Murder: True Crime Stories - UNSOLVED: Hall–Mills Murder 1

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

In September 1922, the bodies of an Episcopal priest and a married choir singer were found posed beneath a crabapple tree on a quiet lane outside New Brunswick…In September 1922, the bodies of an Episcopal priest and a married choir singer were found posed beneath a crabapple tree on a quiet lane outside New Brunswick, New Jersey. Their torn-up love letters had been scattered around them like a verdict. Edward Hall was the most respected minister in town, and Eleanor Mills was one of his most devoted parishioners. The affair between them had been the worst-kept secret in the congregation for years, ignored by neighbors and tolerated by spouses, until someone decided it was time to end it. In Part 1 of Murder: True Crime Stories, host Carter Roy traces the years-long affair that divided a small New Jersey community, the two very different marriages it tore apart, and the final days before two lovers met whoever was waiting under that tree.Head over to our Murder True Crime Stories YouTube channel to WATCH our video episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@MurderTrueCrimeStoriesIf you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Murder: True Crime Stories to never miss a case! Want all 2 parts of every case all at once? Join Crime House+ and get both parts of each case dropped at once ad-free. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Murder: True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Crime House 24/7, and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosYouTube: @murdertruecrimestories

Hi, listeners, before we dive into today's episode of Murder True Crime Stories, I want to take a brief moment to tell you about a show from Crime House's sister studio, Rewind, that I know you'll love. It's called Government That Doesn't Suck, hosted by Professor's Lindsay Cormack and Greg Jackson from History That Doesn't Suck. Ever wonder how the weather forecast on your phone is so accurate? Or how your mail still gets across the country for less than a dollar? or who actually built the highway you drove on this morning?

Each episode tells the surprising story of an American institution that you'll never look at the same way again. Listen to and follow government that doesn't suck every other Monday on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or watch video episodes on YouTube. This is Crime House. In a small enough town, people notice everything. They notice when a marriage seems strained.

They notice when two people sit a little too close at the church potluck. They notice when the new priest seems to spend more time at one parishioner's house than any of the others. They just don't always say what they notice out loud. In 1922, everybody in New Brunswick, New Jersey, knew that the Reverend Edward Hall was having an affair with a singer in his church choir named Eleanor Mills. The congregation knew, the neighbors knew, the people who sat three pews back and pretended not to notice, they knew too. It was the worst kept secret in the city. And yet nobody said a word.

Not to Edward, not to Eleanor, not to their spouses. Life continued the way it always had. Sunday services, church fairs, picnics by the lake. everyone seemed to agree that a polite collective silence was the best way to go. Then two people turned up dead under a crab apple tree. And suddenly, the whole country wanted to talk about it. People's lives are like a story. There's the beginning, a middle and an end.

But you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder, True Crime Stories, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes come out every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, with Friday's episodes covering the cases that deserve a deeper look. Thank you for being part of the crimehouse community. Please rate, review, and follow the show, and for early ad-free access. to every episode, subscribe to Crimehouse Plus. You'll get part one and part two at the same time, plus exclusive bonus content. To join, go to crimehouseplus.com or tap try free on the

Murder True Crime Story show page on Apple Podcasts. This is the first of two episodes on the murders of Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills, an Episcopal priest and a singer in his church choir. They were killed in New Jersey in 1922, and almost right away their deaths became a nationwide obsession. Today, I'll introduce you to Edward and Eleanor, who they were, how they found each other, the cracks in both of their marriages, and the affair that the whole congregation could see but nobody would confront. And I'll tell you what happened on the September night that ended both of their lives. I'll walk you through how early mistakes in the investigation sent the case off the rails. It would go cold for years until a tabloid magazine dug up new evidence and dragged it back into the spotlight. Within weeks, reporters from all over the country were descending on a quiet New Jersey town,

turning it into the center of a national circus. But despite all that attention, no one would ever know for sure who killed Edward Hall. and Eleanor Mills, all that more coming up. Before we get to the bodies under the crabapple tree and the trial that fascinated the nation, we need to go back more than a decade because the story of Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills didn't begin in that lonely field outside New Brunswick. It began with two couples who couldn't have been more different from each other and who all eventually ended up inside the same church.

