Futility Closet - 199-The Mystery of the Carroll A. Deering

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from a bigoted phrasebook to a mailed bank. This is episode 199. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1921, a schooner ran aground on the treacherous shoals off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. When rescuers climbed aboard, they found signs of a strange drama in the ship's last moments and no trace of the 11-man crew. In today's show,

Starting point is 00:00:39 we'll examine the curious case of the Carol A. Deering, which has been called one of the enduring mysteries of maritime history. We'll also experiment with yellow fever and puzzle over a disputed time of death. On August 19, 1920, the commercial schooner Carol A. Deering set out from Norfolk, Virginia, carrying a load of coal to Rio de Janeiro. The Deering was one of the last sailing cargo carriers. She'd been in service for only a year, but on this voyage, she seemed under a cloud almost from the beginning. The ship's master, William Merritt, took ill just a few days out of port and had to give up the command in Delaware. He told his supplier both that he was feeling unwell and that he didn't like the seven new crew members who had signed on in Norfolk. Merritt and his son, the first mate, returned to Maine, and Merritt

Starting point is 00:01:29 suggested his Portland neighbor, Willis B. Wormell, as his replacement. Wormell was 66 years old and retired, but had remained on call as an interim captain. He picked up a new first mate, Charles McClellan, in Boston, and on September 8th, they all set out for Rio. They delivered the coal safely there in November, but there seemed to be signs of trouble on the ship. Wormell told another captain there, I have a worthless mate, and my second mate is not much better. They left Rio on December 2nd, and on the return journey, they stopped in Barbados for supplies. There, McClellan, the first mate, picked a fight with Wormell and was heard to say, I'll kill you before it's over, old man. Wormell ordered him off the ship, and he led the crew on a five-day drunken binge.

Starting point is 00:02:09 Wormell told Captain Hugh Norton of the schooner Augusta W. Snow that his mate was giving him serious trouble. He was habitually drunk on shore and unable to handle the crew. He told Norton he'd take the Deering as far as Virginia, but then planned to go home to Maine. Separately, McClellan complained to Norton that he couldn't discipline the crew without the captain interfering. He said they refused to work, but that Wormell wouldn't let him punish them. He also said Wormell's eyesight was so bad that McClellan had to do all the navigating himself. He appealed to Norton to sign him on as mate on the snow, but Norton refused. Three men then heard McClellan say, well then I'll get

Starting point is 00:02:43 the captain before we get to Norfolk, I will. They had fair weather on the return and reached Cape Fear, North Carolina under blue skies, but heavy storms then overtook them and pounded the Carolina coast over the week that followed. The storm had passed by January 28, 1921, when the ship approached the light ship off Cape Lookout, North Carolina. A light ship is an anchored vessel that carries a beacon light like a lighthouse at sea. James Steele, the lightship's engineer, happened to be on deck and took a photograph of the Deering as she approached, and I've put that photo in the show notes. Something strange seems to have happened on board the ship by this point, but no one knows what it was. A thin man with reddish hair and a foreign accent shouted through a megaphone and

Starting point is 00:03:23 told the lightship's master, Thomas Jacobson, that the out, so he couldn't report this. As the Deering sailed past at about four knots, Jacobson noted that the crew were scattered in an undisciplined manner about the deck, especially on the quarter deck where they weren't normally allowed. The light ship's radioman, W.H. Gallahan, said, The red-haired man didn't look, act, or speak like either a master or an officer. His speech was broken, and Jacobson took him for a Scandinavian. Possibly he was the bosun, Johan Fredriksson, who was a Finn, but the Deering's original master, William Merritt, later said he didn't remember a red-haired man among the crew. Apart from the disorder, though, the Deering seemed to be making

Starting point is 00:04:18 excellent time, and she looked trim and neat in passing. As the Deering disappeared over the horizon, a steamer passed the light chip, going in the other direction. Jacobson hailed her to pass along the Deering's message, but she ignored him. He blew four blasts on his steam whistle, and the steamer changed her course and went sailing eastward while her crewman unfurled a canvas to cover the nameplate on her stern. No one's sure what to make of that. Three days later, on the morning of January 31st, a Cape Hatteras Coast Guard station spotted the Deering run aground on Diamond Shoals, a treacherous area off the Cape. Rescuers approached the ship but couldn't see any signs of life on board. The keeper of the Big Kinnikeet Life-Saving Station

Starting point is 00:04:54 wrote that she was driven high up on the shoal in a boiling bed of breakers, with all sails standing as if she had been abandoned in a hurry. Rough seas prevented anyone from boarding the vessel for four days, but on February 4th they finally reached her. There was no one aboard except for three cats, who were adopted by the steward of one of the rescue ships. The two lifeboats were gone, as were the crew's personal effects and the ship's nautical instruments, chronometer, papers, and log.

