Murder, Mystery & Makeup - Lovers' Lane Nightmare: The Hall-Mills Mystery That SHOCKED America!

Episode Date: September 13, 2022

Hi Friends!  Today on Murder, Mystery & Makeup, I wanted to talk about the Hall-Mills Mystery. It's an interesting story and sadly left unsolved. I think we all have an idea of who it could be but I would love to hear your thoughts and theories down below.  Thank you so much for all your love and support, I love you guys. Hope to be seeing you very soon. Have a happy and safe rest of your day xo Bailey Sarian Watch the original video here and don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube @BaileySarian!

Hi guys, how are you today? My name is Bailey Sarian and today is Monday, which means it's Murder, Mystery and Makeup Monday! If you are new here, hi! My name is Bailey Sarian. You said that. And every Monday I sit down, I talk about a true crime story that's been heavy on my noggin.

If you are interested in true crime and you like makeup, I would highly suggest you hit that subscribe button. As far as today's story goes, I thought we could actually talk about a mystery that's been left unsolved. I don't really like doing unsolved stories because I'm the type of person where I need that closure. I need to go to bed at night knowing it's closed.

So that's why I don't really dabble too much in unsolved stuff here, but I, you know, I should include more, I should. But today we are going to talk about the Hall-Mills murder mystery. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. Edward Hall was born in 1881. Yeah, we're going back, 1881, baby.

Oh, well, that's when he was born. Anyways, he was born. Middle-class parents in Brooklyn, New York. Now, when he grew up, he became a minister at a church in New York and in New Jersey before he accepted a position at St. John's in 1909. St. John's was located in New Brunswick, and at his new job, this is where he would meet his new wife, Frances Stevens. Frances Stevens, now she, let me tell you, she was born in 1874.

Now, Frances was an heiress of the Johnson and Johnson surgical supply fortune, you know, that Johnson and Johnson money. Now it said that Frances and her two brothers, Henry and Willie, they were worth, you know, like $2 million each. $2 million was like, woo, I'm rich. Cause now it's like 2 million. That's not even gonna pay for school. It said that Frances was a homely woman,

a homely looking woman, which I think it kind of made me laugh. It's sad because I feel like it always comes down to our looks, but back then, if you came from money, you were expected to look like you came from money, you know? And people would say that Frances, she just wasn't known for being beautiful. And one reporter commented that she was, quote, not fully unattractive,

just not fully good looking. So that's nice. Frances and Edward, they were married in 1911. Edward was 30 years old and Frances was 37 years old. Now, naturally, assumed that like Edward was into this marriage only for money. It's easy to think that because Johnson and Johnson, hello, like yeah.

But after they got married, Francis and Edward, they moved in together and they moved into their, or Francis's family home. Now at that time, Frances's brother, Willie, also lived in the family home. Okay, so now I'm going to talk about another couple who was involved in this story, James Mills and Eleanor Mills.

James Mills was born on the 27th of January in 1878, a long time ago. He worked as a shoemaker before becoming the janitor at the St. John's Church, the same church that Edward Wheeler, the man we talked about first, ministered at. And then Eleanor Mills, she was a soprano in the church's choir,

and she married James at the age of 15. Eleanor was a prominent member of the church ladies group. It's said that she spent her time in church activities. She would read romance novels. She was just always hanging around the church. Between the two of them they had two children Charlotte Mills who was born in 1906 and Daniel Mills who was born in 1906, and Daniel Mills, who was born in 1910. Now the Mills, they lived in a pretty rundown home. James only made about $35 a week, which wasn't cutting it for the family.

Money was just tight, but they tried their best and they made it work. They had to, they really had no choice. Now, this is when it gets juicy. Eleanor and Edward began having an affair. Remember, Edward is the minister. Eleanor works in the church choir and also part of the women's group.

It's unknown when the affair officially started. It is said that in 1919, Edward would go see Eleanor daily. Both of their partners, Francis and James, would deny any knowledge as far as this alleged affair. They had no idea. But it seemed that everybody else knew. So not only the church, but it seemed like the entire town knew of the infidelity.

Everyone was talking about it. Like it was just the town gossip. You know how that goes. Just one of those secrets everybody knew about. Does your town have one of those? It's weird how that happens, isn't it? On September 14th, 1922, both Francis Hall and James Mills, they would find that neither an Edward nor Eleanor had returned home.

Normally, they would come home around dinnertime, 5, 6 p.m., like what are you doing? It's 2.30 in the morning now. None of their partners are home. Frances and her brother, Willie, they decided to go down to the church and search for her husband. Now they go looking around the area and they're seeing that he's nowhere to be found.

Like he's not at the church. I mean, that's where he works. So where else could he be? They don't find him and they don't find any trace of him. All right. So then they just end up going back home to their place. So on September 16th, which is two days later, a young couple was out on a stroll.

