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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.
She did not listen to it, but she said, girl, this title sounds so you.
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Visit audible.com slash morbid. On November 13th, 2022, four University of Idaho students were murdered.
Today, finally, the true story. Based on over 300 interviews, in their own words, family members talk about their heartbreak and grief.
Students and townspeople describe that terrifying night.
Police detail the dramatic investigation and arrest of Brian Koberger.
You've never read a true crime like James Patterson and Vicki Ward's The Idaho Four.
The true story, it's finally here. Hey weirdos, I'm Ash.
And I'm Elena. And this is Morbid. 🎵 This is Morbid and it's part two.
It's part two. It's the same day for us, different day for you.
That's right. We're in January, but we're not.
We're in January, but we're not. Whatever.
You're not my January. There you go. I don't know.
It's been a long day. It has. And you know what?
What? No, you what? Oh, you know what? I don't even know what.
You weren't going somewhere with that? I don't know.
To be honest, I forgot where I was going.
So that worked out really well for both of us.
So here we are. We're in part two. We are dazed and confused.
A little bit. We're, you know, we're talking about Theodore Durant.
I'm interested in this case, dude. It's a wild case.
I know. I don't even want to have any bullshit.
I need you to tell me about Blanche. Yeah, we got to talk about the demon and the belfry.
We have just found Minnie. We've just found her in a horrific state.
She was posed very, like, she was, like, desecrated, essentially.
She was posed spread eagle. She was stabbed multiple times.
She had fabric shoved down her throat while she was alive.
With a knife, basically, or not even a knife.
A sharpened steak, essentially. Like a shank.
And she was raped before and after death.
It is horrific. The scene is horrific. This is kind of probably a terrible question, but now I'm just curious.
How can they tell that it happened both before and after?
I think they can tell by the, say this as delicately as possible, by the injuries.
How they healed, if they healed. Okay. You know, that kind of thing.
How you can tell when an injury is inflicted after death because of the way that the injury looks and the way that the bruising happens and the blood flows or doesn't flow.
Yeah, so I think it's the same kind of thing.
Thank you. That was a very delicate way to answer that.
I tried. Thank you. So that's where we last left you.
I mean, Blanche's family had, on the same day that Minnie was found, gotten three of her rings sent to them in a weird crude package.
Mm-hmm. We have people finally pointing the finger at Theo, connecting the two, that they were dating, that they had dated, excuse me, that Minnie and Blanche knew each other.
There's a lot of connections here. So police were searching the church and its grounds because Detective Gibson had said he believed now with all the information he had that they were going to find Blanche on the church grounds.
He just had a hunch. So they were searching the church and its grounds based off of that hunch.
And on the morning of April 14th, only the day after Minnie was found and the day after those rings came, they made their way up to the belfry.
Okay. The belfry is where the bell is. Yep.
Essentially. Like how you say like bats in the belfry.
Yeah. There's usually bats in a belfry. Whenever I read it, I always read it as Belfry.
Belfry. It does look like Belfry. Belfry.
Belfry. Now, this is where they finally found the body of Blanche Lamont.
She was nude, completely nude, but she had been laid out and displayed in a notably different way than many.
What? What? What the fuck? Very much like displayed her in a modest and like... Like an angel.
Very much like an angel. Minnie was spread eagle, had her dress hiked up, and was displayed like garbage.
Yeah. Now, Virginia McConnell, who I mentioned her book in part one, and I will again link it in part two.
She mentioned in her book that this is a classic case of undoing.
This is a term coined by Robert Resler, and it's basically when the killer tries to hide or reverse what they've done.
It comes from a feeling of guilt or shame, and there is some twisted sense of remorse involved.
They try to escape the consequences by pretending it didn't happen.
How interesting that he would do that with Blanche, but not with Minnie.
Exactly. Exactly. Now, the belfry, and we'll get into some of that a little bit.
Now, the belfry was high, and it was very dry up there, so the body was not as decomposed as it normally would have been after as long as it had been.
It had been at least 10, 11 days. Apparently, according to the reports, though, and this is kind of graphic, so just prepare, as soon as the morgue attendants began to carry her body down the long, winding stairway,
Quote, the pent-up process of decomposition released itself all at once, and the sharp stench of decayed flesh permeated the area.
Oh. So they were not spared that. No. So there's that.
After a formal autopsy, Dr. John Barrett noted that, like Minnie, Blanche had also been sexually assaulted, and he recorded the cause of death as asphyxiation.
That's just like Minnie. Evident by what the press referred to as, quote, blue streaks on her neck, the marks of fingers that have been pressed deep into the tender flesh.
In fact, I have a book, that book that I spoke about in part one.
It's this trial transcript of the trial of William Henry Theodore Durant.
And in that, it says that when they were talking to Dr. Barrett, he said, quote, I found seven fingernail incisions on the left side of her throat and five on the right side.
Which is very like, so clearly it was manual strangulation.
In that same thing, he also is talking about like stomach contents and all that stuff.
And he actually refers to having a period as the monthly sickness.
And I thought that's very accurate. I'm going to start calling it that.
It truly is the monthly sickness. It absolutely is.
I get that. Okay. Now, evidence was found at the scene as well.
Boot prints were discovered in the dust on the belfry floor, and they were about a size 8 or 9.
Okay. Blanche's clothing she was wearing when she went missing and her school books were found in the rafters.
