343 - This Is Buried Bones | My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

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This is exactly right. Isn't some far off concept? It's already here. Next starts now.

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Hello! Hello! And welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstark. That's Karen Kilgareth.

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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. And I'm Paul Holtz. And this is Buried Bones. Yes! Woohoo!

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Finally. Yes. This is the super group that everybody's been waiting for. That's right.

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This is the exactly right power team. Yes. We're the traveling Wilburys of Exactly Right.

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It's going to be like a parallel universe is going to open up, I think, with all four of us here.

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We're so excited. Paul and I are so excited about this. Oh, absolutely. It's like the amateurs versus the professionals.

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Yeah. Oh, my God, right here. Who's who? Well, and we're so excited, too, because Buried Bones has been in the mix and in the works.

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for a very long time, highly secret. And yeah, I believe the trailer is out, but now you guys can actually tell everybody about your new podcast together. So exciting.

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Paul, why don't you start? Well, you know, Buried Bones is really sort of a brainstorm between Kate and I. Kate came up

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with this concept after we recorded a case for her other podcast. And she had reached out to me

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and said, hey, do you have any historic cases? Well, I do cold cases. You know, and the oldest cases I typically do

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are back into the 1960s. And I was like, historic cases? And I happened to have a role in consulting

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on a 1924 case, Bessie Ferguson. And so I said, hey, I've got this one case out of the Bay Area.

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Well, it turns out it was a case that Kate had covered in her book. So she knew it well.

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And so we recorded that episode and it was so great. It was so smooth. We definitely just hit it off

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in terms of the dialogue and how we took a look at the case. And Kate is just such a masterful storyteller.

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And so now Buried Bones is sort of, I would say it's sort of that, but on steroids,

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where Kate basically tells me a story, which I know very little about, and I respond and go,

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well, this is what I'm thinking with the information you've told me. And she always has twists and turns and keeps me on my toes.

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Oh yeah, she's so good at that. He's given homework, which I'm not sure. He's taken very well from me where I send him a note and I say, here's kind of what it's about.

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It's more of a tease than anything. And you need to know about Mercury in the 1800s.

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So can you figure that out? Paul, is it really weird going that far back? I know that like you're able to talk to witnesses and you're able to look at crime scene photos and you're not able to do that on some of these.

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DNA. DNA. It really is an extension because when I start, you know, if I'm working cases from the 1970s, 1960s, I often don't have witnesses or suspects or physical evidence been destroyed or case files have been lost or photographs.

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And so it's kind of within the same skill set, but it's usually worse. I have less information to work with.

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But what is amazing is that it doesn't matter if it was today or from the 1800s.

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Fundamentally, crime was the same. Motives were the same. And we just take a look at it a little bit differently.

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And we have modern technology that I'll discuss saying, hey, if we could have done this back in the 1800s, this is what it would have shown.

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Yeah. And you guys, it's such a nice, because I've listened to the pilot. and for all the listeners out there,

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it's as good as you're hoping it will be. Truly just a sparkling combination of the two of you

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doing what you do best, two true experts. But then at the same time, it feels like eavesdropping on the teachers.

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And it's really satisfying in that way where it's like, you know, you don't gossip or anything,

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but there is that, it's a casual discussion of, well, wait, think about this. What about that?

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Oh, don't forget that back in the 1800s, everyone drank mercury for breakfast or whatever. That's not technically right, but that's okay.

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We didn't do our homework. That's the way we do our show. No, it's just really fun. I'm so glad that you guys are having a great time because it's

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just so compelling and fun to listen to That great Well I think it fun because when I was a working journalist I would sit down with friends of mine who were with the police department or defense attorneys and prosecutors and sit down with a story I was working on

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And I would say, OK, let me just kind of unroll this story for you and tell me what you think.

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And so this is exactly the same thing. And there are two things that I try to do successfully and so far so good with Paul.

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One is I like to convince him of these victims and how much they deserve to have justice.

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Because one thing Paul has said to me, and I think a lot of people feel is, you know, 1800s, and I have a couple of cases from the 1600s and the 1700s.

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It's hard to relate to those people sometimes. You know, it's a different time period, but he's right.

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Fundamentally, people kill for the same reason. And so the more detail that we can give about the victims, survivors, the better it is.

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And also, I like to surprise him. He knows I withhold some information. Like any good storyteller.

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He never seems mad at me, so that's good. Not yet. I've been checked at the last taping.

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I said, are you irritated? And he's like, no, no, no, that's great. She walks me down one road and all of a sudden we jump over and I was like, hold on here.

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Yes. Love it. Well, you guys have a really great, we don't know what story. You might have a really great story for us today.

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It's okay. You might not. We don't, it's all right. You want to jump in? Yeah, I want to jump in.

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It's a great story. So there are several episodes from the podcast that cover my second book, which was called American Sherlock.

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And that book was about a forensic scientist. And he had all of these amazing cases that made history.

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And so I've picked one that I think Paul can really sink his teeth into. And it's a little gossipy, not for nothing.

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I'm pretty sure you two are going to like the gossipy bit. So we'll talk about that, and I'm going to stop and get opinions from everybody.

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And it's a hefty case. It took up a good portion of my book, but I'm going to sort of shorthand expedite things

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as much as I can. So this case is set during the Great Depression, and it's in 1933 Palo Alto, California.

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And California is a place where you all are now. Paul once was, I once was in San Francisco.

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So this is a case that resonates with me because it's just two average people. Their names are David and Aileen Lamson, and they were both graduates of Stanford University in 1933.

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Earlier than that, by 1933, she had become, you know, kind of an executive worker.

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He was one of the executives of Stanford University Printing Press and very successful.

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They lived on a place called Faculty Row, which was where a lot of the kind of well-to-do people in Palo Alto lived.

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They had a little cottage there, super cute, young couple in their late 20s, early 30s.

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They had a little girl who was nicknamed BB, really cute little girl, two-year-old.

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And they just seemed to have a nice life. And I know that many times our stories, this is the way they start out.

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Everything seemed okay. But, you know, they really truly did. David and Aileen seemed to be a really nice couple.

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And so they would go to parties and very popular. And they particularly spent a lot of time going to parties during holiday weekends.

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So this takes place in Memorial Day weekend in 1933. So they go to a series of parties and nobody's drinking excessively or anything.

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I think they had a great time. And then the very last night, Sunday night, Aileen comes home and she feels nauseous.

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She wasn't sure what it was from, if it was from, you know, the dessert that was served the night before, but she came home not feeling well.

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And they had sent the little girl out with, they had a lemon nanny. They sent her out to spend the night at the nanny's house so that they could have some privacy.

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And they went to sleep and Aileen didn't feel well. She woke up at the middle of the night.

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David took care of her. He was very sweet, apparently. And then the next morning, he said, I'm getting up early.

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And he slept in a separate room. He slept in BB's room because he said, I have to get up really early.

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She wanted him to clean up part of the backyard. They had kind of like a little garden in the back.

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And he had a lot of stuff that he had collected. And he wanted to have a bonfire, which I think was pretty common back then.

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So he got up. He went outside 8 o'clock in the morning. He starts this fire. He goes back in and she is awake now.

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Aileen's awake and she says she wants to take a bath. She still feels crummy, still has an upset stomach.

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He runs a bath for her in the bathroom, which is in the hallway. He helps her get in.

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She's tall and thin. She disrobes and he helps her in the bathtub. He goes back out once she's in the bath.

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He goes back outside. He's sweaty. He takes his shirt off. Neighbors are poking their heads over the fence and talking to him all morning.

