Science Vs - Murder Mystery: An 1850s Whodunnit

Episode Date: October 18, 2018

It’s 1849, and a gruesome murder has just happened at Harvard. As body parts turn up, the science of the day is put to the ultimate test… to find out: who did it? We speak to Prof. Paul Collins, who tells us how this morbid mystery unfolds.  Check out the transcript right here: http://bit.ly/2BntpNU Selected references: Paul Collins’ book, Blood And Ivy: The 1849 Murder That Scandalized Harvard The transcripts from the trial against John Webster Also check out our previous episodes on Forensic Science and DNA and the Smell of Death. Credits: This episode was produced by Kaitlyn Sawrey with help from Wendy Zukerman, along with Rose Rimler, Meryl Horn and Odelia Rubin. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell, with help from Caitlin Kenny. Fact checking by Michelle Harris. Mix and sound design by Emma Munger. Music by Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. A huge thanks to Jessica Murphy and the team at the Harvard University Archives, plus Lars Trembly and Matthew Nelson, Frank Lopez, Joseph Lavelle Wilson and the Zukerman Family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet Media. On today's show, we're taking you back to a gruesome murder that happened in 1849. It shocked America and put the science of the day to the ultimate test. Yeah, Science Versus is going true crime. And if you've got innocent ears around, you might want to skip this episode because it is indeed gruesome. The abdomen had been opened and the intestines taken out. The cartilages and the ribs had been separated

and the lungs, liver and heart removed. Producer Rose Rimler and I went to Boston to investigate this crime and we ended up poring over the original documents from the murder. And we're in a library, which is why we have to whisper. First, the thorax and left thigh of the corpse had been subjected to the action of fire, as shown by the singed hair and the partially roasted state of the corpse had been subjected to the action of fire, as shown by the singed hair and the partially roasted state of the skin. Ew, I feel like we have better words than roasted.

It's upsetting. This murder went down in 1849, and it had the perfect setting. The very prestigious Harvard University. Plus, there was everything you could want in a sordid crime story. A cast of characters that included one of the richest men in Boston, a suspicious janitor, a noted professor, and, at the centre of it all, a mysterious mutilated corpse. So we have this, like, half-roasted... Half-dissolved, but not quite, body.

Who could have done this? Some sick motherf***ing rose. And we're breaking open this case because to catch the killer and bring them to justice, it took all the cutting edge science that the 19th century had to offer. And it broke new ground as Harvard scientists analyzed the evidence to crack the case. So today, we're following their footsteps. We're putting on our trench coats. We're getting out the magnifying glass to find out who done it.

When it comes to podcasts, there's lots of true crime. But then there's... I'm sick of mother******. Science vs. How to Solve a Murder in 1849 is coming up just after the break. It's season three of The Joy of Why, and I still have a lot of questions. Like, what is this thing we call time? Why does altruism exist? And where is Jan 11?

I'm here, astrophysicist and co-host, ready for anything. That's right, I'm bringing in the A-team. So brace yourselves. Get ready to learn. I'm Jana Levin. I'm Steve Strogatz. And this is Quantum Magazine's podcast, The Joy of Why. New episodes drop every other Thursday, starting February 1st. What does the AI revolution mean for jobs, for getting things done? Who are the people creating this technology? And what do they think? I'm Rana El-Khelyoubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI.

Think of it as your guide for all things AI, with the most human issues at the center. Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in. Welcome back. We start our story in Boston on Friday, November 23rd, 1849. The streets are full of horses and carriages. There's a chill in the New England air. Good day, sir.

And Thanksgiving is right around the corner. One of Boston's richest men, the central character in this wretched tale, is out collecting rent money. His name is Dr. George Parkman. Bostonians knew him as a really, really, really rich landowner in Boston. This is Paul Collins, a professor at Portland State University, and he's written a book called Blood and Ivy about our ghastly story today.

And so he told us about this really, really, really rich man, George Parkman. He was known as being kind of a miser. And he would actually go around and collect the rents himself on foot because he did not want the expense of a horse. He was known as being really tough with his tenants. Like your classic kind of Mr. Scrooge. Yeah, I mean, there is something very Scrooge-like about him. A money-gr Mr. Scrooge. Yeah, I mean, there is something very Scrooge-like about him. A money-grubbing Scrooge. Sounds like a guy with a lot of enemies. And Mr. Parkman was very recognizable. He had a jutting lower jaw. It was very distinct.