So he had hidden them in the rafters. That's weird.
Both Minnie and Blanche's crime scenes were highly disorganized and clearly were not planned out ahead of time, ahead of the commission.
Detective Gibson and the deputy coroner found the library card of Blanche Lamont on the floor of the library where Minnie was.
And the deputy coroner noted that the blood on the wall, where Minnie was especially, didn't appear to have been splattered onto the wall in the commission of a crime.
Some of it did. But he said some of it looked like it had been thrown onto the walls.
Like he had been in such a state, frenzied and animalistic, that he had actually thrown handfuls of blood around the room.
What? Yeah, in Minnie's crime scene. And do you think it could have also been like him throwing her around?
I don't know. Honestly, they said it looked like he was throwing blood, like it was splattered on the wall.
And do you think he was doing that in his frenzy or knowingly just splattering her blood onto the walls?
No, I think he was angry and I think he was in a frenzy and I think he was like an animal.
And he just was throwing things like an animal would.
This is the craziest thing that you're like, everyone liked this guy.
He worked at this church. He built things for this church.
He helped his neighbors. That lady was like, oh my God, he's going to get me off this trolley.
And then this man throws this woman's blood all over the place after like eviscerating her.
And then killing Blanche Lamont with his hands, choking her to death.
Yeah. But then leaving her like angelically up in the belfry.
Right. And I don't know if like, and we'll talk about it for sure, but like the Madonna whore thing is definitely seeming to be here.
So I heard you and Dave like talking about that the other night.
That's our friend that helps with research.
She's like the bestest ever. I don't really know what that means.
It's hard to explain. I'm sure I'm not a religious person, so I don't know the ins and outs of it.
But like Madonna is like the, you know, she's the she would be like what the Mother Mary is, you know, like the Madonna.
And then we have like Mary. What's her name?
Mary Magdalene. Is that the one? I don't know.
There's another one that's like the whore.
You know what I mean? There's different Marys.
So there's like the Madonna and the whore.
And a lot of things we see seem to be based on that idea of a woman is a Madonna or she's a whore.
And there's nothing in between. And it's like that's what the idea is here.
That like you are either one or the other and they were left as such.
They were displayed as such. Minnie was displayed as the quote, and this is obviously not my feeling, I'm saying.
No, of course not. She was displayed as the idea of the whore.
She was spread eagle. Her dress was pulled up.
She was savaged beyond belief. She was left with the clothes strewn everywhere.
But then Blanche was savaged in her own way.
Absolutely. But she was left like an angel, like that Madonna, like the hair spread out, the modest covering.
And it's also straight. Do you think a class, a classism?
100%. Goes into that? 100%. Because it's both of these women left you for the same reason.
Yeah. Like neither one of them wanted to have sex with you because you guys weren't married.
But to me, he was angrier at Minnie because she was supposed to because of where she came from and because of what she did.
Okay. And she didn't. Okay. And he was mad about it.
I can totally see that. And I think he was mad at both of them, but I think Minnie got it because you were supposed to be the easy one.
And I think it's also from like what you've told me, many flat out said no, not going to happen.
Whereas Blanche said not right now. I'd like to slow down.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so I see that now. I get what you're saying.
I think it was, this is just my theory, obviously.
We don't have him around to tell us what the fuck the reason was for all this.
And he doesn't. And he doesn't. He doesn't give a motive.
He doesn't even admit to it. But what it looks like to me is that he was projecting his own ideas of who these women were and what they were supposed to be comfortable with onto them in this way.
And being like, Minnie was supposed... She's a maid.
She's lower class. She was supposed to be what I want her to be.
And she wasn't. And Blanche was supposed to be what I want her to be.
But to him, she was the higher class. She was that idea of... You know what I mean?
So... He had also made or found his weapons at the crime scene, if you think about it.
The piece of wood was taken off the table and the knife was a butter knife taken from the church kitchen.
He used his hands. He didn't bring something into the church planning to do this.
He did it in there. Do you think he was planning to do it?
I think he was planning on raping them. Okay.
But I think something must have gone awry.
And then once he had done it, he had done it with Blanche.
And then I think he brought Minnie in there thinking he could get her to sleep with him.
And I think she probably didn't want to.
So he just did the same thing. And he got angry.
And I think that's what that was. Yeah. And it could have been a situation where he raped Blanche because she was sexually assaulted.
He raped Blanche and then he figured he had to kill her or she would tell.
Right. And so he killed her with his hands, manually strangling her.
He displayed her like he looked at her. And then he brought Minnie in there thinking he would be able to get Minnie to do it.
And when she said no, that's when he got angry and he left her how he saw her.
Checks. It's fucked up. But investigators also deduced that he likely knew his victims.
This was not random strangers. He had to have gotten them into that church without much fuss, especially considering the degree to which the neighbors watched that church like a hawk.
He wasn't going to be able to drag somebody into that church, and nobody saw him drag anybody into that church.
They saw him walk the two victims into that church.
So they did find some bloody footprints left on the floor leading out of the library.
But it looked like the killer had stepped in the blood with only one of his shoes.
So the footprints were only one foot. That comes back a little later.
But also interesting was that the killer had broken the handles and locks of both doors leading to the library and the belfry.
So he had intentionally tried to stop people from finding the bodies for some time.
