0:03

I'm Kate Winkler Dawson.

0:05

I'm a journalist who's spent the last twenty

0:07

five years writing about true crime.

0:09

And I'm Paul Holmes, a retired cold case

0:12

investigator who's works some of America's most

0:14

complicated cases and solve them.

0:16

Each week, I present Paul with

0:18

one of history's most compelling true

0:20

crimes.

0:21

And I weigh in using modern forensic

0:23

techniques to bring new insights to old

0:25

mysteries.

0:26

Together, using our individual

0:28

expertise, we're examining

0:30

historical true crime cases through a twenty

0:33

first century lens.

0:34

Some are solved and some are cold, very

0:37

cold.

0:38

This is Buried Bones.

1:01

Hi, Paul, Hey, Kate.

1:03

This is our first show, absolutely for a show.

1:05

Can you believe it?

1:06

After all the planning, it took forever, it

1:08

feels like, But I'm so excited finally to

1:10

be here with you.

1:10

This is so wonderful.

1:12

It's going to be a lot of fun.

1:13

So you and I were together at Crime

1:15

Con UK a while ago, and you

1:17

and I sat down for a long

1:20

time and chatted and

1:22

overcomes a waiter and he puts down

1:24

this glass in front of you and I look

1:27

at it, and you said it's bourbon

1:29

and said, have a sip because I had never really

1:31

had bourbon, and I had a sip. I do not

1:33

like bourbon, and I need to know if this is a deal

1:36

breaker for you or not in this show.

1:39

I think we will be just

1:41

fine.

1:41

I'm pretty colorant of the fact that you

1:43

don't like bourbon right now, but I'm going to work

1:45

on you right now.

1:48

Well, in my head, I've decided that if I

1:51

ever get bottles of Bourbon, I'm going to ship him

1:53

to Colorado. And if you get anything like

1:55

Hardsider, you could ship it to me in Texas.

1:58

And that sounds like a deal.

2:00

And the other thing UK Crime con will

2:02

forever be cemented in my brain because

2:05

you remember, we were sitting there chatting and

2:07

all of a sudden, the worst fire

2:10

alarm in the history of fire alarms

2:12

went off at this hotel, and

2:15

we walked outside and everybody had to

2:17

evacuate, which has never happened to me before. So

2:19

we all pile outside, and all of

2:21

these true crime fans who really

2:23

love Paul, they're surrounding you, and

2:25

everybody's looking to you for.

2:27

Like, what the hell's going on?

2:29

And you say I love this because you say,

2:31

well, listen, if this were a bombing, we

2:33

would have seen even in the UK, we would

2:35

have seen this tactical team and that tactical

2:37

team, And I thought, man, am I

2:39

in the right place with Paul Holtz?

2:42

Yeah, And we were literally talking about this show

2:45

when you know, the fire alarm goes off and the

2:47

fire trucks are pulling up. So we really

2:49

got off to quite the start on

2:51

the concept of this thing.

2:52

I felt very safe.

2:54

This is definitely the person you want to be around with

2:56

all hellas regularly, Thank goodness. It was

2:59

just sort of like a hannicle malfunction. And we had

3:01

a lovely time at the rest of crime Con and

3:03

I think that'll that'll be the start of a beautiful

3:05

friendship.

3:07

So the show.

3:08

Let's talk a little bit about the show Buried Bones.

3:11

What inspired you to say yes when

3:13

I called you and said we need to do this?

3:15

Where did that come from?

3:16

Well, you know, you had reached out to

3:18

me for your other podcast, Wicked Words about

3:20

doing a historic crime, you know, and I've

3:22

been doing cold cases that go

3:24

all the way back into the nineteen sixties. Really

3:27

is the oldest ones that I would tackle. But you

3:29

work cases that are so much

3:31

older and so when I'm looking at my files,

3:33

I only had one that I would characterize as

3:36

being a historic crime, and that was Bessie Ferguson

3:38

from nineteen twenty four, which just was crazy

3:40

that you had an actual chapter in your book

3:43

about that crime.

3:44

So it was meant to be, I think, And that was a

3:46

wonderful episode on Wicked Words

3:48

because you had some theories that I

3:50

had not thought of with Bessie Ferguson, and I had done

3:52

so much research on that case. So that's

3:54

when the little light bulb went off of my head, Ding

3:57

Ding. Paul Hols is someone I should do a show

3:59

with. So I I'm forever grateful

4:01

that you said yes.

4:02

And I think you know, from my perspective, you had so

4:04

much information about the case I had never heard of.

4:06

So now I'm weighing all these new details

4:09

and this is where now when we get to Buried Bones,

4:11

I'm looking forward to hearing all

4:14

the information you can provide on these cases

4:16

and then be able to dissect them well.

4:18

And I'll tell you, I'm intimidated by some

4:20

of the medical things that I run

4:22

into. I run into terms like nervous

4:25

prostration and what does that even

4:27

mean? And you might not necessarily

4:29

know what that means, but together we can figure

4:31

out whether some of these cases that I bring to

4:33

you were done well, done poorly. What

4:36

would we do now in the twenty first

4:38

century? What did they do then? So that's

4:40

what makes us exciting.

4:41

Yeah, and that's what's going to be my challenge

4:43

is, you know, try to figure out what was being done

4:45

back on these cases that

4:48

are historical, both from investigative

4:50

techniques as well as what the forensic science

4:52

capabilities were, and be able

4:54

to address what they did then

4:57

and then see, well, how could

4:59

these cases be approach today, either

5:01

investigatively or with modern technology.

5:04

Do you have a favorite time period in history? I ask

5:06

people this all the time. Mine's the American Revolutionary

5:08

where I love that time period just reading about it.

5:11

Yeah, I would agree, going back into maybe

5:13

the eighteen hundreds, it still seems

5:15

like it's a relevant timeframe that I can

5:17

relate to. When it gets older than that, then

5:20

it's now really getting to where it's just

5:22

so far back in time. Things

5:24

have changed so much since then that I don't

5:26

relate to those older times as well.

5:28

I'm going to make you relate to them, though. I'm

5:30

going to introduce you to people.

5:32

I promise I'm going to introduce you to people,

5:34

and you're going to think, while these people really need

5:36

justice, or boy, the results in this case

5:38

were not well done, or the investigators

5:40

did a wonderful job considering what they were given.

5:42

So I'm excited to jump into this.

5:45

And I will be introducing you to the bourbon

5:47

idea over and over and over again.

5:48

How's that.

5:51

It's a hard note over and over,

5:53

but you could keep trying for sure? Yes,

5:57

Okay, let's set the scene for this story.

6:03

So this story takes place in nineteen

6:05

hundred in Houston, Texas, and

6:08

you work cases in Texas

6:10

right with the TV series.

6:12

Yeah, you know, I've worked cases in Texas

6:14

both previously for the Oxygen Network

6:16

as well as currently with HLN

6:18

and trying to see if I can help families

6:20

get an answer on these cases. Some of them are older

6:23

cases and some of them are recent

6:25

cases.

6:26

You know, people are fascinated with Texas as

6:28

far as crime goes. It just seems

6:30

like everything in Texas

6:33

happens bigger and it's so much more dramatic.

6:35

And I know that coming to Texas can be interesting

6:38

for investigators working with local

6:41

law enforcement.

6:41

You know, this state has, for better

6:44

or for worse, such.

6:44

A deep history, and a big part

6:47

of that history, of course, happens at the turn of

6:49

the century. And one of the things that I want to talk

6:51

about is when we set the scene in history,

6:53

because I'm a big history writer. I

6:55

love talking about where we are, what

6:57

people are doing. And this is a story

7:00

that actually splits between Texas

7:02

and Manhattan. And in nineteen hundred,

7:04

you just can't get any more different. We're

7:06

in Gilded Age New York where

7:09

Boss Tweed with diamond pendants

7:11

and a lot of corrupt politicians, and

7:13

Texas was booming more with

7:16

oil and with cattle. So the

7:18

victim in this case, because I'll have

7:20

a spoiler here, the victim is

7:22

a man named William Marsh Rice,

7:26

and he would become the founder of

7:28

one of the most renowned universities

7:30

in the country, which is Rice University, which is in

7:32

Houston.

7:33

And the story of that is.

7:36

So fascinating because a lot of people don't know

7:38

that Rice almost didn't happen because

7:41

of the death of William Marsh Rice. And

7:44

the big question that I need you to help me answer

7:46

is was William Marsh Rice

7:49

murdered or did he die

7:51

naturally? Were people in prison rightfully

7:54

or did he die of natural causes?

7:56

So hopefully you can help me figure that out.

7:58

We'll see what details you have.

8:00

Okay, So I'll tell you a little bit about William

8:02

marsh Rice, because I'm assuming when you jump into

8:04

a case, the first thing you need to know about

8:06

is the victim. Is that victimology. Sometimes

8:08

I get mixed up with the terms.

