The Misery Machine - Mary Cowan | The Borgia of Maine | Maine's First Serial Killer

Episode Date: June 29, 2020

This week, Drewby and Yergy discuss the little known case of Mary Cowan, who arguably is Maine's first serial killer. We also touch base on her connections to Lewiston. Mary A. Cowan, known as The Borgia of Maine, was an American serial killer who poisoned two husbands (Willis W. Bean, and George H. Taylor), and four children between 1884 and 1894 (Gracie, Alice and Mabel Bean - as well as stepson Willis Cowan), and attempted to murder a third husband (Elias Cowan). Convicted of killing her step-son in September 1894, Cowan was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent off to the Maine State Prison, then in Thomaston, for the following two years. In 1898, her examining physician turned to then-governor Llewellyn Powers with the request of pardoning Mary, as she was in failing health and wished to die peacefully in her Dixmont home. Despite her ailment, Mary gave birth to a child while in prison (an unnamed baby girl - referred to as Mary's final victim), but it, along with herself, died soon after. Cowan, by then dubbed 'The Borgia of Maine' by the press, was first interned at Etna, where her parents lived, but her body was then moved to the Sawyer Cemetery in her birthplace of Plymouth, where she was buried on the family plot with her murder victims. This week's episode is sponsored by Podcorn: https://podcorn.com/ Burial Plots of Mary and her Victims: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/82040802/mary-bean-cowan Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #podcast #documentary #truecrime

We're the misery machine. I'm Yergy. And I'm Drewby. And this week, we're doing a female poisoner from Maine. Yes, the only known one in Maine's history. Maine female serial killer, arguably the first. The very first one. And she tends to go overlooked.

But I think she needs to be covered. I do too. Maine gets a bad rap most of the time. So we're doing Mary Cowen, who was also known as the Borgia of Maine. The borgia of Maine. Which I didn't know what Borgia was until Yergy informed me what it was. The Borgia of Maine, she was basically called that, and it's a call back to Lucretia or Lucretia Borgia, who was the only girl in the Borgia family, and the father was a pope. I believe he was Pope Alexander, and she was known for poisoning people, having sex with her brothers.

The whole family was really just extremely problematic, and they ran the papacy like a dictatorship. And also, who Andrew Eldridge named after in the song Lucretia, My Reflect, Yes, I love that song. Yes, but, but. Anyway, enough with Frigand Sisters of Mercy, Goth Kid. If you're listening on YouTube, please like and subscribe. We just hit 500 subscribers. Thank you so much to everybody who's followed us over the past year.

We're coming up on a year pretty soon. And this just puts me over the moon. We're halfway to monetization. So if you support us, and please share this video with somebody who'd like it. And if you haven't already hit like and subscribe, it goes a very long way. But with that out of the way. Mary Cowan. Borgia of Maine.

Mary A. Knight was born one of several children to Jonathan F. Knight, a veteran of the Civil War, and Afea B. Knight. She lived in a rural family home in Plymouth, Maine, until the age of 20, when she married the young farmer Willis W. Bean of nearby Dixmont. The couple had three children, Gracie, Alice, and Mabel. At some point during their marriage, Willis expressed a desire to become a physician, a decision which was encouraged by Mary, who wanted to dabble in it as well. However, the family was poor, and they also had to take care of their infants. In 1884, Gracie was found smothered to death by a neighbor at the family home.

