Lore - REMASTERED – Episode 31: Lost & Found

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

In this newly remastered classic Lore episode, we revisit stories of bodies lost and bodies found. With fresh narration and production, and a brand new bonus story at the end of the episode, this chilling tale is bound to uncover some feelings. ———————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ©2022 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved. Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [e-mail], or visit our listing here.

10. Teenagers Teenagers have a tendency to get up to mischief when they're bored. It's as true today as it's ever been. So when four teenage boys found themselves with a spring afternoon on their hands, they did what any English lad might have done in 1943. They went poaching. They were only hunting for birds' nests, really. It was April and spring meant nests full of eggs. So they went exploring in their area of Sturbridge, there in the midlands of England. Over the course of that afternoon, their search brought them to a private park known as Hagley Woods. And that's when they saw the tree.

It was a massive elm with an overgrown trunk that looked more like a hedgehog than a plant with thin wispy branches that stuck out toward the sky. Some people called it the witch elm. It was strong. It was climbable. And most importantly, it was perfect for nesting. So one of the boys scaled up the side of it. When he reached the top and began to look for nests, he found something entirely different. A skull was staring up at him from the hollow center of the tree. The boy assumed it was from an animal and plucked it free from the branches. That's when he noticed how large it was in the patches of hair that were still attached. Human hair.

The grisly discovery kicked off one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in modern England. Beneath the skull lodged in the hollow center of the tree was a complete skeleton. It belonged to a young woman of unknown origin and unknown identity. No one stepped forward to claim the body. No killer was ever found. But the public fell in love and named her. And to this day, people still wonder who put Bella in the witch tree. Humans are fascinated by dead bodies. They're the centerpiece of countless mystery stories and a vivid reminder of our own mortality. We can see that fascination in both the innocent wonder of films like Stand By Me and the gruesome realism of CSI. Real life, though, is more

complex. It's more dark than we'd care to admit. And while the odds are good that most people won't ever stumble upon a dead body, it's a lot more common than you'd think. Corpses should be hard to come by. But unfortunately, that couldn't be further from the truth. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. In February of 2013, a number of guests at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles called down to the front desk to complain about the water in their rooms. Some described how the shower would run black before clearing up. Others complained of the odd taste and odor. And that age-old complaint that we all know and love, poor water pressure, popped up from time

to time as well. So the maintenance crew was sent up to the roof, where the hotel kept tanks used to supply the rooms. And it was in one of the tanks that they discovered a body. A human body, no less. And it had been there for weeks. It turned out to be a missing woman named Alyssa Lam. Her parents had reported her missing in early February, but she had last been seen there in the hotel on the 31st of January. And it was her decomposing body that had been altering the hotel's water supply. Blame bodies in unusual places isn't a new thing, though. And it's not uncommon, either.

In January of 1984, three students from Columbia University were walking home to their dorm when they passed an old carpet, rolled up and discarded on the side of the street. Now, like a lot of you, I've been to college, so I think we can all agree that curbside discoveries are frequently wonderful. A random desk or that ugly couch that's way too comfortable to be ignored, so it's hard to blame these three students for bringing the rug home. When they unrolled it, though, they found a body inside. The man, roughly 20 years old, had been shot to death, as was evident from the bullet holes in his forehead. Needless to say, they didn't keep the rug, and the police were brought in to do a full investigation.

In December of 1982, staff were called to a room in a motel in North Bergen, New Jersey. The occupants complained of a powerful odor in the room, and they weren't the first. For a number of days leading up to the call, each guest in that room had complained of the same thing, and it seemed to be getting worse. The motel staff finally discovered why. It was the body of Gary Smith, who had been killed by his auto theft partners and stuffed beneath the bed in the room. They had poisoned his hamburger and then strangled him when he failed to die fast enough for their liking. Afterward, they hid the evidence beneath the mattress.

In 2011, Abbeyville National Bank in Louisiana began renovations to their second floor, an area they had used for storage for decades. Running between the storage area and the active bank facilities below was a chimney, and it was just inside the first floor fireplace that workers discovered a few small bones. Climbing inside the fireplace and looking up, they found the source. A body, now little more than a skeleton, had been lodged in the flue. Dental records connected the skeleton to a man reported missing 27 years earlier in 1984. The man had a criminal record and had been in trouble with the law shortly before his disappearance.