8:10

Yeah, that is victimology to different

8:13

people, it means different things. But for me, it's

8:15

really understanding as much as I can about

8:17

the victim, who the person was,

8:19

their social circles, and

8:22

ultimately anything within their

8:25

life that could contribute to a motive

8:27

for somebody to come and hurt them or

8:29

kill them.

8:29

Well, I can tell you straight away the motive here is money.

8:32

So William marsh Rice was born

8:35

in Massachusetts, and he

8:37

was born in poverty, and

8:40

he started working at a grocery store when he

8:42

was fifteen, and he had such incredible

8:44

business sense that by the time he was twenty two

8:46

he owned the grocery store now and

8:49

he went on to

8:51

invest in property in

8:53

land, in cattle, and

8:55

he eventually accumulated millions

8:58

and millions and millions of dollars in

9:00

the nineteen hundreds, in late eighteen

9:02

hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, which is pretty incredible.

9:04

Now, is he doing that all in Massachusetts or

9:06

Manhattan or is this oiled in Texas?

9:08

He decided to go down to Texas smartly because

9:11

things were moving west and he knew

9:13

that he could buy up a lot of property.

9:14

That was a good question.

9:15

He could buy up a lot of property, and

9:18

he started investing in mills on

9:20

rivers and in oil wells, and

9:23

it just accumulated money very very

9:25

quickly.

9:26

Yeah, and and Texas black gold was everything

9:28

at this time frame, right.

9:29

You're right, And so there was a lot of money to be

9:31

had. He did not have a particularly

9:34

lavish lifestyle, but like

9:36

a lot of successful businessmen, he

9:38

was pretty hard nosed.

9:40

He was no nonsense, and.

9:42

That created a lot of acrimony

9:45

between him and other business people. So

9:47

you would think that's the way we're going to go, right, that

9:50

somebody was targeting him because of

9:52

bad business dealings.

9:53

That wouldn't be unusual, right.

9:55

No, And then that really goes towards

9:57

victimology. Understanding him as

9:59

a bit businessman and knowing

10:02

that he could have pissed people off, and

10:04

most certainly with the money that he has,

10:07

some of those people could have come after him. So this

10:09

now is like the first check that I have

10:11

as okay, here's a possible motive.

10:13

So he gets married, they do not have children,

10:16

and his first wife dies at

10:18

age thirty one, which seems

10:21

young to me, but in the

10:23

late eighteen hundreds, there were a lot of different reasons

10:25

why somebody could die at that age.

10:27

That's right, with the lack of antibiotics,

10:29

various diseases, not being able to

10:31

address some of the genetic issues

10:33

that people.

10:34

Are born with.

10:35

So for sure you had a lot of people

10:38

dying much younger then than today.

10:40

So he kept a house in Houston,

10:42

but he wanted to move to New York. He wanted

10:44

that sort of image Gilded Age New York. So

10:47

he bought an apartment on Madison

10:49

Avenue, which was a very wealthy area

10:51

and still is, and it was a very

10:53

huge place, and he

10:56

accumulated a lot of staff, including

10:59

a valet. So I'm going to quiz you, do

11:01

you know the difference between a butler and a valet,

11:03

because I didn't.

11:05

No, you know, and when you said valets,

11:07

of course I think in hotel valets

11:10

who are responsible for parking

11:12

or retrieving your vehicles at the hotel. So

11:14

I'm going to assume that a valet,

11:16

a personal valet, is somebody

11:19

that is responsible for

11:21

driving. Well, I mean we're talking nineteen

11:24

hundred, so now this is somebody who's

11:26

probably it's horse and carriage with Rice,

11:28

right, this is before the model TA is coming.

11:31

Out, correct.

11:32

Yeah, So a valet in

11:34

the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds

11:36

would have been someone who was sort

11:38

of the personal manservant

11:41

for the man of the house, someone who address

11:43

him, would drive him everywhere all of that, And a butler

11:46

was someone who would supervise the

11:48

entire staff of a house. I

11:51

certainly did not understand the nuances

11:53

between the two before I.

11:54

Started with this story.

11:55

I had no clue for me. The butler is,

11:57

in my mind, was what you just described as

12:00

the job descriptions of the valet. The

12:03

idea of needing somebody to

12:05

dress you that just doesn't sit

12:07

right with me. You don't want that, you know, not

12:10

at all.

12:11

Okay, So the valet

12:14

becomes very important later on. What is also

12:16

important later on is that William marsh

12:18

Rice absolutely declares

12:20

that he lives in New York. He visits

12:22

Texas, but his residence is

12:24

in New York. He marries a second time

12:27

after his wife dies.

12:29

This is not a good marriage.

12:30

She is wealthy, but not as wealthy as

12:32

he is, and as they progress an age, she's

12:35

in her early eighties, he's in his

12:37

mid eighties, and she starts

12:39

to consult a divorce attorney without

12:42

his knowing it. He is kind of a crotchety

12:44

old man. He's a little Howard

12:46

Hughes. He has peculiar tastes.

12:49

He eats only eggs and bullion, which actually sounds

12:51

pretty good to me. But you know, he's

12:53

eccentric. I guess is that what you would say, eccentric?

12:56

Yeah, you know, I'm surprised at his age. You're

12:58

talking about somebody in

13:00

nineteen hundred is in their mid eighties.

13:02

But top notch healthcare, Right, he had the money

13:05

to do whatever was available. Then sure,

13:07

I don't think it's leeches, but you're right, that seems

13:09

like a really advanced age. But he

13:12

did have all the advantages of somebody

13:14

who was affluent at that time period, and his wife

13:17

was also that age. So she consults

13:19

a divorce attorney he has no idea.

13:22

She changes her will, she's

13:24

really mad at him, and she leaves

13:27

all of her estate to her

13:29

relatives.

13:31

She says, we live in Texas.

13:34

Now, why does that matter?

13:35

Because Texas was a

13:38

common property state, right,

13:40

so if they divorced, she

13:42

would get half of everything

13:44

they accrued, all of the land, all the

13:46

houses achred when they were married.

13:49

So if she died and

13:51

it was.

13:51

Proven that he lived in Texas at

13:54

the time of her death, then her

13:56

relatives would get fifty percent

13:58

of his estate.

13:59

Isn't that pretty cold hearted?

14:00

That's a really interesting way to screw your husband

14:03

over.

14:06

But it's very significant. How long

14:08

were they married at this point.

14:11

Seven or eight years, not very long. Never

14:13

a good marriage though.

14:14

It sounded like she struggled with mental health

14:16

issues and probably he did too, I imagine,

14:18

So it was very acrimonious from

14:20

the beginning, and so he doesn't

14:22

know any of this.

14:24

She dies of natural causes.

14:26

This is not the victim here, he finds out,

14:28

and of course is infuriated and

14:30

thus launches a huge lawsuit

14:32

against her family, who is

14:34

now saying, give me fifty percent of

14:36

what you have accrued during

14:39

this marriage, which was a significant amount

14:41

during the marriage, he had double,

14:43

triple, quadruple the amount of assets

14:46

that he had. He had started investing

14:48

in oil wells and even more,

14:51

and he just had an incredible amount of money.

14:53

I think it was the equivalent of twenty five to

14:55

thirty million dollars today. Okay,

14:57

now here's where William Marsh

15:00

where things get complicated for him. What

15:03

he had done and what his wife before

15:05

she died, had agreed to was

15:07

he was going to give a small amount of money

15:10

to some of his family members.

15:13

The wife was going to take much of

15:15

it, but the majority

15:17

of this also was going to go to

15:19

an institute in his name that

15:22

he wanted called the William m

15:24

Rice Institute for the Advancement of

15:26

Literature, Science, and Art.

15:29

And he had always dreamed about having

15:31

a free institution of higher

15:33

learning for people in Texas. He initially

15:36

actually wanted to open up an orphanage

15:38

and then decided for whatever reason

15:40

that that was not going to happen, and so he

15:42

wanted to open up a university that would

15:45

be free of tuition and they would offer scholarships.

15:48

Okay, and this is his way of really setting

15:50

his legacy. So after he's gone,

15:53

his name will live on, So.

15:54

We have a caveat here that is pretty problematic.

15:57

There's controversy over Rice because

16:00

before he died, he wrote into his will

16:02

that this university would be higher

16:05

education for whites only, which

16:07

is not surprising for the time period, but it's

16:10

still horrible and it's a thing that Rice

16:12

University to this day has

16:14

to reckon with and they are. So this

16:17

is sort of the imperfect victim

16:19

in a way.

16:19

This is someone who we know.

16:21

He's going to die, it's going to happen soon, and

16:24

he's got somebody who's fallible.

16:26

But ultimately, as.

16:28

We move forward in the story, we see that

16:30

there are a lot of things aligned against him.