When he informed Mary of the matter, she carelessly replied that she was aware of the fact, and that the child had died about a half hour ago. No official investigation was made, but residents of Dixmont suspected that she had killed little Gracie to get rid of her. In the following two years, Alice and Mabel died from peculiar stomach aches, But yet again, no investigation was conducted and the death soon forgotten after the burials at the Plymouth Cemetery. Despite these tragedies, Willis still decided to pursue his medical career, enrolling into a dubious institute which sold diplomas for $25. However, this was considered fraudulent, and soon a state law was passed which prohibited the selling of fake diplomas right before being could acquire it. Unperturbed by the setback, both husband and wife were dead set on getting diplomas, choosing to travel to an hour.

a state institution in Ohio to get them. Before their trip, Willis confided to his parents that he would invest money in a farm, in which he would live after returning to Maine. Said farm was purchased in the mortgage given to the elder being, but it was never recorded. After borrowing some $200, quite a bit at the time, the couple traveled to Ohio to enroll into an institution. On January 6, 1888, Willis's parents received a letter claiming that their son had died mysteriously, with the cause of death later determined to be stomach pain, similar to the children which died in the previous years.

Mary soon returned to stay with her late husband's parents and soon after the unrecorded mortgage went missing. Since she had the deed for the farm and thus owned the land, Mary sold the farm for $2,000. Sometime later, Mary married George H. Taylor, a Dixmont laborer who worked at the Lewiston Mills, where the newlyweds moved to live. Taylor, who belonged to the independent order of the odd fellows, died after four days of acute stomach pain in 1891, in similar circumstances to Mary's former family. Since he was an odd fellow, it was assumed that he had had a life insurance policy, but since George hadn't paid his dues, it was void. Nevertheless, well-meaning members contributed to a fund amounting several hundreds of dollars as a donation to the supposedly grieving widow. A few months after Taylor's death, Mary, Mary, Mary,

Elias Cowan, a widowed farmer with an eight-year-old son, Willis. Not long after their marriage, a full set of farm buildings belonging to Elias mysteriously burned to the ground. According to neighbors who arrived to provide assistance with putting out the fires, they found the family's clothing, dishes, and other items tied up in bundles and ready to be carried out. It was also rumored that young Willis was abused by his stepmother, who often beat him for the pettiest of things. On September 14th, 1894, Willis was brought down with heavy stomach pains after eating some green apples. A physician was called to the family home who prescribed some medicine and assured that the young boy would be fine in a few hours.

Two days later, the young cow and died in agonizing pain. Due to Mary's dubious history of similar deaths and the fact that her husband had also been taken with a similar illness but survived, Willis's body was exhumed and his organs sent for analysis at the Bowden College in Brunswick. An autopsy result showed the body contained heavy amounts of arsenic, enough to kill a full-grown ox. Without wasting their time, policemen quickly arrested Mary Cowan for murder of her stepson. Until then, she had threatened to pursue illegal action if anybody accused her of poisoning. But when lodged into prison, she started crying. During her 1895 trial, ample evidence was presented.

Penny Mary is the one who poisoned young Willis. One witness was a little neighborhood girl who had seen Mrs. Cowan put white powder into the boy's medicine, which had been left by the doctor, but she did not testify per request of her father who feared for her safety. Despite this, the prosecutor proved that the dose of arsenic present in the body would have only been put deliberately, and after a few days of deliberation, the jury returned with a guilty verdict. Cowan stood expressionless while listening to the verdict with her counsel, J.F. Robinson, announcing that he would file a motion for a retrial. In June, however, it was announced that the proceedings for the retrial had been withdrawn.

While in prison, Mary Cowan conducted interviews with reporters and often responded to callers interested in her case. On one occasion, she confided to a report that she had hired a private detective who supposedly unearthed evidence in favor of her innocence and expressed belief that she would be a free woman one day. Her hopes were dashed on February 19, 18, 1896, when she was officially sentenced to life imprisonment for killing Willis Cowan. Cowan was imprisoned at the Maine State Prison, which was then in Thomston, Maine, for the following two years.

