Going West: True Crime - Murder in Marblehead // 150

Episode Date: November 20, 2021

In November of 1950, a coastal Massachusetts schoolteacher was found murdered while a treacherous nor’easter hit this small town. In one of the biggest mysteries of Essex County, a minsters daughter’s life and secrets are picked apart in hopes of finding her vicious killer. This is the story of Beryl Atherton, also known as the Murder in Marblehead. BONUS EPISODES patreon.com/goingwestpodcast CASE SOURCES https://www.newspapers.com/image/433573691/?terms=beryl%20atherton&match=1 https://www.newspapers.com/image/442997294/?terms=beryl%20atherton&match=2 https://www.newspapers.com/image/442997216/?terms=beryl%20atherton&match=1 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/141244236/beryl-marguerite-atherton https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/89857737/daisy-frances-atherton https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/89857724/warren-lester-atherton https://www.reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/egd5e5/brutal_slaying_of_marblehead_school_teacher/ https://archive.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/10/30/1950_slaying_case_still_gripping/ https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/ma-beryl-atherton-47-marblehead-27-nov-1950.103841/ https://newengland.com/today/living/new-england-history/murder-marblehead/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/433573499/?terms=beryl%20atherton&match=1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on to Crime fans? I'm your host, Heath. And I'm your host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Thank you so much everybody for tuning in today. I think a lot of us have like certain styles of cases that really peak our interest and for me it's these older like dark winter cases and this one happens to take place in one of my favorite new England towns So that really peak met interest actually I was just there last week I was in Massachusetts and it was amazing and this town is just beautiful and

Massachusetts, and it was amazing, and this town is just beautiful. And this case is such an intriguing mystery to the area. So thank you so much Jason M. for sending this case suggestion in a few months ago. I can't believe I hadn't heard of it before, but really appreciate you sending it in. Yeah, and by the way, it's our 150th episode. I wanted to do something special for it, but I just, it came so fast now that we're doing the two episodes a week and I didn't know what the hell to do. Yeah, so I guess we're just gonna have to do

something crazy for episode 200. Yes, absolutely. So thank you guys so much for bringing us to 150 episodes. Here's to 150 more. All right, guys, this is episode 150 of Going West, so let's get into it. In November of 1950, a coastal Massachusetts schoolteacher was found murdered while a treacherous nor Easter hit the small town. In one of the biggest mysteries of Essex County, a minister's daughter's life and secrets are picked apart in hopes of finding her vicious killer. This is the story of Barrel Atherton,

of Barrel Atherton, also known as the Murder in Marblehead. Barrel Marguerite Atherton was born in 1907 in Windom County, Connecticut to parents Daisy and Warren Atherton, and she was an only child. I'd actually never heard the name Barrel before, but I read that it means crystal, so there's that for anyone else who's curious. That's kinda interesting. Yeah. And both of Barrel's parents were born

in the 1860s in Connecticut, her mother Daisy being a housewife, and her father Warren being a pastor in Marblehead, Massachusetts, at the first Baptist church. And Barrel was actually the one to find him dead. In 1937, he was 70 years old, and Barrel went home to her parents' house after work, which is where she also lived at the age of 30, and she saw her father dead in his chair in the living room. And he had been in poor health for years, which brought him to retire from being a pastor six years before his death.

And actually, when Barrel was just eight years old, her 45-year-old mother Daisy died from tuberculosis, so by the age of 30, both of Barrel's parents were dead. Barrel spent the majority of her upbringing in Connecticut, but her family relocated to Marblehead, Massachusetts in 1924, when barrel was 16 or 17 years old. Today, Marblehead has nearly 20,000 residents, but back in the 1920s, it only hosted around 8,000, so much smaller. It's an old harbor town, which is beautiful, and it's in the same county as the city of Salem, which sits right next to Marblehead on the coast as well, and both are under an

hour from Boston. Marblehead is an absolutely beautiful, nice, quaint little town, and it's where Barrel and her parents spent the rest of their days. So by the age of 30, Barrel was all alone. Her parents were gone, she wasn't married, and she didn't have any close friends, and she typically just kind of kept to herself. And actually, her best friend was her dog, a white spits named Eski. Barrel worked as a schoolteacher at the Glover School, which is a public elementary school