They also pointed to the killer obviously being familiar with the church and its comings and goings because he had to be pretty confident that no one would try to go up into the belfry.
And it was rare for anyone to go into the room where Minnie was too.
So he knew that this was going to be some time before they were found.
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So there were janitors like George King and Frank Seidman.
They were both ruled out. Pretty quickly.
And one of the glaring reasons for this was that they all had keys to all the places in the church and would not have a need to break the locks.
Right. So the next place they turned their attention was the next name that kept coming up, which was Theodore Durant, the church handyman.
Mm-hmm. Luckily, although it seems like they were ignoring Theo up until this point, and you're like, what the fuck?
Detective Gibson was already thinking that it was him.
Before they had even found Blanche, Detective Gibson had Theodore in his head.
Because he's been hearing it, too. Exactly.
He had received... So it was time to close in on this fucker.
He was like, I've cleared all the people I needed to.
So April 14th, the day after Minnie was found, the day that Blanche was found, very quickly, they went to his home to collect him for questioning. and they got Isabella, his mother, answering the door.
She allowed them to search the Durant home, and she followed them everywhere.
And she was insisting that Theo was innocent, that they were wrong.
Reporters had also made their way inside while this search was happening because it's the 1800s.
Just like, wow, just like traipsing right in.
Yeah, they're just walking right through.
And she decided to show her compassion and understanding by saying this.
I cannot understand why they should connect our boy with this crime.
He has too many young lady acquaintances of his own class and social standing to be under the necessity of paying attention to a little servant girl.
Wow, what an asshole. You're a bitch. Also, you're not of high class either.
And it's like, that's absolutely the crux of the issue here, right?
Well, for them it was. Theo had dated, again, both Minnie and Blanche.
He had also dated that woman, Flora, just to recap from the first episode here.
And Flora was very wealthy and from a higher social class.
Theo was obsessed with this idea. His mother was obsessed with the idea of raising his social standing as high as she could.
He also was really into letting people, like I said in part one, know that he wanted everyone to know that he was a stud.
And he liked to walk around letting people know that he had this great sexual prowess and had all the experience.
But in reality, he had none. Right. And again...
Flora refused to sleep with him until they were married, so he found Minnie, and because of her social class and job, which was a maid, he assumed that she would just sleep with him.
Minnie would not, so he moved on to Blanche and quickly tried to lock her down to sleep with her.
He knew a girl of her social standing would never sleep with him unless they were married.
He was a pig. Yeah. He was a fucking pig.
Here, here. Cheers. Here, here. It is obviously in how he left them both, which is what we just talked about them.
He viewed them very differently, even though both of them wouldn't sleep with him.
And like I said, it was that supposed to sleep with me thing with Minnie.
You were supposed to and you didn't. But Theo wasn't at home while they searched it.
He had been at the Signal Corps exercise in Walnut Creek.
And detectives found one full pair of shoes in his closet, but they also found a shoe that was missing a match.
And if you remember, the killer only stepped in blood with one shoe.
Imagine that. How coincidental. Now, this was very significant, obviously, but they didn't know this information yet.
When they were searching his house, they did not know that they had found only one shoe print in blood.
So they didn't collect the shoes. Ah, shit.
Which is a bummer. Or the shoe. Then Sergeant Burke was exiting the home and saw on the stairway that there was a coat hanging by the front door.
It was clearly a man's coat, so he asked Isabella, is that Theo's?
She didn't answer, but instead she lunged to grab it before he could.
Girl, like I understand. I can't imagine the feeling of like, oh my gosh, my child's being accused of this.
But you got to cooperate. Don't get in the way of justice.
That's the thing. And it's like, and if you're, you really believe your son is innocent.
Then that there should be nothing on that coat.
Exactly. Well, he was able to get it first and they looked in the pocket and they found a woman's purse in the pocket. girly girl.
There wasn't any blood on the purse or anything, but they found a woman's purse.
Meanwhile, Detective Abraham Anthony and a bunch of other officers were heading to Walnut Hill to officially arrest Theo.
Girl, bye. This is wild to me. Earlier in the day, while the search was being held at the Durant home, Detective Anthony had sent word to the Signal Corps telling them that Durant had to be held there for police to come arrest him.
Everyone at the corpse, including Theo, thought it was a joke.
So they just ignored that, and they started making their way back to base.
Oh, my God. Like, they were just going to let him go.
But luckily, they got there before they let him go.
And when Theo and all of the other people that worked there had reached the trailhead, they were greeted by Detective Anthony and the San Francisco police force waiting to arrest Theo.
Oh, I love it. For the murder of Minnie Williams.
Because at this point in the day, they had not found Blanche yet.
Ah. So he was only arrested for Minnie Williams' murder.
He immediately said he was innocent and tried to resist.
But Detective Anthony showed him the news reports on the discovery of Minnie's body.
And all he could say was, I'm sorry for my mother.
How can she stand it? I'm like, he's guilty.
That's an admission of guilt. Yeah, he's guilty.
He wasn't even handcuffed. They didn't handcuff him because they weren't worried about Theodore.
That happened in another case that we've covered recently, I feel like.
Yeah, you're right. Who wasn't handcuffed?
Oh, and he bent down to get the axe. No, he was handcuffed, wasn't he?
You're right. Was it? It was the torso murders.
Yeah. Or no, excuse me. It was the towpath murders.