In 1898, her examining physician turned to then-governor Llewell and Powers with the request of partying Mary, as she was in failing health and wished to die peacefully in her Dixmont home. Despite her ailment, Mary gave birth to a child while in prison, but it, along with herself, died soon thereafter. Cowan, by then dubbed the Borgia of Maine by the press, was first interned, in Etna, where her parents lived. But her body was then moved to the Sawyer Cemetery in her birthplace of Plymouth, where she was buried on the family plot

with her murder victims. Hey guys, we're excited to say that this episode is sponsored by Podcorn. Yergy, what is podcorn? Podcorn is a marketplace connecting podcasters to amazing podcast sponsorship opportunities, such as host red ads, interview segments,

topical discussions, and more. Right, so if you're listening and you have a podcast like so many of our listeners do, this is a great place to get money for doing a podcast. And it's been great so far. There's no middleman with this at all. You go through all of the companies that are offering sponsorships and you set your own price. You name what your price is and you submit a proposal to them. And if they like you, you get the ad. And I don't think there's anything better than that. Right. And if you take a podcorn sponsorship, you will still keep all your rights to all your podcasts. If you have

a podcast, what are you waiting for? Go check out podcorn. Click the link in the description to try it right now. So there's some stuff we have to kind of talk about with this case. How does one just casually mention the death of Gracie as if, oh, this just happened to half an hour ago? Yeah, I don't know. Oh, I just burnt the bread. I don't know if back then people dying so young and dying all the time was the average age of living then. I don't know, probably like 45 or 50. Maybe less than that. I think it's much less than that. And then babies were just dying all the time. Because remember, there wasn't vaccines and shit like that.

So I'm sure just some kid being dead in bed was no big deal. They would just go put it out with the trash and make a new one. Yeah, and I'm not sure about the late 1800s, but I know there was a point in time back then. Maybe it was early 1800s. It could even have been that period of time where if you broke your leg, it was a death sentence because you'd get an infection and died. There was just no modern medicine. People's lifespans were so goddamn short. reading this obviously you're like why would you be so nonchalant and maybe that way of talking about it back then

would be looked at as crazy but i'm just trying to give some benefit of the doubt here if death was a more common and accepted thing back then i don't know i'm just spitballing that portion of it yeah and i think we should talk about where this stuff is in relation to where we are because this is another main case yes so where this is taking place is dixmont plymouth etna that whole area and if you think back to our on James Hicks, that's that same area about an hour or so north on I-95. So kind of really rural even now. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's the middle of nowhere.

There's more nowhere places in Maine, but that's getting pretty close. If we look at that as very rural nowadays, I can't imagine what it was like back then. But to kind of add to my wonder if death was just not taken so seriously, you look at this woman and all her children die of stomach aches. her husband dies of a stomach ache, the next husband dies of a stomach ache, and nobody seems to put two and two together. Where a lot of people dying of stomach aches, nowadays, if somebody just dies of peculiar stomachache, people are immediately fucking suspicious.

It's just very strange. I don't normally cover poisoners. I don't find them very interesting, and I find them very unoriginal. They're kind of predictable. They're very predictable. It's always a woman. She's always poisoning her family and her lovers. Well, that's the thing, in order to be inclusive on going after female serial killer.

and this is our only known female serial killer, they tend to be poisoners. They tend to kill their children or generally be poisoners. Yes. So the whole-children or spouse. Yeah, the whole reason I kind of want to do this, and I'll kind of touch base on it a little bit here, is the media really gets main serial killers wrong. This actually, Mary Cowen, is our first known serial killer. Everyone gives credit to John Jubair, who really isn't what I would consider a main serial killer.

Why is that? So my reasoning for that is his crimes took place in the 80s. He only had one known kill and it was in Portland. And then he went off to Nebraska where he killed two more people. So he's no longer a Maine serial killer. He's a Nebraska serial killer. He's just a serial killer from Maine. From Maine.

And everyone credits him as being the serial killer. And I think where they get it wrong is he's listed that way in Wikipedia. Markey actually got me this really cool coloring book. like an adult coloring book that had all 50 states with a serial killer from each of them, and they listed John Jubair. I'm like, why are you doing this? Why are you doing this? They could have done James Hicks.