on Maple Street, right there in Marblehead, established in 1916. She lived with her father until the day he died, but then she kept living in the house, which was a slightly rundown clappboard cottage at 57 Sewell Street, with two bedrooms and one bathroom sat on a sharp corner surrounded by other homes, and it's also a short distance from Old Town and downtown Marblehead. By the time Barrel was 47 years old and 1950, she had been teaching for about 25 years, and at this point she was teaching 5th grade at the Glover School. She was still unmarried in living in the cottage on Sewell Street, and when she wasn't teaching,

she spent most of her outings either at a beauty parlour or at the movie theater. In November of that year, winter storms were coming, and a Norrester was headed towards New England. And for those who don't know, you know, maybe if you don't live in the US or on the East Coast, Norreasters are East Coast storms that can get really, really violent and cause a ton of damage. And in particular, in late November of 1950, what was called the Storm of the Century hit the Eastern United States, which killed over 300 people and caused millions of dollars worth of damage. It was called the Appalachian Storm, and it hit just two days after Thanksgiving. It involved extreme winds with hurricane-like force, several feet of snow, high tides, and low temperatures.

However, I know that this particular storm, the Appalachian Storm, hit Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and beyond. But it couldn't find particularly somehow if it hit Massachusetts, even though Massachusetts is right there amongst all these other small states. Yeah, we kind of have to assume that it probably did. Yeah, I can't imagine that it didn't. But we do at least know that there was indeed a Norrester, a very bad storm in the Marblehead area

at this time that included very heavy rains and up to 70 mile per hour winds. So two days after Thanksgiving, which was Saturday, November 25th, 1950, right as the Appalachian storm was coming in, Barrel had the day off, you know, it's the weekend, holiday weekend too. So she used this opportunity to run some errands, which included her picking up a fur coat out of storage in Salem and hitting the grocery store in Marblehead for chicken,

pork chops, beef, a pound of butter, a pound of tea, carrots, a loaf of bread, a bag of donuts, and a newspaper, the Boston Traveler. She didn't ever leave the house on Sundays, and people knew this about her, so she did her errands on Saturday to prepare for the following day and week, which, at least on Sunday, would include nothing but staying in. When Barrel got back to her home from her errands, the rain had gotten really intense. After getting soaked from said errands, she took out the trash, got more soaked, and then headed inside to change. The last time she was seen was while she was

taking out the trash, dressed in her fur coat, and emptying the trash by her back door, which she left unlocked, and a boy delivering newspapers spotted her during his rounds after 6pm. Once inside, Barrel hung the blue shirt that she had been wearing that day on her banister to dry and wore just her white slip dress and pink sweater as she prepared her dog Eskys dinner, which that night was a chunks of meat, before putting her groceries away. And by the way, we can say pretty certainly that this meant Barrel was not expecting company because she would never even let a girlfriend in the house while she was wearing a slip dress. But while her purse sat on the dining table and the groceries on the kitchen counter, and

minutes before the Norreaster would shut out all the lights in town, someone approached Barrel in her own home. It's believed that her dog Eski was kicked really hard out of the kitchen since he had several broken ribs, possibly while he was trying to attack this assailant. There are, by the way, many reports that say the dog wasn't hurt in the attack after all, but a lot of them say that he was, so we can't be sure about this, but we do know that after this night Eski was taken in by a local vet who took ownership over him, so he was taking care of. I'm glad Eski, at least had a new home.

Oh, I know me too. And I mean, like you said earlier, this is like, barrel cared so much about Eski, and this is all she wanted. She actually was supposed to write a will, like she had planned to write a will, and in the will have arrangements for Eski but she never got around to doing it. So Barrel was a tall and very thin woman and she suffered multiple broken ribs, three to be exact, as well during this attack. Then the assailant used a sharp knife to stab her shoulder and chest, then strangled her and the killer was strong

enough to crush a bone in her neck, which shut off her windpipe and suffocated her. And then they took a smaller knife and slashed her throat. The killer broke the carving knife that Barrel used to cut up her dog's dinner into multiple pieces for some reason like they snapped the actual blade into multiple pieces. Probably during the attack I'm assuming right? Well I'll talk about in a second this knife was not proven to be used in the attack so it's kind of like I don't know why we we don't know why it was snapped into pieces very weird. He just had some like knife frustration he needed to get out. Maybe I have no idea. But then he returned apparently the other knife

to a kitchen drawer. So with that, this assailant completely disappeared out of sight. None of the other houses on Sewell Street were aware of what was going on in the Atherton home because of this loud storm that was raining down on the community. So you just, you couldn't hear anything, because think about it.