Yes, yes, yep. Yeah, that was a wily one too.
Yeah, that was a botched one. But anyway, that's fucking wild.
He was able to hide the hatchet under the car seat.
Yeah. You're right. But yeah, they did not handcuff him at all.
He was taken all the way back to the city without handcuffs.
And at one point, he asked if they could let him go to the post office really quick.
And Detective Anthony sat at a saloon while Theo was left to go to the post office alone.
They were like, yeah, yeah, just go run your errand.
It's fine. Yeah, they were like, it's cool.
Like, are you kidding me? And he sat at a saloon while he did that.
He's like, I'm just going to have like a quick little drink.
You do your errand and then we'll get to this murder investigation later.
Yeah, we'll take you to jail after. It's going to be great.
He apparently came back. They were able to bring him back.
That's kind of wild. He probably knew that he wasn't going to get far.
Well, he kept telling them he was innocent.
He didn't even, at one point he said he didn't even know those girls.
But then he was like, wait, I did. 99,000 gajillion people saw you with those girls.
But then he said he hadn't seen them in months.
And then it switched to weeks. And then the story just kept slipping and slipping as he kept talking and talking.
It just got different and different. The media was already losing their shit.
Yeah. yeah word of theo's arrest had gotten out by the time they reached the ferry station with their prisoner yeah headlines were saying like san francisco jack the ripper caught started theorizing that he was responsible for a number of other murders or missing people in the san francisco area which i don't believe he was no they couldn't be satisfied with just two women being brutally murdered the crowds were really angry too they were ready to hang him themselves same He was called the demon of the belfry later, and people would gather outside the police stations to get their hands on him.
People were pissed. Before he was led to a cell...
Theo was allowed to make a statement to the press, and he said this.
How'd that go? The last time I met Miss Lamont was on the morning of the day she disappeared.
I thought it was weeks. Yeah. She talked about books, and I promised to bring her to prayer meeting that night.
Miss Lamont did not come to the meeting, and the following Friday I took the book to her house and gave it to her sister.
The latter told me Blanche had gone to school, evidently trying to keep the fact of her disappearance a secret.
This is all I know of the Lamont case. The last time I saw Minnie Williams was three weeks ago.
Wrong. That's not true. He was sent to jail, and he was a ham in there.
He wasn't upset at all. He was very jovial with the press.
He would order restaurant food to be delivered to him.
Oh, Grubhub in prison? Yeah, apparently.
The fuck? He decorated his cell with things like a rocking chair that was sent by his mother.
He would laugh and joke with his cellmates.
He was having a great time. This is America, though.
Oh, this is America. This is San Francisco.
Oh, shit. Yeah. He's just from Canada. And this is the 1800s.
It's just a weird time. You just get your rocking chair delivered.
That's my answer for everything. It's the 1800s.
Honestly. But this was all very scary and very off-putting to everyone witnessing it.
Because they were like... What the fuck?
Well, and it's such a testament, too, to how everybody had this view of him.
Because look at him. He very clearly did these murders.
And then just sat in prison and was like, can I get a rocking chair?
Can you pick up my prime delivery? Can I have a sandwich, please?
And just acted fine. But then at night, he would wake up and he would scream in his sleep.
Yeah, that motherfucker was haunted. Tormented.
Good. In his sleep. They said he would thrash around, and the guards at first thought this was possibly him trying to ramp up for an insanity defense.
Sure. But it wasn't. I think it was him genuinely being tortured in his sleep by Blanche and Minnie.
Good. I hope it was. No, and I think that was him putting on that face during the day of being like, I don't give a shit, whatever.
But then at night, the demons came. Yeah, it's like Albert Fish.
Yeah. He was held in jail without bail, and he pled not guilty for both murders at his arraignment and preliminary hearings.
Lies. And when he made the pleas, the judge noticed he had a different reaction for both, which I think plays right into my theory of, like... how he looked at these two women.
When asked to plead for Blanche's murder, Theo looked away and apparently barely mumbled under his breath, not guilty.
Like wouldn't even look at the judge. When asked to plead to Minnie's murder, he was strong, clear, and loud.
Yeah. And looked him right in the eye. You're right.
It plays right into it. Yeah. Now, August 5th, during a court appearance, he was escorted from his cell.
And as he entered the courtroom via staircase, it was the first and only time that he was physically attacked by someone in the crowd.
Oh, shit. So he and the officer holding him were attacked by a man who the jailer was able to push away.
But this man came out of nowhere and was, like, about to push them down the staircase.
But this guy came right back with, quote, his right hand in his overcoat pocket as if on a weapon.
Uh-oh. And he rushed towards Theo. Now the jailer, it was like the chief jailer, A.J.
Sattler, was able to fight off this man again with some struggle.
But this man was just kicked out of the building.
No one got his ID and no one checked what weapon he had, if he had any.
And he was just sent on his way. I wonder if he was somebody that, I mean, he had to have been like connected to Minnie or Blanche.
Maybe a suitor, maybe a cousin, who knows?
It was so strange. That was the only time that someone was able to get to him to attack him, but the crowds were very angry.
Damn. And they were massive. People wanted blood.
And they actually had to get really creative eventually when bringing him in and out of the courtroom because it was dangerous.
After all, this was San Francisco's Jack the Ripper.
And he was called that in the press daily.