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He talks about Simonizing someone's car. And I mean, just all kinds of stuff. He's having a great time with the neighbors.

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So a real estate agent and a woman popped their head unexpectedly over the fence.

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And Bebe, the little girl, was having sinus infections. And they said, listen, the doctor said, after Memorial Day weekend, why don't you guys just

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take her to the mountains? It'll probably help. And you can just sublet out your cottage, which is what they were trying to do.

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So the real estate agent comes over on this day and says, I know I'm just popping in and

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interrupting, but can I show my client your cottage? And he said, sure. So he puts his shirt on.

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he goes in and the real estate agent and the client go to the front door and they hear,

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they said the most tremendous, terrible scream they had ever heard. And they go to the door,

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they start knocking. And within about one to two minutes, they say, he comes to the door,

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flings it open and says, my wife's dead. And they walk in and Aileen Lamson is slumped over

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the front of the bathtub, you know, of course, naked, blood all over the ground and then

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splatters on the walls And you know the police are called the neighbors come It an uncontrolled crime scene from the beginning And within 15 minutes he is under arrest for killing his wife Under 15 minutes

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So when the real estate agents heard a scream, was it a male or a female's voice?

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No, it was him screaming, oh my God, oh my God, she's dead, she's dead. And he had blood on his

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shirt, but it was blood from, he said, because now I need to start saying that, he said,

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that he picked her up. He found her in the bathtub. He doesn't know in what position.

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So that's kind of key. He doesn't know in what position. He just sort of almost blacked out.

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He picked her up. He tried to see what was going on. He realized she was dead. He heard the knocking.

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He put her down in the position where we have the photo that we'll talk about in a little bit.

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And so he's got this, you know, kind of diluted water blood on his shirt. And then the investigators come

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and they start figuring out a bunch of different things. But I know probably all three of you

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have some questions so far. Well, I think first is his early statements are, she is actually in the tub dead.

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Yeah. And the tub is full of water. It is pink water. Okay. And then when the first responders arrive,

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what year is this again? This is in the 1930s. This is 33. So they did do a liver temp,

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if that's what you're going to ask next. Actually, I was just kind of curious in terms of when crime scene photography started in this case.

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You know, is this something that first responders arrived, they checked the body, it sounds like they did a liver temp, and then decided, okay, she's dead, and they backed out, and that's when crime scene processing occurred.

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You know, I don't know what order it occurred in. And I know that, if this tells you anything, that that photo of her slumped over the edge of the tub became really key evidence in court because it was the way that they had said, well, you know, the way the defense portrayed this is not the way it happened based on where she was laying.

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But he is saying, that is not how I found her. I don't know how I picked her up.

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He tried to describe it. I picked her up. So it's unreliable, you know, depending on, I don't know, who you believe.

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But he's arrested. So. Oh, yeah. And he goes to trial. He does. He goes to trial.

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Yep. He's arrested. Can I just, before we go to trial, I just want to say a guy who's hanging out in the

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backyard and people are poking their head over his fence and he's entertaining all comers.

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It's not like he's like, I need private time, acting weird, anything like that. And then when they say, can we come through?

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How beyond would you have to be to invite people into your house knowing there was a crime scene inside?

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Right. Or be like, here's my chance in killing her in that moment. So, you know, I see the look on Paul's face, which is a big smile.

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And I think he's about to tell you exactly how that's possible. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

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Tell us. No, you know, well, this is where I think it's going to come down to if he's arrested, he's under suspicion for some reason by early investigators.

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And right now, I don't know if Kate has information as to why he fell under suspicion so quickly.

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But if he was the one responsible for Aileen's homicide or death, then he's already put mechanisms in place with the expectation that somehow the body is going to have to be found.

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This is showing, this is this part of this organized offender. if that's what happened.

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But I'm not necessarily going to hang my hat on that just yet because I know Kate's probably going to tell me some more details.

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Well, there's immediate suspicion, I think, for a couple of reasons. One is the tremendous amount of blood.

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To them, seemed like there's no way this, in any way could this have been an accident.

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And he literally said, I don't know what happened. I don't know what to do. I have a friend of mine who's a really good defense attorney.

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And he said the worst client you can get is an innocent one. because they're useless. They can't tell you anything. He's like, what did I do? I don't know.

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I just found her. So I think that the blood on the shirt, on his shirt, even though he explained

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what happened, was one thing. I think he couldn't answer questions. And it wasn't that he was stoic.

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He just was sort of in a daze, which who wouldn't be? But also, who else would have done it if this

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is murder? I think they looked at the amount of blood all over the place, splatters on the walls

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and on the ground and just thought, there's no way somebody didn't beat this woman to death.

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Well, I guess that's the question now, right? Is like, what's the autopsy say? Because I feel like a head wound bleeds excessively,

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you know, slip and fall. What's the deal? Or is it murder 100%? Well, I mean, Paul, what do you think about,

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so, you know, Georgia said, which I think is a great observation, head wounds. Do head wounds always bleed that much?

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Well, it depends on when they occur. You could have post-mortem head wounds in which you don't have a lot of bleeding because the heart is no longer pumping.

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But typically, head wounds, both the scalp as well as if the skull is fractured and there's damage to the arterial supply into the brain, they bleed heavily.

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So this is where getting into the autopsy result. Always, when I'm evaluating a case, I always need to know, well, what happened to the victim?

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What are the injuries? What are the bleeding injuries? What's the cause of death?

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And then I can go from there to assess the crime scene. So what does the autopsy say in this case?

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Well, hold on. Let me pull this up because I sent it to you, the exact what I wrote in the book, actually,

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which I think is going to be very helpful because I told Paul, I said, should you just

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read part of this book? And he said, no. Are you going to plagiarize yourself right now?

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And then sue us. I might That a great idea I love that What are you doing Right The ultimate By the way if you haven read American Sherlock I just need to say it one of my favorite

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true crime books. It's so satisfying, maybe also because I'm from the Bay Area, but I really love this

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book. So if you are interested in any kind of thing like that, American Sherlock is about essentially

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the first forensic scientist, criminologist in America. Who might have made a big mistake in this case.

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I guess we're going to find out in a little bit. Ooh, yeah. These are the twists and turns.

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Well, let me read you this. So this is what I wrote that the autopsy report said,

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four lacerations on the back of the head covering the occipital protuberance and surrounding it.

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and then three of said lacerations were somewhat horizontal in direction, two being somewhat curved.

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One depressed fracture of the skull as well as an undepressed stellate. Is that right?

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Stellate, Paul? Yep. Stellate fracture. Yep. Everybody said one hard hit and then lots of little cracks like an egg.

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What do you think, Paul? Okay. This is the PowerPoint. This is when the PowerPoint comes out.

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Yes. Here we go. Okay. So this is a sketch of the back of Aileen's head. And the pathologist has now noted these lacerations in this horizontal manner that are to the back and somewhat down below the skull, the back of her head.

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Now, a laceration is a very specific term. term. It's a type of wound. It's caused by when the skin is crushed between a blunt object and the

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bone underneath. And so that causes the skin to split. You see this with boxers. When they're

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boxing and they get that punch to the eyebrow and the eyebrow splits, that is technically a

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laceration. It's not an abrasion. It's not an incision. So these lacerations, this becomes

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absolutely critical because you have multiple lacerations. Now, if the defense is saying she

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merely slipped in the tub and hit the back of her head, you'd have one laceration, maybe.

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You have multiple lacerations that are occurring to this skin. This is indicating multiple events

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causing the skin to split where this blunt object hit the back of her head. And then the skull

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fractures that they are talking about. The skull is very robust until it basically is compromised.