Heavy, heavy rain, extreme high winds like you you're not gonna hear somebody scream in a house next to you. This honestly kind of sounds like a movie to me. You know how sometimes in movies like you know the killers usually strikes on a stormy stormy night. Yes. And nobody sees anything because everybody's indoors and it's you know a lot of rain and wind and you know Well, I think that was a huge thing about this case that interested me that it happened during this noriester. It just makes it so much more scary and intense, yeah. Absolutely. So, also, especially because the power went out

shortly after her barrel's attack. So, she wouldn't have been able to use her phone if she was conscious, which she wasn't, and no one was coming for her sadly. So even the next morning, when things appeared calm, even for a Sunday, everyone tried to just get things back to normal because there was a ton of fallen tree limbs and twisted power lines, and the streets were covered in debris. So everyone was outside trying to kind of clean everything up. So no one looked for Barrel or wondered why they didn't see her.

Because again, she never left her house on Sundays, like not even to grab her morning paper. That's so interesting to me. I wonder why that is. I think maybe because of her religious background, maybe she just decided to, you know, like a day of fully a day of rest where she was just inside doing whatever she would do.

Yeah, that totally makes sense. Exactly. But around 8 a.m. the following morning, so Monday, the neighborhood milkman, who's a man named Kenneth Phillips, was making his rounds through the neighborhood when he came upon Barrel's house. So Kenneth saw that Barrel's back door

leading to her kitchen was open, but he didn't hear anything. He was there to bring her normal delivery of one quart of milk so he decided to appear inside to do so, and that's when he saw Barrel's body lying on the floor face up in her kitchen by the refrigerator. So in his shock and horror, he ran across the street to the neighbors who are the Chapmans to call police. He said into the phone, it's about Miss Atherton, she's lying dead in a pool of blood. The walls and ceiling had blood on them. The newspaper she had picked up the night before was scattered all around.

And I actually read that part of it was underneath her body so it was like maybe in the struggle it fell on the floor and it was just there was like papers everywhere. Yeah so it was just everything was everywhere. Barrel's broken pearl necklace lay nearby and the crime scene appeared incredibly brutal. And as Daphne said, Barrel had slashes into her throat but to describe this further and explain how gruesome this was, a cut was made from below her chin down to her breastbone and another from ear to ear. However, an old newspaper report stated that there was no clear cross on her neck as you can imagine it would appear as, but instead there were between six and nine separate slashes to her neck that didn't appear to have any particular design or

direction at all. Although many still believe it was supposed to be a cross, which could have some sort of symbolism. Either way, this was a savage murder on a simple woman who was just making dinner for her dog in her own damn kitchen. Yeah, that was something that interested me off the bat as well with this case was learning that she was a pastor's daughter, and then she had a cross, quote, carved into her neck. That's what all these old newspapers said. Like this one headline was in all this bold lettering, the killer carved across. So you might think this has symbolism to her religious background, but the police were kind of like, no, there

was a lot of different slash marks and there wasn't, it didn't appear that it was supposed to be a cross. Yeah, I mean, having six to nine different slash marks in different directions, but what's weird to me is that usually when you slash somebody's neck, you go, you know, horizontally. So it's interesting that there was that vertical cut, you know, down your breastbone. And the slashashes at all, I mean, the police also said it just appeared that the killer wanted to make sure she was dead because at the time of the slashing,

they suppose that she was unconscious because he broke that bone in her neck first. So it's a little unclear, but either way, it was very, very brutal. Yeah, it kind of feels like a, almost like a crime of passion with how, you know, Oh my god, it was super intense, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So sadly, the crime scene didn't offer very much information because there was initially

no sign of forced entry. There were no fingerprints or footprints that they were able to collect. And no witnesses saw anyone enter or leave Barrel's home that evening. Nothing appeared to be stolen from the house, and Barrel had not been sexually assaulted, so police started to think that maybe when Barrel came home, someone was already there like planning to rob the house, but since she caught them in the act, they killed her. But still, like we're saying, why kill her so brutally and then take nothing, which only leads us to believe that maybe Barrel's killer knew her and they had a different motive.