That's what I'm saying. Like, the only living serial killer we have right now actually is James Hicks. And that might be our first male serial killer? Yes. Well, first known. Noan male. Yes. Obviously, when I say that, I mean known.

First known and only living. Yes. So really, really, if we're not going to include Mary the Poisoner here, they should have had James Hicks as our serial killer. Yeah. And I think if I had. to pick James Hicks would be the better choice to represent us. I think he fits total package of a serial killer in how he operates. I mean, yes, Mary Cowan is definitely a serial killer, but.

And I hear James Hicks a real asshole even now. So. Oh, really? Yeah. So if you guys, write to him. I don't want to. So if you guys have been kind of following along from the beginning with us, we did a story on Brandon Thong Savon, and I took it upon myself to start writing to him. And we've been conversing back and forth since that episode via mail. He's in a prison right now in Maryland. So I kind of ask him questions about different killers and stuff that I know of that he would have done time with in Maine. And he doesn't like James Hicks. Well, I mean, James Hicks is old as shit now.

And plus, Maine prison isn't that dangerous, I've heard. I mean, there is issues. There is stabbings. There's always going to be issues like that. But it's more chill than places. It's better than where he is now. Yeah. Locked up for 23 hours.

So the next point I want to talk about. How does one dabble in becoming a physician? It was just a lot easier back then. It's just dabble. It's like a hobby. I'm sure there was way more charlatans back then. You were able to buy a diploma for $25. And it was just prior to the turn of the century,

did they pass a law that prohibited the selling a fake diploma? So if this was just now getting fixed in state and federal law, imagine how many hundreds of years had people been used? going around claiming to being medicine men or healers or anything like that. I mean, you think, right, I was going to say the term snake oil salesman. It comes from that period of time where these people would travel around and their covered wagons and selling these mystery tonics, you know what I mean, that we're supposed to cure what ails you.

This thing has been going on for a very long time, and I assume that dabbling in medicine was a lot easier. I just thought it was funny, like, how this is all phrased, where Mary wants to dabble in it as well. She's going to take on her lover's hobby. I don't know. It's just really funny to me. I think Mary wanted to dabble in being a better poisoner. I know. I think so too. She was using arsenic, right? How easy is it to obtain arsenic back then? I don't know. Arsenic now, I believe, is the active ingredient in rat poison. It is, yeah. Which is where a lot of poisoners now will get that. Yeah, they get rat. I mean, that's how they killed Cedric Bixler's dog.

was rat poison and they just put it in meat. So yeah, rat poison very obtainable. But the problem is if you try to poison somebody with rat poison nowadays, it's going to show up. There's no way. It's like the biggest red flag because that's what all the poisoners nowadays use. Yeah. The other stuff's really not that accessible. Yeah, for sure.

So it's like what ricin might be a little undetectable unless they do a thorough toxicology. This is not an area. Where do you even get that, though? I'm not sure. This is not an area where I have a lot of familiar. cyanide is derived from the pit of, is it peaches? I'm not sure. Again, this is not an area of expertise at all for me or one that I've studied very

freely. Like, I wanted to have like a little poison garden on the porch. You wanted to, you wanted to just grow some poisons. But then it just like made me think of like, what are we going to do this for? Are we going to poison ourselves doing this? I mean, you could or you just do what they did in the Princess Bride and just build up a tolerance of poison. Of Iy cane powder.

Yes. And so that way, when you find. finally meet a Sicilian and death is on the line. And death is on the line. You will have the upper hand. That's what I'm going to have to do. And even though Iocaine, is that a real thing? Was that made up for that movie? I think it's made up for the movie. Yeah, I thought six. I hadn't heard of it before and I haven't heard of it since. So what's up with this unrecorded mortgage? How do you not record a mortgage? Okay. So I try to do a little research on this because I hadn't heard that term before. And there's not a whole lot on this because nowadays there's a lot of state laws and mortgage companies,