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So you can have a blow or several blows that aren't going to break the skull itself or fracture

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the skull. But once that skull is fractured, then subsequent blows have an easier time fracturing

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it. The idea that they're saying that the fractures to the skull as well as the lacerations indicates

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one blow from what I can see in this sketch is absolutely wrong. You have multiple blows that

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are occurring to the back of her head. So this now starts to bring up, okay, so was this an accident?

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Is it possible for her to have slipped and fallen and have her head hit on multiple surfaces

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during that slip and fall? But that's where I need to take a look at that one photo that we

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talked about with her slumped over in the bathtub. First, I kind of want to set this up because,

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as Kate mentioned, I kind of like to be critical, if you will, of this Oscar Heinrich who did some

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good work and then did some goofy things. And here's a couple of photos of Heinrich being called

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in and taking a look at this scene. And what you see, I mean, this is obviously so posed for the

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camera with his team and he's looking at this tiny little blood drop above the doorknob,

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or he's using a stereo microscope looking at something on the floor. This is now where you're

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making mountains out of mohills. This is where he is probably over-interpreting blood patterns at

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the scene. The blood pattern discipline is actually a very legit discipline. It's the

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best type of evidence in order to determine events that happened at the scene. But sometimes

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examiners start focusing in on minutiae without looking at the big picture. So now I'm going to go

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and take a look at the big picture. And this is going to be- Can I ask you about something about that really quickly? Because we've been hearing a lot lately

00:22:46

about how blood spatter evidence is bunk. It's not a real science. So you're saying it totally

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is when used correctly. It absolutely is. And this is where when I have reviewed cases in which

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there has been, let's say, faulty testimony related to blood patterns, it always comes down to,

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is the examiner competent? And in many instances, the examiner is not competent,

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or did the examiner over-interpret the blood evidence? And this is where, I mean, just to give

00:23:19

A very easy example. Let's say you had blood on your hand and you just smeared your hand across the wall.

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That's going to create a type of pattern, right? Yeah. Let's say you had blood on your finger and you flick your finger.

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That's going to create a different type of pattern. Is there any way to confuse those two types of events that would create those patterns?

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No. No, it's very straightforward. But what ends up happening, like what we see with Heinrich here, is he's got this goofy eyeglass magnifier and he's looking at the single drop. And it's like, no, this is not going to make a difference in terms of assessing what results.

00:24:00

really happened in this case. I think this is all performative. I promise all of this is him

00:24:05

just trying. He loved photography. It was just him trying to get stuff for his portfolio.

00:24:10

Oh, absolutely. It's all posed, but what he's doing is really illustrating where people fall

00:24:17

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Terms and conditions apply. See pandora.net for more details. Goodbye. Goodbye. So this next photo, and this is the one Karen and George,

00:26:32

just to let you know, you'll see a little bit of the victim, but I'm going to put it up on the screen now.

00:26:36

Here, I just want to point out, you know, what I've done is I've zoomed in on that one photo.

00:26:42

We can see Aileen's arms and then this braided ponytail right here. And then, as Kate mentioned, this very large amount of blood that's on the floor.

00:26:54

That is a lot of blood. So much blood. They said it estimated half of her blood, which I didn't even think was possible.

00:27:00

Ooh, chilling. Now, it's also diluted with water. And we hear from the husband that he came in and she was in the bathtub and he picked her up.

00:27:10

And so you could see where water might splash. But you also have undiluted blood pools that are on the floor in addition.

00:27:20

And there's going to be some things that I will point out a little bit later. But on the floor, maybe a towel in the foreground is a little out of focus.

00:27:30

And this is where I'm asking, okay, what did first responders do? Because I need to know in order to assess how this scene was changed after the victim was found.

00:27:39

Well, I can tell you one note is they, in trial, referred to that she had her hand.

00:27:46

Those are her bedroom slippers. There's one slipper there that's blood soaked. I think they took the photo exactly as when they came in, they found her.

00:27:53

But I'm not 100% sure, Paul, because this was such a cluster of contaminated scene.

00:27:59

I mean, there were neighbors trying to clean up blood in the kitchen. Everybody was walking through.

00:28:04

I mean, it was a big mess forensically. Sure. But this photo shows there's no evidence of cleanup here.

00:28:10

Yeah. And I'll get into some other aspects about this as we get further into the story.

00:28:14

But I just want to point out, we have two gloves on the floor right here. We have a right-hand glove and a left-hand glove.

00:28:21

They look like leather gloves. So whose gloves are those? Well, they were probably his because he was working outside.

00:28:28

He was working with blackberry brushes and he was getting scratched up all over the place.

00:28:33

So he had, they said that he had no shirt on because they were joking that he was doing two jobs at the same time, cleaning up the backyard and getting a tan.

00:28:41

He had no shirt on and he had leather gloves on. If I'm playing devil's advocate, you know, David Lamson's innocent.

00:28:47

I think he probably ran in, saw her, took off his gloves, threw him on the ground, grabbed her and the rest proceeded from there.

00:28:53

But again, you know, because he picked her up and he put her down in a different position, he says, we don't know.

00:28:59

We don't even know what position she was in. And that was another problem with the trial.

00:29:03

But we can talk about that too. Yeah, and I'll circle back around to some other things in this photo because there's actually quite a lot of information in here I haven't brought up yet.

00:29:11

So why don't you proceed, Kate? Okay, so there's enough for the police to say how else could she have died rather than being hurt by her husband.

00:29:20

So he's under arrest. They start searching the house. They look inside the bonfire and they find a 10-inch long iron pipe.

00:29:29

It's in the fire. This wouldn't have been the first time he burned stuff like that before.

00:29:33

He burned things from his garage. People just burned anything they wanted in the 30s, I guess.

00:29:38

And they test it. There's no blood. It's inconclusive. There's, you know, rust on it.

00:29:44

There's some foreign matter, but they don't know what's happening. So when the prosecutor gets the case, he theorizes a couple of things.

00:29:52

One he thinks that Aileen and David got home She wasn feeling well he wanted to have sex She said no She said I on my period That probably why I don feel well They wake up the next morning

00:30:07

She takes a bath and he realizes somehow, like maybe he doesn't see a maxi pad in the trash can.

00:30:13

And he realizes that she's not on her period and he flies into a rage and beats her to death

00:30:23

with a pipe. That's their theory that the Maxi had? That's one theory. And also he had a female

00:30:28

friend who he denied and she denied that they were in a relationship and Aileen knew they went

00:30:33

to college together. But he had sent this friend flowers at one point. She was doing something for,

00:30:39

I think maybe Good Housekeeping. It was one of those types of magazines. She was a photographer

00:30:42

and he said he sent her flowers just to, she was a family friend, but they made that into something,

00:30:48

even though everybody denied it. More context to their relationship. I had her journal, her diary.

00:30:54

I read through it. There's just nothing suspicious at all. I know that doesn't mean anything,

00:30:59

but when there's something in there that's suspicious, it does mean something. There's nothing in there about acrimony in any way.

00:31:06

They seem to have a really nice relationship. She said he's very romantic. He bought her something really nice on Valentine's Day.

00:31:11

He's a great dad. They went hiking. So, you know, if there is any type of an affair,

00:31:17

I don't think that she knew about it, or maybe she would have found out about it that night.

00:31:22

What is interesting to me that I'd like to hear from you all about is this idea that he flew into

00:31:27

a rage over this missing maxi pad. And so he came in, put two and two together and became very angry

00:31:36

with her. And he was just happening to carry this 10-inch iron piece of pipe with him. And that was

00:31:43

a little weird. It doesn't make sense to me. It seems like a pretty weak motive.