Police can't prove why he was in the chimney, but given the proximity to the bank, they felt it's safe to guess that he had been trying to rob it, the Santa Claus style. In November of 2011, Russian police raided the home of a historian named Anatoly Moskvin inside. They found 29 life-size dolls, all women, all dressed in fancy clothing, but they weren't dolls at all. Moskvin, it turns out, was a grave robber with a fetish. For years, the historian had been visiting cemeteries all over western Russia, as many as 750 by some counts, and occasionally brought home corpses that interested him. All were female between the ages of 15 and 30 and had all been dead for a very long time.

It seems, if we're to believe the newspapers and media outlets, stumbling upon a corpse isn't as rare of a thing as we might expect. Maybe it's a product of the times. With more and more people on the planet, I suppose the odds keep going up that we'll eventually open a wall or dig a garden bed and find a body. But some bodies are intentionally harder to find. Some killers go to great lengths to hide the evidence of their dirty deeds. And that's really the core of these stories, because hiding a body is about more than just making an object disappear. It's about concealing a crime and escaping the consequences.

The trouble is, when those hidden bodies are found, their stories often reveal the greatest horrors of all. She wasn't always known as Kate Webster. Sure, when she gave birth to her son in 1874, that was the surname she passed on to him. She claimed to have married a sailor named Webster, but he had died. A decade earlier, though, she had been someone else entirely. Kate Webster was born Catherine Lawler to a poor family in a small Irish village in 1849. Now, while most children might have helped out at home or perhaps played with toys, Catherine had to grow up fast. She spent her early childhood learning to pickpockets,

and judging by how the rest of her life played out, it was a skill that she had been born with. At the age of 15, she was caught and imprisoned for a short time, but by 17, she managed to steal enough money to secure herself passage on a boat to England, but she didn't use the journey as a chance to make a fresh start. No, Catherine Lawler just kept upping her game. Within a year of arriving in Liverpool, she was caught stealing and sentenced to four years in prison. Once released, she found work as a house cleaner in London, as well as a sex worker, and then she became pregnant. The father, according to Kate, was a man she called Mr. Strong. He'd been her friend,

her lover, and her partner in crime for many months, but when he learned of the pregnancy, he abandoned her. Her son, John Webster, was born in April of 1874, and those that knew her couldn't help but wonder, would this help Kate change her ways? The answer, it turns out, was a clear and obvious no. Rather than seek for reform, Kate simply evolved. She would rent a room in a boarding house, and once there, she would begin to sell off the furnishings in her room. When everything was gone, she would move on and repeat the crime somewhere else. Another thing she repeated, I'm sad to say, was prison time. In 1875, while her son John was only a year old,

Kate began serving an 18-month term in Wandsworth Prison, right there in London. It was one of many stints in police custody, even though she moved around a lot and used various aliases to disguise herself. And all the while, her friend Sarah Crease helped by watching and caring for young John. Something that Sarah was an enabler. She gave Kate the freedom to live her life of crime without the burden of parenthood. But others view Sarah as a hopeful friend. She saw a young boy who needed looking after, and she did her best to help out. She also worked hard to get Kate a real honest job, something that had the potential to turn the woman's life around. In 1879, Sarah's employer asked if there was someone who could do some

house cleaning for a friend of hers, a woman named Julia Martha Thomas. Mrs. Thomas lived in the Richmond area of London. She was a widow in her mid-50s and had a reputation for being a little strict and prone to anger. But it was a job, and Sarah immediately suggested Kate Webster. The relationship between Webster and Mrs. Thomas began cordially enough, but quickly devolved into daily arguments. Webster claimed that Thomas would follow her around and criticize her work, while Mrs. Thomas claimed that Webster came to work drunk most of the time. Needless to say, it wasn't a match made in heaven, but the two women tried hard to make it work. After a little over a month, Julia Thomas decided it was time to cut Kate Webster loose.

Kate, to her credit, tried to change. She begged for just a few more days of employment, and for some unknown reason, Thomas agreed to the terms. But the relationship was eating at her like an ulcer, and she couldn't stop thinking about it. She thought that Kate was stealing from her, but she didn't have any proof, and she feared for her life. On March 2, 1879, Mrs. Thomas showed up at church, clearly upset. She just had another argument with Webster, and it had shaken her deeply. Her friends there claimed that Thomas seemed distracted and agitated, and she left early to go attend to matters at home. But Kate was waiting there for her, and this time, they would trade more than angry words.