Starting point is 00:05:19 The ship's side lights had burned out, and so had two red lights that had been placed high in the rigging. Those may have been intended to signal either that the ship was out of control, that it had been abandoned at sea, or that it had run aground. There was no indication of a collision, and if there'd been any bloodshed, by this time the sea would have swept away any evidence of it. In the galley amid ships were a pot of pea soup, a pan full of spare ribs, and a pot of coffee. In Captain Wormell's cabin under the quarter deck, a few clothes were strewn about. The bed was unmade, and the captain's trunk, grip, and a

Starting point is 00:05:49 large canvas bag were gone. If the crew had abandoned the ship after it had run aground, he probably wouldn't have taken the time to collect all of these. There were three sets of boots in the captain's cabin, and a spare bunk had been slept in, which suggests that additional people had been staying in that room. In the chart room, an ocean chart was spread on the table, but a chart of the coast was missing. In the dining room, the ship's large clock had been taken from the wall. In the fo'c'sle, someone had destroyed the steering gear, apparently with a sledgehammer. The wheel was broken, the binnacle box was smashed, and the rudder was unhooked. One source suggests that this may have been done to convince reluctant men to leave the ship by making it unsailable.

Starting point is 00:06:26 It appears that no attempt had been made to swing the Deering off the shoal by lowering or trimming sails. The nautical writer Edward Rowe Snow says this would probably have been possible. An experienced captain in his right mind would never have left without making an effort to save his ship. And the men would probably have been safer staying aboard the ship than facing rough seas in open boats. A search of the beaches found no boats and no trace of the crewmen. Local fishermen said that currents at the shoals tend to flow east and meet the Gulf Stream going north, so any bodies or boats would tend to drift out to sea. The Coast Guard tried to salvage the ship but failed,

Starting point is 00:06:58 and on March 4th she was dynamited to prevent her becoming a danger to other vessels. So, what to make of this? The National Park Foundation says, To this day, the Carroll A. Deering is one of the most discussed and written about maritime mysteries of the 20th century, its enduring popularity no doubt fueled by the complete uncertainty as to how the ship arrived at its fate. And as early as 1921, the Washington Times was writing, there are theories galore. One of the first was that pirates had attacked the ship and made off with the crew. On April 10th, 1921, a fisherman named Christopher Columbus Gray said he'd found a bottle in the surf at

Starting point is 00:07:28 Cape Hatteras. It contained a note that read, Deering captured by oil-burning boat, something like chaser. Taking off everything, handcuffing crew. Crew hiding all over ship, no chance to make escape. Finder, please notify headquarters. Deering. Everyone remembered the mysterious steamer that had evaded the Capeering. Everyone remembered the mysterious steamer that had evaded the Cape Lookout light ship. The theory was that Bolshevists might be cruising the Atlantic coast, capturing American ships and spiriting them off to Russia to assemble their own mercantile navy. The Washington Post had discovered several vessels entering the port of Vladivostok under the command of Russian crews, and the original names of those ships

Starting point is 00:08:02 had been obliterated. Other media cast some doubt on the pirate theory. The Wall Street Journal noted that the number of missing vessels was not significantly greater than in other years, and modern developments should have made it relatively hard for pirates to operate. Ships now had wireless apparatus, the shipping lanes were increasingly crowded, and an international patrol now kept watch over them. And several sources pointed out that pirates wouldn't have needed the ship's boats, which were missing. Altogether, it seemed more likely that the crew had abandoned the ship either as it was foundering or after it had run aground. Nonetheless, the missing captain's daughter, Lula, leapt into action. She found three handwriting experts who