16:33

At least at this point.

16:34

Right now, I'm hearing maybe second

16:36

and third possible motives with

16:39

the changing of the will, the wife's

16:41

family now going after him. He's

16:44

in turn suing the family, so you have a

16:46

tit for tat going on.

16:48

Again.

16:48

These are just little boxes next to these

16:50

possible motives that I'm making a list

16:53

on to see, Okay, which one seems

16:55

to be the most likely based on the circumstances

16:58

as we move.

16:58

Forward often come into

17:01

play, and murder cases I can't imagine they

17:03

don't they must.

17:04

Well, of course, there's plenty of

17:06

cases out there in which, during homicide

17:08

investigations, financial assets

17:11

are the core to the reason the person

17:13

was killed. Wills are a part

17:15

of it. I haven't had a case

17:18

in which the will was specifically the reason

17:20

why somebody was killed, but

17:23

there are more commonly cases life

17:25

insurance being a beneficiary of the life

17:27

insurance.

17:27

That's what you see.

17:28

Those are the easy things for people to

17:31

set up and change names and beneficiaries,

17:33

and those are frequently why in

17:36

modern cases.

17:37

Why people are killed from a financial standpoint.

17:39

Well, we now have to get some attorneys

17:41

involved. And Rice decides

17:44

to hire an attorney name Captain

17:46

James Baker, who was a really

17:49

well known attorney and very very

17:51

right.

17:51

So Rice hires him to defend him.

17:53

In this case, Rice's wife's

17:55

family hires a guy named Albert

17:58

Patrick. Now he is the key

18:00

player. There's two of them. One is the valet

18:02

and one is Albert Patrick. Albert

18:05

Patrick is sleazy. There's really

18:07

no other way to describe it. He's very

18:09

sleazy, and it

18:11

doesn't start out to be sleazy

18:14

this whole thing. He was hired

18:16

specifically to prove that Rice

18:19

really did declare his residency in

18:21

Texas so that this community property

18:23

law could kick in and they could take half the money

18:26

he is insisting, and his will says

18:28

that he considers his home

18:30

to be in New York. So

18:33

Albert Patrick is hired by the family to figure

18:35

things out. Albert Patrick cannot

18:38

prove anything as of now, even though he meets

18:40

Rice. They have a discussion. I don't know,

18:43

maybe you have some ideas. How would you go about

18:45

this?

18:45

Now? Would you find.

18:47

Bills or I don't know how you would prove that

18:49

a person spends more time in

18:51

one state than another state.

18:53

Well, this ends up really kicking

18:55

in investigation one oh one in terms

18:57

of, of course the paper trail, property

19:00

ownership, paper trail. But it's

19:02

going to be somebody like Rice who has

19:04

residents in two different states. It

19:06

is now going to be tracking down witnesses.

19:09

How often are you seeing Rice at this property?

19:12

And if you get a preponderance of witnesses

19:15

saying he's in New York versus

19:17

Texas, those are statements that you can use

19:19

to support that he is a resident of

19:21

New York or he's a resident of Texas.

19:24

So Albert Patrick

19:26

is running into a brick wall because he can't find

19:29

he's seeing consistently that Rice is in New

19:31

York and he's very rarely in Texas.

19:33

He's only there every once in a while to check in on

19:35

some of his property.

19:36

But he really prefers to be in New York.

19:39

And so Albert Patrick, the attorney,

19:41

decides that he wants to get close

19:43

to someone who is close to Rice,

19:45

and that would be a man named Charles

19:48

Jones. And Charles was Rice's

19:50

twenty three year old valet. He had

19:52

been with him for three or four years. He

19:54

was obviously physically close with Rice,

19:57

and Rice seemed to really like Jones

20:00

for some of his education.

20:01

So Albert Patrick targets him.

20:03

Why would that happen?

20:05

Yeah, First, is the valet Jones.

20:07

Is he traveling back and forth with Rice between New

20:10

York and Texas. He is okay, so he's

20:12

a consistent presence in Rice's

20:14

life. Now Patrick

20:17

targeting Jones because, I mean, as

20:19

we talked about what the vallet's responsibilities

20:21

are, I mean this is almost at an intimate

20:24

level. Jones is in

20:26

the bedroom, He's helping

20:28

probably serve food. He

20:31

knows Rice's day to day

20:33

activities. So Patrick

20:36

possibly could be trying to get dirt

20:38

on Rice, or is using

20:41

a proxy in order to be able to have

20:43

physical access to Rice.

20:46

And you know what's interesting is I want you

20:48

to tell me why people.

20:50

Choose certain personalities.

20:52

So Albert Patrick was a

20:54

smooth talking attorney and Charles

20:57

Jones was soft spoken

21:00

and meek and quiet and subservient

21:03

essentially. So my

21:05

guess is that Albert Patrick picked up on

21:07

that fairly quickly and thought.

21:09

Maybe he could be manipulated. Does that sound right?

21:11

Absolutely? You know.

21:12

And this is where when you are trying to

21:14

find somebody who's going to do

21:17

what you want to do. You're

21:19

not going to go to some hard nosed person

21:21

who's going to say no to

21:23

you. You want to go to somebody who recognize

21:26

I mean, Jones is twenty three. Patrick

21:28

is an established attorney with a lot

21:30

of resources and probably

21:32

has all the legally speak and is able

21:35

to basically sway this younger

21:37

man and say this is what I

21:39

need. And the younger man feels

21:41

trapped. He's working as

21:44

a servant, if you will. So that

21:47

is how he sees himself

21:49

in the world. And so now when you

21:51

have a more powerful

21:54

older man coming to you, his natural

21:56

instinct is to be subservient

21:59

to that individual as well.

22:00

And I agree with that, and I think that it

22:03

just seemed like an easy mark in a way.

22:05

And so Albert Patrick.

22:07

Was very smart, and we find out just how smart he was

22:09

coming up. So he goes

22:11

through a series of events that never

22:14

end up well. He thinks that it's too hard

22:16

to prove definitively that

22:19

marsh Rice was actually preferring

22:21

texas he preferred New York. So he convinces

22:24

Jones by telling Jones,

22:26

listen, he's not paying you enough.

22:29

He's not giving you enough respect. You

22:31

need more money. If we can get

22:33

money from his will, I will give you most

22:36

of it.

22:36

More manipulation, right, Yep, No, absolutely,

22:39

And he's playing on Jones's

22:41

insecurity.

22:42

He's planting a seat. Now.

22:44

Jones is going, you're right, I

22:47

do so much for him and I'm

22:49

not getting enough pay. I could do so much

22:51

better. And so he sees potentially

22:54

how he could benefit his life by

22:57

going towards Patrick, becoming more

22:59

loyal to Patrick.

23:00

And I think that Rice picks up on that

23:02

he starts snapping at Jones a little bit more.

23:05

I also think Rice is not feeling well

23:08

and he's not feeling well, because Albert

23:10

Patrick has convinced Jones

23:13

that if they make Rice

23:15

just sick enough that because of his advanced

23:18

age eighty four, the rest of his body

23:20

will give out right, so it won't be murder,

23:22

but it will be moving the process along. So

23:25

they start giving him mercury

23:27

in his milk. I mean mercury

23:30

as in thermometers that you're now

23:32

not allowed to break.

23:33

Mercury.

23:33

Well, mercury comes in different forms.

23:35

Mercury itself is a heavy metal, and it

23:38

was used extensively and still

23:41

is in some capacities, even

23:43

within dental feelings today, but

23:46

it is something that is toxic

23:49

to the person.

23:50

Now, it dell.

23:51

Depends on how you ingest it. In

23:53

this case, we have ingestioned

23:56

orally. So now the mercury is going

23:58

into the body, and if

24:00

it's in milk, which is a water

24:02

based product, that's telling me that it's

24:04

probably a mercury salt. Salts

24:06

are generally aqueous soluble

24:09

or water soluble. So now

24:11

the mercury is able to be

24:13

absorbed through the gastro intestinal

24:15

track and get into Rice's

24:18

body, But if it's at a low enough

24:20

level, you're not going to have the real

24:22

classic acute poisoning.

24:23

Symptoms flailing around exactly.

24:26

It builds up in the body and

24:29

there would be symptoms starting to

24:31

manifest themselves over time, you

24:34

know, such as gi issues

24:37

or kidney or liver problems,

24:40

and then eventually you might start to see,

24:42

you know, the palsies that come in with the

24:45

mercury poisoning. You know those top

24:47

hats, you know, the everybody's heard of

24:49

the Mad Hatter, right, yeah, yeah,

24:51

and those top hats used

24:53

to be treated with a mercury type

24:55

compound, and I forget the.

24:56

Reason why I didn't know that.