And the robbery motive also really doesn't make sense to me anyway, because Barrel made what would equal around $2,000 a month today. She lived in a house that's under 1,000 square feet that was described as a drab and run down, you know, not so much so that it was extremely decrepit and falling apart, but just enough that it didn't appear someone with money lived there. However, she did have a collection of sterling silver pieces, which were worth thousands of dollars at that time, and they were still sat in the cabinet when police arrived.

And as we mentioned earlier, Barrel was known to be quiet. She didn't have very many friends or a husband, but she was allegedly dating someone seriously before she was murdered. She was in a romantic relationship with a local man, but their relationship reportedly ended in 1942 after he fell in love with another woman from Maine. Though, Barrel was previously certain that he was going to propose to her. She was also known to have at least three other relationships simultaneously, but none were serious, who lived out of town as well. But as far as friends go, many of her closest pals were actually teachers that she worked with.

When Barrel passed away, a replacement teacher named Mrs. Perkins was put in her student's class, and they returned to their normal learning as usual. And although they absolutely loved Miss Atherton, they were too young to fully grasp what had happened to their beloved teacher. Meanwhile, police got to work finding her killer. As police continue to search Barrel's house, they found blood upstairs in her bedroom and on her pillowcase, which indicated to police that the killer may have gone upstairs looking for something.

They also concluded that another knife was used in the attack because the one found in the drawer, including the one that the killer had snapped into pieces, were just way too dull to nearly sever her head. So they weren't believed to be the murder weapons. The chief of the Marblehead Police canceled all days off for his officers, determined to solve this murder. Since there was almost no blood left in Barrel's body by the time police arrived to the scene, they had to pump a sample out of her heart.

Her murder was the first in this town for 65 years, so you can imagine the utter shock that the community experienced, especially considering the brutality of it all. Detective Clement Rogers was on this case, and he noticed that a pane of glass was broken in an unlatched front window in Barrel's house of course, and that the front door itself was also unlatched. This indicated that the killer had broken the glass, reached inside, unfastened the window latch, and then entered through the window. Then, after killing Barrel, they unlocked the door and escaped unseen.

Marblehead Police started by questioning all of Barrel's neighbors, including the Chapmans, the Glasses, the Buttmans, William Best and Charles Graham. But none of them remembered seeing any people nor any vehicles at the Attherton home on Saturday evening at all. And in fact, none of them had even particularly seen barrel that night either. Because of all this, police felt confident that the killer knew the district and the neighborhood, and on top of this, police felt that a five-foot tall stone wall behind Barrel's house had allowed him to escape unnoticed.

Perhaps he had climbed over the wall and silently crept into the darkness through the neighbor's backyards. But it's still a wonder how no one would have noticed all the blood that would have more than likely been all over the killer's clothes, considering how gruesome this crime scene actually was. Yeah, I agree. I feel like there probably would have been

a lot of blood on him and I just really wonder how he got away. Cause again, this is like, it's a dinner time in Marblehead. So, yeah, maybe there's not a ton of people outside, but I don't know, it's not like it's the middle of the night where no one's out, you know? Yeah, and I mean the paperboy is out for God's sakes. Exactly, and you know, like considering the brutality of the crime, there had to have been a ton of blood just everywhere all over this guy. We know it was on the ceilings of the crime, there had to have been a ton of blood just everywhere all over this guy. We know it was on the ceilings in the walls,

so that kind of tells you a lot. Exactly. So next, police looked into Barrel's ex of eight years prior, but he had a secure alibi and had long moved on from his relationship with Barrel. Yeah, I mean, if anyone was heartbroken out of that relationship, it was Barrel because he left her for a woman in Maine.