lending companies, banks, all these things, already know what to do to not screw themselves over by getting an unrecorded mortgage. But back in the day, people might have not record a mortgage because it's not the government's business to know what I have or don't have or they're afraid that getting it recorded will cause a property tax reassessment, just things that I don't really hear people talk about anymore. But basically, if it's unrecorded, then it just comes down to the deed holder at that point is my understanding. So I'm assuming that at that period of time, while banks did exist in the 1800s, lending companies, they even existed back in the late 1700s, but I just assume that their practices weren't as refined as today as well as their record keeping system, so things like

this would happen. I just don't get it, though. If you had this unrecorded mortgage and in this case where Mary was holding the deed to the farm, what's to stop you from just defaulting? don't know. Again, it's hard to put yourself in the mindset of somebody back then. Just think about people's worries and common beliefs even 50 years ago that would be completely antiquated today. We're just going to handshake on this and it's fine. Yeah, I mean, people, big believer in handshake deals, maybe, the whole idea, and we still see this today about the government doesn't need to know my business. You still have a lot of those people, fair enough. But I don't think any, of those people would say the government doesn't need to know I have a mortgage.

I just don't see that happening at all. But back then, that could have been a thing. I'm speculating clearly because I couldn't find very specific things on this. The stuff is very, very brief. And as far as looking at unrecorded mortgages today, people just don't do it. I think a bank would freak out. They would just be taking too much of a risk. Right.

And I don't think any banks would allow that to happen in this. day and age. I'm sure there's so many checks and balances and all that stuff that you just wouldn't hear of this nowadays. No, I don't think so. I mean, I don't even work in that type of sector in banking, and I don't think that it would fly. So us people who aren't familiar with this stuff, we read unrecorded mortgage, we're like, what were people issuing just weirdo mortgages back then and handshake deals and all that stuff? How I read this before we looked into it is it was like a loan from the parents. I mean, they did borrow money from them. So the problem with this specific instance is there's not a lot of information on that in particular. But as far as unrecorded mortgages, I'm not so sure

why somebody would do it, but it probably was more common practice back then. I don't know. So the Lewiston mills that George Taylor worked at. Yes, very familiar with these. We were very familiar with these. So I do believe they're talking about the Bates Mill. However, that's not the only mill that's in Lewisston. It's just the more prominent one. So the Bates Mill complex is these giant brick buildings that are four stories high that span, I'd say three to four city blocks. The ones that are still left standing. The ones that are still here. So if you count the ones that are not still standing, it probably went even further than that. Lewiston is primarily a mill town or was a mill town. It's not anymore, but that's where Lewiston's commerce came from. It was a milltown

since the early 1800s, I believe. Yeah. So that's why we got all these French people from Canada. A lot of them came down from Quebec to work in the mills. So that's kind of what made Lewiston-Louiston at the time. So currently, when I'm not working from home, I work in the Bates Mill Complex. The bank that I work for has offices there. There's also a lot of other different businesses. There's restaurants in there. I'd say probably about 75% of it has been repurposed. But a lot of it is still abandoned. Yeah, there's still, there's one whole mill that's gigantic at the very end that borders Main Street, that they keep talking about how they want to repurpose it. Are we going to just tear it down and make a parking lot?

Some of them have burnt down. I know Drewby watched one completely burned down. I did. I did watch one burned down by the Lewiston Auburn Bridge that turns into Goff Street. I clocked out at this call center we used to work at. And I drove down behind this little parking garage and the cops in the fire department had everything fenced off or whatever. And I just watched it burn. It was a mill that I quite liked that.

people used to hang around that I've kind of walked through a little bit and days later I went through the rubble but it was kind of important to me and if it was going to burn down like that I was going to fucking watch it like Yerge said most of the mill space has been repurposed thankfully 10 years ago I'd say a lot less of it was and the big problem with Lewiston is that we had all this mill space and it was all just being left to rot it's changed into different things so part of the mill which is now a series of too expensive loft apartments that I don't believe are worth it. However, if they were more reasonably priced, I'd think about living there. It's crazy that we have any overpriced real estate here in Lewiston considering the economy.