24:59

And so what what's happening is is, you know,

25:01

when you're wearing these top hats

25:03

that had that mercury in that it was being

25:05

transdermally absorbed, and now

25:07

you have that Matt Hatter's disease, where now

25:10

they have this chronic exposure

25:12

to mercury. So in many ways,

25:15

Patrick is convincing Jones. We'll

25:17

just give them a little bit of murcury here and there, and

25:19

eventually this eighty four year old body

25:22

is going to give out.

25:23

It's still a homicide, you know, it's still

25:25

poisoning.

25:25

It's not that immediate like a stabbing

25:28

or gunshot or strangulation.

25:30

It's a homicide that could take weeks, if not months.

25:32

Well, it's interesting because they're

25:35

trying to evade detection, which

25:37

we're going to hear about in a little bit, was not

25:39

so difficult to do with toxicology in

25:42

the late eighteen hundreds and right at the turn

25:44

of the century. Toxicology was just really

25:46

moving then, and so there were

25:48

some tools available, but there weren't some tools.

25:51

You could detect arsenic, cyanide, some other

25:53

things, but mercury. I don't know if they

25:55

would pick that up in a blood test or not during

25:57

that time period.

25:58

And this is where I had to go back.

26:00

I actually have a book written in eighteen

26:02

ninety two, The Essentials

26:04

a Forensic Medical, Toxicology and Hygiene.

26:07

Oh that a fun read, oh believe

26:09

me.

26:10

But this is where, well, what could they

26:12

do to detect a heavy metal like mercury?

26:15

And really it was just qualitative

26:18

chemistry. They would take like the stomach contents.

26:20

They could do a solve an extraction in order

26:22

to get the mercury away from all

26:25

the other contaminants from the stomach.

26:28

And then now they just do a chemical reaction

26:30

where they're looking for a type

26:32

of precipitate, something that will turn

26:35

solid, it be a certain color, certain shape,

26:37

et cetera. Where they go, Okay, that tells us that

26:39

mercury was in this stomach contents,

26:42

but it's not definitive, nor does it

26:44

tell you how much.

26:46

So it was still in nineteen hundreds.

26:48

Even though toxicology is amazing what they

26:50

could do with qualitative chemistry,

26:53

it still isn't very informative

26:56

relative to what can be done today

26:58

with the modern technology. The mental

27:00

analysis, going after blood

27:02

samples, urine samples, et cetera.

27:04

Because in the eighteen hundreds, in this case nineteen

27:06

hundred, they have to know what they're looking for, right.

27:09

I mean, I've dealt with a lot of cases where they

27:11

just never found it because they never suspected

27:13

that there would be morphine when it

27:15

looked like it was a kidney disease.

27:18

Well, and that's where they were so reliant

27:21

upon those symptoms. The

27:23

progression of chronic mercury

27:26

exposure is different than chronic

27:28

arsenic exposure or acute

27:31

If you drink a whole bunch of mercury all at once,

27:33

those symptoms and the damage to the tissues

27:35

in the esophagus, the stomach et cetera is

27:38

different and visually looks

27:40

different than if you, let's say you were to

27:42

take cyanide or arsenic. So

27:45

they relied so much on the

27:47

doctors to be able to recognize

27:49

that. But how often are these doctors

27:52

seeing these types of things? You know,

27:54

it's only going to be your forensic pathologists

27:57

who get that concentration of you

27:59

know, they're doing an opt and poisonings are

28:01

much more common back then than they are

28:03

today.

28:04

Yeah, if you give them too much,

28:06

it's going to be a red flag for a lot of doctors.

28:08

If you don't give them enough, it doesn't kill them. And that's

28:11

what happened. They didn't give him enough. Okay,

28:13

he got indigestion, he got

28:15

diarrhea, and that was about it from the

28:18

various types of doses of mercury

28:20

that they gave him.

28:20

An eighty four year old man survived all that.

28:23

Yeah, but I bet that indigestion and

28:25

diarrhea from the exposure to mercury

28:27

was not mild. My thinking

28:30

is is that Rice was suffering

28:32

while he was trying to recover from that exposure.

28:35

For sure.

28:36

The next thing they did while they tried to figure

28:38

out how to kill him.

28:40

Was they decided that they wanted to work up a new

28:42

will.

28:42

And of course this is Albert Patrick supposedly

28:45

doing all of this, and Charles Jones

28:47

of Vala is just kind of moving

28:49

along as a lackey.

28:50

So Albert Patrick does something that I think

28:52

is very smart.

28:53

He works up a new will and they

28:56

end up forging Rice's signature,

28:58

just doing the old fashion what I would

29:00

do as a kid, put a piece of paper on top of my mom's

29:03

signature and trace it. Okay, And this

29:05

is where I think Patrick was smart. In

29:07

this new will, William marsh Rice

29:10

had left a portion two

29:12

relatives and the rest was going to

29:14

go to the Rice Institute. In

29:17

this new will, Albert Patrick

29:19

wrote that this group of relatives

29:22

who would be the ones to contest

29:25

the will, he gave them more money in

29:27

the forged will, so they didn't say anything.

29:29

They wouldn't have said anything. They got more money

29:32

and the rest was in his name and Albert

29:34

Patrick, so he just said, forget it. I'm just going to take

29:36

all the money and it would keep everybody else's mouth

29:38

shut.

29:38

So I thought that was very smart.

29:40

So he's actually putting the majority of the money in

29:42

his name.

29:43

Yes, because I and Rice had done business

29:45

long, long, long time ago, and so he could say

29:48

as his legal consultant, and most

29:50

people would have said, Okay, we understand

29:52

that.

29:53

Yeah.

29:53

I mean for me, I've got a Laren Bell's you

29:55

know, dinging in my head as an investigator

29:58

if Rice was ought

30:00

to be a victim of a homicide, and

30:02

I've got the attorney that's representing

30:05

the dead wife's family

30:08

in a very contentious divorce proceeding,

30:10

and now this attorney is named as the

30:13

primary beneficiary. Okay,

30:15

there's some meat on that bone that needs to be

30:17

dug into.

30:18

Yep, I agree.

30:19

So while Albert Patrick is trying

30:22

to sort out is it now

30:24

time to just kill the old man off, he

30:26

is saying that his biggest concern is

30:28

autopsy. He thinks that there will

30:30

be an autopsy on Rice's body because

30:33

he's wealthy, and this.

30:34

Is not an automatic right.

30:36

Not everybody gets an autopsy if it's not

30:38

a suspicious death.

30:39

Is that true?

30:40

Well, if today, if somebody

30:42

dies under medical care, the

30:44

medical doctor can attribute

30:47

the cause of death, and the

30:49

corner or medical examder's office

30:52

may or may not decide

30:54

that they are going to proceed with an autopsy.

30:57

So there is still the possibility

31:00

if there's something that the coroner

31:02

or medical examiner feels is

31:05

whether it be suspicious or there's

31:07

medical or public health safety concerns,

31:11

they will say, I don't care if that medical

31:13

doctor is signing off, we are going

31:15

to take a look at this body and see what's

31:17

going on. But generally, anybody

31:20

who dies outside the presence

31:22

of direct medical care, or

31:24

die suspiciously or via

31:27

an accident, yes they

31:29

are going to be autopsyed.

31:30

So Albert Patrick actually did have something to be worried

31:32

about in this case, it sounds like there would

31:34

likely be an autopsy.

31:35

You know, I don't know how they would have handled that back

31:38

then, if he was just found dead in his bed

31:40

and there was no signs of violence or

31:42

no signs of any type of

31:44

illness, that there would be health concerns,

31:47

then it's possible that somebody would

31:49

just attribute to natural death. He lived a

31:51

long life, and let's go ahead and

31:53

get him to the funeral home.

31:54

Well, I think that Albert Patrick had the same concern

31:56

you did, that people were going to look at this new

31:58

will and say, who is this guy? And why

32:01

would Rice have left sixty to seventy percent

32:03

of his fortune to this guy instead of setting

32:05

up this institute. So once

32:08

they started formulating a plan on how

32:10

to kill him, Albert Patrick asked

32:13

Charles Jones, the valet, to forge

32:15

another letter. And this was

32:17

a letter that said from William

32:20

marsh Rice, I do not want

32:23

to be buried. I want to be cremated because

32:25

embalming sounds like a terrible

32:27

thing and I don't want that to happen to my body,

32:30

so I would like to be cremated immediately.

32:46

So now you have a twenty three year old

32:49

valet who's forging this

32:51

letter supposedly from Rice, and so it's

32:53

a handwritten letter.

32:55

The will, by chance was that type

32:58

set.

32:58

I believe.

32:59

So, so then we got into typography too, and

33:01

I think they talked about that in the trial.