And he tended to walk around with it up in the air. So, you know, he's almost like the caricature that you would imagine of a somewhat stuffy, snooty, rich guy. And this November Friday, well, it seemed like a regular day for Mr. Parkman. With his jutting jaw, he was out doing his rounds, collecting money. He was later seen at a grocery store and told the man at the counter, I've got to go to, collecting money. He was later seen at a grocery store and told the man at the counter, I've got to go to Harvard Medical School. I'll be back in five minutes to pick up my things. And he leaves behind a head of lettuce. From here, Mr. Parkman is seen trotting off to the medical school. He's actually seen walking up to the medical school building,

which is not an unusual thing. He would actually seen walking up to the medical school building, which is not an unusual thing. He would often stop by there. But on this day, an unusual thing does happen. Mr. Parkman walks up to the school and then he's gone. And there's like some scattered seeming sightings of him around the city after that, but they're hard to confirm. Nobody actually speaks to him after he's seen at the medical school. When Mr. Parkman doesn't return home, his family isn't sure what happened. Maybe he'd gone for a wander in the woods. After several days, though, he doesn't return.

And they think, well, he had a breakdown in the past and even talked about suicide. Perhaps he jumped off a bridge. Some suspected foul play. Mr Parkman was carrying a lot of money with him at the time he disappeared. So perhaps he was murdered for the cash. The family plasters the city with missing posters. With a $3,000 reward, that's worth roughly $100,000 today.

And the town goes nuts searching for this man. They scour through parkments, properties, vacant lots, railway stations. They sweep the medical school. They even drag the river for his body. And nothing. Things are looking hopeless. After a week, a breakthrough. It comes from a nosy janitor who lives in the basement at Harvard Medical School. And this janitor seems to know everyone's comings and goings in the building. So he tips off police.

He's like, Oi, you missed something in one of the labs at Harvard. And the police, they don't mess around. So they break the door down and they tip over a tea chest, a large tea chest that was in the lab, and an entire human thorax basically falls out. The thorax was sort of hollowed out and had had like a thigh shoved into it

in order to just shove it all into this chest. What? So what whoever did this did was ultimately cut the body up into various bits and then scooped out the innards of the torso and then shoved a thigh in there and put it in a case? Yeah. They just found all these parts that had been kind of pulled apart in a very bizarre manner.

Parts of the thigh and thorax had also been soaked in some chemical and then burnt. There was also a furnace in the lab, and when police rake through the ashes, they find the remains of a human skull, a lower jaw, gold fillings and some artificial teeth. Whoever had access to this lab is now looking very, very suspicious. And indeed, the police learned that there is one man who has a key,

a professor of chemistry who had been at Harvard for 25 years. This was his private lab and his name was John Webster. But he didn't seem like the obvious suspect for a murder. He was a family man, married with four daughters. Webster is this sort of strange figure in a way because he seems to be a fairly competent professor. He's made some attempts at inventions that kind of don't go anywhere. He's just not all that great. He's like the rest of us, mediocre. Yeah.

So by all accounts, John Webster was a fairly average chemistry professor. But now he was a fairly average chemistry professor with a hollowed out thorax in a tea chest in his lab. The police look at all these body parts and immediately arrest the professor. They drag him back to the medical school to explain why a dismembered corpse is scattered around his lab. And they lay out these parts that they've been finding in front of him and say, what is this?

What is this doing in your lab? And he can't explain. And the only thing he says over and over again is that the janitor has betrayed him, that the janitor is somehow behind this. Uh-huh. So the janitor emerges as suspect number two. The janitor's name is Ephraim Littlefield, and he was the person who led the police to the professor's laboratory.

And the professor has now turned around and said, hey, I've been framed. It's the janitor you want. And I can tell you how he snuck into my lab. Webster was telling his team, you guys have to go look at the door to my lab because you'll discover that you can pry it up in such a way that someone could break into the lab and plant something. So that's how the janitor got in.

And even though this guy is a professional janitor, we found dirt on him. In fact, he doesn't look nearly as squeaky clean as the professor. He's often described as a swamp Yankee. He is fond of a drink or two, and he allegedly had been quietly running some card games at the medical school late at night. So in his downtime, he was a drinker and a gambler, but the real killer piece of evidence against him

was what he did at work. Besides cleaning the premises, this janitor helped procure dead bodies. He literally knew where the bodies were buried. At the time at Harvard, anatomy students were desperate for bodies to dissect. And getting those corpses was a really dirty business. It often meant paying off body snatchers who literally dug corpses out of graveyards. Yeah, this janitor was really kind of the middleman.