Starting point is 00:08:37 matched the handwriting on the bottle's note to that of the ship's engineer, Herbert Bates. She thought Bates had written the message in the engine room during a pirate attack and then thrown the bottle into the sea. Lula drummed up some support in Washington. She met with Maine Senator Frederick Hale, who thought that possibly the crew of another ship had mutinied and then boarded the Deering to get a navigator. And she met with Herbert Hoover, who was then Commerce Secretary, and pledged her the support of the U.S. government. Several other vessels had disappeared in the same area, but most of those were found to have been near dangerous hurricanes. And as the investigation proceeded, the bottle's authenticity fell into question. For example, why would the writer of the note ask that headquarters be notified rather than the police or the Coast Guard? Under questioning, the fisherman

Starting point is 00:09:17 who'd brought it forward, Christopher Columbus Gray, finally admitted that it was a fake. He'd written the note himself. He'd been applying for a job at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse and wanted to impress them. With that, the pirate theory fell apart. There was no other real evidence to support it, and no suspected pirates were ever caught. The investigation was closed in late 1922 with no official finding, and a search began for other explanations. Edward Rose Snow, the nautical writer I mentioned earlier, tracked down Lula Wormell in 1948 and asked her what she thought had happened to her father. She said she believed he was dead by the time of the grounding, but he couldn't have been killed too soon after they left Barbados. The ocean chart that had been left on the ship shows his handwriting up to January 23rd when the Deering

Starting point is 00:09:57 passed Cape Fear. After that, another person's handwriting takes over. Lula told Snow, at that time a second chart, the coastwise one, would naturally have been placed on top of the ocean one, and on this would appear the figuring from then on. It was this chart that never was found, and the disappearance of which was as mysterious as that of the crew itself. It is not reasonable to say the crew took it with them, unless one of them wished to conceal something, for the ends of both charts would be rolled together, and, if leaving hurriedly, no one would stop to separate them. Lula thought the red-headed man who hailed the lightship was the mate, McClellan,

Starting point is 00:10:31 and that this meant, she said, all was not well with my father. If Captain Wormell had died naturally or had been washed overboard in a storm, the red-headed man should have reported that, and he didn't. Lula added, the question of drunkenness on board ship remains unsettled, but Barbados was then floating in rum, the mate was drinking heavily when he was there, and rum running was highly profitable. These facts give food for thought. They certainly do. I've made a list of theories that have been put forward, and we can start with that. Lula's right, the disappearance happened during Prohibition when alcohol was outlawed in the U.S. and Barbados was awash in rum. So maybe some of the crew were smuggling liquor from Barbados, Wormell caught, and they killed them, and then fled the ship.

Starting point is 00:11:07 Or maybe they tried to put the liquor in the boats themselves and made a run at Hatteras Inlet, and then the weather changed, and they went down or were swept out to sea. Or maybe another ship full of rum runners tried to take over the Deering, and during the ensuing fight, she accidentally ran aground. The rum runners then would have abandoned the ship to escape the Coast Guard, but this doesn't explain what happened to the crew. It's possible that pirates were involved even though the message in the bottle was fake. One former Coast Guard chief

Starting point is 00:11:32 thought that perhaps pirates had abducted the entire crew because they needed hands for their own ship. A more extravagant theory is that the U.S. naval collier Cyclops, which had been missing since 1918, had gone rogue and was now marauding the coast. Someone else suggested that maybe the ship was attacked by a German submarine captain who refused to believe that World War I was over. It's not clear whether the crew abandoned the ship before it ran aground or after. It seems unlikely they did it after. It would have been difficult to launch the boats in stormy weather, and they wouldn't have been able to carry off all the clothing and gear. And if they'd run aground accidentally, they wouldn't have left the sails set full, as Snow argued they'd have hauled them down and tried to get

Starting point is 00:12:07 clear of the shoals. On the other hand, there's no sign that the crew made for the shore before the grounding. A local Coast Guard station keeper pointed out that the coast was well patrolled at night, and a lookout was maintained all day, and no one had spotted any effort to reach the shore. One neat solution to that problem is a freighter called the Hewitt, which was in the area carrying a shipment of sulfur from Texas. The day after the grounding, Coast Guardsmen saw a vivid flash of light near Atlantic City, and the Hewitt disappeared. It may have exploded, either because its cargo ignited or because it hit a mine left over from the war. If the Hewitt had picked up the crew of the Deering, that would explain why they were never found. But the Hewitt should have notified the shore if it had these men, and it never did. Captain Albert Frost told the FBI that he thought that the crew had tried to