00:31:48

I wander around my house with pipe all the time. Like a prison guard? This is a guy thing.

00:31:56

Keep those kids in line, Paul Holtz. Oh my goodness. I mean, the pipe thing for me is weird because everyone knows it's not going to

00:32:03

burn. So why would he try to get rid of it in the burn thing? Yes. It makes you less suspicious of him or more suspicious?

00:32:11

Less. Everyone would think that's a dumb way to get rid of a lead pipe, you know.

00:32:16

But then why would you put it in a bonfire to begin with? I mean, either way, he's not that smart, obviously.

00:32:21

I mean, maybe I know somebody's probably going to message me and say, don't you know the best way to do something?

00:32:25

Something with a pipe is... But I just didn't. Either way, it doesn't make sense that he put it in that fire.

00:32:30

Paul, being a man, Paul. Well, you know, from my perspective, if this pipe had been used in a bludgeoning like this,

00:32:36

it would have a fair amount of blood on it and probably adhering hair. and possibly other tissue.

00:32:42

So you throw it in the fire, and then that evidence would be removed. Now, it's not going to destroy the pipe,

00:32:48

but you destroy the evidence that would suggest that the pipe was the murder weapon.

00:32:52

It was inconclusive. Just to counter weapons-wise, because I'm an expert too, say this was what was happening, and he was guilty,

00:33:01

and therefore that was his pipe, and he was there doing it. He is inches away from a much better solution,

00:33:07

which is put that pipe in the bathwater and get everything off of it. Yeah. And then go put it in your pipe pile like they had in the 30s.

00:33:15

Your pipe pile. But I mean, like the idea of, I feel like it goes against normal human processes to burn

00:33:22

blood as opposed to wash it off. Right. And he's in a bathroom. To me, that feels like they're trying to really tie things together that maybe truly aren't

00:33:33

together. and he did just have, like if he had a box of garbage and he dumped it all in,

00:33:38

there was a pipe in there or I don't know, something like that. Well, I think they're looking for a weapon and a pipe is certainly a good weapon.

00:33:44

Yeah. I have to explain how she ended up with cracks in the back of her head. And I will say based on the sketch, I'd like to see photos,

00:33:50

but at least with the sketch of her injuries, that a pipe is consistent with the type of injury she has to the back of her head.

00:33:59

Well, let me give you more details about what happened. So the prosecutor hires Heinrich.

00:34:03

He comes in, he looks around, he looks at the blood and he looks at the droplets and

00:34:09

the amount of blood and where it was. And he looks at the sink and he says, I can't work for you.

00:34:14

I don't believe that this was murder. I think she slipped and fell and hit her head on the sink based on the wound patterns.

00:34:19

I know. So if you guys at home could see Paul's forehead right now, his eyes are arched higher than

00:34:25

they probably ever have been. He's truly shocked. He is shocked, see? Oh, I'm chomping at the bit, but I'm going to let you keep telling the story.

00:34:34

So he is hired by the defense, of course. And he says, if you look at the way the patterns are, now this part makes sense to me, Paul.

00:34:42

If you look at the back of the head and the parallel lines feel very even, right?

00:34:48

His argument, and actually a couple of pathologists I've spoken to, modern pathologists say that when you're hitting someone on the back of the head with a pipe, they're moving.

00:34:57

and you're not going to have these three or four perfectly parallel marks. She's not just lying on the ground.

00:35:03

So that was one of his arguments about blood. And then I'll tell you in a little bit.

00:35:06

Georgia, what do you think about that? That's a great point. Also, the wounds being horizontal to me signify a slip and fall more likely

00:35:14

than being hit personally, in my amateur opinion. Wait, well, let's see what's Karen's vote.

00:35:19

Karen, what do you vote? I feel like I've been highly influenced by the amount of blood on that floor

00:35:25

because I wish it were a slip and fall. And there's nothing indicating in her personal diary

00:35:33

that there's any strife whatsoever. But the amount of blood that there is, there's several, I want to say contusions.

00:35:41

Lacerations. Lacerations, yeah. There's not one. Looking consistent, looking parallel, like you're saying,

00:35:47

it just doesn't seem accidental. It seems like it has a lot of intention based on her head.

00:35:52

Can I ask are there bruises on her body at all Not that I read Paul did you read something No I didn read anything All I could assess was that one photo that shows her body and I not seeing any defensive injuries There no defensive injuries that I read about now Now addressing the parallel marks of the

00:36:10

lacerations to the back of her head. I've worked bludgeoning cases and one case in particular,

00:36:17

which is going to be a Golden State Killer case, which Gregory Sanchez was bludgeoned to death by

00:36:23

Joseph D'Angelo. And he has multiple clusters of linear lacerations on the back of his head

00:36:32

that are clustered just like this, but also you see change in directionality with these clusters.

00:36:39

So one cluster will have a grouping that are all parallel, and then another cluster had another

00:36:44

grouping all parallel, et cetera. And this is showing that, yes, the offender was able to strike

00:36:50

multiple blows with the weapon and the victim's head in the same alignment. And then at some point,

00:36:59

another cluster occurred with the weapon and the victim's head in a different alignment.

00:37:04

It absolutely is possible for an offender to strike a victim multiple times in the head,

00:37:13

the weapon being in alignment. In this particular case, the very first blow, we're talking about

00:37:20

blows that the pathologist is saying, occipital protuberance. This is now the lower bone in your

00:37:26

skull right above where your neck is. This is a devastating area to receive a blow. Ice skaters

00:37:34

who they slip and fall and hit the back of their head on the ice. Sometimes that proves to be fatal

00:37:39

because of where it's at. Imagine the first blow could have been fatal or causing absolute

00:37:45

unconsciousness. And now the victim is no longer moving for the subsequent blows that finish her

00:37:51

off. What I kind of take a look at is when you look at the dynamics of combat between the offender

00:37:58

and the victim, a feature that stands out to me about Aileen is that braided ponytail. Isn't that

00:38:04

such a great handle for an offender to grab? And could you imagine while she's standing up,

00:38:11

The offender grabs that and now brings her head down. And while she's in a bent over position, that first blow is delivered.

00:38:20

So this is part of trying to assess the dynamics of offender-victim interactions during the infliction of violence.

00:38:29

These blows, there's blood spatter in this case that we haven't really talked about.

00:38:33

I'm not going to go into detail outside of the fact that the blood spatter in this case is all out in the bathroom area where the sink is, where the door into the bathroom is.

00:38:44

It's not in the bathtub. So I will get into that a little bit later. So we are going to trial and Heinrich is testifying on behalf of David Lamson.

00:38:55

And Heinrich's argument is that she slipped and fell, and it's hard to tell, but it's a very small, small bathroom.

00:39:05

So he had many arguments here. One is that there simply didn't seem to be enough room for David to get behind her with this pipe.

00:39:14

There wasn't enough room to get back. Two, every wall had bits of blood on it, including a jacket.

00:39:23

It's not a robe. It was kind of a jacket, bathroom jacket that was hanging on the inside of the door.

00:39:28

So when she was in the bathtub, she closed the door where there was a crack there, right?

00:39:32

So if this is a slip and fall, the blood went up his jacket as well. So on every wall, there's no void for where the killer would have been.

00:39:41

The blood touched every wall, according to Heinrich in these photographs. So his argument was, well, why did David Lamson, first of all, where's the cast off blood, right?