Julia Thomas thought the house was empty, but went searching for Kate Webster anyway. They had unfinished business, and it was time Kate found some place else to work. It was settled, as far as she was concerned at least. While Mrs. Thomas was in the upstairs hallway, Webster stepped out of a dark room and attacked her employer. The two women struggled for a moment, and then Kate gave the older woman a shove. Thomas tumbled down the staircase, where she slammed into the floor below. Her skull now fractured and bloody. She began to scream where she lay. Kate was immediately concerned that the neighbors might hear. There was a busy pub next door, and if someone happened to hear the shouting, Kate was sure to be discovered and

arrested. Launching herself down the stairs, she sat on the injured woman's chest and began to squeeze her throat with both hands. She wanted the screaming to stop. She needed it to stop. And after a few tense moments, it did. Julia Thomas lay dead on the floor of her own home, and Kate Webster had graduated from theft to murder in the course of just a few heartbeats. But Kate was stronger than her fears, and she knew she had to act fast. She grabbed a razor, a meat saw, and a carving knife and set about cutting Thomas' body into pieces. Later, Webster would admit that while she believed she had always had a strong stomach, this work in particular tested her limits. There had just been so much blood, she later told the

police. Webster put the pieces into a large copper laundry kettle and boiled them in an attempt to reduce them to a more manageable state. It was essentially rendering. The process where meat is cooked until the fat and protein separates. Witnesses would later come forward and talk of the stench coming from the home. But no one complained at the time. This was London in the late 19th century. Perhaps people were just a little more forgiving of odd odors back then. When the boiling was complete, Webster fished out each part from the remaining lard and placed them in a box she found in the home. Most of it, that is. She couldn't seem to fit the head and one of the feet, so she had to get creative. She tossed the foot into a local trash heap,

but the head was more problematic. In the end, she found a Gladstone bag, something like an old physician's handbag, and stashed it inside there. And then she cleaned the house, removing as much of the evidence as she could that something horrible had taken place there. It took her two full days to do it, but when she was finished, she put on a dress from her former employer's wardrobe and went to the pub next door to meet a friend for drinks. This friend, a Mrs. Porter, later told police that Webster arrived at the pub carrying a large black bag. She kept it with her almost the entire evening, as if it contained something very valuable to her. Oddly though, Webster excused herself from the table at one point, and when she returned

a short while later, the bag was gone. Webster's next order of business was to get rid of the box that contained what remained of Mrs. Thomas, so she enlisted the help of Mrs. Porter's son to carry it out of the house and to the nearby Barnes Bridge. He carried the heavy box all the way to the bridge, and then she sent him home, claiming that a friend was on the way to meet her there. This boy would later tell police that as he was walking away, he heard a large splash. It was as if something heavy had been tossed into the river. Webster had disposed of the body, and I can't help but wonder if she perhaps sighed with relief when the box finally dipped beneath the surface of the Thames and vanished from sight.

The following day, though, things got more complicated. Unaware that the box containing Mrs. Thomas had floated to the surface and drifted to shore overnight, Kate Webster dug in deeper. She took on the identity of her former employer while beginning to sell off all of the items in the house. The old habits die hard, apparently. And it was about this time, according to a later witness, that Webster stepped outside and spoke to a pair of neighborhood boys. She had two bowls in her hand, and they were steaming hot. She told them it was lard from a pig, she added, and they were welcome to have it for free if they wanted it. The boys ate two bowls each. While the police were investigating the discovery of the box full of body parts,

they had no clues that might point them to the killer responsible. It even took them a bit of time to figure out that the parts were actually human, rather than butcher castoffs. But even then, all they could be sure of was that the victim had been a middle-aged woman. Kate Webster, meanwhile, was making money hand over fist. She sold off all the smaller items first, the jewelry, the knickknacks, even the victim's gold teeth, and then began to spread word that the furniture was for sale as well. And that led to an agreement with a local man, who arrived on March 9th with a small group of men to help him carry the items out of the house. A neighborhood woman saw the activity and approached one of the men.