Starting point is 00:12:49 work the deering off the shoals with the sails set, but then, fearing an approaching storm, had left in the ship's boats and drowned. He said, now we know they would have been better off if they'd remained on board the vessel, but other vessels which have gone on diamond shoals have been pounded to pieces quickly and all hands lost. And Charles O'Peel of the Coast Guard said the fact that no bodies were found isn't surprising given the local currents. He said there's never been a known instance where the body of a man drowned on outer diamond shoals washed up on the beach. And we can throw in the Bermuda Triangle, flying saucers, sea monsters, and sinister forces we know not of. Put those on the table as well. There's still no conclusive evidence for any

Starting point is 00:13:22 single theory. Someone asked Snow, the nautical writer, his own opinion. He suspected that Wormell was having trouble with the crew, that he wasn't aboard when the ship went aground, and that someone else had assumed command. He guessed that either the mate had done away with Wormell, or Wormell had been injured so severely that he was confined to his bunk, probably the former. He wrote, probably the mate and the others became frightened in the great storm which took their anchors. Eventually, they decided to abandon ship and let her run ashore. He wrote, sea. Then they cut the lashings and were on their own last adventure. The Carolee Deering sailed away from them and grounded on the outer diamond shoal. The men were then either picked up by a passing steamer, the Hewitt, or were swamped when the seas became rougher that same night. As the Hewitt was never reported, we cannot check this hypothesis in any way.

Starting point is 00:14:17 The fate of the Carolee Deering has been a mystery for nearly a century now, and as the ship itself is long gone, it seems likely that we'll never get a definitive explanation. In 1948, Edward Rose Snow tracked down William Merritt, the original captain, the one who had taken ill and had to leave the ship in Delaware. He believed that the Deering had run aground and that the crew had left in the boats and foundered in the breakers. He added, of course they may have murdered Captain Wormell, and again, they might not have. It is so hard to prove anything that happens at sea. It is really a case where you've just got to guess at it. We often tell you that Futility Closet would not still be here if it weren't for the support of our listeners,

Starting point is 00:15:00 and that really is the case. We appreciate all the different ways that many of our listeners help the show, but the backbone of our support really is our Patreon campaign, which gives us an ongoing source of support so that we can commit to the amount of time that the podcast takes to make. Patreon also gives us a good way to share some extras with our show's supporters, like outtakes, extra puzzles, peeks behind the scenes, and extra discussions on some of the topics we cover. For example, last week we put up a discussion of some extra information on hoarding disorder, and this week we'll be posting some extra discussion on the mystery of the Carol A. Deering.

Starting point is 00:15:34 You can learn more about our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see the supporters section of our website for the link. And thanks so much to everyone who helps keep Futility Closet going. Stuart Armstrong wrote about the puzzle in episode 195, spoiler alert, about Dr. Barry Marshall who drank bacteria to prove that they could cause gastritis and ulcers. Dr. Barry Marshall, who drank bacteria to prove that they could cause gastritis and ulcers. Hey there, mighty guardians of all that is curious. The latest lateral thinking puzzle made me think of other medical self-experimentation. Of note is that such experiments can fail, such as Max von Pettenkofer, who in October 1892 drank cholera bacteria to disprove the idea that they alone caused cholera. He concluded his

Starting point is 00:16:25 experiment was a success. Nowadays, we think he just got a mild version of the disease. Keep up the good work. And thanks to Stewart, I now know that there is a whole Wikipedia page on self-experimentation. It is pretty impressive how much risk some of these scientists have taken to help advance the field of medical knowledge. Cholera is a very serious illness that has killed millions of people. Yet in 1892, Pettenkofer deliberately drank bouillon that contained a large dose of the bacteria suspected of causing it. He did have some symptoms for nearly a week, but claimed that it had nothing to do with the cholera. And it's now thought that he just happened to get a mild case of the disease, possibly due to immunity from a previous case of it. As Stewart noted, Pettenkofer was convinced that the bacteria by itself would not cause cholera, as he believed that a whole set of

Starting point is 00:17:14 conditions was required. But even so, it was taking quite a risk. Pettenkofer is quoted as saying, even if I had deceived myself and the experiment endangered my life, I would have looked death quietly in the eye, for mine would have been no foolish or cowardly suicide. I would have died in the service of science like a soldier on the field of honor. Which is a rather noble sentiment, but it still amazes me the risks that some of these researchers have taken. If you think of the conviction you'd have to have to do something like that.