And I read a lot of newspaper reports from her friends that she did have who said she was just destroyed after that breakup. Yeah, I can imagine. So police ordered all the knives to be sent to the state lab, which is in Boston, and they asked for every doctor and hospital in the area to report to them if a patient came in

to be treated for cuts the day or the day after barrel was murdered. Detective Ray Foley also wanted to see if any local dry cleaners had gotten any blood stain clothing in. Local dumps were searched in hoping of potentially finding dumped evidence or even bloody clothing, and eventually, a woman's nightgown, a man's shirt, and a brown-stained towel were found, and these were sent to the Boston Crime Lab. But sadly, they did not prove to be relevant in Barrel's case. Police soon learned that the Friday before Barrel's death, so just the day before, she went to her safe deposit box in Salem

at the NAMKIG Trust Co. And they thought maybe this could be a lead, maybe there were some clues in the safe deposit box. But when they opened the box, they found various papers regarding her father and his religious work. But there was no money, there was no insurance policies. So still, the motive to her murder

was this huge mystery. After Barrel stopped at her safe deposit box, she went shopping in Boston with her friend Georgiana Henderson, and according to her, Barrel was in great spirits, which made Barrel's murder seem even more random. No clear motive, nothing seemed wrong in her life, so what happened? Again, Marblehead was absolutely terrified by this murder, and many women in the neighborhood and throughout the community worried that the killer would strike again. They demanded more lighting on the streets and more police protection in general, and what police did do for the time being to help with the, you know, peace of mind of this community, and to avoid another murder, the department hired more officers so that they could check on these houses of middle-aged

women periodically. Which is great, you know, because maybe they were thinking there's a killer out there who's targeting middle-aged women. I mean, who knows? Yes, I mean, really, who knows? Exactly. So, police wanted to close this so badly, so they continued questioning people between her coworkers, delinquent local teens

and window-peapers, but police eventually cleared them all. Knowing that Barrel's life was pretty quiet, they wondered if she had any secrets. If there was anyone out there with information that they wouldn't know to ask. So police ordered that her picture be shown across TV screens in New England. And this actually brought

in a ton of tips. And yes, in 1950, they did have TV and local news channels. And of course too, I know that her face was in the papers. It had been in the paper. So they're trying to get her face out there to as many people as possible. But most of these tips were useless, but at least one kind of helped. So the man asked to keep his name anonymous, but he was an accountant from the neighboring town of Lynn and he gave a little peek into Barrel's real life. On weekends, Barrel often went clubbing in the city of Lynn, which is just two towns over

and about 15 minutes away by car from Marblehead. And then, when she would get back very early in the morning, she would always walk her dog Eski. This man said that he was friendly, but not intimate with Barrel, and that he first met her in 1946, so four years prior to her death,

and that they saw each other on and off for the next three years before he went into the service. This man named two other men from Lynn, both single, who spent time with Barrel here and there, and when investigators questioned them, they both stated that they had nothing to do with her murder. Neither were in love with her, they were just intimate with her on occasion, and that was as far as it went, so why would they kill her? According to them, they wouldn't have, and they didn't know who it would want to. But because she was a minister's daughter

and a schoolteacher, she kept these affairs a secret from her friends. So was she hiding anything else? Barrel did have a diary that she typically wrote in every day, but even this didn't bring in anything very helpful. Another lead that police had were these checks that Barrel made semi-frequently for two years leading up to her murder. Typically for 7-10 dollars each, which would be equivalent to around 80-15 dollars each. These checks never noted what they were for, but the last one was written about three and

a half weeks before her murder on November 1, 1950. The name on the check has not been revealed, but we do know that it was only the first name, and it's a name that could either belong to a man or a woman. This just makes me wonder, because, so by the way, I also read that none of these checks had been canceled. So none of them were canceled in her checkbook, meaning they were cleared by the bank. So there's a lot of kind of speculation around

what that would mean. And then I also read in a Reddit thread. Somebody said that she closed her bank account before she was murdered. And that, I couldn't find that in newspaper articles so I don't know if that's true or where somebody got that information but that kind of made people speculate to that.

She closed her account to go run off with somebody and then she ended up getting murdered. Like there's all these weird things about her bank account that are kind of confusing but it is weird that she wrote these checks unless maybe, you know, for all we know, she had somebody who helped her around the house or took care of her dog or whatever. Or she's making donations to the local church or something. Right.