33:02

Okay, yeah, because if there's just a

33:05

signature on the will that's been

33:07

forged at least today, credible

33:10

document examiner's handwriting experts

33:12

generally will say there isn't enough

33:15

just within a signature for me to be able

33:17

to detect a forgery unless it's very

33:20

obvious. I mean, if they literally are doing a tracing,

33:22

then yes, that becomes pretty obvious. To an experienced

33:25

expert, but they usually

33:27

want to have more writing

33:29

in order to be able to get a better sense

33:32

of all the various permutations

33:35

of the characteristics that we all have when

33:37

we write. So now this handwritten

33:40

letter becomes critical evidence

33:42

towards what now is sounding

33:44

like to me a conspiracy between Patrick

33:47

and Jones. Even though Jones is just kind of following

33:49

Patrick's lead, he's an adult male

33:51

who's an active participant. He is committing

33:53

a crime, and so detecting that

33:55

forgery through that handwriting is

33:57

something that could be done then and

34:00

most certainly done now with the

34:02

will, with the typeset. I'm

34:05

sure Patrick didn't have access

34:07

to whatever typewriter was done to generate

34:10

the original will for Rice, and

34:12

so now there can be a comparison between

34:14

the typewriters or whatever type of printing

34:17

instrument was used in order to see,

34:19

Okay, this is something that Patrick had access

34:21

to and this is what was done. Today, it's

34:24

so much easier to show let's

34:26

say, alterations to a document or

34:29

tools that were used to produce the document

34:31

that the forger had access to.

34:34

You know, back in the day, before you know everybody

34:36

had computers, we would collect typewriters

34:39

for this type of comparison, and

34:41

you could pull the ribbons out of the typewriter, and

34:44

the ribbons they scroll as

34:46

you're typing, and you can literally take

34:49

that ribbon and read what's been typed.

34:51

But you also because of the variances

34:54

within the construction of the

34:56

typewriter. This is where now

34:59

one typewriter with its keys, and then

35:01

all the sub characteristics within

35:03

each key, like the key may be for slightly

35:05

different or have an imperfection in it. You

35:07

can do a physical comparison between

35:10

the typed will and that typewriter and

35:13

go, this typewriter produced this

35:15

will.

35:16

Is it as unique as striations

35:18

on a bullet?

35:19

Is it the same sort of concept?

35:20

Well, in terms of the manufacturing

35:23

defects, you know, that's something like with

35:25

firearms, that is very

35:28

real. And yes, with the typewriter, anything

35:30

that has got a manufacturing

35:32

process, studies are done to show

35:35

how different consecutive objects

35:38

that have flowed through the manufacturing

35:40

process, how they have these microscopic

35:42

differences, you know, especially with the metals.

35:44

And I mean it's really gets into

35:47

the weeds.

35:47

When you start talking about the type of manufacturing

35:50

process and what it produces. But

35:52

when you have I don't know how many keys

35:54

are on a typewriter off the top of my head,

35:56

but let's say you have roughly fifty

35:59

keys. Each one of those

36:01

has a set of unique characteristics

36:04

and that can be transferred onto

36:06

the typed page. And then you start

36:08

taking a look at I'll do the all the

36:10

s's on this type page, match the

36:12

defects on the s on this typewriter, and

36:15

then what about the a's, and what about the d's,

36:17

And pretty soon you're going this typewriter

36:19

produced this piece of paper.

36:21

Well, I'll say that this

36:24

I knew because this all comes up into trial,

36:26

and you, pol Holes are a genius

36:29

and you are right along

36:31

with the nineteen hundred district

36:33

attorney who prosecuted this case.

36:36

I'll tell you more about that in a minute, though. So,

36:39

yes, you are right on so far.

36:40

I jumped the gun on you.

36:41

Then no, you were perfect.

36:43

So now we have a sense of urgency,

36:45

and the sense of urgency comes with

36:48

the Great Galveston hurricane

36:51

that wiped out the entire island in

36:53

nineteen hundred, which was I

36:56

believe still is America's

36:59

were natural disaster. Really,

37:02

yeah, it was Eric Larson, who's one of my

37:04

favorite authors wrote a book about it, and it's

37:06

called Isaac Storm. My family and I

37:08

go to Galveston a lot and it just wiped

37:10

out the whole island, killed so many people.

37:13

So Rice is in New York.

37:15

His refineries was right outside Galauson

37:17

One had some severe damage, and the

37:20

refineries manager got

37:22

a hold of him and said we need to rebuild.

37:25

And Rice said how much money do you need? And

37:27

he said a quarter of a million dollars. So

37:30

Jones here's this, reports back to Patrick,

37:32

and of course Patrick says, oh shit, there

37:35

goes a portion.

37:35

Of our money. We need to do this now.

37:38

So they began forging letters

37:41

from Rice to put off the

37:43

manager. Rice says, I want to rebuild,

37:45

but it's not going to happen right now. They

37:48

seem panicked to me.

37:49

Okay, yeah, well two hundred fifty thousand

37:51

dollars back in nineteen hundred, it's a lot of money.

37:54

Yeah.

37:54

It was a big chunk of his estate.

37:55

It was.

37:56

It was not the most, but it was something

37:58

that if you're Albert Patrick and you're thinking you're going to

38:00

get all this money and now, for no good reason,

38:02

you're going to be a quarter of a million dollars less rich.

38:04

That would panic anybody, and he wants

38:07

to move the timeline up of the murder.

38:09

It sounds like this is just sheer greed

38:12

at this point yep. So he

38:14

is being poisoned slowly with mercury.

38:17

It's not working, and finally

38:19

they make a decision that in September

38:21

of nineteen hundred, it's time

38:24

for William Marshrice to

38:26

die. Now, everybody

38:29

in this case there are of course differing accounts

38:31

to what happens next. So what

38:34

we have to do is take the valet's account because

38:36

eventually, of course, this all unravels,

38:38

and that's why we know about this case at all. So

38:41

Charles Jones says that Albert

38:43

Patrick said we need to kill

38:45

him, and Charles Jones says, well, how are we going

38:47

to do that? And Albert Patrick says,

38:50

you're going to take a rag and you're going to put

38:52

chloroform all over the rag, and you're

38:54

going to put it over his face and

38:56

he's essentially going to have a heart

38:58

attack. And I

39:01

did not know that it was possible

39:03

to die from chloroform. So

39:05

I looked it up, and I asked you to look it up. To what

39:07

did you find out did you know anything about chloroform

39:10

to begin with.

39:11

I actually did.

39:12

I've used chloroform in the lab, had to

39:14

be familiar with its properties. It is a very

39:16

common solvent that is used in

39:19

scientific industry. Chloroform

39:21

used to be used as an anesthetic,

39:24

you know, for surgery. That and diethyl

39:26

ether were kind of the two very early

39:28

anesthetic compounds. And so yes,

39:31

it is something that can render somebody

39:33

unconscious or kills somebody,

39:36

and it kills by your respiratory depression,

39:39

just like opiates. Right, you overdose

39:41

on an opiate, basically your

39:43

body no longer it just it can't

39:45

breathe anymore.

39:46

You're not able to inhale.

39:48

Well.

39:48

With the chloroform, it puts your body

39:50

into a state where it is no longer

39:52

breathing, and that's how you die. And

39:55

that's with a very acute

39:57

exposure. This is where now you're talking

39:59

about large amounts of chloroform that

40:01

are being administered.

40:03

Now.

40:03

The interesting thing everybody's seen in the

40:05

movies, you know, particularly in the older movies,

40:07

you know, the killer comes up with the chloroform

40:11

soaked handkerchief and

40:13

puts it over somebody's mouth and the person

40:15

just immediately collapses. That's not

40:17

what happens. This is a

40:19

relatively small amount of

40:21

chloroform that is being inhaled off

40:24

of that rag. You would have to hold that

40:26

rag over this person's mouth

40:29

for an extended period of time before they

40:31

even lose consciousness. So now

40:33

under that circumstance, you imagine

40:36

Jones going up to Rice and

40:38

putting a rag of chloroform over his mouth.

40:40

You think Rice is going to fight, Well,

40:43

now you're going to have evidence of asphyxia.

40:46

Now you're going to be seeing he's going to have to

40:48

struggle. Jones is going to have to struggle

40:50

with Rice. You're going to see the abrasions

40:53

to the mouth and the nose, the

40:55

teeth, indentations in the gums.

40:58

There may be physical combat. I'm

41:00

sure Jones probably could dominate

41:02

Rice at their respective

41:04

points in their lives physically. But

41:07

Rice is still going to probably have old man's

41:09

strength and be able to get a blow in or

41:11

scratch.

41:12

Or something like that.

41:13

I don't think I've heard of old man's strength before.

41:15

Oh well, hey, it's real. Believe

41:17

me, I'm an old man. I have

41:19

some old man's strength. But this is where

41:22

you know, there's that myth that is

41:24

perpetuated in the movies about

41:27

this rag.

41:28

So this is where I'm going.

