Hey weirdos, it's Ash.
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Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash.
And I'm Alayna. And this is Morbid!
it's morbid it's morbid in the what time is it mid morning it's afternoon it's early afternoon afternoons yeah yeah so we don't really have a a song for that it's morbid on an afternoon whoa it doesn't slap all right i i mean we can work on it we can we can kind of workshop that i have heartburn so i feel like it's limiting me right now she's living in an elka seltzer world right now so you know you're about to turn 27 and then you just can't put hot sauce on your your eggs anymore.
Everything just falls apart.
What the fuck? The only thing I've eaten today is my little breakfast burrito that I made, which slapped.
But you had hot sauce.
But I put the tiniest little bit of hot sauce on it, and I can't take it anymore.
You're living in an angry tummy world.
I know. Unfortunately.
My tum's fine. It's just my esophagus that's being a little bitch. Because of your tum.
Well, maybe I need like spurting that acid right back up there.
Yeah, I don't like it.
Remember when we looked into what heartburn really is?
Yeah, it's a little scary when you really look at what it is.
We won't get into it right now, but you guys should look into it yourselves.
Look it up. Look it up.
Fuck yourselves up and look at it.
It's pretty gross. It involves fermentation, right?
Yeah, there's a lot of really gross things that happen in your gut.
What are you doing over there?
I'm just fixing a wire because it was in my face and I felt like I was getting slapped by a wire.
That's kind of funny.
The wire. Because I'm trying to drink my coffee.
yeah you drink your coffee while i drink my fucking alka seltzer over here i'll drink my i feel oh yummy from dead sled yeah from dead sled check that out yummy um i have a flavor to try later i hope that my heartburn goes away so that i can try it i hope you can too because i love dead sled coffee who doesn't tm tm i love tm like that's somebody else i'm like only i can love of them just me i own the love of them you know why not what's up man uh what's up what's up is that we're going back in time today what what to my favorite kinds of things which is old timey you love old timey things where is in europe
uh no it is not america uh it's in america and it's in you know our neck of the woods a little bit oh yeah okay just a little bit okay you could drive there i guess so it's there so this is a wild one it has to do with you know uh how shitty the death penalty is and how really shitty it was back then okay it has to do with mental illness and how it was handled back then not well bitch and it has to do with whether or not somebody was executed for a crime they potentially didn't so it's a it's a big one that always stresses me out a little bit this one's this one's a lot i will say this one's a lot
so hang in so we're gonna be talking about elroy kent and the murder of delia congan okay now elroy kent is our convicted murderer okay here so i want to talk about him first just because he's the one that we were going to talk about delia of course but But I just want to bring up Elroy because you should know what we're working with here and why it was such a shock that he eventually receives the death penalty.
Okay. Because, whoa.
Like, he had a lot going on.
So Elroy Kent was born in Rutland County, Vermont in 1878.
He was born to George and Caroline Kent.
According to the 1880 census, he had one sister, Belkent, but later he would end up having six more siblings.
Oh, shit. a big family that census really popped off it really did but for back then that was just like normal you know that that's a family yeah that was like having two kids exactly so kent himself said that he always hated school when he was younger he was kind of a troublemaker he couldn't really focus and he would run away from home a lot and he probably just to get some peace and quiet but each time he did this he would either be tracked down by the local constable and just returned back to the family or he would just take it upon himself to come home he was like i never really ran away
for a long time i just did it all the time no exactly no when he did bother to show up at homer's school he spent a lot of time like i said getting in trouble he liked to prank people he just liked to cause havoc he liked to cause a lot of trouble for people okay once he actually set fire to a neighbor's plow when he was younger like a kid that's a dick move uh and it was being being stored in the man's barn and he only intended to do it.
This is why like his reasoning skills were not great even from like, you know, kids reasoning skills are not great anyways, but like his were shockingly bad because he was like, I thought this was a joke lighting fire to this plow in a barn.
Yeah. But like we should work on your sense of humor.
Yeah. Like luckily it was caught, but if it wasn't caught it definitely would have spread very quickly and burned the entire barn down and probably the surrounding structures oh my god and he just like couldn't understand that he was like it's a joke guys get over it do you know like roughly how old he was i think when he did this he was somewhere in like the 12 range okay i feel like he should know yeah yeah you absolutely should now not only was he a pain in the ass at this point getting into trouble running away all the time just causing issues for everybody around him him but kent's actual
criminal career began way earlier than this he began his criminal career when he was just seven years old yes at seven years old he and his friend from school stole a cooking stove for a hut how the fuck did they manage to even move a cooking stove no idea and so they did that they got caught but he was seven so they weren't gonna like throw him in prison for that they were just like wow that's really bad don't steal things don't steal ovens you little But later, when he was in his teens, he stole a horse from a neighbor in Brookline, Vermont and rode it for several miles, but then just jumped
off it, let the horse go and hopped a train bound for Townsend.
Okay, I feel like he's running from something.
Yeah, and that's the thing.
You can't really find out a lot about that.
There's just not a lot about his family life.
Yeah, I mean, 1800s.
But once he was in Townsend, he actually found work there.
He found short -term work chopping wood.
and while he's there he breaks into the train station at night and steals three mileage books that he later gave to friends and people he knew okay now mileage books are books that drive like train conductors would use to log their hours and their mileage I know I just motioned like a car but I motioned a car wheel like I was like steering wheel driving well you don't know how to drive a train you know who knows maybe I don't think they have that but you know but I who am I who am i that's just my little pantomime for driving something anything even though like a plane i'm like yep this is how
we do it she's really going going crazy on the 10 and 2 there now it's like a ship's wheel of like wow but these books were not valuable monetarily but like they were just valuable to these drivers and to like administration purposes purposes like for administration purposes so it's just a very strange thing to steal and kind of a dick move a very dick move it'd be like now if somebody stole your google calendar yeah it's like they just stole shit that's important to you because you need it to like function just function like do your job like it's like that's all and it's like he couldn't sell
those he wasn't making any money off of them he just stole them to be a dick yeah you know um and they're also very clearly marked as property of the railroad so like i don't know a lot of people that are going to want to take those off your hands because like that's bad right um so they were quickly recovered luckily okay because people like that he gave them to were like i don't want this and would just leave it somewhere like that's not mine because why would you want that it's just such a strange thing to do so and because he did this he was quickly arrested and sentenced to 20 months in the house
of corrections because that is a he stole shit and he broke into a train station yeah So wrong The casual theft of a horse Which by the way was quickly recovered as well Yay And the theft of completely valueless mileage books These are just like Petty crimes In the grand scheme of things Like you know like they're not violent Again he's really not doing anything That he's gaining any kind of value for himself He's just doing it to be a dick And this was like stuff he did when he was a teenager And it was just kind of like okay He's just Elroy This is Elroy.
This is who he is. But in 1896, when he was 18 years old, he was brought before a judge for something different.
He was brought before a judge for trying to burglarize a store in Brookline, which we're starting to escalate.
Yes, we can see. That's the thing.