Starting point is 00:17:44 Yeah, to be so sure. When everyone else apparently doubted it. Right, right. I mean, because cholera has got a pretty high fatality rate, so you'd have to be really sure of your theories about it versus somebody else's. Yeah, but you know, which he couldn't really have been, not on the evidence. on the evidence. In 1933, Alan Blair was deliberately bitten by a black widow spider in order to prove whether the symptoms seen in some victims could indeed be due to a spider bite. Blair became quite ill and was hospitalized in great pain for several days, but did settle the question of what the effects of a bite would be. And more than one researcher attempted to give themselves cancer in order to determine if it might be contagious.

Starting point is 00:18:26 For example, in 1808, Jean-Louis Marc Alibere injected himself with a discharge from breast cancer. And in 1901, Nicolas Sen surgically inserted a piece of cancerous lymph node under his own skin. Neither one developed cancer, which did help prove that it's not contagious. But given that there wouldn't have been much in the way of cancer treatments back then, the risk that they took was pretty impressive. That's amazing. And of course, there are those researchers that were not as lucky. For example, as an article in Forbes says,

Starting point is 00:18:58 if you're studying deadly hemorrhagic fevers, the last thing you want to do is test your hypothesis on yourself. fevers, the last thing you want to do is test your hypothesis on yourself. But that actually was the last thing epidemiologist Jesse William Lazier did. In Cuba in 1900, a small group of U.S. Army doctors and some soldier volunteers allowed themselves to be bitten by mosquitoes that had bitten yellow fever patients in an attempt to infect themselves with the disease to try to prove the mosquito transmission hypothesis. One of the doctors developed yellow fever but survived, though he was permanently weakened, but most of the volunteers did not get the disease. Lazier, who was 34 with a one-year-old son and a newborn daughter, wrote to his wife back home in

Starting point is 00:19:40 the U.S., I rather think I am on the track of the real germ. He then died of yellow fever a few days later. The official story was that he had been accidentally infected, but some of his colleagues indicated that he had deliberately let himself be bitten again. Interestingly, the army major in charge of the medical research team that Lazier was part of was Walter Reed, who is the one who is often given much of the credit for the breakthrough research into yellow fever, though Reed himself acknowledged at the time that the mosquito hypothesis was not his idea, but rather came from the Cuban doctor and epidemiologist Carlos Finley. And Reed was the only member of his

Starting point is 00:20:20 research group who did not allow himself to be bitten by an infected mosquito, even though he had pledged to do so along with the others. I've mentioned on the show before how almost arbitrary it sometimes seems as to who alone gets most of the credit for a scientific advancement. Yeah, and Reed's name is much wider known today. Much wider known, and apparently he did a lot less and sacrificed a lot less. On a bit of a lighter note, Rick Byer wrote, Dear Greg and Sharon,

Starting point is 00:20:49 and Rick explains in a postscript that since Sasha doesn't speak to him, he didn't think it appropriate to address her. I listened in amusement to the description of a bear breaking into the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, episode 194, and gave a bit of a start at Greg's wondering about a bear's sense

Starting point is 00:21:05 of smell. I was immediately reminded of an experience my wife and I had almost 20 years ago on a backpacking trip in Yosemite National Park. I had planned the trip carefully so that we could reach our first stop, the Little Yosemite Campground, which is a strenuous 2,000 foot climb over approximately 2.7 miles up from the Yosemite Valley floor and past the lovely Nevada and Vernal Falls. We got up early, secured our backcountry permit, parked the car, and hit the trail at a very respectable time in the morning. Our overall destination was the summit of Half Dome, which we were planning to climb the next morning after a leisurely afternoon and evening camping by the Merced River. I was carrying an engagement ring and planned to propose on top of Half Dome. About two-thirds of the way into our hike, my now wife Christy asked me if I