00:39:51

When you hit someone and the blood comes backwards, where's all that? There's little droplets and most of the blood is contained on the ground.

00:39:57

So when he took the stand, that was his major argument. Are you guys watching Paul's face right now?

00:40:02

Yeah, he's really hilarious. I wish you could see it, listeners, because he is not buying any of this bullshit.

00:40:10

Not at all. Not at all. I'm trying to think of what I should address at this point in time.

00:40:16

One of the things that I do want to address is the photos that Kate herself acquired

00:40:22

show the blood spatter on multiple surfaces out in the bathroom. In order to produce blood spatter,

00:40:30

you have to have a blow to a pooled blood source. So I'm going to walk you through a hypothetical

00:40:37

scenario, and I use this when I talk to citizens' academies all the time, I could take a baseball

00:40:43

bat. This is a high energy weapon. I could hit you in the head as hard as I could. I am not going

00:40:51

to produce blood spatter because there's no pooled blood source. I would kill you with that blow.

00:40:58

But now that I've hit you, I've created that laceration. Maybe I've crushed the skull and I've

00:41:04

now got cerebral arterial blood also bubbling to the surface. The next time I hit you with that bat,

00:41:13

now you get the poof. That's where you get the blood spatter. So think about the scenario of

00:41:20

an accident. She slips in the bathtub and hits the back of her head. Is there a pooled blood

00:41:26

source at that point? No. No. No way is that going to produce spatter. It would require another

00:41:34

slip and another fall into that same area on her head to produce blood spatter. But she's,

00:41:42

under this theory, she's in the bathtub area. There's no spatter from the photos that are

00:41:47

available to me to show that there's spatter in the bathtub area. It's all out in the bathroom

00:41:53

area This is a problem for the slip and fall theory that Heinrich is proposing Ladies what do you think

00:42:05

I love to learn. Honestly, I'm just like, wait, it doesn't? You're right. It doesn't.

00:42:13

It wouldn't. The first hit to the head wouldn't produce that. It's fascinating. The caveat is the only time it does is with explosive level energies like a gunshot or a bomb, obviously, where there's massive disruption.

00:42:29

And blunt objects have different, I will call them energy levels. A short pipe is different than a baseball bat.

00:42:37

A baseball bat is so much more devastating. the blood spatter from that and the injuries to the victim are so much more magnified than from a

00:42:46

shorter, less energetic weapon. Is there any whirlpool in which you think this could have

00:42:53

been an accident? Or are you looking at these photos and High Wrenches drawing and just saying

00:42:57

conclusively, like you would be comfortable presenting this to a prosecutor and saying,

00:43:01

go after this guy? Well, right now, I am comfortable definitively saying this is a homicide.

00:43:08

Okay. And then I will give you information as to why I think somebody close to her is responsible for the homicide.

00:43:16

Okay. It's very mysterious. Usually I'm the mysterious one. Now it's about turning the tables on you now.

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00:45:22

Goodbye. Okay, well, let's say now that David Lamson took the stand. He was terrible.

00:45:30

He was not good on the stand. He was not charming. He had no idea what happened.

00:45:37

He just said, I miss my wife. And that's pretty much it. And people did question a lot of things.

00:45:43

They questioned how he could have a conversation about simonizing a car in the backyard.

00:45:48

And the liver temp test, and frankly, they could feel the water. And it confirmed that within an hour she had died of the police arriving.

00:45:57

So that fit into his timeline. And that he could kill her and come outside and within, you know, an hour out there having conversations with people.

00:46:08

And then have this woman unexpectedly show up and let her in. And it just seemed all too much for some people.

00:46:14

the prosecutor reminded people that David was an actor. He was, I mean, he was a community theater actor.

00:46:21

So I'm not quite sure that's going to be something that's going to convince people

00:46:25

that this man was really trying to get one over on the jury. But regardless, at the end of the whole trial,

00:46:32

the jury went back and, you know, immediately took a vote. And it was 11 to 1 to convict.

00:46:40

11 to 1. But it was hung. Well, so this is what happens. And maybe, Paul, you have a nifty story about this, or you might not.

00:46:47

But, you know, later on, after the trial ended and after they rendered a verdict,

00:46:53

one of the people in the jury, the person who was hanging the jury was a woman who came and later said that she was going to essentially sue the state

00:47:01

because she had been threatened and pressured in the jury room to change her vote.

00:47:06

Right. And it was admitted that that's what they did. So they all spent three days pressuring her to change her vote.

00:47:12

I can't believe you're doing this. They were threatening her and saying, don't you know what

00:47:17

happened to the last guy who hung a jury and then this murderer went free and people burned down his

00:47:23

house? And so she was really intimidated. They didn't even really discuss the evidence. What

00:47:28

they did was, which I thought, Paul, you would appreciate, is they tried to recreate the accidental

00:47:34

fall, which I thought, well, that's really ballsy to try to do that. They had people standing on a

00:47:40

table and falling backwards and trying to figure out in which way she would have hit her head to

00:47:45

reenact. I mean, this is crazy to me. I have a question. Did it ever come up that

00:47:51

someone else was the murderer? Why is that an option if we all think it's murder?

00:47:56

Well, because the only two people... at the time, since they were able to say she had died within an hour of the police arriving,

00:48:06

no one had seen anybody else at the house except for the real estate agent and the person there.

00:48:09

And it was David, and that was it. So, you know, I had found there were a lot of instances on

00:48:14

Stanford Row. There had been a whole rash of burglaries and some peeping toms and stuff that

00:48:18

had happened. Nothing definitively. It just was, you know, David was the most likely suspect and

00:48:23

the husband did it. You all say that all the time. I know. We don't say it all the time.

00:48:28

Every single crime show we watch says it all the time. It's simply the numbers. Right, it is.

00:48:34

And so eventually this woman on the jury is worn down. And she finally says, okay.

00:48:40

And he's convicted. And he is sentenced to death and sent to San Quentin. And as you know, that's not the end of the story.

00:48:47

Oh, so, okay. So this is interesting to me then. Obviously, first, when you say this one juror who was holding out was threatened and intimidated,

00:48:57

Was that by the prosecution at all or was it by the other jurors? Other jurors. Okay.

00:49:01

Pressure within the jury room. Yeah. And this is California. They had death on the table for this case.

00:49:09

They did. I'm not familiar with the murder statutes from the 1930s in California.

00:49:17

Do you know how they had delineated special circumstances to justify the death penalty

00:49:22

or did they back then? No, they didn't. Okay. Yeah. Okay. No, he was sent, it was called, I think, Execution Row.

00:49:28

He went right there. It was very swift. He didn't say anything. He had no comment, essentially.

00:49:34

Can I just point one thing out? Sure. In how we were saying he was out there, she had died within the hour, he was talking to

00:49:40

neighbors. Paul made this point earlier, but if this was planned in any way, talking to neighbors would

00:49:49

be the best thing you could do to be out. I'm being casual, my shirt's off, I'm doing some yard work.

00:49:55

most innocent thing you could be doing, you get witnesses to look at you having a normal day.

00:50:00

Whether you just did it or are planning to do it, wouldn't you say your average sociopath or

00:50:06

psychopath could have those conversations with no one catching on? That something either bad

00:50:12

is about to happen or did happen. Like, wouldn't that be part of the plan? He knows the real estate

00:50:17

agent might pop by, right? That could be you're all playing into his scheme. Okay.

00:50:24

Well, from my perspective, yes. You know, and there's plenty of examples. And I think a notable example in some ways is the case out here in Colorado with Christopher Watts, right?