Who ordered the removal of these items, she asked him. The man simply turned and pointed to Kate Webster, who stood on the front steps of the house. She did, he replied. Mrs. Thomas. When the police finally arrived, they entered the house and immediately found signs of something tragic, a charred finger bone in the fireplace, blood stains on the floor, splatters of grease or lard around the copper kettle. But the one thing they wanted to find, the killer, was nowhere to be seen. Kate Webster had skipped town. In the end, the authorities tracked her down in Ireland. She'd taken her son and made her way back to her hometown as fast as she could. When she arrived, she did so while still wearing clothing

and jewelry taken from Mrs. Thomas. But her stay there was short-lived. The local chief of police, the man who 15 years earlier had put her in jail for the first time, recognized her in the bulletin from Scotland Yard and quickly took her into custody. Everything after that moved quickly. Webster was transported back to England and at every train stop between Liverpool and London, crowds gathered to jeer and shout at her. By March 30th, she had formally been charged with murder. Of course, she tried to lie her way out of it. This was the woman who had changed her name dozens of times to outsmart the police, who had moved into room after room and sold off the possessions inside. She was a thief and a liar, so it was only natural for her to try and talk her

way out of this too. First, she blamed the murder on Henry Porter, the husband of her friend from the pub. When his alibi held up, she shifted the blame to the man who had come to buy the furniture from the Thomas house. But he too was easily dismissed. When it appeared that she wouldn't be able to squirm out from under the charge of murder, she took credit for the crime but claimed that she only did it because others told her to do so. In the end, none of it worked. The formal trial began on July 2nd of 1879 and six days later, the jury declared her guilty. The judge, a man named Denman, sentenced her to be executed. When asked if there was any reason why she should not be executed, Webster told the judge, yes, insisting that she was in fact

pregnant. A new jury of women were gathered together along with a physician and after examining Webster, they declared that the pregnancy, like everything else the woman had said, was a lie. She returned to Wandsworth Prison where she had served time before working for Mrs. Thomas and it was there that she wrote her formal confession. She described all of the details of the murder, right down to how she burned the internal organs to get rid of them, how she chose her tools, and even how she removed the head. On July 29th, Kate Webster stepped onto the platform inside the prison's execution chamber, a building ironically nicknamed the Cold Meat Shed. The governor announced the time,

a priest administered last rites, and then she was guided onto the trap doors with a sack over her head. Afterward, she was buried in an unmarked grave right there at the prison. The records of Wandsworth Prison contain the names of 134 people who were executed over the span of 110 years. Kate Webster was the only woman on that list. It's hard to nail down the real reason behind our fascination with death, but it's safe to at least make a guess. Death puts our mortality on display. No matter how hard we try to avoid it as a topic, to ignore its slow, steady approach from the distance, we can't seem to get away from it either. Whether we want it or not, death will come for us all one

day. And the dead body stands as that singular, visceral reminder of that death. In the horror movies, it's the clue that's dropped in our laps early on in the film. It highlights the danger our heroes find themselves in. It represents what's at stake, what could happen if they fail, and the true power of the killer. When the London police pulled the box containing the remains of a woman from the cold waters of the Thames, they didn't know a lot, but they did know one thing. There was a killer in London, and whoever it was needed to be stopped. Thankfully, they managed to do just that. But in a wild twist of irony, the body of Julia Thomas has been lost. It might have been a result of the way evidence was handled in the late 19th century

or the state of decay when the remains were found. Whatever the reason, there's no grave for Julia Thomas. No tombstone with her name etched into the surface. Her body was lost, then found, and then finally lost again. Well, most of it. As luck would have it, the neighborhood where her house once stood has gone through some renovation over the years. In October of 2010, a wealthy London homeowner was having an addition built in his backyard when the work crew unearthed something small and white. It was a skull. The teeth were missing, but there was a fracture at the back of the head. And after doing a bit more research, investigators determined that the structure that once stood in the homeowner's backyard

was a stable, a stable behind the pub that stood next door to the home of Julia Thomas. Her body might be lost forever into the pages of history, but the head that Kate Webster had tried so hard to get rid of has finally been recovered. Oh, and the wealthy homeowner who stumbled upon that skull? None other than English naturalist Sir David Attenborough. Murder most foul. That's the headline many of us might conjure up for stories like this. And thankfully over the centuries, they are the sort of crime that has been a bit less common than other types. But not too uncommon, which means I've tracked down another thrilling tale of