Starting point is 00:21:50 had placed the food from the car in one of the bear boxes in the parking lot. I said, no, I thought you were going to put the food in the bear box. Once we had concluded very unhappily that we had indeed left the food in the car, We decided to keep going and see if there was anything the park ranger at the campground could do to help us. I will never forget what the ranger said. Think of the bear as a giant olfactory organ covered in fur. That bear can smell the food in your car a mile away. He went on to explain what the bear would do to our car to get to the food in it. We had seen pictures and were dismayed. Since it was early in the day, we elected to drop our packs, hike back down, correct the problem, and hike back

Starting point is 00:22:30 up. It was much harder the second time around. We pitched our tent and ate dinner in the dark to the sounds of Boy Scouts randomly running around the campground to scare off the bears that were watching in the dark. Yikes. an unforgettable experience and the love of my life. And I will never again underestimate the sense of smell of a bear. Love the podcast. I always find the stories interesting. Thanks for your hard work. And always on the alert for bear news these days, I happen to see an article entitled, Could a Bear Break Into That Cooler? Watch These Grizzlies Try. And of course, I had to follow up on that. It turns out that six grizzly bears living at the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center just outside

Starting point is 00:23:31 Yellowstone National Park in Montana are professional product testers and spend their time biting and battering coolers, food containers, and garbage cans. Any products that the bears can't puncture or bust open within 60 minutes earn a seal from the Federal Interagency Bear Committee, certifying them as bear-resistant and thus officially recommended for use in bear country. The bears do pretty well against the products they're given, managing to breach about 30% of them, and their record for breaking into a cooler is 7 minutes. Manufacturers pay $450 to $750 to have their products mauled, and the committee's 19-page product testing protocol specifies the use of

Starting point is 00:24:12 bears of various sizes and with varying levels of experience with containers. Containers such as steel dumpsters aren't tested because the bears know that they can't get into them and thus they find them boring. But some items are a lot more fun. Plastic trash cans have to be chained to trees to keep the bears from dragging them into their pond. The grizzlies will sometimes drag a cooler in though and then, as center employee Bill McGlynn says, pop up on it and float around just like a kid. This kind of activity doesn't count towards the 60 minutes of bear testing as they want the bears to be trying to break into the product and not just playing with it. To properly motivate the bears to really give it their all to try to get into the products, the staff will stash delicacies

Starting point is 00:24:55 inside of them such as fish heads, elk bones, and peanut butter. And I felt a little sorry for the bears when I was reading about them salivating over the treats that they could smell in a test cooler, but they couldn't find a way to get into them, despite their best efforts at whacking the cooler, jumping on it, flipping it over, and trying to use their 600 pounds to just squash it. You have to be pretty impressed by a cooler that can stand up to that kind of abuse, though McGlynn said, of course, we always root for the bears. said, of course, we always root for the bears. Yeah, you'd think, I mean, if you gave a bear 60 minutes to do anything, I'd bet on the bear. That's incredible that anything could stand up to that. Well, that's why they get a certification if it can stand up to that. And I guess if you were going hiking in bear country, it would be good to know if your cooler could stand up to 60 minute of bear testing.

Starting point is 00:25:45 And faithful listeners might remember that all this bear stuff started with the puzzle over round doorknobs being more bear resistant than the lever types. Jason Bukata, who clearly has been listening, tweeted at us, just turned on the TV, Jurassic Park is showing, quote, we're safe unless dinosaurs figure out how to open doors. Dinosaur proceeds to open door with lever style handle. So after reading that, I looked for the scene on YouTube and that is exactly what happens. So obviously, if your priorities are to try to keep out either bears or velociraptors, round doorknobs are the way to go. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. We really appreciate hearing from our listeners. So if you have anything you'd

Starting point is 00:26:33 like to say, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him a strange sounding situation, and he's going to try to work out what is going on, asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle was inspired by a news item that was sent in by Neil deCarteret and his feline companion Nala. A woman is murdered and police arrest her daughter-in-law based on the fact that they are able to determine that she is lying about the time of death. What did the police find at the scene of the crime that enabled them to determine that the woman had died much earlier than the daughter-in-law was claiming? Okay, so this turns on the time of death, the time the woman was murdered? Yes. Does the fact that this is a daughter-in-law or... No. I don't need to know the rest of that. It

Starting point is 00:27:23 sounds like this really turns on how can you tell when a person was murdered. Yes. Is technology involved? Yes. A clock? No. It's not a clock was broken conveniently at the time.