But then at the same time, I think it's like, why didn't that person come forward and say, oh, yeah, she wrote me these checks for this. It doesn't seem like police ever solved who these checks were too, which kind of makes you question as well. So two weeks after Barrel's murder, a 35 year old man in Marblehead assaulted his own family as well as other locals with a butcher knife.

So of course, police wondered if he had something to do with the Atherton case, because like I said, her murder was the first in 65 years. This is a very safe little town. Yeah, no, no, you've got this guy running around with a butcher knife attacking people Yeah, it's just weird and also this man had previously been a patient at the Denver State Hospital But when police questioned him there just wasn't enough evidence to pin him to Barrel's case, so this was kind of just dropped. Another person of interest who there isn't much information available online about is

a teenage boy who happened to be the son of a prominent local family. He was known to be quote, wild and spoiled, and had even been seen wandering around Siouxville Street, which again is the street that barrel lived on during the storm, wearing an oil skin jacket, also known as a slicker, you know, one of those waterproof jackets that is worn by sailors and fishermen. Yeah, think to the movie, I know what you did last summer. I knew you were going to say no, I was going to put that move over in there. No, because that's what that's exactly where my mind went to when I was looking at this. I was like, Oh, okay, yes, I know you did last summer.

Yep. So later an oil skin jacket was allegedly found with a switchblade in the pocket, but it didn't contain any blood. However, this knife was apparently washed with gasoline, which is very bizarre. I wonder why. Do you think that would maybe be to take any sort of DNA off the blade?

I should have looked this up. I don't know if gasoline does that, do you? I couldn't be certain if you guys know or if anybody does know. Let us know. Yeah, I mean, I know that. I mean, unless he set the blade on fire, I really don't know. And by the way, full disclosure, this prominent teen we're talking about, he was mentioned in a Reddit thread. And the person said that they found it in a newspaper article online

from a Massachusetts newspaper. And I typically don't like to include or we typically don't like to include information that we can't personally back up with a source. But I thought this information was super interesting. And I searched far and wide, but I could not find a source that gave this information, so I don't know who this boy is. But it might be someone named Philip Jenkins, which Heath is going to tell us about right now. I think they might be the same person, but I cannot confirm. And we actually know quite a bit about Philip.

At least from his own perspective, because he wrote an article for New England Today Living titled, I was Suspected of Murder. On Monday, November 27, the same day that Barrel's body was discovered, Philip, who was a newly hired high school teacher in Swamp Scott, which is the town between Lynn and Marblehead, arrived late to the first class that he taught since he had just been to a doctor's office. Two investigators showed up to his office shortly after to ask how he knew Barrel Atherton. Philip thought back to hearing about her murder story and said that he didn't know her at

all. But the investigators explained that he was in an evening class with her just a few months prior at Boston University. And we're a bit confused about this because we can't confirm if this means that Barrel was for whatever reason taking night classes, but either way, Philips said that shortly after said course began, he switched to a different one, so he wouldn't have remembered her. The weird thing is that Philip had a cut on his face, and this of course stood out to

police. They mentioned that he left a raincoat at the cleaners that same morning and it had stains on it. This is kind of the reason I think it might be connected to this other boy, even though Philip himself in this article, I was suspected of murder, does not mention any kind of knife, but this raincoat at the cleaners could be that slicker or the oil skin. I think police discovered this because like we said earlier, they asked every cleaner to come forward in the area if there was anything given to them

that had any stain on it or anything suspicious. So they then asked if the stains were from the cut on his face and then asked how he got hurt. Philip told them that he had driven off the shoulder of Route 114 the night before, so Sunday, because of the evening fog. He was driving from the town of Andover to Swam Scott, where he taught, and when he drove off the shoulder, he said he hid his head against the windshield post. He said that he'd been in Andover visiting some friends after being in Worcester, Massachusetts

at his mother's for the Thanksgiving holiday. Now Philip was a bit younger, like a younger guy. I don't know how old he was. I'm assuming maybe in his 20s or his 30s, but investigators still wondered if he could have maybe had some sort of fling with Barrel and that something went wrong. So the investigators wanted to speak with his mother

to confirm his alibi, and they also planned to speak to his doctor about that cut on his face. So later that evening investigators arrived at Phillips' home where they examined his car for damage and this checked out with this story. And they told Philip that they had spoken with his doctor as well and that also checked out. So just like that, Philip was no longer a suspect. And years later, 26 years to be exact, Philip even met up with the detective on Barrel's case, Clem Rogers, because Philip wanted to write about the story.