When you were saying like, it's just like petty crime.
It's like slowly. totally yeah it's getting worse and worse and he claimed that he was like i did not try to rob this man's store that wasn't my intent he did admit to the judge that he had destroyed several of the man's beehives that's fucking rude which again just rude shit and like wow you're really you're playing with fire there buddy yeah like that's just really rude and he had broken a light in the store he admitted to that so i was just being disruptive as hell is what you're telling me and And what happened was his uncle ended up paying a fine and he was free to go after this.
Oh, man. But only two months later, he was caught again trying to break into the home of a man named Royal Mars.
Yes. His name is Royal?
Yes. Mars. Me too. That's an awesome name.
I am Royal Mars, baby.
And you don't get away with trying to break into Royal Mars' house.
No, sirree. I don't know if you thought you would.
I never did. I never thought that.
I never did. i don't know why elroy thought he could i was born with the knowledge that you do not attempt to break into royal's home i thought we all were right to be honest but maybe that's a more not a more modern knowledge that we are born with maybe they didn't have it then but for this one he was sentenced to jail and i don't know how many months because i couldn't find the exact it just said many months many many months many months however you feel is many that's how many that could be anything yeah so at this point he's just a pain in the ass he's kind of an asshole yeah but so far sure
he's escalating but he's not really stealing again anything of value he's not reselling things he's not hurting people physically and of course it's like the 1800s so nobody's like hey what's going on with you like why why are you doing this why are you why are you taking random random shit because it did seem at times that the act of stealing was equally or more important as the value of items that he was stealing it seemed like he just liked doing it to do the act of breaking in somewhere the act of stealing worthless shit that would just make someone's life like slightly inconvenient right
like a very strange set of events that is weird but this changed in in 1899 when he was 21 years old he said it's the brink of the 1900s and what's crazy to me exactly he's like we're entering a new era but what's crazy to me is he's getting older and escalating and i'm like so your punishment gets greater the older you get yeah so why are you escalating your crimes so that the punishment you get is going to be far worse de -escalate so he's 21 years old 1899 and that year he was caught robbing a store in milton vermont no he just just broke a light it's just broke a light no he stole seven gold
watches a suit of clothes a hat and a pair of shoes and he thought he was gonna get away with that yeah damn and the thing that's well this one's wild to me because during the while he was in the middle of robbing this store um a night watchman saw him and the night watchman fired his double -barreled shotgun gun at him hit him in the leg and the back with buckshot what i was like whoa in the back you said yeah holy cow he was left in really bad shape and the injury from the shotgun he he had to end up being hospitalized for several weeks from it wow but he recovered and once he was finished healing
his crimes had earned him three years in the state prison in windsor straight to jail so they were like you feeling good cool you're going to prison you know those photos sitting in your phone the ones that make you smile every time you scroll past them well at smallwoodhome .com they believe that you deserve better than that smallwood home transforms your favorite memories into stunning gallery quality artwork that tells your story All you have to do is upload your photo to smallwoodhome .com, choose your style from classic framed prints to elegant wrapped canvases, and they'll handle the rest. With natural
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Okay. Maybe he got off for like good behavior and maybe like time served in the hospital or something.
So either way, he was sentenced to the three years in the state prison in Windsor.
He did serve some time.
Yeah. Now, after he was released from there, he traveled to Brattleboro.
Where's that? Brattleboro.
And is that a Maine?
I don't know. Brattleboro?
I need to look it up now because I need to know.
I'll vamp. Just vamp.
I don't go to Maine that often, so I don't know a lot about it.
I've been to like, I think Portsmouth is Maine.
Or it's Vermont. It's Vermont.
We're in Vermont. I only went to Vermont one time.
Vermont's cool. Yeah, I liked it.
Yeah, we like Vermont.
Anyway. Brattleboro, Vermont.
Okay. So he traveled to Brattleboro and he was traveling there to visit his cousin, W .G.
Kent. I always love how everyone's name back then was like W .G.
It wasn't a full name.
I like it, but like, it's nothing really goes goes past royal mars no nothing will beat that and i obviously know that like they had real names and that those are initials wait what they did yeah oh like i'm not saying like his name was wg like that's i know that but i like how they referred to them as that yeah it's like like dw exactly my favorite or my arthur heads out there what was so while staying with that family his cousin his actual family wg he learned that his cousin wg had recently got a payment of some sort of 50 dollars oh honey big money yeah so one evening while everyone was asleep
elroy kent just goes through his cousin's shit looking for that money and he's you're staying in my gd house wg's house and he only ended up finding 12 of it but i'm sure he stole it and he fled the house in the middle of the night what a shit bag I don't know Elroy I don't like you I'm saying so the next morning when WG realized my cousin has stolen all my money or $12 he reported it to the chief of police he was like fuck this guy I'd like to report a crime he said fuck this guy fuck blood my cousin is a asshole like blood is not thicker than water my friends it's not thicker than money says,
ready? I can tell you that.
Blood might be thicker than water, but it's harder to clean when it spills.
Oh. That was her fucking quote this year.
Shit. Blood may be thicker than water, but it's harder to clean when it spills.
I was like, who okayed that?
You're like, damn, just casual murder references.
I was like, Andy, what?
Shit. Wow. Okay. Damn.
But like Teresa says.
Yeah. WG felt that.
WG felt that in his heart of hearts.
9 -1 -1, I'd like to report a crime yes so the chief of police traced elroy's movements back to his mother's house in manchester now he's getting his mama involved so they call caroline kent and they're like hey your son who has been a jackass his whole life and has been a pain in all of our asses he was like what we know he's there we're like traced him here and caroline was like no he's not home she's aiding and abetting but oops because they searched the home and they found him hiding in the basement oh my god it's giving goodfellas right and he was taken to new feign jail so by the time he was sent
to new feign for taking 12 out of his cousin's belongings yeah oh wait also i meant blow not goodfellas don't yell at me that's okay i'm sharing goodfellas somebody hid in a basement i love that probably i do too but uh but kent had become kind of a notorious notorious local criminal but like mainly due to this like myth he had created around himself like right because like we're saying he did some shit but it wasn't like cray cray but it was all more like head scratching shit see mikey mikey sneeze it was a cute one it was it's okay you do not god damn it mikey shut up how dare you there's no sneezing
in the workplace unpublish this episode fuck it ruined it so like i said he's not all his shit that he's doing is more just like chin scratching head scratching i'm confused by him kind of shit more less than like wow he's like physically harming people and like like nobody's a violent yeah like it's more just people are like oh my god it's that elroy kent he's kooky put your 50 away but and according According to a news report from January 1902, it said, Kent has a dark record. He knows it and does not hesitate to talk about it.
Indeed, he relates his experiences on occasions with considerable gusto.
So they're basically like, that man loves to talk about his shit.
Like he's just running around being like, yes.
Dark passenger, that's me.
But by the time he was in his early 20s, he had been arrested and jailed at least six times at this point.
Damn. And had spent more than a quarter of his life locked up for petty crimes.