Let's start with Edward. We don't know a ton about his earliest years, what his parents did for work, whether he had siblings, what life at home looked like day to day. What we do know is that he was born on June 12, 1881, into a middle-class household in Brooklyn, New York. His parents weren't wealthy, but they were solid, respectable people, and they poured everything they had into their son.

From a young age, it was obvious he had a gift, not for numbers, for science, but for words. So his parents sent him to the best schools they could manage. First, Manhattan's Grace Church School for Boys, then Brooklyn's Polytechnic Preparatory School, where he was the president of the Interscholastic Debate League and Vice President of the Literary and Debating society. This was a kid who could hold a room. He could make a case. He could make people listen. It was a quality that would define his entire life. For better or for worse. After high school, Edward went upstate to Geneva, New York, where he attended Hobart College. Supposedly, he was a bit of a wild youth there, although pledging a fraternity seemed to be the most scandalous thing he

up to. Other than that, he was a really good student. He won several academic prizes and graduated cum laude. Edward had been around religion ever since he was a kid. But it's not clear if he always planned to go into the clergy or if it was a decision he made later. Either way, after Hobart, he attended Manhattan's General Theological Seminary. At the time, it was one of the most prestigious Episcopal institutions in the country. In 1903, at the age of 22, he was ordained. He spent a few years serving in churches around New York before crossing the river into New Jersey. There, he worked as a curate, basically an assistant priest.

He was good at it, and the higher-ups took notice. In the summer of 1909, a priest position opened up at St. John, the Evangelist Episcopal Church in New Brunswick. it would mean leading his own congregation, one that many prominent families were part of. Edward obviously said yes. One gloomy morning in June 1909, 27-year-old Edward gave his first sermon. Over 100 parishioners sat in the pews, waiting to see how he would do as the new head of their congregation. Edward thanked them for their warm welcome. Then he started talking about consequences and sin.

And once he got going, the congregation was enthralled. He was young, vibrant, and incredibly charming. He had a clear, resonant voice that filled the sanctuary and a smile that landed easily on whoever he was talking to. Everyone loved him. but especially the women. Church attendance spiked after he became the preacher. Edward didn't seem to notice, or maybe he just ignored it.

He had a lot to keep him busy in those first six months, and he threw himself into his new life. He wrote sermons, met with parishioners, and officiated weddings and funerals. He updated the church's records and spruced up the property. In whatever free time he had, he attended charity events and started a Boy Scout troop. He spent time with the kids playing basketball and riding bikes. And as the holiday season approached, Edward decided to throw his first annual Christmas fair.

He hired an acrobatic troop. He convinced the men of the church to participate in a talent show. There were booths set up for people to sell food and small wares. at one of those booths was a 35-year-old woman named Francis Stevens, and she couldn't take her eyes off Edward. Francis was at a crossroads in her life. She was unmarried at 35, in an era when most women were wives and mothers by their early 20s.

By the standards of the day, she was heading toward what people called spinsterhood. and she was desperate to avoid that fate. And then Edward had walked into the pulpit. He was everything she could want in a husband, educated, charming, a man of God. Yes, he was seven years younger than her, but he was still entirely respectable. Someone whose social standing could only elevate her own. someone who could save her from a life alone.

Francis knew the reality of her situation. She wasn't considered beautiful by the standards of her day. She wasn't young or particularly fun. What she was was proper, demure, and private. She taught Sunday school and was devoted to her charities. Oh, and she was incredibly rich. Francis came from New Jersey royalty, the Stevens family on one side, the carpenters on the other. Her great-grandfather on the Stevens side had thrown tea into Boston Harbor and marched with the Continental Army.

Her grandfather on the carpenter side was an early member of the New York Stock Exchange. Through a web of marriages and business arrangements, the family had ties to some of the most powerful names in a American commerce, including the founders of Johnson and Johnson. In New Brunswick, the carpenters were everywhere, and you couldn't turn a corner without running into the estate of some aunt, uncle, or cousin. Francis's house was a three-story Victorian mansion on Nickel Avenue, with a wraparound porch, leaded glass windows, and a footprint that took up a full city block. inside the house ran on a schedule.