He's the guy that would get the money from the professors and then go talk with the body snatchers. So clearly the janitor didn't have a big issue with handling corpses for cash. And we know Mr. Parkman had a lot of money on him when he disappeared. Plus, since there was a reward, if the janitor did this dirty deed, he would get paid out twice. When he stole the cash, and again, when he led the police to the body. With that kind of money, the janitor would have made a killing.

So, who's responsible for the chopped up body at Harvard? Was it the professor in the laboratory with the chemicals, or the corpse collecting janitor in the basement? Suddenly, there's a twist in the case, and evidence starts piling up against the professor. For one, he has a motive too. The professor owed lots of money to the missing Mr. Parkman, and he was in fact flailing in a quicksand of debt. Deeply, disastrously in debt. And in debt to Parkman in particular. He owed him thousands of dollars.

He had literally signed away every book, every piece of clothing, right down to the bed linens in his house. Just all his property. You see, this professor had a taste for the finer things in life. He had spent all of his inheritance on a stupidly fancy house that cost $40,000,

and his salary as a Harvard professor wasn't nearly enough to keep up with his lavish lifestyle. So the professor was in the red to the Scrooge of Boston to the tune of thousands of dollars. It then emerges that this professor was no mild-mannered nerd. Newspapers report rumours that he had such a quick temper that his nickname while he was a student was Sky Rocket Jack. And finally, there's his suspicious job.

The professor studies chemistry, but he's not cooking up new life-saving medicines at the medical school. Oh, no. He studies what chemicals do to the human body. Chemicals. Like arsenic. The chunks of the body in the professor's lab and the fact that he owed the dead man lots and lots of money.

It looks bad for the professor. Bad enough for the prosecutors to take this case to trial. The professor would be charged with the murder of Mr George Parkman. But after the break, this case takes a shocking turn when it looks like a murderer might go free. Harvard scientists throw everything they can at the case, but will it be enough? Can science save the day?

Welcome back to The Biggest News in 1850. We've just learnt that a wealthy Scrooge type, aka Mr George Parkman, has gone missing and the last place he was seen was at Harvard Medical School. A mutilated corpse has been found in the lab of a chemistry professor who's now on trial for murder. And this case goes viral. Well, viral for 1850. New railroads were being built and brand-new telegraph poles strung up,

allowing news of the Parkman case to travel to Wisconsin, Texas and Florida. In fact, the story of Mr Parkman's murder even made it to Australia. And back in Boston, the locals couldn't get enough. Here's Professor Paul Collins again. They had a real problem at the courthouse. People fighting each other, punching each other in the face, trying to get in. It was pretty nuts. So many people wanted to witness the trial of the Harvard professor

that officials had to rotate people through the courtroom. By the end of the trial, about 60,000 spectators had passed through the courthouse. Oh my gosh, 60,000! It's equivalent to almost half the population of the city. It seems that everyone wants to sticky beak on the trial of the chemistry professor accused of killing one of the richest men in Boston. And you could understand why this was one of the hottest seats in town, because the trial had a fancy professor, a dodgy janitor, and a missing rich man. It had all the trimmings of a Broadway show.

One that you'd kill to see. Now, with all the evidence lined up against the Professor, you'd think that this case was a slam dunk. But things take a very curious turn when the Professor's legal team comes up with this intriguing strategy to defend him. They basically say, look, you're accusing our client of killing Mr George Parkman, but you don't even know if the body you found in his lab is Mr Parkman.

You've got a thorax without a head, chunks of a skull and parts of a leg. That could be just about anyone. They said, well, this could be anybody. It's a whole building full of cadavers. The professor's legal team point out that this corpse was found in a medical school and there are bodies all over this place. They're there for students to dissect.

And Paul told us that this was a good argument because students at this school cut up so many bodies that they literally built the place to deal with the corpses. They had this dissecting room in effect over the river or over an area that was very accessible to the river so that they could just dump this stuff out. So yeah, I mean, they literally designed the building with cadavers in mind. And there really were odd body parts found around Harvard. Like leading up to the trial, some hands were found in the river near the medical school. And police think,