So people were just getting that. And this was right after Jack the Ripper in London.
And these are two young girls who were loved in the community.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Now, again, anybody called the demon of the belfry is going to be public enemy number one.
So they started posting fake court dates and times so that they could offset the crowd for his transport to courts.
And he was completely unfazed, calm, very quiet through all of this.
In fact, one reporter asked a jailer if they were worried that Theo might try to escape out of an empty window that they had sat him next to.
Because Theo was just like looking out the window and they were like, aren't you a little worried he's going to try to escape out there?
And the jailer said, he isn't that kind.
Huh. Like they were literally like, no, I'm not worried about that motherfucker.
Let's not underestimate this guy who's on trial for these two murders.
Because you've all underestimated him. Everybody he's ever met has underestimated him.
Right. Look what happened. So just before being transferred from the city prison to the county jail, Theo had to have his photo taken to be added to the San Francisco Rogues Gallery.
It's like all the mugshots. Sure. He apparently, quote, preened and posed and then asked for copies.
The fuck? Yeah. Like, dude, if you're not guilty of this, you wouldn't ask for copies.
You're not helping yourself. Yeah. And also, while the trial was going on, Theo told a friend who was visiting him that he would like to send his condolences to Blanche's family.
He wanted to send flowers and a card. Oh, that's so fucked up.
Yep. But not minis. No. Huh. Isn't that interesting?
Uh-huh. Yeah. He was thoroughly discouraged from doing this.
And this could be looked at as one of a few things.
He was immature and vain. Yep. And not really taking into consideration the seriousness of what he had done.
Or that he was disassociating from this entire thing because he was just...
I don't even know. Or that he's an evil motherfucker and wanted to have them have flowers from him in their home.
That's what I think. Just like the thing with the book.
It was an alibi, but I also think it was let me stand in front of this girl's sister that I just brutally murdered and she has no idea.
And she has no idea. Exactly. Exactly. The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.
But lately, life on the coast has taken a strange turn.
The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption.
His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant.
Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting.
I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos.
As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, I would like to address you all.
Legal proceedings have been initiated. Join me, Anna Richardson, and journalist Leo Schick for The Mystic and the Mayor as we investigate a story of power, corruption and magic.
Binge all episodes of The Mystic and the Mayor exclusively and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.
Start your free trial in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the Wondery app.
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Now, the crowds were shocked at his nonchalance as well.
They told the press that he looked completely unfazed by it all.
And in particular, he was seen yawning and expressing his, quote, obvious indifference while Dr. Bartlett, the medical examiner, was detailing the extent of the injuries inflicted upon both women.
Wow. He yawned. Wow. Yeah. Now, on September 3rd, 1895, District Attorney William Barnes made the opening statement in the People v. Durant.
He laid out the facts that Theodore Durant courted Blanche, was known to have made sexual advances towards her, and was witnessed by the entire nation as being with her and entering the church on the day she died.
He just let the facts, the evidence, and the witnesses do the job for him.
He was like, they're pretty convincing. I don't really have to do a whole lot.
And he was right. Also, Barnes was really aware that he was being touted as like that Theo was being touted as like a lunatic in the press and like a deviant.
Basically, like those are verbatim words.
And there was a ton of negative press about him and the public sentiment had very much turned against him. good so he didn't want to evoke any of that in his opening statement because he was like i'm gonna let this all speak for itself and if i look like i'm relying on this press stuff and this negative sentiment it will take away from the fact that this is really just a slam dunk case right which i think was a really good way to go about it and it worked out in the end yeah especially back then to have that kind of thought to like deal with to know how to deal with the media truly Now, they brought up Dr. John Bartlett, like I said, who performed the autopsies, and he actually went into a great deal about the horrific violence that Blanche had endured.
He was very thorough. He explained even the autopsy process, which was really cool.
If you read, like, I can even maybe post one of the pages in this book.
When he talks about it, he goes, I mean, it's pages of him going through like meticulously what he did during that autopsy.
Things that are like, I opened this and I looked in here and this is what I found and this means this.
So he made it so that the jury really understood the process and understood why his answers were the way they were, which was so smart.
Good for him. Because he brought them into the world.
He taught them how this goes. And then he said, and that, my friends, is why I can conclude that this happened.
Because I just told you this. I think it was such a smart way to go about it.
And it's very different than what I've seen back then.
Like it happened, obviously, but this was one of those cases where it was just like, wow, good on you.
You go, girl. So Officer George Russell was another one that I was like shocked by.
He was just one of the officers that was working the case, but he actually handmade a scale model of the Emanuel Baptist Church.
Wow. What? And it's spell free. My God.
Just to show the jury a visual representation of the crime scene.
That is crazy. And there's a picture of it in the book that I have and it's wild.
This is a school for ants. It literally, it looks like that.
So they brought in Minnie Edwards, who was Blanche's new friend there that she was at the streetcar stop with.
She testified to walking with Blanche from school that day that she went missing.
She testified to the clothing that she was wearing and that they were, in fact, the ones that were found in the Belfry rafters. and how she was approached by Theodore and they went to the church together.
She testified to the fact that the books found in the rafters, bound in twine, were the ones that Blanche was holding that day and that they were still bound because she had not gone home.
Oh. So... She also testified that Theo carried those books for her.
Elizabeth Crossett testified that she too, Elizabeth was our one that loved Theo.