All of it. So he kind of looked at jail stretches as just like inconvenient at this point.
And he also just kind of like loved that everybody was like, oh, that's that, that kooky criminal Elroy Kent.
Like he loved his reputation.
So he was just like, he's, he's honestly kind of giving, and again, I've never seen it, but it's giving peeky blinders.
Like, like, like it's giving, like he likes that reputation.
Yeah. I could see that.
He's one of the outsiders, right?
They're definitely more violent, I would say.
Well, they're more violent than him at this point.
Oh, no. Yeah. But I would say you're right.
Like the kind of like.
Like that attitude.
He's walking around like he owns the place.
Yeah. You know, so yeah.
The gall. You know, red right hand is playing at all times when he's walking.
Love, love, love. So he actually said to a reporter in 1902, because they would like, press would ask him and like be like, hey.
What's your deal? He's still being kooky, Elroy.
Roy and he was like I am I mean really what else happens in Vermont yeah exactly at that point that like nothing yeah so he said the two things I love best are whiskey and railroad rides let's go baby he's living life now we're right now being like Elroy Kent he's a kooky guy yeah oh it's gonna change okay I'm gonna it's gonna change but I believe there are extenuating extenuating yeah there it is extenuating factors that come into play later that I think were a little ignored okay i also wonder if he actually committed the crime that he is um was convicted for and i wonder what you guys will think
so the paper said poor poor elroy kent finding enjoyment only in whiskey and railroad rides and seeing nothing before him but prison life okay so everybody just kind of gave up on him too they were like this guy's a loser and he's just gonna be in prison forever that's sad which again he didn't really give them much of a choice but to look at him that way truth so the theft of the money from his cousin actually resulted in him so he went to prison for he was sentenced to the three -year prison stint he didn't serve the entire thing like i said i don't know exactly how much he served of it but he
ended up having to go back to prison because they had give him given him parole for the cousin stealing and he broke it he broke the parole because he robbed a store in milton while he was on stop it and actually This was the first example of someone violating parole in Vermont's history.
Whoa, look at that.
Good old Elroy. Yeah.
So it was actually Governor William Stickney who was the one who insisted he be sent back to prison to finish his sentence out because he said he just had a flagrant disregard for the law.
Truth. And he did. Yeah.
So 100 % I'm on the governor's side.
Go, go, go. So once he was released finally from Windsor again, Kent found Brattleboro authorities waiting for him with a warrant for his arrest right away because they said hey you violated parole after we let you out for stealing your cousin's twelve dollars but now you have to go back to jail and finish that sentence ooh because they were like we got you out we paroled you you broke the parole you went back to jail for violating the parole and now you've come out we're gonna make you finish off that sentence yeah that sucks it was only a few more months in new fame at this point but now we
had to go back okay so we just got out and they were like ding ding ding you're going to that one now goodbye bye now on december 6 1902 he actually escaped from prison of course he did of course honestly i was waiting for that yeah that was the the obvious next he has the vibe of somebody that escapes he does now this is where shit gets wild and this is where his life changes again from being a petty criminal who we can all go oh my goodness that elroy he's so kooky that's funny this is when it turns and this is when something happened that makes it turn in my opinion at least yeah sure so he
escapes from prison and he hops on a train in west dumberston headed away from the city everything's going according to plan everything's smooth he's hanging out on this railroad car he's thinking about the whiskey he's gonna have he's like my two favorite things i'm excited i'm free and then someone on the train car looks at him and recognizes him and calls him right the fuck out he freaks out thinking everyone else is going to hear this and everyone else is gonna recognize him and he does not want to go back to prison because now he's thinking like i'm just gonna get away from here and start
living my life so he jumped from the moving train and it was as it was approaching williamsville station he jumps out and his head hit one of the railroad ties oh and they and according to the boston daily globe in 1902 it hit with great force you would think now according to reports that came out later elroy had sustained a skull fracture when he hit the tracks holy shit he hit he had a skull fracture and he lay unconscious on the tracks for several hours oh my god he woke up no one helped him he just woke up and he wandered away to a nearby farmhouse and when he got to this farmhouse the owner
of the home called the local doctor dr pp white and i know i saw ash's face i had to now when he arrived when the doctor came he saw that Kent not only had a skull fracture, but he was like, this man has a piece of rotten wood that was driven into his brain when he fell.
I'm sorry, what? This man has a skull fracture from diving out of a moving train.
And when that happened, somehow a piece of rotten wood had been driven into his brain, not just his skull, his brain.
He basically had like a road road pick lobotomy literally holy shit so the doctor took out as much wood as he was able to and dressed the wounds and just kind of like was like you're gonna die i hope you're gonna survive this and the next day the doctor saw him again and he was there to kind of examine the wound make sure it was make sure something was happening like drain everything do what he had to do during this whole thing he discovers that quote the wood had been driven through the top of the the head diagonally through the brain to the base of the nose what how is he even functioning a piece
of wood two and eight seven eighths inches long and an inch in diameter was removed how is he functioning two and one fourth ounces of brain tissue were cut off and a piece of gauze just a yard square was packed into the opening they put gauze into his brain so as you can see anything that happens from here on out likely the result of some mental illness and some severe like cognitive issues i was just gonna say that's like the most traumatic brain injury i think i've have ever heard of which does not excuse anything that happens later but means that he should have been sent to a hospital for anything
that had happened after this and probably not executed for anything that happened after this so this is honestly what's sad is if they had sent him to a hospital it probably would have been worse i know it's true it's very true especially back then you know now we it's it obviously it's impossible for us to sit here and say for sure that any of this that this injury that he got when he jumped out of the train affected his behavior and like impossible but like impossible for us to like totally sit there and save 100 yeah we're not doctors but like come on it seems like that would have a pretty
big issue like effect on what was going on like please sit there and tell me with two inches of wood stuck into the middle of your fucking cranium that you'd act normal feels like this and what we know is that by 1903 his behavior and his thinking was becoming very disordered i'm very unpredictable enough for officials at the prison where he was brought back to after this oh my god they just threw him back in prison but the officials actually had him transferred to this from the state prison in windsor to the quote unquote this is what they called it hospital for the insane in waterbury sure now
that was because the officials at the uh prison were like something's wrong he's a different like this is a different beast like that's got to go that way was he like violent now i think he was becoming so disordered he was like unpredictable he was bizarre and he's still i mean he still has rotten and wood in his brain correct and and pieces of his brain were taken out oh my god like that yeah holy shit this is really wild insane this case did bring as you'll find out like at the end of it like this brought up a lot of discussion about one the death penalty as a whole to how you know executing
the like what they referred to as the criminally insane back then and also just like Like what we're going to see is like there's this was kind of a circumstantial case.
Yeah. So it's like and it's kind of based off of stuff that it's like you executed this guy.
Yeah. You didn't even really know if this is like oh I don't know about this one.
Oh no. So they did bring up a lot of discussion and it did also lead to like the death penalty in Vermont like stopping.
Really? Like this was at least part of the discussion.