ha ha, these are Mr. Parkman's hands. But then a sheepish medical professor comes forward and says, Sorry, mate. That one's mine. I put it into the river to see how it decomposes. Hmm. Touché, defence team. But seriously, though, in 1850, how would you prove these body parts are Mr. Parkman? At the time, there was, of course, no DNA evidence. In fact, scientists wouldn't even understand what DNA was for another hundred years. And fingerprinting wouldn't be used in the courts for decades. Not that it mattered. They didn't even have this corpse's fingers. So to prove that the body in the professor's lab was, in fact, Mr. Parkman, the prosecutors turn to some rather bizarre legal strategies. For example, one of the legs found was particularly hairy, and so they tried to

identify him that way. That was one of the weirder moments of the trial. So, they talk to Parkman's brother-in-law and they ask him, well, were his legs hairy? And his brother-in-law is a bit embarrassed about being asked about this. He says, well, you know, there was this one time where he pulled up his pant leg for some reason, and yeah, he had kind of hairy legs. It's amazing to think about that in a trial today because we have DNA evidence, but to imagine that in order to identify someone as a legitimate piece of evidence, they're like, how hairy was his legs? Yeah, the prosecutors are going to need a hair more proof. And so they find some evidence they can really sink their teeth into.

Bits of dentures and a jaw were found in the furnace of the professor's lab. And so the prosecution thinks that perhaps we can prove this is Mr. Parkman by his teeth. And they catch a lucky break. Shortly before his disappearance, Mr. Parkman had visited a dentist to be fitted for dentures. And that dentist had a cast of exactly what his jaw looked like. So the prosecution calls the dentist to the stand and says, like, do you recognise these bits? And the moment the dentist saw the jaw, he knew. He broke down crying and said, quote, Dr. Parkman is gone. We shall see him no more, end quote. The dentist could identify this jaw because it was so odd looking.

And when producer Rose Rimler and I went to Boston to investigate this case, we actually got to see a cast of Parkman's Jaw because it's still kept in the archives at Harvard. This is what we've come for. We're currently looking at the casts that the dentist made of Mr Parkman's jaw. And so this became this critical piece of evidence to say that that body in the professor's laboratory, that must have been Mr Parkman because he had this weird jaw. It is kind of protuberant. But it wasn't just that the jaw was a bit odd.

We got to see a cast of the dentures too, which were even weirder. Because Mr Parkman only had a few teeth left, so his dentist made him dentures that would fit around them. This is such a specific cast. You would absolutely be able to identify someone based on this. Yeah, there's like three clustered on one side to identify someone based on this. Yeah. There's like three clustered on one side and one by itself on the other side. You could just have this like scraggly remains of teeth.

That would be pretty, yeah, totally like a fingerprint almost. And you might think that this would have clenched the case. But at the time, introducing this kind of evidence was a total gamble. It was the first time that dental evidence had been introduced into a murder trial in America. And just the idea of identifying a whole person based on pieces of a body, it was all pretty new and untested science. On top of that, the defense had their own dental expert. Here's Paul again. The defense brings in another dentist and says, could you look at a tooth or at a piece of jaw or at a bit of a denture

and actually identify who it came from? And the guy says, no. So there's almost this battle of the dentist that basically happens in the courtroom. And it goes on and on. These are definitely his teeth. No way. You'd never know. Then finally, the dentist for the professor crumbles and admits, well, it might be Mr.

Parkman. What seemed like this wild and untested new form of evidence suddenly becomes very, very powerful. OK, so the prosecution has convinced people that this is indeed the body of Mr Parkman. There is one more hurdle, though. The prosecution needs to explain why, if it was the professor who'd done it, why did he leave this body in this weird dismembered state?

After all, he's a professor in chemistry. If he committed this murder, surely he would have done a better job of getting rid of the body. Well, yeah, he's a chemistry professor. Why didn't he just dissolve the body? An expert in chemicals takes the stand. And he says, yeah, you can dissolve a body using strong chemicals, but here's the thing, you need a

ton of them, particularly to dissolve an entire human body. Parkman was not actually a very heavy guy. He was maybe only 140 pounds. Just all chin. Right. But I mean, that's like industrial quantities. He doesn't have anything like that. And he doesn't have any containers in his lab that are remotely big enough to do that. This chemical expert on the stand, along with a dream team of other Harvard alumni, had done a cutting-edge chemical analysis of the dismembered corpse. This really was CSI Boston 1800s. And remarkably, it did show that some of Parkman's body parts had been soaked in a chemical called potash lye.