They were going down Lover's Lane. Lover's Lane was like one of those areas that all the young kids in love would hang out. Maybe they would make out, do stuff like that, you know? But it was like a walking area. A lot of people would just go and take a stroll. Lovers Lane was in Somerset, New Jersey, which was right outside of New Brunswick.

So it's like, it wasn't too far off from the location. So this young couple is taking a stroll and as they were walking they came across two bodies in like a field area. So they see laid under a crab apple tree a man that was handsomely dressed in a dark gray suit. He had on a white shirt with a stiff white collar and a white tie. He also had a Panama hat that had been placed over his face as though it was like shielding him from the sun. At his side, there laid a lady and her legs were crossed, her head pillowed on her,

what seemed to be like her companion's outstretched right arm. Her left hand was resting on his knee. Now again, they're dead and they're under this tree, so their bodies are like positioned in this kind of like romantic way. It was very strange.

Now the girl, she was wearing a polka dotted blue dress, a brown woolen scarf covered her throat. And when they looked closer at the body, they see that the lady had been shot three times. Oh shit. So this couple that had came across the bodies, they hurry to like the nearest home and they let the owner know like,

hey, we just saw some bodies under a tree. Can we please use your telephone and call the police? Two police officers were on the scene within minutes. Now, once the police had arrived, they moved the scarf that the woman was wearing and they see that her throat had been ripped out. So they were able to ID the bodies as Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills.

Hmm, hmm. Now, littered around the bodies were pieces of torn up love letters. Allegedly, the letters had belonged to the two of them. Edward's business card was left at his feet, and due to the state of the wound on Eleanor's neck, police were able to assess that the two of them had been dead for at least 24 hours.

For years, members of the church had whispered about the close relationship between the minister and the choir singer. But now that gossip was confirmed to be true because again, around the bodies were like torn up love letters. They weren't torn up into like tiny itty bitty pieces, you know, so the police gathered these letters

and were able to put them back together. And one of the letters was from Eleanor and it said, "'Sweetheart, my true heart, "'I know there are girls with more shapely bodies, "'but I'm not caring what they have. "'I have the greatest part of all blessings, "'a noble man's deep, true, eternal love. "'I want to look up into your dear face for hours

as you touch my body close." End quote. Super hot. Now in these letters, they come across another one. And this one was from Edward. And Edward had written, quote, "'Darling Wonderheart'," Wonderheart? Okay.

"'I just want to crush you for two hours. I want to see you Friday night, alone by our road, where we can let out that universe of joy and happiness we call ours, end quote. Yeah, I don't know about you, but if someone wrote me a love letter saying, quote, I wanna crush you for two hours, end quote, I'd be like, yeah, I can't,

I'm like really busy around that time, you were thinking about doing that, sorry. So these love letters confirmed that of course, they were having, well not of course, but that they were indeed having an affair. Autopsies revealed that Edward had been shot at a point blank range with a.32 caliber automatic pistol. The bullet, it had entered his head near the right temple

and came out of the back of the left side. And then Eleanor had been shot three times in the head. The New York Times had reported that one of the bullets entered the woman's forehead about two inches above the nose. Another went through the right cheek and the third pierced the right temple. And then on top of that, whoever did this shit,

because her throat had been cut so deeply that her jugular vein, windpipe and neck muscles were completely severed and her backbone could easily be seen. What the fuck kind of sick shit is that? What the hell is wrong with people? How come they didn't do it to the dude? Now naturally, I know what you're thinking

because I'm thinking it too. Hello, it's the spouse. It's one of the spouses, right? Affair, it's gotta be one of the spouses. Now the Halls Mills case had all the elements. It was dramatic. It involved wealth and sex. I mean everything that just really interests people. So when media got hold of this story

everyone lost their shit. Okay everyone just went nuts. People were just heavily invested. Technically we still do that to this day you, like on the news and stuff when something major happens. So I guess nothing really has changed. But anyways, so the media went crazy. This is dumb, but this is also a different time. People were just, it's just different because it's so fucked up. Where the bodies were found,

it turned into like a major tourist attraction. So on weekends, the crime scene, it became like a major tourist attraction. So on weekends, the crime scene, it became like a carnival. There were vendors out there selling popcorn, peanuts, soft drinks, oh hell, balloons. You want a balloon? People died here, celebrate with the balloon. Hordes of people, curious cats, all came out there.

It's said that there were about a thousand cars a day just coming out to see where this crime took place. Mind you, their bodies weren't there anymore. They had taken them away, but hundreds of people flocked to the crime scene because they wanted to see the bloodstains. They wanted to see if they could find any evidence and solve the crime or something.