Maids kept it spotless and nobody talked about anything unpleasant. At the time, Frances was reportedly worth the equivalent of nearly $30 million in today's money. She could have pretty much anything she wanted. And what she wanted was Edward. There had apparently been another woman in the congregation who Edward had, his eye on, someone closer to his age, but for whatever reason it fizzled out before it became anything serious. After that, Edward's attention shifted to Francis, and Francis got exactly what she wanted. On July 20th, 1911, 30-year-old Edward and 37-year-old Francis got married. Francis walked

down the aisle in her mother's wedding gown. The pews were packed with New Brunswick High Society, and there were probably more than a few whispers going around. Was this really a marriage of love, or just a marriage of convenience? The truth was it was probably a little bit of both. Like most marriages, it was complicated, and it only got more complicated when a 23-year-old parishioner named Eleanor Mills entered the picture. Eleanor couldn't have been more different from Edward and Francis. Where the halls lived in that sprawling Victorian mansion, Eleanor and her husband shared the second floor apartment of a rundown house nearby,

one that had no plumbing and a leaky roof. In a place like New Brunswick, those few blocks between them made them feel like different countries. New Brunswick in the 1910s was a manufacturing town, textile mills, shoe factories, the Johnson and Johnson plant, and the social lines between the wealthy old families and the people working in those factories were clearly drawn. Edward and Francis lived on one side, Eleanor and Jim lived on the other.

Eleanor had grown up in the area and married young after getting pregnant at 17. Her husband, James Mills, who went by Jim, was a decade older than her. Their daughter, Charlotte, was born seven months after the wedding. Their son, Daniel, came four years later. Life wasn't easy for the Mills. Jim never made more than $38 a week as a shoemaker, but Eleanor made the best of the situation.

She crocheted clothes for herself and the kids. She cooked German recipes, passed down through her family, family, and she got up before dawn every day to start on all the housework. She did it all without complaining, but she felt trapped in their marriage. Jim had made his peace with a constant struggle, but she hadn't. She dreamed of something bigger, something more romantic, more adventurous than a life she'd ended up with. She'd grown up reading novels, picturing a different kind of life.

the kind where the heroin wasn't a shoemaker's wife in a leaky apartment, the kind where someone might actually sweep her off her feet. There are different worldviews led to lots of arguments. Money was always a stressor, and as the years went on, Eleanor and Jim got meaner to each other. Eventually, they stopped even sleeping in the same room. Eleanor shared a room with their daughter, and Jim shared one with their son.

For a while, it seemed like that was just how things would always be. Eleanor stretched Jim's $38 a week salary as far as it could go, and she found her pleasures elsewhere in romantic novels and in church. She went to St. John's almost every day. Rain, snow, didn't matter. She found a way to get there. Eleanor had been in the church choir since she was a teenager, and it was one of the things she loved most. She had a beautiful soprano singing voice.

At least one person compared her to a nightingale. When she sang in church, people listened. For a few minutes every Sunday, she wasn't just the shoemaker's wife in the rundown apartment. She was someone worth paying attention to. But soon, the choir wasn't the only reason she showed up to church every day. We don't know when she and Edward first really crossed paths, but it would have been pretty immediate. They were in each other's orbit. And over the years, that orbits grew tighter until they became each other's worlds. By 1911, Edward and Francis Hall were married, and

a while, at least on the surface, their life looked exactly the way it was supposed to. Edward was an admired priest with a devoted congregation. Francis was the clergyman's wife she'd always wanted to be, presiding over charity functions, attending Sunday services. The halls lived in their sprawling Victorian mansion. A few blocks away, Eleanor and Jim Mills crowded into their cramped second-floor apartment with no plumbing and a leaky roof. two households, same church, very different worlds.

By the mid-1910s, the church was pulling the halls and the mills toward one another. As Edward's wife, Francis was always at St. John the Evangelist, and Eleanor, as a devoted parishioner, was right there alongside her. Eleanor helped with everything from sewing to clerical tasks. In addition to the choir, she was a member of the ladies' auxiliary, a group of women who fundraised for the church and pitched in however else they could. For Eleanor, the church had become the most important part of her life besides her children. So when the shoe factory Jim worked at relocated to Brooklyn, Eleanor told him he was welcome to follow it,

but she wasn't going. Her whole life was in New Brunswick, and with Edward, although she didn't say that part out loud. In the end, Jim stayed and looked for work elsewhere. Sometime in the mid-1910s, Eleanor and Edward became romantically involved. The exact moment is impossible to pin down. No one has ever been able to say with any certainty how it started,

but by 1917 their closeness was undeniable. That year, when Eleanor was hospitalized with appendicitis, Edward sat by her bedside for hours. He told her she needed to get well, for his sake, that he couldn't bear the thought of losing her. In public, Edward and Eleanor kept pretending like they were nothing more than a devoted minister and a loyal parishioner.