It was cited many times.
Wow. While people were fighting to get the death penalty abolished.
Abolished. that's the word I was looking for.
Thank you. No problem.
And it also gets brought up now as like a way of being like the death penalty is barbaric.
Like look what happened here.
Wow. So this case really did have a lot to do with that, which I guess is the positive that comes out of it.
Because this is what I don't understand when some people don't like old timey cases because I'm sitting here right now like, holy shit, what?
It leads to so much. It does.
And it's like this was before the forensic, you know, science boom that had happened.
So it's it's interesting to see the scrappy way in which cases had to be solved and what happened when you didn't have the tools to solve it correctly and what comes out of that.
I just think that's really interesting.
Don't worry. My case this week has a lot of forensic DNA.
There you go. So, you know, we're, we're balancing it out.
I like it. Yeah. And what's the, and we haven't even talked about Delia yet.
We're going to get to Delia who is the victim in this case.
And it's like, she also like, this is, there's a lot here.
There's a lot here.
There's a lot of different victims here i was just gonna say it's sad the whole case is very very sad but sometime in the evening hours of because he's been transferred to the hospital now in the evening hours of august 12th 1905 he had spent 18 months in confinement at this point in the hospital he escaped from the hospital disappeared out into the night the press went wild immediately they're really terrified Terrified.
Pretty terrified. Again, at this point, he hasn't been outwardly violent in his crimes still.
But I'm sure people were worried.
But now they're a little worried.
But what they really went after was criticizing the hospital and criticizing the state for the administrative and security failure.
Yeah. Like, why was he left alone?
Yeah. Like, what's happening here?
Why was that allowed to happen?
Now, according to reports, quote, in order to make his escape, this was in the Rutland Daily Herald, by the way.
Or excuse me. no it was in the saint albin's daily messenger the next one is in the herald excuse me uh it said in order to make his escape he was obliged to unlock three doors and make his way out through an attic window which was not barred y 'all so they were like why was that able to happen we gotta we gotta fix these things and in hospital staff just checked his cell during the morning rounds and they he just wasn't there and it's also like why were there not like rounds on rounds on rounds Exactly and they made note of that they saw that he had procured in some way a new suit of clothes and his old
one was found in its usual place which is just outside the cell door.
Yikes. So they're like how did he even get new clothes?
What was going on in there?
Do you believe that possibly he was helped?
I don't think so I think he just was able to walk through three doors and up into an unbarred window and was like bye.
Because he still had some you know he wasn't like you know unfunctioning you know at this point like he was functioning But his behavior and his thinking was definitely scattered and mightily different than what it was before.
So once he had escaped and they had discovered that he escaped, Sheriff F .H.
Tracy was sent from Montpelier to Waterbury to lead the search for him.
He told reporters a basic description of Elroy.
He said his height is five feet, four inches, weight 160 pounds.
he has hazel eyes and brown hair he wore a light mustache when last seen has a deep scar on the left side of his forehead I bet he does two inches long one inch one half inch wide and one half inch deep at lower end he also has scars on the back remember from being shot with a buck shot and six shot scars on the left leg or on the right leg six yeah oh my god he was shot in like six times or it's a buck shot so it's like I think those are the ones and I should probably probably look it up before i say this but i'll look it up i think though i believe those are the ones that it like um like several
pieces shoot out oh like it explodes a little bit oof that's i'm gonna look it up absolutely terrible it does sound pretty terrible um i keep feeling that in my egg i think yes so it's a um it's a big shock it's like shotgun shells for hunting game i guess or buckshot and uh basically it says the most commonly produced buckshot shell is a 12 gauge which we've heard of yeah um and they hold eight pellets inside of them so when they hit it's like the pellets explode like it's one of those things or when they shoot it the pellets explode i think yeah schematics i'm not completely familiar with all
that but i believe that's like a very rudimentary way of saying it i like that word rudimentary um but but basically when you shoot someone with it with a buckshot they're gonna be they're gonna have several scars they're gonna get fucked up yeah it's not gonna be great so he had they explained his description but unfortunately investigators lost his trail pretty quickly and he didn't really come back into their focus until like two months later oh shit that's when his brother uh lualin i think it's called lualin it's called i said it's it's pronounced is what i i meant um his brother luelin reported
that elroy had attacked him oh no reported it to a police now according to news reports on the morning of september 29th both of them the two brothers apparently elroy had been like with yeah uh they had been transported a load of potatoes to the market in nearby rockingham and had returned with supplies and some provisions like flour sugar sugar and apparently liquid fire what is liquid fire i looked this up and i cannot find an actual response i think it could mean many things i could it could be like oil of some kind like i think it's something like that but they called it liquid fire which sounds
like it sounds like wildfire from like game of thrones like i feel like it's like this green glowy liquid that they have it i'm like why do you have that for real it just makes me think of baked alaska there you go like wood fire you know i don't know no later that evening uh i guess lualyn's young son george said he heard shouts and groans outside the house so he went out there to investigate what was going on and according to him he said about quote 40 rods from his house which thanks to dave i now knows 220 yards um to fly 40 rods dave dave knows all he does apparently george kent the son found
the family wagon overturned and he saw a large pool of blood next to it oh no so a little bit further away he found his father lying beside a creek with his nose broken a large gas gash in the back of his neck and his face and head badly cut oh no that's very violent yeah now once he'd regain consciousness um lulin told police that he and elroy had been out on the road they got into an argument and the argument scared the horses so the horses ran off when this happened the wagon overturned according to lulin uh the wagon flipped with him underneath it now when that happened the force of that drove
an iron bar into his neck dude what the fuck yeah and when he He asked Elroy, he was like freaking out asking Elroy to pull the metal bar out of his neck.
Can we stop with the impalement of everyone?
He said that Elroy, quote, tried to drive it in still farther.
And then he said he lost consciousness and couldn't remember anything after that.
But when he came to later, he said Elroy was gone and he had taken Llewellyn's wallet.
That's your brother, dude.
Dude, so after all this petty theft, generally nonviolent crimes, everything is turned now.
We're getting violent.
Because if his brother was to be believed, Elroy didn't just attack his brother and steal his wallet.
He had tried to kill him.
And it kind of seems like maybe he thought he was dead when he left. I think he probably did.
