Criminal - Pearl Bryan

Episode Date: August 7, 2015

In February of 1896, a little boy discovered a woman's headless body in a farmer's field in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. No one knew who she was, or what had happened. Newspapers carried headlines like "Hunt for the Head" and "Headless Horror." Quickly, the crime scene became a tourist attraction and visitors traveled from all over to collect bloody souvenirs. The gruesome details were adapted into a popular song that's been recorded dozens of times. We talk with folklorist Sarah Bryan about the true story behind the murder ballad, and the band Elephant Micah performs an original arrangement. Download Elephant Micah’s “Pearl Bryan” on iTunes or Bandcamp. Read their guide, “How to Bring a Murder Ballad Back to Life” here. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey

involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. It's not known whether they themselves thought they could perform the abortion

or whether they took her to a doctor who was willing to do it. It was a felony at the time in most states, including Ohio and Indiana. Pearl Bryan was a 22-year-old woman from Greencastle, Indiana. She was five months pregnant, and she wasn't married. The year was 1896, and so she had a big problem. She was from a fairly well-to-do family, and she had a boyfriend named Scott Jackson, who was a dental student from Cincinnati.

She got pregnant either by Scott Jackson or by her cousin Will Wood, who was another boyfriend of hers. When she found out she was pregnant, she contacted Jackson and Wood, asking for help. We don't know what nature of help. We're hearing Pearl Bryan's story from folklorist Sarah Bryan. Jackson and his roommate in dental school, who was a young man named Alonzo Walling, told Pearl that she was to come to Cincinnati and they would arrange for her to have an abortion. She arrived in Cincinnati on February 1st with a small suitcase,

and either the men did take her to a doctor who botched the abortion, or they attempted to use their dental school training to perform the procedure themselves. But either way, she ended up dead, and they panicked, and carried her body across the Ohio River to Fort Thomas, Kentucky, cut off her head so they wouldn't be able to identify her, they thought, and left her in a farmer's field. They left her body in the field, but they took Pearl Bryan's head with them. Little did they know that even without her head,

her identity would be figured out pretty easily, and that generations of strangers would do their best to make certain that Pearl Bryan's name was not forgotten. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. There was blood all over the ground, around the body, but also higher up, which suggests that she was both standing and that her heart was still beating. So it does sound like there's a good chance she was alive when they cut her head off. And had gone through this horrible series of events preceding that. Yeah, an absolutely physically and emotionally traumatic experience

ended by realizing that these two men that she thought she could trust were going to kill her. Because they were terrified that they had screwed up. Right, that's the theory, is that they realized that... They ran over their head. Exactly, they ran over their head, panicking not just that she was pregnant, but that whatever had happened during the attempted abortion had injured her so grievously that they would be blamed for her murder. Pearl Bryan's body was discovered in the farmer's field by a nine-year-old boy who ran to get help.

And it was apparently an incredibly nasty, bloody scene. Blood on the bushes and trees around her, blood where the body was lying, and no head, of course, which would have been absolutely shocking to everybody who saw it. Within a fairly short space of time, lots and lots of people started descending on the crime scene, thrill seekers basically. And they collected souvenirs, leaves and twigs, ideally ones that had blood on them. exciting, but they essentially denuded this place where the body was found, taking apart all the bushes and trees around to take back souvenirs of the crime scene. Pearl had told her parents she was going to visit friends in Indianapolis, and so they didn't think it was too strange that they hadn't heard from her for a few days.

But when they read about a headless young woman in the newspaper, they traveled to Kentucky to see the body. She was formally identified when they found a shopkeeper's tag in one of her shoes, which they traced back to a shoe store, I believe, in Greencastle, where she had bought her shoes. She also, a strange detail, that her mother pointed out that Pearl apparently had webbed feet, webbed toes, and so did the body. So that was, you know, a fairly positive identification as well. Was her head ever found? Her head has never been found.

It's now tradition to leave a penny, heads up, on her grave when you visit in order to, quote, provide Pearl a head. Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling were caught, and each man accused the other of the murder. The trial was a total spectacle. Huge front-page stories around the country. There was one newspaper that said it was the greatest tragedy of the 19th century. Evidently somebody who'd forgotten about the Civil War,

it was truly sensational. And the two young men, despite what they were accused of, became sort of heartthrobs. A lot of, there was a problem at the jail because so many young women were showing up trying to visit them. They got letters from young women were showing up trying to visit them. They got letters from young women proposing marriage. And in some cases, at least a couple of girls invented alibis and tried to float them to the police, saying that Jackson or Wallinger both had been with her and trying to get them released.

The two men were found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. It was a double hanging. It was the last hanging in Newport, Kentucky. My understanding is that there was word that Pearl Bryant's family and friends were putting together a lynch mob. We're going to break the men out of jail to lynch them. In fact, while the men were in jail awaiting their execution, there was a big prison break, and all of the prisoners made a run for it. But Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling stayed behind in their cells just to hide from Pearl Bryan's family.