kindred spirits down by faith. The congregation didn't buy it. The rumors started making the rounds, and before long, the whispers became open conversation. Other parishioners resented Eleanor's spot in Edward's inner circle. They complained that she was too forward, too sure of herself. She'd go on about church affairs that hadn't even been announced yet, subtly bragging that she knew more than anyone else. Or she'd rearranged the list of hymns after they'd already been agreed on

because she knew Edward would back her up, which he always did. The congregation saw right through them, and they didn't approve, but that didn't stop the affair. By the end of 1919, Edward was visiting the mill's household almost every day, He could explain away the visits easily enough. House calls were just part of a priest's duties, especially to a family as involved in the church as the mills were. Sometimes Edward would arrive in the evenings and join the family around their old upright piano

while they played songs together. One time he gave Eleanor's daughter, Charlotte, a book of sheet music as a gift. For Eleanor, he brought a Bible written in German, which she absolutely treasured. For his part, Jim Mills didn't seem to mind the visits. He liked the halls well enough, and he had good reason to. When his old factory had relocated to Brooklyn,

Edward had helped Jim land a new job as the church custodian. Jim owed the man. We don't really know if Jim knew about the affair and decided to look the other way, Or if he genuinely had no idea. You have to imagine he wouldn't let Edward in the house if he knew. But Jim and Eleanor's marriage was so far gone at that point. Maybe he just didn't care.

What is clear is that Eleanor was happier than she'd been in years. She smiled and laughed and sang more. She always seemed to come most alive after her visits with Edward. She started spending more and more time at St. John's, doing any little task that gave her an excuse to be closer to him. She restocked the flowers in his study. She delivered freshly baked apple cake. She took on whatever errand needed doing. She made herself indispensable, and she made no secret of enjoying every moment of it.

But eventually, her devotion became another sticky. point in her marriage. Jim pointed out that no other married woman was hanging around the church as much as she was. He reminded her that the halls came from a different world than theirs, that no matter how close she got to them, she would never really belong in their circle. Eleanor ignored him. By the start of 1922, the two households had become genuinely entangled. not just emotionally, but financially. When Eleanor needed a kidney removed and the Mills couldn't afford it, the Hall stepped in. Edward and Francis arranged a $300 loan from the church, which Jim could pay back in $10 monthly installments.

The Hall's involvement in the mill's lives didn't stop there. Francis, who knew Eleanor loved flowers, regularly invited her to walk the mansion, gardens and greenhouses. She'd send Eleanor home with armfuls of vegetables. She gave Eleanor monogrammed towels and fine fabrics to sew into blouses, small tokens of what looked like genuine affection. Eleanor returned the favor with embroidered pieces she'd made by hand, gifts for Francis's birthday and holidays. From the outside, it looked like friendship. It may have even felt like one sometimes, but underneath it all was a secret that only grew more obvious as the months went on. That summer, Edward and Francis took their annual vacation to an island off the coast

of Maine. They hired Jim to house it for them. He spent three weeks sleeping under their roof while they were away. Meanwhile, Eleanor was at home writing love letters. She and Edward had decided to keep diaries for each other during those weeks apart. Not single letters, full diaries. They wrote to each other every day, sometimes more than once, filling notebooks with intimate updates about their lives. Edward's entries were intense, unguarded, or nothing like the composed, restrained man his congregation knew from the pulpit.

He wrote about wanting to hold her close, to keep her warm and safe. He told her they had been made for each other's arms. He told her that wherever she was, that was home. And he told her that every moment away from her was excruciating. This was the sight of Edward that only Eleanor saw. Eleanor's diary was just as full. In her letters, she called him her true priest, her dear priest, her dearly. dearest darling boy, her babykins. He signed his own letters, D-T-L, which he told her was a German

abbreviation for Your Faithful Love. In one of their final letters, they made plans to meet on the Friday Edward returned to New Brunswick. They mentioned one of their favorite meetup spots, a bench in Bucklew Park, a secluded area outside of town. It was near the old Phillips farm, close to a dirt road called DeRussie's Lane. The locals had a nickname for it, Lovers Lane. Edward wrote that he wanted two hours alone with her, unrestrained out by their road. They almost certainly met there when he got back to town, and it wouldn't be the last time. By September, the affair had been going on for years.