00:50:33

Oh, yeah. Here this guy is, horrible case, killed his wife. And I think there were daughters.

00:50:38

Two little girls, two little girls. But if you watch him, you know, when he's being interviewed by media, you know, he comes off as being, poor me, I'm missing my wife and my daughters.

00:50:50

And he's the killer. Yeah. These guys are able to be convincing and taking on this role.

00:50:57

And they go into the case thinking they can do this. These are the types of individuals that will represent themselves at trial.

00:51:04

They're narcissistic. They think they're better than anybody. They can fool anybody.

00:51:09

And I don't know about the husband in this case. And I can't say based on what I'm seeing that there was a ton of planning for this homicide.

00:51:18

I can't say if this was in a fit of rage versus this was showing a lot of malice, a forethought.

00:51:23

But it does not surprise me that if he is the one that killed Aileen, that he would be able to pull off convincing others, hey, I was just out working in my yard.

00:51:34

And now I have to let out this blood curdling shriek to convince the people outside that I just walked in on something horrific.

00:51:44

Yeah, because there is something very performative to a shriek so loud that you would hear it all the way through the house.

00:51:50

I'm just trying to picture there would be almost like an implosion for me of frozen, silent, gasping, not being able to breathe, that kind of thing.

00:52:00

I mean, obviously, we have talked about there's no right way to do anything, especially in these extreme and totally bizarre circumstances.

00:52:08

But as a man in the 1930s, that seems to be sort of an unusual reaction, whether it's nature or environmental upbringing.

00:52:20

I never have the impulse to scream no matter what I'm dealing with. And I think that's probably most men, at least in our society today.

00:52:28

Well, so where do we stand? Let's take a straw poll right now. Where do we stand with what happened with David Lamson?

00:52:34

So if we're pulling these two guilty and not guilty things apart, in the guilty column, we think he's guilty is the lacerations, the cracks in the back of the head, where the blood landed.

00:52:47

And she had these braids. Maybe that's what gave her these even parallel lines on the back of her head that he had an opportunity.

00:52:56

There were the only two people in the house. He had an alibi of sorts. He was able to disappear in and out.

00:53:02

There were people outside. Maybe the scream, the cry was performative. And then on the other side, the not guilty is you have several experts, at least in the 30s, say this actually to us looks more like the markings that fit perfectly the ridges of the sink.

00:53:19

That's what they think. The sink? Hold on. The sink? Not the bathtub? Even though she's found in the bathtub?

00:53:25

Yes. She's found in the bathtub, but the sink is about two feet from her. So Heinrich's idea was that she slipped and fell

00:53:32

and there's three ridges on the... Are we having to go back and redo this whole episode, Paul Holt?

00:53:38

Tell me we're not going to freaking do that, man. Why didn't we know about this Art Deco sink?

00:53:44

This is the reveal. Okay. The courthouse reveal. Can we all say what we think so far

00:53:49

and then you'll give us the rest? Yes. Tell me. I don think there enough evidence to bring it to trial Okay I think it slip and fall You think it slip and fall Okay And Karen you more cynical I more cynical Also just Alckham razor like you said it the simplicity of it

00:54:07

where the other option aside from a slip and fall is that a third party came into the house

00:54:13

at the perfect time, killed her silently without David hearing in the backyard, and then went back out and didn't take anything or didn't, I don't know if they investigated that

00:54:23

part. But like that to me, everything else seems a little out there. And the slip and fall, I just

00:54:30

don't think they would go one, two, three, four, the way they are on that autopsy. Even if you were

00:54:37

falling, it feels like it would be in different areas of your head. It looks like she perfectly

00:54:40

fell down. I don't know. I'm not sure. But it just seems like it's so hard. The reason I like true

00:54:47

crime is because the possibility of him actually doing it, which is there is a monster hiding in

00:54:52

plain sight, talking to the neighbors and raking up his leaves while then he just does this thing

00:54:58

and thinks he's going to get away with it, is what I'll always pick because it's more interesting.

00:55:02

Yeah. Well, this story gets a little bit more interesting at the end too. So you'll get to

00:55:06

hear that. Paul, what do you think now? Because Heinrich's argument was she fell, she hit the

00:55:11

sink with the two or three ridges and that to him, it matched up with the back of her head and then

00:55:17

she fell. But the sink was very close. I lived in a place in New York where literally I could take

00:55:22

a bath and spit in the sink at the same time. And it was no big deal. And it sounds like it was that

00:55:26

kind of a bathroom. But still, the pathologist I spoke to said, that's a lot of blood for slip and

00:55:31

fall. I don't know. So what do you think, Paul? I don't want you to ever doubt. You are my number

00:55:37

one forensic scientist, dude. So whatever you say, I'm going with. That's really beautiful.

00:55:42

So this wash basin is two and a half feet away from the bathtub. So imagine if you're in the bathtub and you slip and fall to where now you're hitting your head on that wash basin.

00:55:59

Where is your body mass located? Where's the center of your mass? You're not going to fall back into that bathtub.

00:56:07

You are going to be falling onto the floor. Karen and Georgia, I'm not going to divulge how tall each of you are, but you're not tall people.

00:56:17

I wish you wouldn't. There's incentive about their height. Very tiny. Even me, you know, I'm 5'10".

00:56:24

If I were to slip and fall out of this bathtub to a point where I'm hitting the back of my head on something,

00:56:31

and I'm not like going to be standing right on the edge of this bathtub. I'm going to be standing in the middle of the bathtub.

00:56:37

So something that's three to three and a half feet away, I'm not falling into the bathtub.

00:56:42

And it's oriented wrong. But he grabbed her. You do have an alteration to the scene for sure.

00:56:48

But he wouldn't put her back in the bathtub and like slump her over. No, well, the wash basin for me is a huge miss under this theory.

00:56:59

And I don't know if it was Heinrich that was the one that proposed it. But I don't see that as even an option.

00:57:05

The only option from the slip and fall would be the side of the bathtub itself. But again, I go back to the injuries, multiple lacerations.

00:57:18

You have blood spatter that is out by the door to the bathroom to where the towel rack is,

00:57:27

which is now a distance away from the bathtub. This is indicating blows are occurring to a pooled blood source out in the bathroom, not in the bathtub.

00:57:39

Multiple blows occurring out in the bathroom. For me, this is definitively a homicide.

00:57:47

And based on what I'm seeing in that photo, I'm absolutely confident that the homicide was committed by somebody who naturally thought they would be a suspect.

00:58:00

And is this a time where I can maybe divulge a little bit, Kate? Wow. Yes, please.

00:58:05

Uh-oh. This is such an unfamiliar role for me because usually I'm divulging. Now I'm uncomfortable, Paul.

00:58:13

So I can share my screen here. All right. So everybody can see what I'm looking at now?

00:58:21

Yep. All right. So as I mentioned before, there is a tremendous amount of blood that's on the bathroom floor.

00:58:31

Yeah. And it's been diluted with water. You can see over here by the victim's hands where this blood pool, which has been disrupted,

00:58:40

there's water that's intermixed. but you can see over near the bathtub where you have blood that has flowed from the pool

00:58:50

and has accumulated showing that, yes, you have a significant amount of bleeding that has occurred

00:58:57

onto this bathroom floor. Now, our victim whose bleeding injuries are to the back of her head,

00:59:03

she's in the bathtub. Take a look at these kind of very dilute rivulets going down the side of

00:59:11

the bathtub. It's like streaks. These are dilute flows of blood. This is bloody water that's gone

00:59:19

down the bathtub. Her bleeding injury is up high here. And now we know that the husband did move

00:59:27

her body, but she was in the bathtub when he goes in, right? Yeah, it's what he said. These flows

00:59:33

in no way, shape, or form can account for the amount of blood pooling on the bathroom floor.

