So I have to, just as a legal matter, respect that verdict was valid and they made decisions sincerely based on the evidence. I will say though, that we can make historical judgments. There are plenty of people who were never convicted of crimes who clearly were murderers. Stalin was never convicted of any crime. We can make our judgments because it's proof beyond a reasonable doubt is a

very, very high standard. It's not the standard we use for history, though. History, you make judgments on the available evidence we have. So my historical judgment is that, yes, I do believe that she was involved in the homicides and committed the homicides specifically. I am not sure entirely whether it was first-degree murder or manslaughter. To me, what is compelling are these pieces of evidence. First of all, the items are unquestionably Emmeline that were stolen. It's hard to even think of any other woman that would have even had access to the items.

I don't also understand any reasonable explanation about why Polly lied to her son about where she was going on Christmas. She has no alibi for that night. She was the last person seen alive. People are often horrified. The motive is weak, but what I often say is homicides are not rational. People are always looking for rational homicides. People kill family members all the time for the stupidest, just emotional, awful reasons. What I suspect happened, although I cannot prove this, I suspect they had some kind of fight or altercation. Either it was, you know, Polly was discovered by Emmeline to have been pregnant, because remember, Polly is pregnant. I think that's an underrated aspect to all of this.

She's eight months pregnant, and nobody knows about it, and they're about to discover it. And so this is going to be a very difficult time. And so what I suspect is either Emmeline discovers she's pregnant or Polly was trying to steal some money or some kind of valuables because George Waite, her paramour, was in financial debt. In any event, I think there was some kind of confrontation. She kills Emmeline and then extremely sad, this is the hardest part of the case for me, she's looking at the year and a half old niece, and the prosecution asked the grandfather could Analyza speak, and she said yes. And so there's a witness all of a sudden. She could have said Polly did it, or aunt did it, or something. And so it's horrifying, but I think that's the motive for why she, in the moment,

why she killed. I have no idea why she decides to pawn the items. I do think the pawnbrokers were telling the truth. I think there's no other person that had those items. It's way too much of a coincidence of a woman that's dressed up at the same time and has all of Emmeline's goods and is wearing the same clothes that Polly wears. Way too much points. I do think Polly was pawning those items. I have no idea why she thought that was a good idea, like to sell at this moment, other than she just sort of out of her mind at that point. You know, she's not thinking clearly. She just committed homicides and just is not thinking clearly. So the short answer is, legally, I respect the Newburgh juror.

Historically, yes, I do believe that Polly committed the homicides. I don't know if it's manslaughter. I would have at least voted for manslaughter based on the evidence that I saw, and potentially could have been persuaded to first degree murder based on her suspicious activities and her cover up of it later. So yes, that's my long winded answer about what I think happened. That's a great answer, Alex. Just finally, in terms of the trial by media that Polly goes through, do you think this case has an unsettling legacy in terms of setting that precedent of media interference in legal proceedings? I think it does set a very damaging precedent. I mean, the subtitle of my book is The Curse Birth of Tabloid Justice, because I do think it's a curse.

I also, as a curse, I'm not sure we could do anything about it. But what I think it established was the idea that we could project our beliefs based on how we feel onto these criminal cases, regardless of the evidence or having little to do with the evidence. And people are going to decide what they want to decide. There's always going to be, there's good reporters, but there's always going to be press, and especially now with social media, that are always going to go to the rumors, that are going to point fingers, that are going to rush to judgment, that are going to cause social divisions because people are going to divide along various lines. And I think that that endangers the right to a

fair trial. I think that causes very bad views and distorted views of the criminal justice system. And ironically, most of all, it makes actual justice harder because it's harder to get jurors, it's harder to get them to decide cases based on the evidence before us. And as a result, I would say in the case, ironically, I think the New York Penny Press more than anything is responsible, ultimately, for Polly being acquitted. You know, look, I wrote a book, I don't want to be a hypocrite, I wrote a book about a true crime. I mean, the true crime space, I'm not, it is fascinating. But I do think that we have to be cautious, particularly about pending cases. I think there's a big difference between the past when no one's alive, everybody's dead, no one's going to be affected of a historian, of course, but also that of a

constitutional lawyer. I really would like to point people to your book, The Witch of New York, just to get a more nuanced and more carefully considered overview of this particular case and all the ins and the outs. I know that that's available now, and I think it will be right up the streets of a lot of our listeners. So do check out Alex's book. With that, we are going to say goodbye once again. Thank you for joining us on After Dark. Please leave us a five-star glowing review wherever you get your podcasts so other people can find us too.

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