The halls and the mills were still pretending to themselves, to each other, to the congregation, that nothing was happening. But Edward and Eleanor weren't making it easy. The closeness between them was obvious to anyone who spent more than five minutes in the same room with them. That month, Eleanor needed medical attention again. This time it was a tooth extraction. When she couldn't find a local dentist to see her, the halls referred her to someone in New York. Newark. But instead of Jim taking her to the appointment, Edward stepped in. That's how brazen things had become. Whether Francis Hall knew about the affair at that point is a question that would haunt the investigation for years. Above all else, Francis cared about propriety. It's entirely

possible that she'd seen the signs and chosen to look away, that she preferred a polite fiction to a public scandal. She was married. Her husband was a respected man of God. That was the version of her life she wanted to maintain. But by some accounts, Eleanor had convinced herself that Edward would eventually leave his wife. She thought what they had was more important than anything else.

That was where Eleanor's head was as the summer of 1922 wound down. On September 13, 1922, Eleanor spent the afternoon with The Halls. She and another devoted churchwoman, Minnie Clark, joined Edward and Francis for a picnic at a lake in northwestern New Jersey. It was a tradition the halls had started as a way to thank the women who kept St. John's running. Of the five people who held keys to the church, Eleanor and Minnie were two of them. that's how integral they were. That afternoon, the group took a boat out on the lake. When Eleanor and Minnie jumped into the water, Francis joined them.

They swam together while Edward watched from the shore. Later, they all sat down for the picnic Francis had packed. If you'd seen them out on the lake that afternoon, Edward laughing on the shore, Francis and Eleanor swimming side by side, you'd have thought everything was fine. It wasn't. And a little more than 24 hours later, two of the four people on that lake would be dead.

By the evening of September 14, 1922, 41-year-old Edward Hall and 34-year-old Eleanor Mills were in the middle of a year's long affair. Their spouses, Francis Hall and Jim Mills, may or may not have known about it, but the rest of the congregation absolutely did. That evening, Edward and Francis were both at home. But given the size of their Victorian mansion, they could have easily gone hours without crossing paths. Their maid, a 20-year-old woman named Luis Geist was going about her work when the phone rang.

She answered, a woman was on the line asking for the reverend. friend. From another room, Edward called out to ask if the phone was for him. Louise confirmed it was. She handed off the call and went back to work. She wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but Edward wasn't exactly being quiet. He made plans to meet someone at 8.15 that night. Not long after, Edward went downstairs, grabbed his coat, and told Francis he was making a call. He'd be back soon. Then he headed for the door. Luis was in the kitchen when he passed through. He stepped onto the back stoop and paused there for a moment, looking up at the sky. Isn't this a lovely evening, he said. Luis watched him head down the street and disappear into the dusk. Just after seven the next

morning. Luis was in her room when she heard shutters being drawn on the first floor. It was a sound that usually meant Edward was up early to catch a train into New York. She got dressed and headed to the kitchen to start breakfast before he left. She walked into the dining room, but instead of finding Edward at the table, it was Willie Stevens sitting there alone. He was Francis's older brother and lived in the house. But Willie was almost always the last one down for Browell. breakfast, not the first. Louise asked what he was doing up so early. Willie didn't give her a straight answer.

He just said he'd rather have Francis tell her. Well, that seemed like an odd response to Louise, but she didn't know what to make of it, so she let it go and went about her chores. While she worked, she passed the coat rack in the hallway and noticed that Edward's hat wasn't hanging in its usual. spot. He must have never come home the night before. She told herself there had to be a perfectly good explanation. Edward had late night sometimes. A sick call, a parishioner in need, someone who required him to stay out. He always had a good reason. Yes, Louise told herself that had to be it.