00:59:42

In addition, we see these coagulated masses of blood when blood pools, it congeals.

00:59:51

And so the outside of the blood that exposed to the oxygen in a thick blood pool will start to just kind of form a skin And then the entire thickness of the blood pool will eventually kind of congeal

01:00:05

What we see all the time is we have somebody laying in the middle of the street.

01:00:09

Let's say it's a gangbang homicide. And we have a huge pool of blood around the victim's head.

01:00:14

And that blood is congealed. When we move that body to place into the body bag, that disrupts this congealed blood.

01:00:21

What I'm seeing here is that I had a blood pool that was on this floor where the blood had congealed and then was disrupted.

01:00:31

And I cannot account for the blood pool forming on the floor with the victim in the bathtub.

01:00:38

This tells me the victim was laying on the floor for a period of time, bleeding out from her head injuries,

01:00:45

long enough for the blood to congeal. And then she was moved into the bathtub. This is a staged crime scene. And anytime an offender stages a scene, that means that offender

01:01:00

in his mind feels that he naturally would be a suspect. So he's trying to make the scene

01:01:07

look like something it's not. In this case, he's trying to make a homicide look like an accident.

01:01:13

So now we go down to who had access inside this house that morning. Paul, can I ask one question?

01:01:22

Absolutely. How long does it usually take blood to congeal after it starts to pool?

01:01:28

Well, it depends on environmental conditions. If you're outside in the cold, it's going to be slower than if it's outside in a warmer environment.

01:01:39

If you're inside, this is Palo Alto, I don't know what time of year. But in essence, it takes some time.

01:01:47

But the initial aspects of the blood congealing, it actually starts right away. That thin skin starts to form on the outside.

01:01:55

And then as the blood sits there, it starts to harden. And I've had to dig through it many, many times to try to recover bullets or other forms of evidence within this blood pool.

01:02:06

I'm very, very familiar with this. So when I'm looking at this scene, I'm going, okay, she died on that bathroom floor.

01:02:13

The blood spatter in this bathroom tells me she was beat, hit on the head multiple times out in the bathroom, not in the bathtub.

01:02:22

And then she was placed in that bathtub. And some of the water in that bathtub ended up flowing down onto the floor once her body was placed in there and disrupting this blood pool.

01:02:36

Staged crime scene. And right now, husband, he's in the house. He's out in the yard.

01:02:44

For me, husband's number one suspect based on what I am seeing. I buy it. I'm on board now.

01:02:51

Changed my mind. You flip-flopped really well, Georgia. I mean, I like that. Is there anything to do with the fact that her hair isn't wet?

01:03:01

And if she were bleeding initially out from that position she's in, her hair would be way more bloody than it is. It's hard to tell from that photo.

01:03:10

It is a good question and it is a limited photo. The original photo that Kate provided

01:03:15

shows not much more of her. For me, the absolute lack of blood on her arms with maybe the exception

01:03:25

of smears is significant, almost as if maybe cleanup had occurred at some point. You think

01:03:32

about her, if she's bleeding heavily in this bloody bath water, you're going to have that

01:03:38

adhering and it's going to be present on their arms. Her arms look dry to me. This idea that

01:03:44

he's actually coming in and lifting her up after he finds her dead in the bathtub,

01:03:50

I'm calling BS on that. I'm saying that once she was dead and he placed her in the bathtub,

01:03:56

He placed her in this position and she stayed in that position. He didn't have to, from a performative standpoint, go through the physical act of actually touching her.

01:04:08

Chances are the blood on his shirt was from the original homicide act. And nobody noticed it until after he comes out and he comes up with the story.

01:04:20

I thoroughly dispute Heinrich's theories and conclusions on this case. This is definitively a homicide and it's a staged homicide.

01:04:33

And prime suspect is husband. Okay. Well, I think David Lamson was certainly, unfortunately for him, convicted and sentenced to San Quentin

01:04:46

and never particularly talked about this, right? And his family stood by him. He had two sisters who stood by him.

01:04:53

He always talked about how much he loved Aileen. His daughter, Bebe, stayed with his sister for a very long time.

01:05:01

And she essentially, you know, began raising her. Just as a kind of conclusion to the story and a little bit of a, I wonder what happened.

01:05:11

David Lamson had a lot of friends who were very powerful, who thought he was innocent.

01:05:16

and they wrote a book full of the evidence, full of independent pathologists who said,

01:05:23

listen, we really do think this was a slip and fall. But of course, we're hearing from Paul why that was incorrect.

01:05:29

And maybe there were just limited knowledge in the 1930s. Certainly there was. Well, let me address that real quick.

01:05:34

Because of course, pathologists, because they have medical training, people put a lot of weight on their statements.

01:05:41

Very few pathologists actually have crime scene reconstruction expertise. Very few actually go to crime scenes. Their expertise is

01:05:50

pathology So they not taking into account all this other evidence that is present that people that are involved in homicide investigation and crime scene investigation see day in and day out I never put any weight

01:06:08

on a pathologist rendering an opinion as to what happened at the crime scene outside of

01:06:15

tell me what the injuries the victim had, and then I will correlate how those injuries impact

01:06:22

the physical evidence at the crime scene. So what ends up ultimately happening is this is appealed.

01:06:27

Of course, it goes all the way to the California State Supreme Court. The justices there discuss it.

01:06:35

They disagree. They're split kind of down the middle. They actually also, strangely,

01:06:41

try to do a reenactment, which they're also not allowed to do. You're not allowed to do a reenactment,

01:06:46

Just a random reenactment in the jury room. The justices also did that and essentially said,

01:06:52

we can't do a reenactment without killing someone with a slip and fall. So they actually gave him a new trial.

01:06:59

So he went to trial again. And Heinrich was allowed to do a reconstruction with the accident theory.

01:07:06

It hung the jury. And so we officially have a hung jury. And the prosecutor looks at the case and says, I can't do this again.

01:07:14

This is, we're not coming up with new evidence. Nothing ends up shaking loose for him.

01:07:19

There's no new evidence of anything. And so they declined to prosecute him again.

01:07:26

David Lamson, while he was in prison, was a very smart man. And while he was in prison, he wrote a lot about the other death row inmates who were with him.

01:07:36

He wrote a book, was a nonfiction book. It was actually pretty good. And it became a New York Times bestseller.

01:07:43

and it was widely reviewed and he wrote a fictional book and then he became a screenwriter

01:07:48

and he lived a really quiet life. He raised his daughter. He got remarried three or four years

01:07:54

later and his daughter said, you know, he never said anything unkind about my mom. And he said,

01:08:01

that was it. So he lived, it turned out to live a very quiet life after he was not prosecuted any,

01:08:06

any longer for this, for this crime. So what do you think about that, Paul Holtz?

01:08:11

I don't like it. I know. I don't think, you know, like I said, I can't determine whether or not there's what in this day and age would amount to first degree murder with special circumstances based on what I know.

01:08:26

But at least with what I'm assessing, I think he is a prime suspect in this homicide.

01:08:33

And, you know, if he was responsible for Aileen's bludgeoning, then he should never have had that opportunity at a second life.