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now luckily elroy was arrested about three weeks later in hadham connecticut a local constable actually spotted him crossing a railroad bridge and just recognized who he was just elroy still walking out across railroad bridges elroy still just doing whatever the hell he wants to do i would never ever approach another railroad ever again no he loves railroads he does but like even after that i love it the love is deep you can take the boy from the railroad road but but you literally cannot literally from the boy it's still in his head accurate so the constable questioned him and during the course
of the questioning he determined that elroy was definitely responsible for a burglary that had also occurred the day before in town oh another one yeah uh confirmation of this came quickly when he searched his pockets and discovered all the stolen shit from the house oh my god elroy so he was confirmed to be elroy kent and the constable contacted sheriff tracy who traveled to connecticut and brought him back to vermont my goodness so elroy said that he had managed to escape the hospital by picking the locks with a piece of metal from his shoe and a length of wire the fuck so he said once he was outside
he had just climbed down the wall wearing only a shirt and then he swam down the winooski river until he felt like he was far enough away and he just got away this man has lived a life and he's probably like 25 at at this point truly now the next day he said he stole a new suit of clothes and then he made his way to his brother's house in townsend hey broey uh when asked about the assault on his brother kent said he was like but he was like i don't really have any explanation for that so he was returned to the hospital in waterbury pretty quickly okay now once he was brought back to vermont by the sheriff
he spent several more years in the hospital in waterbury and that wasn't until that wasn't until the early i don't know why i keep can't say until that was until yeah i haven't had enough coffee and it's tiramisu coffee it's making me excited so i can't speak do more do more coffee do more coffee it is a drug i will do do your coffee ready oh my god guys she's doing coffee right now whoa i just did some coffee okay so that's really yummy no deadslide tiramisu yeah Yeah, this was until the early morning hours, see that worked, of July 11th, 1908, when he and a fellow inmate named John Keenan escaped
again. They need to close this hospital right the fuck down.
If he, the same guy, like you would think that you'd be keeping even more tabs on him.
Tabs on him. A little bit.
Like tabs on him anyways, but even more so now.
Because he's escaped once.
Y 'all. Yeah, he's escaped again.
This was years later.
he's escaped again and he even told you how he did it the first time and you're not checking this out oh and this is even worse he escaped using a duplicate key that was given to them by another inmate who tried to escape the previous week what it was like here's my duplicate key you can use it how did you get like what they created 3d printer out there yeah in 1908 they created a ladder using pieces of keenan's bed sheets and used it to climb over the wall surrounding the the hospital oh roy's like right this way just this way hospital administrators said they were confident that both men would be
recaptured within a few days confidence is a nice thing to have yeah especially at that point it's a nice thing to have i think that's all you have it's really all you got because that confidence was pretty unfounded freaking idiots now let's talk about delia conga yeah so delia had a lot of struggle in her life as well but she was seemed like she She was kind of thriving out of it, which is really cool.
She was sad, though.
Yeah. She was born into one of Wallingford, Vermont's founding families.
Oh, wow. But she contracted scarlet fever at age eight.
Back then, scarlet fever is a crazy that she lived.
And this rendered her completely deaf at age eight.
Oh, wow. So until then, she had been able to hear and it was like a like just boop happened all at once.
Terrible. And it also affected her speech to such a degree that it was difficult for people to understand what she was saying.
So she would get frustrated and like, it was tough.
Now, several family members also said that Delia had actually been born with a cognitive impairment.
OK. And scarlet fever kind of exasperated that whole thing.
Exacerbated, excuse me.
It's hard to say. By the time she had become an adult, Delia's parents and several of her siblings had actually died from various illnesses.
and her remaining siblings had just moved away um they just left her yeah i think that i don't know what the whole story was but it made me sad too yeah but she she made the best of it though because because of all this she inherited the family home which was this large farm on sugar hill she's doing like hell yeah she said i got this house and she so she had a little bit of reputation that people call her like a spinster she was only like 40 by the way yeah of course she's 40 but in reality Delia was never alone and she was never lonely she had mostly was surrounded by friends her neighbors were like
all surrounding her at all times hell yeah they all took care of her like looked out for her looked out for her greatly and they didn't look out for her in a way that like made her feel like they were like pitying her like we have to look out for you people genuinely liked her and were spent time with her a lot she always had friends over she was just she was like thriving she was like you know what like i'm a cool person and everybody knows that yeah it sounds like it also she had local school children at her farm all the time because she would bake them cookies regularly oh my god shut your
fucking face she's just like this nice person that's like i was delta tough set of cards but like but here i am working with it like everybody likes me and i'm awesome yeah like i'm gonna be kind and just like live my life oh she She sounds really cool.
Yeah. So on the morning of July 23rd, 1908, two of Delia's neighbors named the Sprague brothers, they were working in the field next to the Congdon house because she allowed them to farm on her land because they were so close, all of her and her neighbors.
And that's a huge deal back then.
You don't just give up your land for farming.
So while they're working, they said they were approached by a small man who said he was looking for work.
Five -four. Five -foot -four.
Exactly. According to the Sprague brothers, they said the man noticed Delia in her yard. And they noticed they saw that he noticed this.
And he said, who's that woman?
And they were like, why do you need to know that?
Who's asking? And then they said he, quote, proceeded to say what sort of things he would like to do to her.
Oh, I don't like that.
So horrified by these statements, I guess the brothers looked at him and said they would, quote, shoot full of holes anyone who tried such a thing.
Fuck yeah. Yeah. And they said, you better move along and you better seek work somewhere else.
Yeah. Because you're not getting any work over here.
Like not after saying that, which I was like, fuck.
Yeah. They said, we will make you Swiss cheese.
Yeah. Like these men are like, you know, they're brothers.
Don't you dare fuck with Delia.
Yeah. She's our girl.
I love community. Now, the next day, Delia didn't get the bottle of milk that was left on her front porch by the milkman.
Neighbors, of course, notice this immediately because, like I said, they all love her.
They're looking out for her.
So they went right to her home to knock on the door and see if she was okay.
And I'm sure even more so those two brothers now.
Yeah, of course. So when they entered the home, they found Delia lying dead on the pantry floor.
No. They said, quote, in a condition which indicated she had been ravished and with several deep cuts upon the head.
Oh, no. Now, a large amount of blood was coming from her head.
It had pooled next to her.
There was blood spattered on the walls in the pantry.
Country sheriff E .C.
Fish was immediately called out to the scene.
He started talking to anyone who was on the farm around the farm all the neighbors.
After a pretty quick investigation of the scene he actually arrested a man named Frank Rogers who was an occasional farmhand and was known as a pretty tough character.
That's a quote tough character.
Sure. Rogers had actually served three sentences at the house of correction.
Damn. And people said they saw him on the property the previous evening.
OK. So that's why he was taken in.
So they did a little examination of the scene and they determined that Delia had been probably preparing breakfast for herself in the pantry.
Oh, my God. When whoever had killed her had approached her from behind and struck her on the head several times with a wood splitting axe.
How senseless. Yeah.
Now, according to state's attorney, Robert Lawrence, when she was discovered, Delia, quote, was fully dressed and had a toothbrush in her hand, which had been broken in two.
Oh, my God. Her false teeth were in an adjoining room and it appears as if she retreated into the pantry when attacked.
That's so sad. The killer had then taken the handle of the axe and wrapped it with fabric and like with her clothing fabric and had twisted the fabric around her neck and then used the axe as a garrotte.
Oh my god. And had literally garrotted her with the axe and her own clothing.
after after brutalizing her after sexually assaulting her oh no which they found definitely happened and beating her in the head with the axe they then grotted her god and she was just making breakfast just making breakfast just woke up oh my god the body also showed signs of bruising and what they referred to as criminal assaults indicating that she was very likely raped um Lawrence, the state's attorney, he also told reporters she had evidently put up a fierce fight for her life.