She was going to help her off. She had testified that she had seen Theo and she said, and now I know I saw Blanche on that streetcar.
She said I was going to ask him for help off the streetcar, but he had exited with Blanche before I could.
Again, showing he was with Blanche. Yeah.
Henry Jacob Shelmont was the streetcar conductor that day, and he testified that he had seen Blanche and Theo together, just as Minnie had testified.
He said, quote, Lee. He then said, quote, And the dummy is like the seat.
Yep. So he's pointing out that he was being very touchy with her, very flirty with her.
Next, Martin Quinlan, David Clark, and Caroline Leak all testified that they'd seen Theo enter the church with Blanche on that afternoon, April 3rd, right before her time of death.
And Dr. Barrett was there to say, yes, that was her time of death.
Now, apparently, it was very hot in the court that day.
It was like a thousand degrees. The crowds were making it worse.
Like, they had tons of testimonies happening.
Too many people were in there. People were smoking in there, too.
Oh, God. Basically, everyone was suffocating.
And so one of the jury members, actually his name was Horace Smythe, he got angry at the judge and he was like, how can you let this continue under these insufferable conditions?
Like a circus. And then he said, I refuse to continue serving on this jury until conditions are improved.
Like, you need to change. He's like, I can't listen to this.
We love an aware king. We do. Know how you should be treated, all right?
And lay your boundaries out. Yeah. And so the judge did agree and was like, we have to stop this.
So they had to stop. And he said, I have to only let, like, he had to basically, like, go with the occupancy limits of the room because they were very over that.
He said that no, there was a ban on smoking in the courtroom.
And they made sure that there was fresh air and ice water for everybody.
So they made everything much more comfortable.
So the defense team had their work cut out.
Yeah. They were headed by Eugene Dupre and John Dixon.
They argued that Theo was actually at Cooper Medical School attending a lecture when this was going on.
Did anyone see him there? Well, they said they could provide lecture notes and roll call as proof.
Okay. Unfortunately, the lecture notes could not be proven to be taken by Theo.
And in fact, they did not match his handwriting.
So bye. And the roll call actually listed him as not present.
Basically, he wasn't marked as present because he wasn't there, but the roll taker didn't believe him to be absent, so they marked him to be, like, assumed present.
So many people have such faith in Theo. The wildest.
Crazy. Also, people in the lecture said they didn't see him there that day, but then a few of them said they might have seen him.
Yeah. Hardly anything concrete. That's beyond a reasonable doubt.
Essentially, the defense really didn't have anything to work with.
No. They would come out swinging and cross-examine with gusto, and then it would all just fall apart between their eyes.
Like, they would come out there with such confidence, and then it would just get taken apart.
Goodbye. In McConnell's book, they said, quote, their cross-examinations were endless fishing expositions launched out of a desperate desire to find something they could use to raise a reasonable doubt in the mind of just one juror.
It failed. Every witness was just completely pulled apart by the prosecution.
None of them could be certain about anything that would help prove Theo's innocence.
They even subpoenaed the entirety of Cooper Medical College, the class that they were in.
They could barely get anyone to even kind of remember maybe seeing him that day.
They got more who said that he was 100% not there.
Boom. There it is. So then they threw a Hail Mary and they put Theo on the stand, which is never a good idea.
But they actually didn't destroy their case completely at first.
He definitely didn't do a great job at the end.
Didn't you say he like wouldn't say what his birthday was?
Yes. So he was at first he was calm. He was cool.
He was collected. He was impeccably dressed, which does help in these scenarios.
Isn't that so sad? I know. He was very prepared ahead of time, so that helped him a lot.
They definitely prepped him completely ahead of time.
And he said anyone who said they saw him with Blanche or Minnie was mistaken.
Okay. So just a lot of mistaken people everywhere.
Yeah. That's not his problem. No. And this is when he wouldn't say whether his birthday was April 24th, 1871.
He just said, quote, I know the date of my birthday as a matter of history, just as a matter of record. what and they were like is that your fucking birthday you idiot yeah like what does that mean sure but like he had to be difficult yeah and it's like you that doesn't make you sound good doesn't help your case at all no So then he was cross-examined by Barnes, and his composure started to waver.
Barnes hammered him about all of the contradictory statements he had made since being arrested and on the stand.
He cross-examined him for two full days, and at the end, Barnes had successfully blown up Theo's alibis and his composure, for that matter.
So he was able to pick everything apart.
That medical college thing, you weren't there.
Yeah. you weren't not a single person blew it up definitely put it in the minds of the juries that this is he riled him up he got him rattled he got him to get a little angry he got him he did his job so they brought back up george king who was the janitor at the church the evenings that this was happening and he was one who saw theo after he had supposedly killed blanche He testified that when he saw him, he, quote, said, Huh.
What was he doing? He had just killed someone.
Now, in the end, the prosecution had several credible witnesses that were 100% sure about Theo being in Blanche's presence up until they walked into that church.
And the defense had not one person who would 100% say he was in that lecture at that time.
So they had nothing. Assistant District Attorney Edgar Peixoto, I believe his name is, said as much in his closing arguments.
He said, Okay. It means doubt as to whether when you bid your daughter, your sister, your wife, one near and dear to you, a farewell in the morning, and she is in her innocence, goes forth to her daily advocation, is she to return to you safe and well and undefiled?