I don't know, but people just lost their shit, okay? Getting balloons and like, it's weird, right? But it's a different time. So I'm trying not to judge, but I'm judging. So it's like, so within a few weeks, the crab apple tree that the bodies were found under had been completely stripped of every branch and bit of like bark. People were coming and they wanted a souvenir. So they would take a piece of the tree. Yeah, I don't know. They were really excited about it.

There was one person who took like samples of the dirt in the surrounding area and they put it in little bags. I don't think Ziploc bags were a thing yet. Did Johnson and Johnson make it yet? I don't know. They would put the dirt in like these little bags and they would sell it to people for 25 cents who were looking to take a souvenir and they couldn't take the tree anymore because the tree was destroyed.

They took dirt at the crime scene. You guys, what the fuck? People are weird. We're a weird breed. So saying that people were obsessed is like an understatement. And then naturally, naturally, because people suck, even back then they sucked, these seller people would get dirt from different areas,

put it in a little bag and be like, "'Yeah, this is crime scene dirt, 25 cents.'" Now, the problem with like all these people coming to the crime scene and kind of making it into a show, it was interfering with the collection of evidence in the investigation because everything was literally being destroyed. And again, this is like the 1800s.

No, it's not, it's the 1900s now. They were born in the 1800s. Okay, yeah, it's the early 1900s. Okay, so their ability to investigate crime scenes isn't that high tech. I don't even know what they do, how they solve crimes back then. It must have been very challenging because they didn't have any DNA yet.

Stuff like that, that we really take for granted now, huh? I think that's why a lot of these older cases go unsolved because they didn't have anything to work with. Anyways, so initially, initially, initially, wow, I can't talk. Police did not question James Mills, Eleanor's husband, because they thought he was quote unquote, dull. And they honestly thought he had nothing to do

with the murders. He also had a pretty strong alibi. His neighbors had seen him at home and they heard him doing some woodwork. Now these neighbors weren't super close with him, so they would really have no reason to lie. Now Frances, the Johnson and Johnson girl, she had an alibi as well. She said that she had been home with her maid. The maid of course was like, yeah, she was here.

I'm the maid. Police are stumped. They really have no other leads. They're like, we got nothing. Now, a few weeks after the bodies had been found, a 50 year old woman, her name was Jane Gibson, she owned a hog farm right next to Lovers Lane. It was a lot of land at that time,

so I guess she would kind of like ride around on a horse, not a hog, but she would ride around to, on her farm and her land area, and she could like ride up to Lovers Lane, which wasn't too far off. So she was on her horse and she was like riding around the areas, and she reported on the night of the killing

to hearing gunshots. And then she heard a woman scream, Henry. Now she believed that she had seen two men and two women at the scene before the gunshots. Now, when Ms. Gibson, the hog farm lady came forward, she tells like all this information that she heard that night, once media got ahold of this, they of course went crazy.

They were harassing this poor lady who came forward and then they ended up giving her the nickname, quote, the pig woman in the papers. So anytime her story was referenced in the papers, they called her the pig woman. I would be so pissed. I mean, really? I'm trying to help, what are you guys doing?

And you're calling me the pig woman? Now in the media and whatnot, they were like just showing all this upset with her, like that calling her a liar and saying that she's lying for attention and just like attacking this poor woman who was just trying to help. If you remember, Frances had her two other brothers,

Willie and Henry. The witness reported hearing a woman scream, Henry, before the gunshots, before the gunshots. Police go back and they question Frances and her brothers, and they actually end up taking them in and arresting them. They go in front of her grand jury and they end up just letting them go because there was no evidence pointing to them at all

besides the witness report. So the case gets dropped and they all get let go. For years, no one heard anything. Then in 1926, a man named Arthur, this Arthur guy, he was actually trying to separate from his wife at the time. The reason that he wanted to separate was because she kept secrets. Now, what kind of secrets was she keeping?

Well, she was hiding information about the Hall-Mills murder. Now, what could this random ass wife know about these murders, you know? Well, this random ass lady was the former maid of Frances Hall. Remember Frances's alibi? Arthur said that his wife had known

that Edward and Eleanor had planned to elope. She knew Willie Stevens had a.36 caliber pistol, and they also paid this ex-maid $5,000 to keep her mouth shut. Media gets a hold of this. And of course it just turns into a big story. So then the ex-maid, ex-wife now, she comes forward and she's like,

"'No, my husband's lying. "'He's making all this up. "'He just wants attention.'" All of it's fake. But at that point it was way too late. Arthur, her ex-husband, his statement had been pushed out by the press. So I'm sure the ex-maid, if it was true,

she's probably like, oh fuck. Do I still get to keep my 5,000? Because the media picked up this statement and it just got like crazy, police did actually reopen the case and go and investigate Frances Hall. I'm not exactly sure how it worked back then. Like I'm assuming they didn't need hardcore evidence

in order to take you into custody. I guess I should have looked into that a little bit more. My bad. But on July 28th, 1926, Frances Hall, she was actually taken into custody. After several hearings involving more than 50 witnesses, a lot of the people were just coming forward and saying that they heard something

because they wanted to be a part of the story. What is with that? What is with people doing that? People do that all the time. Anyways, and the jury actually indicted her brothers, Willie Stevens and Henry Stevens, as well as their cousin, Henry. So there's two Henrys.