He asked if he had a theory as to who the killer was, and Clem said that it had to be someone who knew Barrel's home and lived in Marblehead, and was also more than likely somebody that she knew. But after all these years, her case has still remained unsolved. Clem Rogers has since passed away and it seems the one person who is still alive and dedicating nearly each and every day to Barrel's case is a man named Harry Christensen. In 1970, when Harry was just 24 years old and attending Salem State College in Salem, he wrote a 12-page paper about barrels murder for his English class. He got an A on the paper,

but after writing it, he became completely consumed by her case, and he wanted to solve it himself. As the years passed, he became a select man of marble head, which is someone on the board of officials in a town, so he was like on the board of officials in Marblehead and still is, as well as a lawyer, but he still dedicated countless hours and days to barrels case. He has taken hundreds of photographs of her house. He spent every November 25th from 1970 to 1975, parked outside of Barrel's old house, just kinda hoping the murderer would return, writing down various license plates by the way

as people drove by, yet to no avail. He questioned Clem Rogers many times before Clems passing. He studied Barrel's diary, and to this day, Harry still drives by her house, hoping to discover something. I'm just so inspired by this man, I think he's amazing. I think just the fact that, you know, she, Barrel doesn't have any family, she didn't have any kids, both her parents were dead, it kind of seems like her case is just this mystery of the town.

And you know, but it doesn't seem like there's anybody who's still fighting for justice for her in that way, but Harry cares so much about this case. And he just wants to bring justice to her name. And I think that's awesome. Yeah, I do too. And 20 years ago, Harry believed that he had actually solved Barrel's murder. And he kept the name of the perpetrator and all his research in an envelope inside of a bank vault.

Yeah, and I also read that. I think he still has that because he's still alive. I think he still has that envelope in the bank vault and he has a range meant to hand it over to police when he does die, which is just insane. Yeah, exactly. And until then, he won't reveal the name, you know, to this day due to legal ethics, and just wants to test this person's DNA. In 2003, he told the Boston Globe that he was extremely confident in his conclusion.

And all he would reveal about the person is that they were a former student of barrels, and that in 2003, they were still living in Massachusetts, and were in their early 70s, meaning at the time of the murder they would have been a teenager. Police still have preserved scrapings from under barrels' fingertips, and Harry believes that if police could capture this apparent killer's DNA, it would be a match. But the one reason they can't test it is because lack of funds. As a select man of marble head, Harry knows all too well what the budget is.

And back in 2003, such DNA testing would cost around $40,000. He stated, why spend this kind of money? Because she had her life wrenched away from her. Somebody needs to be an advocate for that kind of person. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode, and next week we'll have two new episodes for you guys to dive into.

If you guys, by the way, would be interested in helping with this case, please let us know, comment on our posts about it so we can kind of get an idea of how many people would maybe be willing to throw a few bucks to this important cause. We're really interested in setting up a donation to help fund the DNA testing, which we're still trying to figure out how much it would be today, and we've contacted Harry, and we of course are interested in donating ourselves, but I mean, every penny counts, so please let us know. Because again, just because Barrel doesn't have any living family, it doesn't mean that her case deserves to be unsolved.

It's such a huge mystery that still haunts the community, and this vicious killer needs to be caught if they're still alive. Yeah, definitely. Justice needs to be served in this case. Also for you guys who want extra episodes of Going West, please head over to patreon.com slash goingwestpodcast, we have a ton of ad free full length episodes for you guys to binge. Yes, we just released the episode on Yara Gamarasio. It's a crazy Italian case.

I forgot to mention it earlier. We'll mention it next week to remind you guys if you don't go join this weekend. That case is insane. They're actually about to release a Netflix documentary on her case. So go listen to that and over 50 other episodes. But either way, we love you guys so much.

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