So the men who killed Pearl Bryan went down in history basically as heartthrobs, but her legacy was a little more complicated. She was a murder victim, but because she was unmarried and pregnant, her story and her so-called mistakes were made into a song. Way down in yonder valley, where the flowers fade and bloom, our own pearl blinds its gleaming, This is a recording by the North Carolina Ramblers. Back then, a lot of popular music used what we now call a ripped-from-the-headlines formula. Think Law & Order SVU with a fiddle.

What have I done, Scott Jackson? That you could save my life. I've always loved you, Judy, and would have been your wife. The most popular ones by far were the ones about the murders of young women. And they follow a very predictable structure in most cases. There's an innocent young woman who's deceived by an evil lover. You can sort of read between the lines that she's pregnant. He decides to do away with her. She follows him naively to some remote place, and there's

usually a scene where she pleads for her life and promises to go away without causing him more trouble. And he usually kills her either by stabbing or drowning. And that's sort of the basic plot of most, you'd call them murdered girl ballads, basically. And these are to do a lot of times, as you say, with pregnancy, unwanted pregnancy, inappropriate pregnancy. So are these rather cautionary tales? Definitely. And you get that feeling, especially with the songs that start with an invitation to the listener, like, come and listen to my story. I'll tell you the sad tale of such and such. And they often end as well with, you know, don't let this be your fate.

Don't trust a false-hearted lover. Stay home with your parents and be virtuous. Within four years of her death, there were already several versions of the Ballad of Pearl Bryan. And since then, the song has been recorded dozens of times. And as it passed from one person to the next, it changed a bit. Different sets of verses sung to different tunes. Which is your favorite version? My favorite version is the one recorded by Burnett and Rutherford. They were very traditional musicians,

made great string band records, square dance music, and their Pearl Bryan has a real traditional feel to it, a real folk feel. Do you find the fact that you're surrounded by these murder ballads creepy, or do you hear them more for the song, you know, and not so much the details? I find that. I don't really know what they're saying, but I just like the song. They're great songs. Just their musical value is part of why they survived and part of why I like them. They also are really the best memorials to these murdered women. If it weren't for the songs, we very likely wouldn't remember Pearl Bryant today

or Omi Wise, Mary Fagan, the other women and girls who were commemorated in these songs. We'll be right back. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. We'll be right back. as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts.

Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI,

a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. Because murder ballads transmit these true crime stories from one generation to the next, we were interested in what a 2015 arrangement might sound like. So we asked the band Elephant Micah to create a new version of the Ballad of Pearl Bryan 120 years after her death. People, if you'll listen A story I'll relate It happened near Fort Thomas

In the old Kentucky state On January the 31st The dreadful deed was done By Jackson and by Walling down in Balwale how cold their blood did run what have I done, Scott Jackson I thought Jackson, that you should take my life I've always loved you dearly I would have been your wife The driver was

the only one to tell of her sad fate How they murdered poor Pearl Bryan In an old Kentucky state A farmer passing by next day, her life was fully found Lying on a cold dark spot where nobody had stained the ground The message was brought to her home

Poor Pearl Brine was dead Killed by Walling and Jackson And they took away your head © transcript Emily Beynon Thank you. guitar solo Then in came Pearl's mother And to Jackson she said You have killed my daughter Please tell me where's your head Scott Jackson said they're stubborn

These are the words he said When we meet Pearl in heaven There'll be no Missing it Please tell me You deserve it Please tell me where's her head Tell me where's her head

Pearl Bride is dead Can't find her head Walling in Jackson Come Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohr and me. A lot of people helped out on this episode. Rob Byers, Joseph O'Connell, Matthew O'Connell, Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohr and me. A lot of people helped out on this episode. Rob Byers, Joseph O'Connell, Matthew O'Connell, Jason Evans-Groath, Emily Hilliard, and Aaron Smithers.

Julianne Alexander creates original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. If you'd like to find out more about Elephant Micah or download this version of The Ballad of Pearl Bryan, you can find out more on our website, thisiscriminal.com. We're coming to the West Coast to do a little tour this fall. We'll be in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and we're going to start the tour at Motorco Music Hall here in Durham. Tickets go on sale today. Criminal is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of the 13 best podcasts around.

Check out the other shows at Radiotopia.fm. Shows like Strangers, made by our friend, Leah Tao. She has a new episode out, marking the one-year anniversary of her Love Hurts series. And when we first started dating, and this is a reality TV moment, I was dating someone else. And that was kind of why I was kind of trying to...

Haze your bets? Yeah, I mean, as unromantic as that is. I did not know that. I know. Go listen. Radiotopia is made possible with support from the Knight Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating creativity, chaos, and teamwork.

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