murder, disposal, and eventual discovery. And if you stick around through this pre-sponsor break, I'll tell you all about it. Mary seemed to fill her life with tragedy. From the top of her head to the tip of her toes, she was the sort of person who welcomed the darkness and allowed it to harm the people around her. She and her husband lived in Shaftesbury, Vermont at the beginning of the 20th century, but it was far from an idyllic home life. After getting married at the young age of 15, the couple had their first child three years later in 1901. That's when the first tragedy arrived in the form of their six-month-old daughter, Helen, dying from a mysterious injury.

Her husband, Marcus, suspected foul play. So did his family. Months later, after Marcus became violently sick from a cup of tea given to him by Mary, the tensions in the house reached its peak. Mary moved out shortly after that, and then both of them went their separate ways to begin new lives. They stayed in touch, but what Mary really wanted was a clean break. A clean break and a small nest egg to build her life upon. And she knew just where to get it. Her estranged husband's life insurance policy. Of course, that meant doing something most of us would never even consider. For Mary Mabel Rogers, though, it felt like second nature.

In August of 1902, Mary invited Marcus to a riverside picnic. I would have to imagine he assumed Mary was interested in reuniting, but when she arrived with another man at her side, he knew that might not be the case. Mary had brought along a friend named Leon Parham and introduced him as just that, a friend, and then the three of them sat down for an awkward lunch beside the river. Now, this is where things get weird, and if we were all watching it happen live on TV, each and every one of us would be shouting at the screen for Marcus to run away. We would see it coming from a mile away, but Marcus was blinded by something. Hope? Love? A good ham sandwich? I have no idea why, but he didn't suspect a thing. Mary informed Marcus that she

had just learned a rope trick and offered to show him. Someone produced a length of rope, and Mary proceeded to tie up the wrists of her friend Leon. Leon easily broke out of it, and Mary frowned in a playful yet defeated sort of way. She tried again, and Leon broke out a second time. So she tried it on Marcus, wrapping his wrists in the series of special knots she had memorized, and just like Leon, he too freed himself without so much as a struggle. Fine, Mary pouted. You try it, Leon. And she handed the rope to her friend while Marcus willingly held out his wrists for another test. Only this time, it worked. Leon managed to get the man's hands tied behind his back and then bound his feet as well. And while he did that,

Mary pulled a glass vial of chloroform out of her bag, poured it on a handkerchief, and then pressed it to her husband's nose and mouth. I'd like to say that Marcus reached the end of his rope because that sounds clever and cliche, but his actual murder was much more simple. Mary pinned a fake suicide note to his hat, and then she and Leon lifted his unconscious body and tossed him in the river. Somehow, that was supposed to fool the authorities. But of course, it didn't. There was a quick trial, and Mary was found guilty of murder. Her story was covered by newspapers all across the country, which brought on an outpouring of efforts to try and save her, all while her execution day was being planned and prepared for.

But delays were headed her way. First, her case went before the state legislature, and later moved to the U.S. Supreme Court. The governor of Vermont granted not one, but three reprives at the 11th hour, and for a while it seemed as if Mary's sentence would never be carried out. When she finally stepped onto the gallows at 1 p.m. on December 8th of 1905, it had been over four years since she had killed Marcus. The sheriff placed the noose around her neck, and then the platform was opened, dropping Mary into the space below, where she landed on the tips of her toes. Now, hangings have been botched before. We've covered a lot of those here, and accidents happen, usually though the criminal is taken down, the gallows is reset,

and then they try again. But not this time, though. Instead, the executioner and an associate reached out and grabbed the rope that hung taut through the opening in the platform, and then together they pulled up as hard as they could. Mary's feet left the ground, and she began the long, slow process of strangling to death at the end of the rope. Like I said before, Mary seen filled with tragedy from the top of her head to the tip of her toes. This episode of Lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with music by Chad Lawson. Lore is much more than just a podcast. There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both

out if you want more Lore in your life. I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of our shows and everything else going on over in one central place, grimandmild.com. And you can also follow this show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.