But I digress. That's another topic. It's another topic for another day. But those loft apartments back in the day was the call center. Drewby and I worked at. It used to be in that part of the mill. And I'll tell you, at that time, a lot of the mill was still very much abandoned. We used to have these ridiculous ways

We'd walk to the back parking lot Through parts of the abandoned mill And we had to dodge bats They'd like spooop you and get in your hair There'd be random pigeons I know at once There'd be random homeless encampments there too There were a lot of random homeless encampments

At one point they found someone eating a pigeon Oh my God There was a homeless person eating a pigeon Inside of the mill I found lots of syringes There were a lot of times Homeless people or just general drunk people would get in because it wasn't locked. No part of this was locked and they'd go into the bathrooms

that we used that were actually not part of the call center we were in. We had to leave the call center locked area to go to a different part of the mill to use the bathroom. And they had to put key codes on the bathrooms because drunk people or homeless people or whomever who just really shouldn't be in the mill who don't have like a purpose to be in there would go in there and get drunk. Sounds incredibly archaic and nothing you would ever see in a bigger city. Yeah. So it was very, very strange and it's very interesting to me because these types of mills you only see in new england's yes this isn't anything you see anywhere else in the country it's kind of like a holdover from britain really this is really what it is because i mean we were the only colonies you know around

new england and maybe a little bit further south we're the only colonies of the quote new world so to speak you're looking at the most archaic mill buildings that you can imagine in the united state's history. Yeah, and a lot of ones in different parts of the country, for example, and when I say different parts of the country, I'm talking about New England, a lot of the ones in Massachusetts have already been repurposed into really nice things. Yeah. The ones in Manchester are like nice apartments and things as well. You don't have any abandoned spaces in those. But of course, Maine being problematic. Yes, Maine's problematic. It doesn't know what to do with it. They love being the 48th worst economy in the nation. I haven't seen this personally, but is it true that a lot of the

mill buildings are just so decrepit in some areas you can't even walk around without risk of falling through the floor. So that was the case before. A lot of it has been renovated. The mill that's our call center used to be part of. To get in, you had to access it from the front of the building. You'd go up to the second floor. At that point, yeah, there were holes in the ground. They had carpeted areas and areas roped off and you were not allowed to get out of the roped off area because you could risk going through the floor. Big problem with the mill buildings is that when anyone has a good idea for it, either the city gets in the way or anyone who owns it just asks for too much money. And they would rather just sit on it forever and continue paying property tax than sell it to somebody or have a tenant

or something like that. Did I ever tell you the proposal I put out to Platt's associates that owns it and to Trader Joe's? No. I put out a proposal to them to have a Trader Joe's. I put out a proposal to them to have a Trader Joe's in the Mill Complex. Oh, I didn't even know this. Yeah, I let them know basically what the parking situation was there. The demographics of Lewiston, how far we have to travel to go to the nearest Trader Joe's, how there are like-minded businesses in the area and how it would fit well in the community. The apartment complexes that were in the area that would be walkable for people to get groceries and how there isn't a walkable grocery store in that area. I never heard back from anybody. Not that I'm entirely opposed to Trader Joe's, but I think it's overpriced and it's pretty showy compared to what it is.

Like going there, they're not very inclusive of people with allergies even compared to big box giant like whole foods. Unfortunately, I would rather see something like a market basket or an IKEA. And if we're going to talk IKEA, I am totally for this. I know they have different rules and regulations about how far they need to be apart, how big the metro area needs to be in their surroundings. However, if they want to put an IKEA here, that would do so much. Just demolish the Auburn Mall and stick it there. They would do so much for our economy. It really would, especially because people make giant pilgrimages to IKEA.