Or is she to be lured by perfidity, cajolery, cunning, and persuasion of some fiend and man's hablements to such lone spot and there robbed of virtue and honor, murdered, defiled, and her body desecrated?
It means, are even your houses of God safe, or are they to be converted into carnal houses, receptacles for the victims of lustful murder?
Shit. Damn. Like, if you're in the jury, you're like, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Whatever you said. You're throwing up like a rock on sign.
Just absolutely, dude. On the afternoon of November 1st, 1895, the jury was sent to their chamber to deliberate and returned with a verdict after just 20 minutes.
Yeah, that's when you know. If you know, you know.
We, the jury, find William Henry Theodore Durant guilty of murder in the first degree.
Ooh. Now, according to the press, quote, Whoa.
And then I have a couple of little passages that I wanted to read from my book.
Let me open up to you. They were just interesting parts of the ending arguments.
And I just wanted to say, so who was it that did this one?
You might be able to hear the papers. And for that, I am sorry.
So one of the prosecution's ending arguments, they said this.
There they were alone, passion predominating in this perverted man asserted himself, a weak maiden fighting for her virtue and her honor, a pervert, fiend, and devil fighting to satiate an insatiable and overruling passion.
His strong arms grasped her, his fingers stiffened on her throat, her breath stopped, her struggle ceased, and Theodore Durant was a murderer.
Whoa. I was like, damn. Like, you're trying to write a book out here, sir.
I was like, that's a lot. And then I have another part.
I believe this is, yeah, this is Mr. Barnes.
So this is the head prosecutor. Okay. It was not committed under a blind and furious impulse for revenge, some real or fancied wrong to his persons, his property, or his character, not from motives or gain, not in the commission of a robbery, nor yet under the hot spur of jealousy, that hell of the injured lover.
It was in every sense a cold-blooded, vicious murder.
It was without the slightest provocation or apparent excuse or palatation."
So he's literally like, this is one of, because they, again, they were shocked that this kind of murder was something that was happening now.
Yeah. Was that like, there usually needs to be a reason, like a tangible reason.
And there really wasn't one here. And there really wasn't.
So this verdict was definitely kind of a catharsis for the injustice that came from the actual Jack the Ripper case in London only a few years before this.
Right, because it actually had an ending.
It had an ending. And again, this kind of murder was new and scary.
It wasn't for money. It wasn't for gain.
It was murder for murder. Murder for a body.
Murder to hurt and maim and shame. And that's it.
And they'd only seen that in Jack the Ripper.
So days after the verdict had been read, the coroner, William Hawkins, this is very interesting, one of the coroners, got a letter from a man by the name of George Reynolds.
This letter was a bombshell. Is it the Reynolds pamphlet?
The Reynolds pamphlet. That's all I can think of.
So it could be considered that. He claimed that he and several other men had actually been recruited by the defense to by Theodore's defense team to, quote, put together some stories that would give Theo an alibi for each of the two murders.
Ooh, you're in trouble. This letter also said the man was planning to kill himself and wanted to confess his sins before he did.
And that's why he was writing this letter.
Oh, shit. Detectives could not locate the man by that name.
He could have been using a false name. Yeah.
But the letter, they said, included a lot of details that would have been unknown to the public.
So they believe it was authentic. That's for real.
Yeah. How creepy. Isn't that wild? I hope that man didn't end his life.
I know. It's sad. But after he was found guilty, Theo started going on a rampage writing letters to anyone that he felt could help him in his appeals.
Mm-hmm. He was ready to appeal it. He said he was innocent, he claimed it constantly, and he ended up taking his appeals to the U.S.
Supreme Court. I knew he was going to do that.
By October 1897, it was clear that he was starting to lose his resolve to fight the appeals, and according to the New York Times at the time, quote, "...he has betrayed signs of nervousness and irritability, and even the visits of his parents have been received with an indifference which has shocked his visitors."
By November 8, 1897, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the earlier decision.
So that was his final appeal. Yeah. Leading up to his execution date, Theo's personality took a sharp turn.
He was very agitated, very unpredictable.
He was mad. He was constantly yelling about his innocence.
But then when the day came, everyone said he was completely calm and completely accepting.
Ooh. Yeah. That's eerie. Scary. Scary. Now, January 7th, 1897, 24-year-old Theodore Durant.
24 years old. He was 24, guys. You just dropped a straight-up bomb on all of us.
I know, I just had to. I was like, I gotta, 24 years old.
Y'all, that's younger than me. That's young.
That is real young. He was visited by a priest, and guards said he was heard saying, no, I will not confess the murders because I am not guilty.
You are, though. He's guilty. He was executed by hanging at San Quentin Prison at 10.37 a.m. that morning.
And on the gallows, he addressed the crowd that had gathered and said, quote, Probably not.
Um, no, I don't think so. No, whenever you're up there saying I forgive the reporters, that's because you know, you did it.
Exactly. You're not up there innocent as a newborn babe saying I forgive the press who gives a shit.
You're not like no one's asking you to do you're doing that for show for because you know, you did it and you know that it's fine to say you forgive them because they were telling the truth.
It's always surprising when people back then don't confess before they're killed or executed because they held it, like, religion in such high regard.
And especially Theo. Yeah, he did. It's weird that he was like, nope, I'm not admitting to it.