01:08:41

You know, that's my position. Fascinating. I keep coming back to the no shirt outside,

01:08:46

shirt inside immediately has blood on it. And Paul, when you said, I think that blood was there before

01:08:52

and the fact that he didn't have a shirt on outside kind of- He had a shirt on, he went outside,

01:08:58

the shirt was clean, he hung it up on the fence, he got super sweaty, then the real estate agent came

01:09:04

and then he put the shirt on to go back inside. No, no, I mean, I think that's a good point.

01:09:09

There are a lot of little details about the case that seemingly, and that's what I think is so interesting about this case is that we can talk

01:09:16

about him being a great actor or him being, how could you ever have done that and then gone on and

01:09:23

talked about cutting down weeds? It just seems, is he a sociopath, is he a psychopath? I mean,

01:09:29

really what this comes down to is what does the evidence tell you? And that's really what

01:09:33

I say all the time is it doesn't really matter what we think, it's what we prove, right? And

01:09:38

And so one of the things that's so enlightening to me about these historical cases is when you have somebody like Paul, who has all of this depth of knowledge, incredible knowledge, particularly in this case, the crime scene reconstruction, I think was very important.

01:09:53

Then I did that, too. I mean, I think it's just nature. You're saying, why did this happen or why did that happen?

01:10:01

Don't we think this is weird? But really, it is looking at the evidence, the forensic evidence and saying, OK, well, this is what the evidence is saying.

01:10:08

Yeah. So, I mean, is that right, Paul? Well, no, that's what it comes down to. But it's also making sure that the individuals that are interpreting the evidence have the experience and expertise to do it properly.

01:10:21

Correct. And that's where, you know, I've seen it over and over again, you know, the failings within the various forensic disciplines is that you have individuals that don't have the experience or expertise.

01:10:34

And somebody like with Heinrich, who possibly has a fair amount of laboratory expertise based on 1930s era technology.

01:10:46

But how many homicide scenes was he called out to in the middle of the night as an active CSI or homicide investigator?

01:10:57

We're not getting into where it's forensic science. This is where we are talking about a type of expertise that is developed by those of us that actually did that.

01:11:08

And that expertise plays into the ability to properly interpret what we are seeing based on what we have experienced before.

01:11:19

You know, and this is where we get into, and Kate and I record an episode talking about, you know, forensic science and junk science and stuff.

01:11:27

But there is an aspect to expertise that plays into these cases, and that expertise also plays into the trial aspect.

01:11:38

And so this is where you pull in a forensic scientist who's worked in an academic institution, but has never been on a homicide scene in his life from just being called out in the middle of the night and actually watching the blood pool form.

01:11:55

He doesn't have the experience. He's using magnifying glass to look at a single droplet in this crime scene.

01:12:06

Listen, Paul Holes, you back off of my forensic scientist a little bit, buddy. I tell you, this case is really, you know, it's really kind of taken him down a notch in my eyes.

01:12:17

Wow. Wait a second. But the point of this book is that this was the dawn of forensics at all.

01:12:26

Right. So like this was still the time. And we've all talked about this, unlike the old stories that we've done on the road or whatever.

01:12:33

But the idea that they didn't know not to let the neighbors in to the crime scene.

01:12:40

I mean, that's to me what is so compelling about historical true crime is what they were up against because they didn't know about these detailed scientific things.

01:12:52

So they were, it was almost like it was partially scientific and then partially they were still completely in the dark.

01:12:59

I mean, that's what I loved where like Heinrich's big enemy was the guy who was always saying you could identify criminality in handwriting.

01:13:07

And so he would always bring up handwriting and it would drive Heinrich crazy because he's like, that's not scientific.

01:13:14

It was like basically the battle he was in at the time when it was just so early days for everything.

01:13:21

where it was like, okay, now let's get the photographer in here. All right, now the neighbor lady wants to come in and wash everything.

01:13:27

And anybody could be an expert. Yeah. But just like anything, this is an evolution, you know?

01:13:32

And what I did back in the early 90s versus how I would approach a case today is different.

01:13:39

You know, it's on the spectrum for sure. And then people, you know, 20 years from now will take a look at what I did and go,

01:13:47

oh God, you know, they'll be going, Foles really screwed this up. Like I'm saying, Hydrich really screwed this up.

01:13:54

But I will say in this case I on solid ground So what this shows us more than anything is what a great podcast Buried Bones is

01:14:04

If I can bring it all back to the beginning. For real. What's more interesting than this conversation?

01:14:11

I mean, like, truly look at what the detectives in the 30s or the 1800s or the 1600s had to

01:14:17

basically even approaching trying to solve crime, what they were up against. Well, I'll tell you, I spent three years researching that book, the American Sherlock book.

01:14:27

And, you know, when you spend that much time on a case and I've read two, three thousand word transcript for David Lamson and you read through all of that stuff and you think you know the case.

01:14:36

And then you bring an expert in like Paul, who sheds a whole new light on it. So I think that it's really it's so beneficial for somebody like me who knows a lot about the history of forensics to talk to someone who knows so much about the present day forensics.

01:14:53

And I think that's what makes it exciting for me. And Paul likes history a lot. And I think that he wishes to me, though, that he doesn't have a particular time period.

01:15:03

He's not as attached to the people in that time period. So I think in the next, probably in about five months, I'm going to ask him if he has now a favorite time period of history, because maybe we'll have exposed him to so many different people and different life situations.

01:15:16

But it really is, it all just keeps coming back around to we can learn things from these stories.

01:15:21

And I love telling him a good story. That is just like I get a kick out of hearing him gasp in the most manly way possible, Paul, I promise.

01:15:30

I never want to squeal like a girl. No, but Kate does a great job and she keeps me on my heels.

01:15:38

And of course, these cases are amazing. And they're older cases, but the reality is, is when you start taking a look at them,

01:15:46

there's no difference from what happened to the victims back then, what the offender did what the offender motives were to what happening today So it absolutely relevant for sure It just great to listen to it Really we are so glad when you guys first pitched this idea

01:16:04

we were just like, oh my God, hell yes. Like what could be better? So it's so exciting that you guys, that it's happening.

01:16:11

It's on its feet. You guys have several in the can at this point. Yeah. And now we just get to plug it and we get to bring it out to the world

01:16:19

because it's really, it's just really fascinating. Of course, I already plugged American Sherlock.

01:16:25

That's on you. That's fine. But Kate's latest book, All That Is Wicked, A Gilded Age Story of Murder

01:16:31

and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind. It's a whole book about Edward Ruloff and that's available for pre-order right now.

01:16:40

Everybody knows listening to this podcast, pre-order really matters for books. So go order it.

01:16:45

It comes out October 4th. And of course, Paul's bestselling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases,

01:16:51

is out now. It is so incredible. Everyone is raving about it. Paul, great job. Well, thank you.

01:16:58

Make sure you check that out. You guys are doing a great job and thank you for being on the show today with us.

01:17:02

Oh, thank you. Buried Bones, you guys, it premieres on Wednesday, September 14th,

01:17:06

right here on Exactly Right. So make sure you follow wherever you listen to podcasts.

01:17:11

Is that the right wording? Then you can listen to the trailer, which is out now.

01:17:16

Yeah, go listen to the trailer and then Buried Bones on Wednesdays. It's your new favorite podcast.

01:17:20

That's right. Thanks so much for being on. Thank you. We appreciate it. Thank you very much.

01:17:26

Thanks, you guys. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an Exactly Right production.

01:17:39

Our senior producers are Hannah Kyle Crichton and Natalie Wren. Our producer is Alejandra Keck.

01:17:44

This episode was engineered and mixed by Andrew Eepen. Our researcher is Maren McGlashan.

01:17:49

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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgi

343 - This Is Buried Bones

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