But like the shitty part about it is because IKEA shipping is so bad, people will go down with U-Hauls. Yes, they will. To go get what they need to get. Some people also will advertise their services online or through Craigslist. make IKEA runs for you. See, and I never would have believed that until I've only been into one IKEA and it was south of Seattle. I think it was in Renton.

I saw people literally show up with U-Hauls and I'm like, what the hell is this? And it's because there's so few of them and people will drive so far to go to an IKEA. I'm not that obsessed with IKEA. I thought it was cool, but... I am because the furniture is affordable. It's decent enough quality. It's hard to put together. I don't find it hard to be put together at all.

No, what did I get there? I think I got a desk and a bookcase and it was easy to put together, though. That's all I read online is that it's very hard to put IKEA things together for some reason. It's because there's no words on it. It's just the little man showing you what to do step by step. Okay. But, yeah, I think we should have an IKEA instead of the Auburn Mall so they can just level that. Yes, but you're quite biased.

I am. So, Drewby, who are the Odd Fellows? I thought the Odd Fellows were just a reference to the Odd Fellow Theater, which was just somebody's name for the theater in Buckfield, I think it is, where I saw plays as a child. They are a international fraternal order, a lot like many of the different fraternal orders of the day. Their female counterpart is the Rebecca's. They also let men into that now, too. Basically, they promote principles of friendship, love, truth, faith, hope, charity, and universal justice.

They promote goodwill and harmony amongst people and nations, wrote the principle of universal fraternity, holding the belief that men and women, regardless of race, nationality, religion, social status, gender, rank, and station are all brothers and sisters. Basically, it's just a feel-good group, is what I'm gathering here. And then when you get in deep enough, Satanism. Once you get to the higher tiers, like the masons and stuff. You're sacrificing people. I don't know.

I don't understand a lot of these orders that old people are part of. I don't either. It's nothing I've had giant interests in. I wonder when all of it will fade out one day. I don't know because it is kind of an old boys club, isn't it? And I mean, even the things like the Order of the Eastern Star, which is like the female sect of it, I haven't seen any sort of temple for that. And I don't know anyone that's a part of it. I can only count on one hand the number of masons I've met. And they were all older men. So it may get phased out eventually. Yeah, I don't understand any of this. So I think it will probably be in a couple generations. Completely just gone.

Yeah, probably. That's what I think. So the final thought on this, and it's the burning question I've had, who the fuck's baby was that? That she was pregnant with. That she was pregnant when she died. So here's what I've got here. She was arrested in 1894 after she killed Willis.

Four years had passed at this point when she died. Whose kid is this? So find a grave. It's not Elias Cowens. Find a grave lists it as Elias Cowens. However, we don't know that's any sort of official report. if it was an official report, maybe they were just doing that because you couldn't have these bastard children. They had to be assigned to somebody back then. That's quite possible. So they

probably listed this baby as Elias Cowens based on the fact that she was still technically married to him. But there wasn't any conjugal visits or stuff back then. And why would he be going and getting it on after she tried to kill him and killed his son? Unless he believes that she was just all being framed and that She couldn't possibly have tried to murder me and my son. I don't know. We could get into some assumptions of a lot more foul play. Maybe she was raped by a prison guard. She could have had a relationship with somebody in there.

I don't know what prisons were like. Was there a true women's prison then? This I don't know because they list her as being in the main state prison in Thomaston, which I thought was just a men's prison. Maybe there weren't enough female convicts at the day that maybe they just had a small section for the women. Yeah. And maybe they weren't... Maybe it was just co-ed altogether.

Yeah, maybe they weren't broken up that well. Even if they did have a section for them, maybe they still intermingled. Maybe there was ways to have relations. I think that's a more viable theory than it being Elias Cowans, especially since I can't find anything about conjugal visits being a thing back then. Maybe she was a saucy Tentrist. Maybe she was. Maybe she was having relations with her physician or lawyer.