Starting point is 00:27:34 Right, yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Okay, so if I'm a detective and I come on the murder scene and I don't know anything else, Right. I can tell what time she died, right?

Starting point is 00:27:43 You could have a good guess you um based on thing things at the crime scene like you don't need an autopsy did this happen in her home yes yes uh do i need to would it help me to know what room no she died uh do i need to know um anything more about the woman specifically? Like her health or anything like that? Any of the backstory? A woman dies in her house and it's possible to tell when.

Starting point is 00:28:12 Yes. And technology isn't involved. Technology is involved. Oh, is involved. But not a clock. But not a clock. Okay. Does this,

Starting point is 00:28:21 okay, so does this concern something that happened after she died? I don't understand the question. Well, is it like something, she died and then something happened, I guess, that affected the body or something or the tableau and that made it clear that it happened after her? I'm going to say no if I understand correctly. And you said I don't need to know the cause of death? Correct.

Starting point is 00:28:43 and you said I don't need to know the cause of death correct do I need to know the position of the body no does this have anything to do with her health no or her occupation no are there other people involved

Starting point is 00:28:56 no she could have died alone in her house right she didn't but she could have I mean yes but she could have i mean uh yes but she could have yes uh was she technology there's so many ways you could do that yeah um does this involve something she was doing when she was killed no something she failed to do at any point no

Starting point is 00:29:29 uh did she die quickly can we say she died instantaneously i don't know but she might think she didn't but but it was relatively quickly but not immediately so this could whatever it is and it doesn't matter yes um could she have died just like say in bed without moving and this this evidence would still yes really yes okay uh does this have anything to do with time i mean no clocks aren't about but like time of day or night or anything like that the sun or the moon or anything. No. You say it doesn't have to do with the fact that she failed to do something. Right.

Starting point is 00:30:14 I'm going to give you a hint that this is a recent story and it needs to have been a recent story. Does it involve the internet? No. Involves technology and it involves some device she owned, I guess? Yes. And used? Yes. But she wasn't using it at the time of death.

Starting point is 00:30:31 Well. Would she normally have used it? And then, no, we asked that. I wouldn't say she was using it, but it was in use, let's say. In the house? Yes. It was in use when she died yes and because she died she didn't attend to it in some way no no it was something that was doing its job function performing its function like a

Starting point is 00:30:58 passively i keep thinking like a smoke detector or something. No. Something like that? Not like a smoke detector. Not something that monitored the environment. Not monitored the environment. Monitored her somehow? Yes. Something monitored her. Oh, like a Fitbit, a personal fitness? Exactly.

Starting point is 00:31:19 They found the dead woman's smartwatch, which was tracking her movements and heart rate. Ah. Ah. Wow. I bet that movements and heart rate. Ah. Ah. Wow. I bet that happens more than once. Yeah. So Carolyn Nielsen had claimed that her mother-in-law, Myrna Nielsen, was attacked and killed in her home by some men who Carolyn said tied up Caroline, but that she had managed to free

Starting point is 00:31:38 herself and seek help soon after they left. However, according to the data on Myrna's smartwatch, the police were able to determine that Myrna had died more than three hours earlier than Caroline was claiming. Other parts of Caroline's story didn't line up with the available evidence either. And Caroline Nielsen has been charged with her mother-in-law's murder. They think she used the missing three hours to clean herself up and stage the crime scene to try to match her story. Wow. herself up and stage the crime scene to try to match her story.

Starting point is 00:32:09 So Neil sent this article as a follow-up to the puzzle where they had used data from a man's pacemaker to show that his story didn't match up with a story he told about a fire being set. And Neil suggested that I could see if I could make a new puzzle from it, which I did. That's very good. So thanks to Neil and Nala for the idea for that puzzle. And Neil also recently sent a very cute photo of Nala taking a nap next to her new Futility Closet mug. And we'll have that in the show notes for anyone who wants to see. And if anyone else has a puzzle for us to try, criminal, fatal, or otherwise, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:32:43 Futility Closet is supported primarily by our awesome listeners. Thank you. While you're at the site, you can also browse through Greg's collection of over 10,000 compendious amusements. Check out the Futility Closet store in case you want a mug for your furry friend. Learn about the Futility Closet books and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. All the exceptional music that you hear in our shows was written and performed by Greg's talented brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 199-The Mystery of the Carroll A. Deering

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.