But, and this is his words, not mine.
Remember, we're in 1900s here.
But as she had been deaf and dumb from an early age, it was impossible for her to cry out.
Obviously, cognitive impairment was treated and discussed rather differently back then.
So we would never say deaf and dumb.
No. Like, what? The fact that anybody ever thought that was okay.
well that's it's like why why was dumb the word for cognitive impairment from birth like come on no and it's like all you have to say is like because she was she couldn't hear yeah she couldn't hear them coming and because she like like you don't have to say like she was just unable to cry out right right you know like the we we know who delia is like people in the area know her just put it simply like you don't need to make it sound like that but it's like you know it's disrespectful stupid times basically stupid times stupid statements but it's important to say them because that's the time period
and it's important to look at it and go my how far we have come but sort of what he was saying was she put up a fierce fight yeah but that she was able unable to cry out she couldn't get the words out she obviously probably didn't hear the person coming up behind her when she attacked her and she's already been struck in the head like immediately so maybe she couldn't at that point even yell out to incapacitate her right and she's in her her own fucking house like she's in her own house making breakfast yeah like what the hell so after killing Delia the killer then went through all the drawers
went through all her stuff and the problem here was that she lived alone so nobody could say whether anything had been stolen or not right because they didn't know exactly yeah nobody didn't know so based on this they did conclude that the motive was likely robbery because of the ransacking but again with no evidence that that something is stolen that can be staged yeah and to me it looks like she was raped and brutally murdered that looks like the motive that's what i was gonna say is like the the rape yeah the murder and the way he said it was evidence was found to indicate robbery as the motive
some of the furniture being ransacked and drawers being found open and the contents of the drawers thrown about which i'm like that to me sounds staged definitely the content of the drawers thrown about yeah Yeah.
So the evidence against Frank Rogers, the sometimes farmhand, was not great.
Okay. Flimsy and circumstantial might be a better way to put it.
Okay. He'd been seen in the vicinity the night before.
There's that. Couldn't easily account for, like, all his movements in the days leading up to the murder.
But it was really just them going, well, you have a reputation for, like, being a criminal and being violent sometimes.
So, like, it's probably you.
Yikes. Like, that's about it.
Yeah. That's really all they had.
Right. It was only after examining his body and the clothes he was seen wearing that day on the day of the murder that he was actually released because there was no evidence of blood.
There was no evidence of a fight.
He had no scratches, no bruise.
There was no blood on his clothes.
And there would be.
And that it would have been next to impossible to achieve coming out of that with no wounds, defensive wounds, no blood on your clothing.
And he would have been covered.
so two days later on july 27th was the autopsy of delia congdon um and this was to determine the cause of death and hopefully the order of of events that had happened so doctors b h stone and william stickney reported that delia had been attacked in her home by an assailant who sexually assaulted her first in the main home of the house then she had run she had fled into the pantry to to hide oh my god but her attacker had followed her and struck her on the head six times with the wood splitting axe this is heartbreaking which caused six cuts to her scalp but the doctors determined the cause of death
was actually strangulation caused by the handle of the axe having been wrapped in her shirt and grotting her this is horrific yeah so also what's like a really strange thing here is that and this also worked in frank rogers's favor of them being like it's probably not him.
Yeah. Was they found something in the barn on the Congdon property.
Okay. Carved into the wall.
Oh. I don't like this.
Next to a pile of hay that was clearly recently disturbed.
Uh -huh. Were the initials E .K.
And you don't know if he did this or not?
Yeah. Yeah. You said, wait, there's more.
So here's the thing.
I'm not saying he didn't do this.
I'm just saying it is really circumstantial evidence oh okay my gut tells me he probably did oh okay i see but i don't think they had enough to convict him oh okay i see and i don't think they had enough to execute him on for sure gotcha gotcha um now police i was like excuse me i have misunderstood i think he definitely was sleeping in that barn for sure yeah but that doesn't say that he murdered anyone okay uh no police had no luck tracking alroy kent so like they found those things and they haven't been able to find him and that was since he escaped the hospital two weeks before this for the second
time yeah but several people in the area said they had seen him at least in the area of the congan farm a week earlier i bet they did so residents of east wallingford believed he was kind of harmless because up until this point they didn't know like they they didn't know what the brother thing was like they were kind of you know so in their words they called him quote a half -witted tramp who had drifted in jesus christ they really knew how to insult people back i'm saying a half -witted tramp a half -witted tramp i know what i'm calling the next person that crosses me yeah there you go you're a half
but they figured he just drifted in to find work and so they were like when they saw him out and about they were kind of just like yeah i guess he's supposed to be in a hospital but we can't keep him there.
Which I'm like, did anyone know what he did to his brother?
It doesn't sound like it.
That didn't come out.
Apparently it was not widely reported.
Apparently not. And Elroy Kent, he definitely matched the description of the man the Sprague brothers described seeing the day before Delia's murder.
And like you said, he's looking for work wherever he is.
So that's why to me most of me believes he did this for sure.
I think it just, I think there When it comes to the execution is where my problem lies.
Sure, yeah. It's like there were other things happening here that I think he should have just been put back in the hospital.
But do you think maybe, and we'll talk about it, I'll ask you a question later.
Now investigators searched like abandoned buildings and other areas that they said they knew that like people who drifted in and out would kind of hang out and use like unused buildings.
and there was one on a an unused outbuilding on a nearby farm that they looked at and they found an area of you know disturbed hay kind of like in the barn and they said it looked like it had been used as a bed and on the wall near it was carved e kent oh another one another one okay another one another one now this is why it's like so he did it here he did it there it's clear he's sleeping in these places and then leaving his initial on the side yeah which also i'm like Like, why are you leaving your initials?
Yeah. That's the thing.
Now, the carving matched that of the one found in Delia Congdon's barn, and investigators were like, okay, so Kent had definitely slept in her barn the night before the murder.
That barn we can see is connected to this next one.
We can trace his movements that way.
But they also noted that from the barn, he could probably see into Delia's bedroom and would have been able to track her movements the next morning from that barn.
That's freaky. so they theorize he probably watched he waited for her to unlock the door to the house and when she did he snuck in and attacked her and then tore the house apart to search for any money or anything valuable and it's i mean we have like the account from the two brothers of him explicitly saying what he wanted to do to her exactly and then she was raped and that's the part that really stuck in my mind is like oh you know but again it's based off of somebody's somebody's saying something and we never heard the that's the other thing so this is a matter of like do i think he did it
yeah do i think they had enough to convict him and execute him probably not yeah but this was a different time um you didn't need as much yeah exactly no this was definitely not the first time that he had been leading the police on like a wild goose chase at this point but this time was a little different because they're not dealing with the petty criminal elroy kent they're dealing with a man who has clearly demonstrated that he does have a capacity for violence when he what he did to his brother was wild horrific um he also kind of has everything to lose if he's captured at this point which is not good
so the search for kent began immediately around the area once they found those carvings and it was around the areas of wallingford rutland and brattleboro so for some extra power and some extra help uh sheriff fish gathered deputies from from the area, who had known or dealt with Kent in the past. So from outside areas.