Reading this, I could make assumptions that she's a charismatic person. Who's to say, though, there's not a ton of information on her. I don't know. She's not a very handsome woman, but who knows? That wasn't important back then. You just needed a plot of lansome animals and childbearing hips. It's true. So you're basically livestock.

Yeah. God damn it. Everyone was livestock then. You weren't thought to survive that long. So, you know, could you reproduce and carry on the family name? The family name and the lineage was far more important than anything you were going to do. So that's all we have on this. If you're listening on YouTube, please like and subscribe.

Again, we just hit 500 subs, and we're so excited about that. We want this to keep growing. We're halfway to being able to be monetized by YouTube, which will help us ramp this podcast up so much. Again, we want to have a video element to it. If you support that and you haven't already, please subscribe, please share this video to anyone you think would like it. It really goes so far.

And also, we have new Apple podcast reviews. So we've got three new ones. This first one is highly recommended, great chemistry between the host. thoughtful commentary and good content from hashtag king nerd thank you for that this next one comes from the UK we don't get very many overseas reviews so I'm excited for this one this is from Sheppels and it says I'm a big my favorite murder fan and these guys are up there in terms of conversational and compassionate style great work guys keep it up subscribed heart thank you so much that means a lot especially to compare us with my favorite murder all right and this last one is this

show is wonderful. We found it on social media and their content sounded interesting. After listening to a few episodes, we can confirm this is a great podcast. Drewby and Yergy do a wonderful job digging into the information for the topic at hand. Do yourself a favor and add this to your podcast list. Joe from Comic Book Rundown. So thank you and shout out to the comic book rundown podcast guys. Really appreciate the review. And if you want to be shouted out on the podcast, all you have to do is go to Apple Podcasts, leave us a five-star review and we will shout you out on the podcast. And just as we're about to get to Patreon, Yergey. Mike Stan just broke, so I'm just holding it all wacky right now.

So anyway, shout out to our patrons, Eddie, Holly, Rowan, Margie, Voo, Ashley, and Karen. Thank you so much. We love you. Yeah, we love you guys so much. Thank you for supporting us. To support us in that extra step goes so far. Everything we get, we will put back into the podcast. We are currently saving up for a camera to hopefully, when we hit a thousand subscribers,

to be able to start doing more video stuff. And also, we need to replace these mic arms. We always say this, but we keep forgetting until they act all stupid while we're recording. Yes. I need to actually get better ones because I got complete crap ones when we first started thinking that they would last for a while, but... They're being held together by tape. So if you'd like us to get new mic arms, you can go to patreon.com slash the misery machine.

And again, if you just want to do it to support us, that's great. But you will also get secret episodes. You'll get snaps from us. You get postcards and you better subscribe soon because those July postcards are going out very quickly. Very quickly. And you get secret access to our Discord. By the way, our Discord is now open to the general public. So if you'd like to come in and be part of the conversation, you can.

Now, if you're a patron or you've been grandfathered into the secret Discord room where we are the most active. So if you want to be a part of that, you have to be a Patreon tier subscriber. I believe it's tier two. Yes. The 666 Satan tier. Yes. Yes. So if you are that or higher, you will get access to the secret area of the Discord.

And again, I know some people don't like Patreon for one reason or another. I get it. PayPal.m.E. slash the misery machine. You can make a donation there. And message us. We'll message you. We'll work something out.

Yeah, but definitely go ahead and join our Discord. It's very nice. And Yergi, you're the Facebook group. My Facebook group, yes. So you'll go there. There's community discussions going on. on. You find out a day early what episode we're going to do. So yeah, definitely join the Facebook group. Share memes. Lovely stuff. Okay, well, that's all for this week. So until next time.

Until next time, we love you. We love you. Okay. Bye. Bye. Love reverie, true crime. Revery means to daydream, but even daydreams can become nightmares. Come join me and get lost in horrific reverie about true crimes and area of end. Revery, True Crime Podcasts, available wherever you stream your favorite podcasts.