So they're like, it's gotta be one of the Henrys. We don't know which one it is, so we're just gonna take both of you guys in. Okay, cool. The trial turned into a complete spectacle. Main Street was littered with, again, these, a bunch of vendors, and they were selling refreshments.

They were selling popcorn, trying to just sell whatever they can to make some money. Do you remember when they found the body, they found Edward's business card, which was left by his feet, and they brought that in for evidence. Prosecutors stated that the card had Willie Stevens fingerprints all over it.

This same card had been handled by curious visitors to the crime scene, as well as police. I'm not kidding you. When they found the bodies, they were laying under the crab apple tree, right? They take the bodies away, of course, but they leave the evidence there. So the business card that was found by Edward's foot was left there, and then it was handed around. When people came to like look at the crime scene, they passed it around so everybody was touching it,

which is not a good piece of evidence to have, but they brought it in anyways. Now remember the pig lady, remember? She actually heard something and they dubbed her the pig lady, which sucks, but I can't remember her name right now. But they actually called her to come testify. Miss Gibson, that's her name, Gibson,

Jane Gibson, Jane Gibson. She actually was pretty ill. She was brought in from the hospital on a stretcher. And also a doctor and two nurses came with her. She was carried into the courtroom on a stretcher and placed on an iron hospital bed facing the jury box. It's like theater. During her testimony,

her account of the awful double murder, her own aged mother sat in the front row of the gallery and would chime in yelling, quote, she's a liar, she's a liar, she's a liar. Again, the media had set her up, Jane Gibson, the pig woman, as like a liar and an evil person who's making this all up. Why?

I don't know why they were so against her. They just like didn't want to believe it. Anyway, so her own mom, she's being brought in by a stretcher and her own mom is there like, she's a liar. What the? The drama of it all. Defense attacked Ms. Gibson.

They attacked her credibility, pointing out that she had gotten a divorce in 1898 for adultery. They questioned her morals and brought up the names of a few ex-lovers, trying to discredit her and make her out to be untrustworthy, which it was kind of working.

So then Frances, the Johnson & Johnson girl, I wanna be part of the Johnson and Johnson family. Like that's fucking, that's like money, money. She took the stand and swore that her husband was absolutely devoted to her. After over 80 witnesses and five hours of deliberation, they found all four not guilty of the murders of Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills.

The case to this day still remains unsolved. Now, after the trial had ended, the Stevens, the Johnson & Johnson family, they ended up suing both the Daily Mirror and the Evening Journal for slander and libel. Both cases were settled outside of court. Many scholars believe that this case was actually

the basis for F. Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby, you know, the book. The book was written three years after the murder and it takes place in 1922. So it's rumored that the book is based off of this unsolved murder mystery. I could believe it. So that's the story about the Hall-Mills murder mystery. I could believe it. So that's the story about the Hall-Mills murder mystery.

So the case never was solved technically, but I think it was Frances and like her brothers. Hello, first of all, she's rich. Money can get rid of anything. I mean, ain't that the truth? Come on. If her husband was having an affair and they separated, I wonder if at that time he would be receiving money

from her estate because I'm sure the family didn't want that. And I'm sure the family didn't even want this scandal in general, so they probably were able to get the family off the hook. Shit like that pisses me off. If you have money in this country, you could get away with murder.

I mean, we've seen it over and over and over again. Do you think it was one of the spouses? What if we're looking at the wrong person completely and it was the husband to Eleanor? But what would that benefit him? I'm not sure. The fact that the bodies were like posed seems kind of like intimate

and something that a random stranger wouldn't be comfortable doing, right? Or is that just me? And the fact that Eleanor's throat was ripped out, I mean, to the point where you could see her effing, sorry, I shouldn't even cuss, her neck bone. What the fuck? Like where did her throat go?

They never found it. Who the fuck got that? The guy, he was just shot. So that makes me think that it was probably Frances because Eleanor seemed to get attacked more. Eleanor was shot three times versus the one time and her throat was ripped out. So it kind of seems like somebody was upset with her

more than Edward. Poor Eleanor. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I hope you have a wonderful day today. You made good choices and I'll be seeing you guys later. Bye.