And they thought maybe they would have unique insight into who he is, like his character, so they could kind of determine where he might be.
Okay. And the sheriff's office also got some bloodhounds in.
Oh, shit. And they tracked Kent's trail from the Congdon farm to a spot in the mountains near his sister's home in Wallingford. Ooh.
But they soon, they got, like the dogs got super exhausted.
It was a long way. I mean, it's a mountain.
Yeah, and they needed to rest. Yeah.
And they couldn't even start the search again until the next day.
So they began again the next day, August 1st, and the dogs lost his trail.
Oh, shit. Handlers tried to get them back on track.
They gave him a pair of his old shoes that he wore at the hospital.
And they were able to track him again briefly, but they were only able to track him as far as an abandoned building on his sister's property.
How fucking cool is that kind of look?
Bloodhounds? Fucking wild.
That is a whole subject that I could just sit there and read about forever.
It's fascinating to me.
I really do think that would actually make a very cool episode.
That would be cool, like how it came about, how they are trained.
Like, that's just really cool.
I mean, because you could go back to, like, way long ago they've been using bloodhounds.
Like, bloodhounds, cadaver dogs, all that stuff.
Like, dogs are wild.
Even, like, in royal times when they would go hunting.
Yeah, exactly. It is interesting.
I think you would do a really good job at that.
That would be a fun one.
Put it in the little little jar of ideas.
Jar sounds better than bucket.
We'll go with that.
It's not a bucket, it's a jar.
But they did try. They gave them the shoes, weren't at the hospital.
They only got to that abandoned building on the sister's property in East Dorset and then they lost the trail again.
I've never heard of Dorset.
Now, luckily, investigators received a tip that afternoon.
noon apparently some berry pickers were the ones who gave this tip they were working at a nearby farm and they said a man wearing a bloody shirt and lightly and pretty much according to the matching kent's description had been discovered in some bushes on the property and was scared away before anybody could call the police the dogs managed to pick up a scent where they said um and it followed they followed it for nearly 10 miles down the highway and then they lost it again Damn it.
And according to the owners of the dogs, really the only reason they would lose the trail was if the scent was too old.
Oh, OK. So that kind of led investigators to think that Kent was definitely no longer in the area he had long gone.
Now, the dogs losing the trail definitely sucked.
But a week later, they became kind of hopeful because a new clue and a pattern was starting to emerge.
Wherever Kent was, he just couldn't help but leave his initials somewhere.
Anywhere. Anywhere he stayed overnight, he would leave his initials carved into it.
Very interesting. Yeah.
It's wild. It began emerging in different locations around southern Vermont.
He would do it on trees, abandoned buildings.
Are there any that still exist that you know of?
I don't know. That's a good question.
We should look it up because I wonder if there are.
I'm sure a lot of these buildings are probably gone, but they said on trees and stuff too.
And in one case, this is pretty wild, three boys passing by Red Mill Pond in Woodford on August 8th, they stopped at a local barn and they carved their initials into the side of the barn.
Because remember, it's like 1908.
What else are you going to do?
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And they returned the next day and they saw that next to their initials, someone had carved EK.
Oh, creepy. So it's like he saw those initials and I was like, I was here too.
Yeah, right. Creepy, creepy.
Now, Kent's family was still in the region, so investigators were thinking he might be making his way through the mountains in the direction of Massachusetts.
But they had no idea where he was going to show up next.
Now, as weeks went by and investigators were failing to bring this guy in, couldn't find him anywhere, the news started focusing more on them and their failures and less on the murderer on the loose.
among other things the articles were saying that the wallingford deputy sheriff alan leonard and a .c mason who were in charge of the hunt for kent had been spotted drinking on the job and when they were refused further alcohol they produced bottles from their jackets so like like they brought their own liquor byob baby now in late august attorneys for leonard and mason filed a lawsuit against olin french who was the publisher of the vermont phoenix and they sued him for $5 ,000 each. Damn, and back then, holy shit.
That's a lot, and the basis of the lawsuit was the Vermont Phoenix had published articles that, quote, falsely, wickedly, and maliciously injured the officers by claiming they, quote, appeared to be as much a menace to the peace and good order as Elroy Kent.
Oh, no. Yeah, so that's just a little, like, oof, some drama.
Now, while the lead investigators are just trying to fight with the press now over their reputation, investigation um sheriff's deputies were just trying to continue the search and trying to make this happen you know the main focus the job uh then they finally caught a break in late october it was when it was then that a man matching kent's description was arrested in pittsfield massachusetts hey he was trying to sell a stolen bicycle believe it i bet it was right right so he was arrested and the man said his name was william allen and he said i've never heard of elroy kent i I don't know what you're
talking about. Several hours of questioning later, he said, you know what?
I'm Elroy Kenseth. Well, shit.
Here I am. He said he escaped from the hospital in Waterbury, and he vehemently denied having anything to do with Delia Congdon's murder.
He was like, sure, I escaped for sure, and I just didn't want to be caught and put back in the hospital, but I did not murder that woman.
Now, in order to be sure it was the man that they were looking for, state's attorney Robert Robert Lawrence, was sent to Pittsfield to identify him and bring him back, and he definitely was Elroy Kent.
Yeah, I figured. So on the morning of October 26th, he was brought to Rutland County in the company of deputies Leonard and Wilkins.
Again, he admitted to being a fugitive from justice.
He was like, for sure, I've been outrunning you because I didn't want to go back in the hospital.
But he continued to deny anything to do with Delia Congdon's murder.
And he said he wasn't even in the vicinity of East Wallingford at the time of the murder.
wow when they reached the train station in rutland i guess like more than 20 or 200 people had shown up just to see him like be put on the train and i guess he was quoted as saying i don't i didn't know there were so many fools in all the world i'm like damn that's that's funny you're saucy i don't want to laugh at him though no because you just don't know i feel like he did it so it's like and no matter what he was like a he was a shithead from beginning before the drama so it's like he He was a bad guy.
And he hurt his brother.
He did. And he hurt his brother like really bad.
Yeah. Like could have killed him.
Like hurt his brother and robbed him and robbed his own cousin.
Like I would low key call that attempted murder.
Oh, that was one. They called it attempted murder.
So there you go. That's what they looked at it as that.
He walked away probably thinking he had killed him.
Yeah. Not good. So Elroy Kent had already been indicted by a grand jury for the murder of Delia Congdon.