41:29

Well, if Jones is saying that that's

41:31

how this happened, I want to know a little

41:33

bit more.

41:34

And this is where the autopsy, I think comes in.

41:36

So let me tell you what Charles Jones

41:38

said, because this is the main source of

41:41

what happened that night. So Charles

41:43

Jones says that Albert Patrick says, this

41:45

is the night to do it. We're not going to be able to get

41:47

away with this much longer. He's going to want to send

41:50

this check at some point for a quarter of a million

41:52

dollars.

41:52

We don't want him to send it. This is the night to

41:54

do it.

41:55

He hands him rags with a bottle

41:57

of chloroform, and he says, wait till the old

41:59

man's up on the couch, pour a chloroform

42:02

all over the rag, and then put it on his face

42:05

and it'll knock him out and then he'll

42:07

have a heart attack and he'll die. And Jones

42:09

says he did that. He waited as if the old

42:12

man was asleep. Rice was asleep on the couch.

42:14

He put the rag on He didn't hold

42:16

the rag on his face. He said, he

42:18

laid it on his face, and eventually

42:21

Rice stopped breathing. There was no fighting,

42:24

no nothing. Does that sound logical

42:26

to you.

42:27

Some of the concerns that I had related to

42:29

the use of a rag saturated

42:31

with chloroform and how long it would take

42:33

there would be the signs of asphyxia. Under this

42:36

scenario, he's avoiding

42:38

a lot of the potential injuries

42:41

that would be seen by investigators

42:43

or pathologists to show that there

42:45

had been an asphixial act

42:48

that occurred on Rice. So

42:51

under that circumstance,

42:53

I'm a little bit more intrigued

42:56

about the possibility that if this chloroform

42:59

rag is over Rice's

43:01

nose and mouth for a longer period of time,

43:05

would that be sufficient to

43:07

cause respiratory depression.

43:09

Yeah.

43:10

I'm not absolutely convinced of that, but at least

43:12

it puts it within the world of

43:14

possibility where I'd be reaching out to an

43:16

expert and saying, hey,

43:19

what about this scenario.

43:21

I think the big question for me and for some

43:23

of the medical experts in nineteen hundred

43:25

was if you are asleep, even

43:28

if you're an older man who's

43:30

lulled into a really deep

43:33

sleep, if you smelled and felt

43:35

something on your face. Wouldn't your natural instinct

43:38

would be just to knock it off if

43:40

somebody's not holding it on your face, Or

43:43

would chloroform act quickly enough

43:45

to disable him?

43:46

You said it takes a lot.

43:48

Right, at least with what my research

43:50

showed is that chloroform, with the amount

43:52

that you would be inhaling off of a

43:54

rag like this, it would take

43:56

some time. So Rice would be laying

43:59

there sleeping for some time before

44:02

any type of depression

44:04

caused by the chloroform would truly kick

44:06

in. I still question whether

44:08

or not there would be sufficient

44:11

exposure to the chloroform that could

44:13

have caused Rice to

44:16

die from it under this scenario. The

44:18

other aspect is chloroform is

44:21

very strong smelling. It's

44:23

got a kind of this sickly

44:25

sweet smell. It is so

44:28

distinctive. And so if this

44:30

is even with Rice's sleep,

44:32

and this rag is just laid on top

44:34

of him, this would be something that I think would

44:37

naturally wake somebody up. You've got

44:39

this very strong smelling solvent

44:42

that you're breathing in, So there

44:44

may be something more going on than this

44:46

scenario in my estimation at this

44:48

point.

44:49

So Rice is dead. The

44:51

doctor's called. The doctor says

44:53

natural causes. He was eighty

44:55

four, he had indigestion. His

44:58

death certificate said he died of

45:00

old age and extreme

45:03

nervousness, which I've seen on many

45:05

death certificates, pretty much only in the eighteen

45:07

hundred, so, which to me is heart attack

45:10

or something to that effect.

45:11

I mean, is that what you would think?

45:13

Yeah, you know, that's such an odd term.

45:15

That's where kind of getting into the

45:18

medical parlance of the day to

45:20

try to figure out what symptoms

45:23

were being interpreted in

45:25

the final day's, final months of

45:27

Rice's life that this doctor is saying extreme

45:30

nervousness is a contributing factor.

45:32

I'm not sure what that would be.

45:34

If he got indigestion for mercury

45:36

poisoning, It's possible that he did

45:38

get enough mercury in a system

45:40

where he's developed a level of the shakes

45:42

in his hands. Generally, mercury

45:45

when it starts affecting the nervous system, affects

45:47

the upper extremities before the lower extremities.

45:50

And so maybe that somebody

45:52

is saying, you know, he's shaking all the time,

45:54

you know, and here's your nervousness.

45:56

Yeah, the phrase that I had mentioned

45:58

to you before is nervous prostration is

46:01

what I've written about, which seems like

46:03

extreme nervousness. Nervous prostration

46:06

is interpreted as extreme

46:08

exhaustion.

46:09

So yeah, the doctor is just basically saying

46:12

he's eighty four. He just gave

46:14

out, you know.

46:17

Okay, So Albert Patrick

46:19

talks to the undertaker, because Albert

46:21

Patrick's in the will, he talks to the undertaker.

46:24

He hands him the certificate and says Rice

46:26

wants to be cremated. And the undertaker

46:29

delivers some terrible news

46:31

to Albert Patrick, which is it takes

46:33

twenty four hours to heat this thing up to

46:36

cremate someone. Okay, And

46:38

so now Albert Patrick is essentially

46:40

freaking out, and he says,

46:44

embolman, put the fluid in him right now.

46:46

Don't even take it, just put it in right

46:48

now. He's trying to corrupt the blood,

46:50

I think, is what's happening?

46:51

Is that what you think?

46:52

Well, he is.

46:53

Most certainly trying to make

46:55

alterations to the body to cover up

46:57

these external tox instead have been put

46:59

in some Rice's body. But

47:01

he's relatively naive about things. But

47:04

he's thinking on his feet. And

47:06

so now he's just trying to

47:08

contaminate the body as much

47:10

as possible before authorities

47:13

decide or we better check into this death

47:15

a little bit more closely.

47:17

So he's being naive slash smart.

47:19

I'm not sure what kind of attorney that is.

47:21

This is where you know just enough

47:23

to get yourself in trouble.

47:24

So along those lines, Jones

47:27

and Patrick the next day spend much of

47:29

the day forging checks, forging

47:31

Rice's signature on checks, backdating

47:33

them, and trying to deposit

47:35

them. Unfortunately, Jones

47:38

is in charge of filling out many of the

47:40

checks, and on several

47:42

of the checks that are supposed to be

47:45

paid to the order of Albert Patrick,

47:47

he misspells Albert's name,

47:50

and that seems to be an issue because

47:53

I guess William marsh Rice was very

47:55

meticulous, and his banker,

47:58

when he receives the check, noticed

48:00

that he had spelled this name wrong,

48:02

and he starts to investigate. And because

48:05

of this one banker he says, I think something's

48:07

wrong, and then he finds out that William

48:09

Marshrice was dead, and he calls

48:11

the investigators, and this whole thing

48:13

unravels for both of them, for the

48:16

valet and for the attorney.

48:18

Yeah, they were trying to do too much.

48:20

That really is the bottom line is I

48:22

think you use the term the panic set

48:24

in and so now, well,

48:26

we better start trying to get money flowing

48:29

before the spigot gets turned

48:32

off during an investigation. But

48:34

then they're just leaving a paper trail that

48:37

is becoming obvious to somebody

48:39

who knows Rice well, going

48:41

nope, this isn't right. And now the

48:44

investigation kicks off on assuming correct.

48:46

So they start putting all of this together.

48:48

They bring in like you're talking about, forensic

48:51

document experts who look at the

48:53

signatures, who look at the typography, everything

48:55

that's happening, and says none of this matches

48:57

up, and they proceed to arrest

49:00

both of them, Jones and Patrick.

49:02

Jones says I didn't do any

49:04

of this. Patrick says, I

49:07

didn't do anything. Nothing happened.

49:09

The guy died of natural causes and there's

49:11

no way you.

49:11

Can prove otherwise. And

49:14

I might be.

49:15

An attorney who tried to wiggle in a

49:17

couple of places, but I'm not a killer.

49:19

And he's right.

49:19

He could be a sleazy attorney all he wants,

49:22

but that doesn't make him a murderer. So

49:24

it's a district attorney's job now to

49:27

prove that Albert Patrick was

49:29

the one who orchestrated this whole thing.

49:31

And this seems like a daunting test to me, does

49:33

it to you?

49:34

Well, it could be. You know what this is where

49:37

if you have you know, a good investigator

49:39

on the case. I mean, this is a golden

49:42

opportunity. You have two

49:45

conspirators who are now turning

49:48

on each other, and this is where the

49:50

interview becomes critical. It's

49:53

okay, you either going down or he's

49:55

going down. You better start talking about

49:57

what actually happened and then playing

49:59

them off of each other so you can get

50:01

so much information before this even

50:04

gets into a trial.