But clearly, there wasn't enough to disappear a body. So that would explain why the body hadn't been completely destroyed by chemicals. The professor simply didn't have enough. But parts of the corpse had been roasted by fire, and there was a small furnace in the laboratory. So why weren't the body parts completely burnt to ashes? Another learned doctor takes the stand, one who has a lot of experience getting rid of bodies. And he says, Well, yeah, I burn lots of bodies. And actually, it takes, you need a good big stove for it and need lots of kindling and you don't want to use the wrong kind of coal. And, you know, he goes over all these details. And basically, what he points out

is that the professor really doesn't have the right kind of stove or the right kind of fuel. Basically, the prosecution argues that this fairly average chemistry professor did a fairly average job of getting rid of a body. The crowd in the court gasped. Or so we imagine. After the professors tottered off the stand, the jury had to work out what the Charles Dickens to do with all this newfangled scientific evidence. The scientific testimony about the teeth, the chemicals and the fire, they seemed to add up to the professor having done it. But at the same time, there were no witnesses

who saw the professor kill anyone. No one heard a scream. And this professor who's never fallen afoul of the same time, there were no witnesses who saw the professor kill anyone. No one heard a scream. And this professor who's never fallen afoul of the law before, he's pleading innocence, insisting that a sketchy janitor has pulled one over on everyone. There's no conclusive evidence of any kind, just some toffee professors, a protuberant jaw, a weird set of dentures, and a curious chemical analysis.

Would the science be enough? At around 8pm, the jury retires to consider the verdict. Just two and a half hours later, they come back and declare him guilty. The professor was sentenced to death, and the papers went wild. The excitement at this juncture was intense. The prisoner sank back in his chair and wept. An awful and unbroken silence ensued. The jury, as well as the prisoner, trembled and grew faint.

May God, of his infinite goodness goodness have mercy on your soul. But for anyone who still had doubts about the professor's guilt, the truth would soon be confirmed. As Professor John Webster sat in his cell awaiting his hanging, he actually confessed to his minister. And the whole sordid tale was later published in the papers. Here's what the professor said happened. Mr Parkman, a.k.a. the Scrooge of Boston,

came hassling him to repay his debts. He'd always hassled the professor for money. But on that fateful day in November, Mr Parkman took it one step further and threatened to have the professor fired. By Webster's account, he picks up the nearest thing, which is basically a large sort of stick of wood, and just hits him as hard as he can in the head. Parkman drops dead and Webster panics. And that's where everything then unravels. And without the dental evidence, the chemical analysis, and the scientists,

the fancy professor might have gotten away with it. He might have been able to hide behind the reputation of such a prestigious college. After all, at first, who could believe that a family man and a respected professor could have done such a monstrous crime? But in the end, at least this time, the science convinced them, won out, and convicted a murderer. I guess murder was on the syllabus. That was my David Cruz.

I see a sign. Who are you? Looks like the dentist took a bite out of crime. Who are you? What about, um, maybe Mr. Bachman shouldn't have been so mouthy. Who are you? What about, um, maybe Mr. Parkman shouldn't have been so mouthy? Ooh. Hi. All right.

That's science versus how to solve a murder in 1849. If you want more gory details about this trial, you have to check out Paul Collins' book. It's called Blood and Ivy, the 1849 Murder that Scandalised Harvard. And it's an absolutely ripping read. And by the way, if you're into true crime, what about

untrue crime? Gimlet has a new fiction podcast called The Horror of Dolores Roach. It's this macabre urban legend of love, betrayal, weed and cannibalism. We're going to play you a snippet from the show, and if you like it, you can binge on all the episodes now.

And P.S., this one is just for the adults. It's not for the kiddos. OK, so here it is. The Horror of Dolores Roach. And there's like a meat hanging upside down, but there's a face still on it, parts of his face, pieces of that f***ing Marcy. Big pieces in the ice. On the little ledge, there's these two balls of, like, clear, maybe silicone. Can't eat fake tits. And on the sink, there's a butcher knife, shiny, perfectly clean, not a drop of blood anywhere. That's The Horror of Dolores Roach.

You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Caitlin Sori, with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, along with Rose Rimler, Meryl Horne and Odelia Rubin. We're edited by Blythe Terrell, with help from Caitlin Kenny. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mix and sound design by Emma Munger. Music written by Emma Munger and Bobby

Lord. A huge thanks to Jessica Murphy and the team at the Harvard University Archives. Plus thanks to Lars Tremblay, Matthew Nelson, Frank Lopez, Joseph Lavelle-Wilson and the Zuckerman family. Next week, we're tackling dating.

Can science save the dating game? The takeaway message is take your date to a room full of electrical equipment and say you're going to electrically shock them if you can. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.