Francis came down for breakfast about 20 minutes later. She sat at the table and barely touched. her food. She was quiet in a way Luis had never seen before. She didn't even bother to correct Louise for forgetting to put out the Reverend Silver Water Pitcher. That was the kind of thing Francis always noticed. Luis couldn't take it any longer. She decided to play dumb and pretend she didn't know Edward was out. She asked Francis if Edward wanted his breakfast in bed that morning. Francis didn't hedge. She told Louise that Edward had not come home the night before, and she didn't know where he was. Louise was surprised by how directly Francis answered. She suggested there must have been an accident. Had Francis called the police? Francis had.

She'd called around seven that morning. But here's where things get strange. When she called the authorities. Francis hadn't given her name, and she hadn't said that Edward was missing. She'd simply asked whether there had been any casualties in the area overnight, not accidents, casualties. And after that one call, she hadn't phoned a single hospital. She hadn't reached out to any friends or family. For a woman, whose husband had been missing all night, Francis was strangely patient. But as the day wore on, that calm started to crack.

Francis gripped a set of car keys in her hand and wouldn't let go, jingling them nervously. Every time a car slowed down outside, she was at the window. It was the opposite of her usual calm, collected demeanor. then around 11 that night Francis made a phone call once again Luis overheard parts of it at one point Francis made a comment that didn't quite make sense to Luis in the moments but would haunt her later Francis said quote no there was nobody else he was friendly with her she's in the choir the next morning, September 16th, now 36 hours since Edward had gone missing,

Francis called her cousin and asked him to come over. When he arrived, she told him she feared the worst. If Edward were alive, why hadn't he come home? Why hadn't he called? She told him she was almost crazy with worry. It was a fair question. Her cousin didn't have an answer for her. He told her to stay calm, that there had to be ill.

logical explanation. There was no use jumping to conclusions until they knew more. He couldn't have been more wrong. That same morning, two locals met up for a rendezvous of their own, 23-year-old Raymond Schneider and his underage girlfriend, 15-year-old Pearl Bomber. The two of them planned to walk over to Bucklew Park about a mile from where they met up. More specifically, they were headed to to Rousey's lane, the dirt road on the edge of the park that had earned the name Lover's Lane. They were about halfway down the lane when they spotted two figures lying beneath the crab apple tree. They looked like they were caressing each other, snuggled up in one another's arms. The man was in a gray suit with a white shirt and a tie. His Panama hat was laid over his face,

wielding him from the sun. The woman at his side wore a polka-dotted blue dress that went past her knees with a brown silk scarf around her neck. Her legs were crossed. Her head rested on his arm. Her left hand sat on his knee. Raymond and Pearl assumed they were sleeping. They tiptoed past, not wanting to wake them. But when Raymond and Pearl came back from their own rendezvous, Pearl noticed something. The couple hadn't moved at all. She got a feeling in her stomach that something was wrong. She told Raymond to go check on them.

Raymond went. Pearl stayed a few steps behind him, curious but cautious. As they got closer, the truth was impossible to ignore. The man and woman weren't sleep. sleeping, they were dead. As Raymond peered closer, he could see what looked like bullet wounds. The man had been shot once, the woman three times. And Raymond realized the scarf around the woman's neck wasn't there to keep her warm.

It was covering something. Her throat had been slit. It was so deep that she was nearly decapitated and scattered around their bodies as if placed there deliberately were torn up pieces of paper. Love letters. Pearl started to scream. Raymond grabbed her and pulled her back from the bodies. They needed to get away from that crab apple tree. They needed to find a phone.

They needed to tell somebody what they had just seen. They ran down to Rusey's lane, away from the field, back toward town. They flagged down the first person they could find, and before noon, the local police were on their way to the scene. When Raymond Schneider came across the couple, he didn't know who the victims were. He had no idea what had been going on between them, and he had no idea that the case he just stumbled into would dominate American newspapers for the next four years. But even he could tell that whoever had done this hadn't just wanted them dead. They'd wanted to make a statement to tell the world that these two people deserved each other. Within hours, word would spread about the priest and the choir singer, about the love letters,

about the brutal way they'd been killed and posed like lovers under that crab apple tree. The quiet town of New Brunswick was about to be torn wide open. And it would never be the same again. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder True Crime Stories. Come back next time for part two on the murders of Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills and all the people it affected. Murder True Crime Stories is a crime house original powered by Pave Studios. here at Crimehouse, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support.

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