50:06

Who do you think flips? Because one of them

50:08

does flip.

50:09

Jones is the weak link, twenty three year

50:11

old, subservient male, and

50:13

Patrick is the sophisticated attorney

50:15

who's thinking he's smarter than anybody,

50:18

so he's going to hold his

50:20

mud while Jones is just going to sit

50:22

there and chirp away, you.

50:24

Did it, that was it? Yeah, Jones

50:26

flipped on him. Jones was offered

50:29

full immunity. Can you

50:31

trust somebody who was

50:33

offered full immunity on the stand?

50:36

Well you can.

50:36

It all depends on who they are, and

50:39

it's really comes down to does

50:41

the jury trust this witness?

50:44

And this is where Jones, by

50:46

providing testimony, he has to be

50:49

convincing, where the jurors believe

50:51

him.

50:51

So there's two parts to this trial,

50:54

really. I think one is the medical

50:56

testimony. I'll tell you about in a second. The

50:58

first part is Jones, who is

51:01

to me the definition of an unreliable

51:03

witness. He talks about placing

51:06

the rag over Rice, and

51:08

Rice doesn't move at all.

51:09

Medical experts don't think that's likely.

51:11

Yeah.

51:12

He talks about taking the rag after Rice was

51:14

dead and throwing it onto a stove and

51:16

it catches on fire right and bursts

51:18

into flames. Not just a rag

51:20

that sort of kind of catches on fire. It's almost

51:22

like an explosion. And then Albert

51:25

Patrick's attorney said, this is BS. This

51:27

guy is lying about everything.

51:29

If he lies about that one thing, how can

51:31

we trust anything, he says, And I think

51:34

that's the line a lot of attorneys have used over the past

51:36

hundred years.

51:37

For sure.

51:37

That's how you start chipping away at the veracity

51:40

of a witness is you catch them in

51:42

a single and it may just be a minor

51:44

detail that they got wrong, but then

51:47

you blow it up and then you

51:49

just taint anything else that they're saying

51:51

from it. What stands out to me with

51:54

the chloroform and taking a look at

51:56

its physical properties, it is not excessively

51:58

flammable thing.

52:00

If it was thrown on this stove.

52:01

You know, I do see where that rag with the

52:03

chloroform on it, you may have it

52:06

catch fire to a point. But

52:08

if he's saying it was explosive, I question

52:11

if it was even chloroform. Maybe

52:13

there was another solvent that was on

52:15

this rag and it wasn't chloroform.

52:17

Yeah.

52:18

The thing I didn't tell you about Jones was that in the middle

52:20

of all of this, he was jailed.

52:22

Even though he was given immunity, he was jailed

52:25

and he tried to take his own life in the middle

52:27

of all of this. Oh okay, I think it's

52:29

clear that he had some mental health struggles. I

52:31

think possibly even before this, but this certainly

52:33

didn't help. And Albert

52:35

Patrick's attorney then turned to the

52:38

medical testimony, and this is the interesting

52:40

thing. So they did the autopsy because

52:42

thank goodness, William marsh Rice did not get

52:44

cremated. They did the autopsy,

52:47

and the medical examiner

52:50

said everything was actually for an

52:52

eighty four year old man was in pretty

52:54

good shape and the only

52:56

issue were his lungs. And the lungs

52:58

were congested and they had sort of

53:01

kind of a burned out look, as

53:03

if they had been exposed to a

53:05

gas or a severe irritant.

53:08

So the district attorney said, of

53:11

course, this is what caused it. And what do you think

53:13

he said, this was the cause of his death?

53:15

Was the chloroform? Right?

53:16

Sure?

53:17

Now when you say his lungs had a burned

53:19

out appearance, do you have any more

53:21

details about that?

53:23

They said, sort of like sores, almost

53:25

like lesions, But the lungs were

53:28

incredibly irritated, like it just seemed

53:30

like almost on the brink of like

53:32

red marks everywhere, and just really irritated.

53:35

Is the only description I had.

53:37

Any testimony about inside the mouth

53:40

or down the esophagus.

53:42

Now, see this is what stinks, Paul. You're

53:44

going to learn when we do stories from the nineteen

53:46

hundreds.

53:46

I can't call I can't call

53:48

the medical advance.

53:49

No.

53:49

But this is the part of Okay,

53:52

So the limitations at the time, the limitations

53:54

of the autopsy, and you

53:56

know when I hear long congestion,

53:58

of course that the natural thought is

54:01

with the idea that chloroform was

54:03

potentially used in this case, that the inhalation of

54:05

chloroform is what the irritant

54:08

is that caused the issue inside the lungs.

54:11

However, chloroform and many other

54:13

substances when ingested orally,

54:15

when it's absorbed into the body, you also

54:18

can get pulmonary edema or lung

54:20

congestion. And I found like a nineteen

54:22

thirty three article talking about a

54:24

guy that drank six ounces of chloroform

54:26

and at automosy his lungs were congested.

54:29

So this is where now the idea

54:31

of this rag being laid over

54:34

Rice's mouth for a period of time,

54:37

I wonder more, is it possible

54:39

that Rice was given something to

54:42

drink that contained chloroform and

54:44

we see this type of response

54:47

today. I had a tragic case of a teenage

54:49

boy who I rolled out on, who

54:51

was dad laying face up, and he had

54:54

ingested an entire bottle of

54:56

Coffs aerup containing codeine, and

54:58

his lungs you could see it foaming

55:00

at the mouth because of all the pulmonaria

55:02

edema that is now extruding.

55:04

We see this in these overdose

55:06

type deaths.

55:08

So the chloroform absent

55:11

the technology today to be able to

55:13

identify chloroform in the body.

55:15

I start questioning, well, if there was chloroform

55:18

used, was it.

55:19

In elation versus oral ingestion?

55:21

And at autopsy?

55:23

Chloroform because it has such a distinct odor,

55:25

pathologists would often be able to smell

55:28

that odor when they open up the body,

55:30

so that's where it. Second, did this pathologist note

55:32

that did he actually pay attention

55:34

to the oral cavity? Did he pay attention to the esophagus

55:37

and the stomach to see Is

55:39

there the possibility that this was

55:42

actually something that had been fed

55:44

to rice, maybe in a liquid

55:47

form, versus this rag over his

55:49

mouth. I just the rag over the mouth unless

55:51

somebody with a lot of knowledge comes in as it's

55:54

a possibility under these circumstances, I'm

55:56

just skeptical of that.

55:57

Yeah, it seems odd and Jones's

56:00

just unreliable in general.

56:01

I think.

56:02

Now, Albert Patrick had

56:04

an attorney, but mostly he represented himself

56:06

because he was that kind of an attorney.

56:08

He wanted to represent himself.

56:10

And Albert Patrick said

56:13

the congestion from the lungs is not

56:15

chloroform, because I never told Jones to do

56:17

that. I had nothing to do with that. It

56:19

was the embalming fluid, okay.

56:22

And at the time the doctor

56:24

said that is impossible. The

56:26

heart valves would not allow embalming

56:28

fluid through. But now people

56:31

at medical experts today say it

56:33

is possible the embalming fluid could

56:35

have been in the lungs.

56:37

What do you think about that?

56:38

Well, if you have the fluid,

56:40

the embalming fluid, which you know

56:42

formal to hide methanol and some

56:44

other chemicals, these of course

56:46

are going to be chemicals that

56:48

are not kind to the lungs.

56:51

But this is we're having a

56:53

good pathologist, and you know, we don't

56:55

know because you can determine

56:58

very rapidly, is that due

57:00

to just the embalming process, or

57:04

do I have vital

57:06

reactions occurring, Because

57:08

now you have living tissue as

57:10

risis succumbing to exposure

57:13

to let's say chloroform, you have

57:15

inflammation responses. You know, they take

57:17

tissue samples and look at them under the microscope

57:20

to see what types of cells are

57:22

flowing in to the aveoli and

57:24

everything else. To determine am I dealing

57:27

with something that is because the body

57:29

was exposed to something? Or am I dealing

57:31

with a post mortem artifact

57:34

and these solvents the embalming

57:36

fluid being able to pass through

57:39

into the lungs Right now, I couldn't

57:41

answer that, but that would be my question today

57:43

to a pathologist is Okay, did you

57:45

do enough to be able to eliminate the fact that

57:48

this could be something that happened after death?

57:50

To me, the crux of this case is it

57:53

is a little bit of a medical mystery. And

57:55

with the fact that we've got all

57:57

of these forgeries and this attorney

58:00

who is obviously manipulative and

58:03

with the intention of stealing, is

58:05

that enough if we

58:07

take out the medical mystery of how he died?