If you think about it, he held religion in such high regard, but then what he did in the house of God is... whoa like that obviously he held it in a different kind of regard because if he was able to do that in in the laud's house yeah he obviously didn't give a shit about it much but apparently um san quentin authorities had a lot of trouble finding a crematorium that would accept his body i love that so much he was actually unburied for over a week while they were trying to find them and finally one in pasadena was willing to do it which i was like all right fine Okay, Pasadena.
And as a last little thing for this, because it's such a wild case and it just like this blew my mind.
So according to an article by Katie Dowd from 2006, she wrote it for the San Francisco Gate.
We'll put that link in there too. It's called The Tale of the Demon of the Belfry.
During Theo's trial, a woman that was from Oakland came, was so obsessed with this trial.
Like this is just to show you how, how closely people followed this like it was nationwide people were obsessed with this this lady from oakland was so obsessed with it that she was having her husband read her the full trial transcripts every day and it would take like hours yeah because they were long Was he like, why the fuck are you so interested in this?
Well, finally, he just started reading her the summaries because he was like, here's the information.
He returned home. She found out. He returned home one day.
All the furniture was gone. And there was a note that said she was dissatisfied with her home and wanted a change.
What? She literally divorced him and left because he read her the summaries of the trial transcripts and not the whole thing.
Are you shitting me? And that's for real.
That's for real. That's straight up, like, truths.
Yes. What? The fuck? Like, that was... She would have listened to True Crime Podcast.
She would have listened to all of them. She's a lot.
She's me. She's a lot. Oh. And she took all the furniture.
I'm like, how did you arrange for that, Chica?
She left. She was out of there. You read me the summaries.
This isn't the marriage I thought it was.
She said, for better, for worse, and no summaries in between.
No summaries. Wow. What a wild lady. Yeah.
So I... Fully believe that Theodore Durant was guilty.
Same. There was a lot of evidence, be it circumstantial but also physical.
He was seen with them last. He was seen with them at the times of their death.
I mean, he was seen with Minnie at 8 o'clock entering the church.
Her time of death was around 8.30. Yeah.
Hella. Yeah, and then he was seen leaving and then showed up to a party late and disheveled.
Yeah. Like, that tells you everything you need to know.
Yeah, come on. And it's like somebody who's familiar with the church.
Yep. We know that. He was missing a shoe from one of his shoe pairs.
That's crazy. The killer had stepped in the blood with one shoe.
Did they ever determine if that was Minnie or Blanche's purse that was on his person?
I don't think they did. I didn't find anything.
But it's gotta be. But it's gotta be one of them.
Yeah. I would assume. But yeah, I fully believe that he did it.
I fully believe that we will unfortunately probably never know why he did it, like, fully.
But I think your theory makes sense. I theorize, and I think he... Something was off.
There was some darkness in there. And you think the meningitis kind of... I think the meningitis could have definitely, like... agitated whatever was off exactly i think it could have like kind of lit the spark there was some darkness in there and that lit the spark and boom can meningitis so meningitis makes your brain like swell is that what you're saying yeah and it's it can cause a lot of neurological damage okay so yeah so maybe in the in the frontal lobe there yeah and they can they found they believe he had a lot of neurological damage from his bout but he was um he was cremated He was cremated.
Oh, that sucks that they couldn't ever like dig him up and check his brain out to see what was going on there.
I know. I mean, by now that thing would be.
That's true. Yeah. Literally nothing. Or like, you know, too bad they didn't do it back then.
They could have done it back then though.
They should have. Yeah. Because something was up there.
Same with Bundy. We've said that before too.
We said, I mean, about a lot of them, to be honest.
Like, I really do think we should take more time to look at these brains.
Yeah. Yeah, but then again, like, when you look, I go back and forth, because I'm like, is there something?
Or is it just... Or are people just evil, like, in their spirit?
It's, like, who you are. Maybe it's, I think it's a case-by-case situation.
That's the thing. I wonder if, like, there is anything that's a common tie.
I don't know if there is. I don't know if it's just...
I don't know. But, like, head damage and, like, TDIs a lot tend to lead to... But why does it lead to some and not to others?
That's true. Like, why is somebody who had, like, six concussions not out there murdering everybody?
But this guy who bonked his head once... is killing everybody yeah it's something that already has to be there like with but that's the thing meningitis what is it was already there but exactly what is no i feel like they're that common link we have just not found it maybe it's not in the brain maybe it's just in the in the soul it's in the soul There she is.
There's a woo girl. There's a woo girl. I know.
David, our friend again, was saying, he was like, I forget that you're into new age shit.
I was like, I don't think I'm into new age shit.
I'm just weird. You are. I love it though.
You're just a spiritual girly. Just a woo girly, you know?
Just a cottagecore witch over here. There you go.
So what do you guys think? I know. What are your thoughts on this?
And I'll post the, I'll make sure. What will I do?
What am I going to do? I don't know. I'm going to make sure that the photos are posted.
I'll take photos of them and send them over.
So they'll be with this on the Insta. On the interwebs.
On the Insta. Well, guys, with all that being said, we're totally freaking interested in what you have to say about this.
So let us know. And we hope you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that any of this because, ooh, that's crazy.
Theo did it. Yeah, I mean, he did everything except write a book that said, if I did it.
Yeah, he definitely did it. I think he did it.
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