58:09

Is that enough evidence to say.

58:11

Albert Patrick should be

58:13

executed because that's what would happen.

58:16

He would be sentencing seeing to the electric chair.

58:19

Is this enough if we aren't one hundred

58:21

percent sure that this is murder? That's the

58:23

question the jury had.

58:25

Yeah.

58:25

The totality of the evidence, in my opinion,

58:28

most certainly points at Patrick

58:30

and Jones conspiring to kill

58:32

Rice and his death was

58:35

caused at the hands of another. This

58:37

was not a natural death. Now, the

58:40

actual cause of death, maybe

58:43

because of the frailty at eighty four years

58:45

old, everything that was being done to

58:47

him by these two he succumbed

58:49

to just you know, as a pathologist or

58:51

the doc said this nervous prostration

58:55

due to exhaustion. But this was something

58:57

that he wouldn't normally have been dealing with. Two

59:00

people were giving a mercury, giving the chloroform,

59:02

doing all this stuff. But I think the totality of

59:04

the circumstances, in my mind, you know,

59:06

probably goes beyond reasonable

59:08

doubt that they were responsible for his

59:11

death. And it's possible

59:13

that with Jones's testimony saying well

59:15

it was chloroform, and there's really

59:18

absent the introduction of the embalming

59:21

fluid, there's nothing necessarily

59:23

contradicting the fact that chloroform

59:25

could have been used. So I think there's

59:28

sufficient cause to convict.

59:30

But of course, if the only option

59:32

is to execute, that's where it kind

59:34

of gets into where you see more of a stratification

59:38

of the murder laws today.

59:40

You know, so the jury has an option

59:43

going, Okay, it doesn't rise to this in

59:46

this case. If they convict, there's no question

59:48

there's pre planning, there's malice, a foe

59:51

thought, So that's going to be one of

59:53

those things that separates first from second

59:55

murder, at least in California. What

59:57

are the special circumstances you know, that would

1:00:00

it up into a death eligible

1:00:02

case. So from

1:00:04

my perspective, I could see where

1:00:06

the conundrum would be, does the state execute

1:00:09

somebody when we can't prove that

1:00:11

either one of them actually utilized

1:00:14

a chemical weapon?

1:00:15

Yeah?

1:00:16

To me, it comes down to had these

1:00:18

men not been doing what they were doing, giving the mercury,

1:00:21

had he just laid down that night and gone

1:00:23

to sleep without chloroform on his

1:00:26

face or anything else, is it likely

1:00:28

he would have woken up the next day, probably

1:00:30

despite being eighty four, because the

1:00:32

medical examiner said the rest of his organs

1:00:34

were in great shape for a man his age, and

1:00:38

Patrick and Jones

1:00:40

had been worried that he was going to keep

1:00:42

living for years because he was in

1:00:44

good shape. I guess that's what bully and base

1:00:46

and eggsill do for you. But

1:00:49

the jury agreed with you that

1:00:51

there was a sufficient amount of evidence that they

1:00:53

were guilty, okay, and Albert

1:00:56

Patrick was sentenced to sing sing

1:00:58

to the electric chair and Charles

1:01:00

Jones walked.

1:01:01

He had total immunity. He left.

1:01:04

He ended up about several decades

1:01:06

later, taking his own life again. I think struggles

1:01:08

with mental illness or problems with this

1:01:11

case. So flash forward

1:01:13

ten years. Albert Patrick spends ten

1:01:15

years in prison, and he has a

1:01:17

whole team of attorneys working this entire

1:01:20

time. His sister very

1:01:22

fortuitously married into a wealthy

1:01:24

family who believed him, and

1:01:27

they appeal after appeal after appeal,

1:01:29

and finally they won an appeal

1:01:32

and he was commuted from the

1:01:34

death penalty from the electric chair

1:01:36

to life in prison. And then a

1:01:39

couple of years later, the Governor of New

1:01:41

York pardoned him. Oh wow,

1:01:43

he walked out. So the

1:01:45

Governor of New York said, and a lot

1:01:47

of doctors did come forward and say, you

1:01:49

cannot connect chloroform to

1:01:52

this death. Will you cannot definitively

1:01:54

say it. Yes, this guy is a terrible

1:01:57

person and an unscrupulous attorney,

1:01:59

but you can not say definitively that he is

1:02:01

a murderer. He should have never been sent to sing sing.

1:02:04

So that's what the governor said. Now, of course, there's

1:02:06

all sorts of rumors that I believe that the

1:02:08

family paid off everybody

1:02:10

they possibly could to get him out. But he got

1:02:12

out and he ended up living a really quiet

1:02:14

life in Oklahoma.

1:02:16

Okay.

1:02:17

I wasn't expecting that

1:02:19

that's the goal, Paul Holes.

1:02:21

I thought he went to the electric chairs.

1:02:23

No, he didn't

1:02:25

get any of the money. So thank

1:02:27

goodness, though.

1:02:29

The silver lining on this

1:02:31

whole case, and actually I wouldn't call that silver lining.

1:02:33

I would just say the bright spot of any

1:02:35

of this is that the money ended

1:02:38

up going where it was supposed to go.

1:02:39

James Baker, the attorney, took the money.

1:02:42

Figured out the correct will, and used

1:02:44

the money for what it was intended to, which

1:02:46

is to build one of the most

1:02:48

wonderful universities in the country in

1:02:50

Houston, Texas. So William

1:02:53

Marshrice comes away from

1:02:55

this. There is the legacy of

1:02:57

of course, racism and not wanting to

1:03:00

have black students there. Ultimately he

1:03:02

is given back a school that

1:03:04

is outstanding that almost never happened.

1:03:07

It came so close to not happening. The

1:03:09

richness of that is incredible.

1:03:11

Yeah, that history is just amazing.

1:03:13

In terms of of course I've heard of Rice University,

1:03:15

but it's usually within the NA

1:03:18

football setting.

1:03:19

Than anything else.

1:03:20

But to know that this homicide

1:03:23

or this murder trial and all the

1:03:25

shenanigans that were

1:03:27

going on really could have prevented

1:03:29

that university from existing. That's just

1:03:31

where it's so interesting and fun

1:03:34

to dig into these old cases because you learn

1:03:36

so much, you know, in terms of

1:03:38

how things are existing today.

1:03:40

Well it's based on this type of backdrop.

1:03:48

Well, I have to bed.

1:03:49

When you first sent me sort of just that

1:03:51

three sentences of the overview of this case,

1:03:54

it was like, okay, so we're dealing with a will

1:03:57

and maybe chloroform.

1:04:00

Wasn't exactly sure how this case was going

1:04:02

to play out and not sure

1:04:04

how much I could contribute to it, but it was like, oh,

1:04:06

there's a lot of backstory

1:04:08

that really is compelling about

1:04:11

well, this is what happened, you know, and I think the jury

1:04:13

got it right.

1:04:14

Well I'm excited because I

1:04:16

loved hearing all of your perspective on all this,

1:04:18

because again, that was the whole point of doing this

1:04:21

was do we think they got it right, and

1:04:23

do we think they got it wrong? And what would we have

1:04:25

done differently? So that's

1:04:27

exactly what I was hoping to get out of it. And my

1:04:29

goal is I love twists and turns.

1:04:32

I don't like boring, straight shot

1:04:34

stories. I like surprising things,

1:04:37

and I like to have details and

1:04:39

to have characters that we can really come

1:04:41

to life. And William marsh

1:04:43

Rice was not the perfect character, but boy,

1:04:45

his life was interesting and it was really fun retelling

1:04:48

it. So thank you for that journey,

1:04:50

Paul Holes. I can't wait for next week.

1:04:52

So what I'm gathering is is you're going to

1:04:54

be surprising me each week with

1:04:56

the story.

1:04:57

Okay, you should be surprised if I.

1:04:59

Don't prize you is what I'm doing, what

1:05:01

I'm talking about.

1:05:03

I'm looking forward to it. This was great.

1:05:05

Me too, Me too.

1:05:10

This has been an exactly right production

1:05:12

for our Sources and show notes go to Exactlyrightmedia

1:05:15

dot com slash Buried Bones sources.

1:05:18

Our senior producer is Alexis Emirosi.

1:05:21

Research by Maren mcclashan and Kate

1:05:23

Winkler Dawson.

1:05:24

Our mixing engineer is Ryo Baum.

1:05:26

Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.

1:05:29

Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.

1:05:31

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1:05:33

hard Stark and Daniel Kramer.

1:05:35

You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram

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and Facebook at Buried Bones.

1:05:40

Pod Kate's most recent book, All

1:05:42

That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder

1:05:44

and the race of decode the criminal mind, is

1:05:46

available for pre order now

1:05:48

And Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked,

1:05:51

my life solving America's cold cases,

1:05:53

is also available now