Yes. So he pled not guilty and was held in a cell to await trial.
trial the trial began march 30th 1909 and state's attorney jc jones john sergeant and robert lawrence announced that they intended to call more than 30 witnesses to the stand shit what's funny is that most of them apparently all the witnesses apparently quote complained of being kept away from their farms at sugar making time i mean they were annoyed hello priorities priorities i mean especially at that time it's like this is a big fucking deal well i'm away at a serious time i'm here and i think sugar was expensive back then right yeah so it's probably like you're really taking money out of my
pocket here the trial was a bit over two weeks long and throughout it the prosecution called several witnesses like the sprague brothers were called to the stand all the sugar farmers all the sugar farmers and they claimed to have seen kent in the area just before the murder and the motive that they were putting out there was robbery wrong yeah i don't think that was the full motive i think it was rape because remember i think he even before the a head injury he seemed to like just doing the the act of robbery yeah you know what i mean like i think he liked it and i think he escalated into needing
more to like what he was doing yeah to yeah but the prosecution introduced several pieces of evidence they had um delia congan's bloody clothing they had section of wood bearing kent's carved initials that they had taken out of various places where is it now where is it i couldn't find i just tried to look while you were saying Because I feel like there's got to be a tree somewhere with his initials on it.
Well, and you would think like some random museum in Vermont would have it.
Would have them, you know.
Just be interesting to see from all those years ago.
Yeah, because it's so long ago.
Right, and just such a freaky weird thing to do.
It's such a weird thing that he did that.
That's why it's just really interesting.
Dr. B .H. Stone, who was one of the men who completed Delia's autopsy, also testified and said that Delia, quote, was subject to the most outrageous treatment before she was killed.
um herbert savary a former inmate testified and he's claimed to have overheard kent confess that he killed deal it killed delia so quote she couldn't tell um we know how that goes sometimes when you listen to like former inmates or like present inmates it stinks because like you want to and it could help testimony and be true line of information here and it's like sometimes it works out right it's really like a 50 50 shot if it's gonna work because at the same time then they're some of the worst because they're just trying to get out yeah they have something to gain right but the most crucial
testimony definitely came from deputy leonard he claimed that kent had practically made a full confession to him following the arrest oh shit he said quote kent told me that miss congan saw him before he reached her and that he grabbed her and threw her into the milk room oh now leonard's testimony was corroborated the following day by dr ww townsend who was the physician at the House of Corrections.
That was where Kent was staying.
And he said he had also discussed the murder with Kent.
And according to Dr. Townsend, Kent knew very specific and intimate details of the crime and had even corrected the doctor at one point.
Oof. The doctor asked something about the crime happening in the kitchen and he said, no, it happened in the milkroom.
Oh. Yeah. So the final bit of damning testimony came from Elgin Taggart, Who was an employee of the East Wallingford cheese factory Oh the cheese tax The cheese tax That's a great song Anytime you hear cheese you have to sing Anytime So Taggart told the jury he had spoken to Kent just before the murder And it was when Elroy saw Delia And made quote an obscene remark about her Like the Sprague brothers Taggart had told Kent that quote He had better keep away from that house Hell yeah I love that our neighbors protected her I love that our neighbors protected her too and i the shitty thing here
is that we're dealing with like sinister people i feel like it almost made it more exciting for him i know because they were like he is the one that did it but he was like oh it's even more forbidden yeah exactly now the evidence and testimony against elroy kent was unfortunately still pretty circumstantial like you were saying you know like that's just the reality of it but there was a lot of it yeah and each piece seemed to kind of corroborate the one before it you know so rather than try to disprove the state's claim kent's defense attorneys knew that you know circumstantial evidence can still
be pretty compelling yeah definitely and ernest o 'brien and john spellman his defense attorneys decided to take like a pretty broad approach to the defense they said l roy was nowhere near the house at the time of the murder that was the first one and they said even if he was his pro he is profoundly mentally ill and could not be held accountable for what he's done.
Okay. At least not held accountable in the sense that he is not sane.
Right, and held accountable in the sense that he's going to go to prison for this or be executed.
Like, he's going to have to – like, we're going to have to do an insanity defense here.
And he needs, like, psychiatric treatment.
Yeah. So as an alternative, they also suggested that Taggart, the guy who said that he – the cheese factory guy, he could have been responsible for the murder.
Okay. They claim that by his own admission, he knew Congdon and was aware of where she lived and that she lived alone.
They also said that he was a known heavy drinker and had actually been fired from the cheese factory due to his drinking interfering with his work.
And they pointed out to the jury that when Taggart was called to the hospital in Waterbury following Kent's arrest, he could not pick Kent out of a lineup.
And he couldn't in any way recognize him as the man who'd shown up at the cheese factory before the murder.
Well, that's interesting.
and taggart's response to this was that he had quote made the apparent error purposely to fool dr grout the superintendent why would you want to fool them why he would want to do that unclear to this day i still don't know why he would want to do that yeah so it didn't look good for him either it was like survey says no survey says i don't fucking know about that so he says the fuck now to kind of bolster their insanity claim the defense called a bunch of witnesses to the stand to testify about kent's like bizarre and unpredictable behavior and his thinking as well as disordered thinking and the handful
of years leading up to the murder um ld right who was a nurse from the hospital testified and told the court that he had been forced to restrain kent with a quote leather jacket on occasions where he had become very violent that's so sad and he said he had also heard kent curse apparently at an imaginary woman oh uh dr grout the superintendent agreed while testifying that kent was quote of unsound mind yeah obviously so they're all like we are in the hospital we know and did anybody like i'm like did you guys tell them that he had fucking railroad spikes in his head yeah that's it i'm like was that that introduced
into any of it you would think i mean if you told me that and i was on the jury i'd be like yeah i think we should send him back to the hospital yeah i think so now on april 8th the defense rested their case and the prosecution had an opportunity to call one final rebuttal witness um of just to kind of testify a witness to those testifying as to kent's sanity basically the witness was dr d a shiris uh he was a psychologist from montreal now this guy told told the jury in his opinion kent quote was not insane but had been faking the delusions which he appeared to have he said he did not react to any
questions like a man who had hallucinations and he said i don't believe that he is insane okay but i would like to repeat are we taking into account the wild head injury that he sustained years earlier because it's crazier to to me that he would not be like what they would have said back then, insane.
Yeah. After having had that accident.
To me, there's no way in hell that he didn't have any kind of repercussion from that.
This to me would be like a slam dunk for the insanity defense.
Yeah. Like, nobody's saying it's right to what he did or it's justified in any way or like excused, but that's a defense.
fence like this happened because clearly seems to fit here at the very least you know we have to take it into account right but i do guess it complicates things that he did have a long history of that's the thing that's why this is such a complicated case it's a tough case yeah it's very complicated because you can see both sides of that either way if he did it he's got to go somewhere yeah but execution i don't know about that and this is the question i was going to ask earlier because obviously we know he's ultimately executed do you think they thought to themselves whoever you know made the final
decision that's what i'm thinking i think i probably am we keep sending him back to the hospital he keeps escaping whether or not he did this crime are we quote unquote getting rid of a problem that we have here i think you hit the nail on the head i think so too i think that's i think that's really what happened here is like he's been a problem so we We must eradicate the problem kind of thing.
And this is a perfect excuse.
Again, I don't think the excuse was let's frame him for this murder.
I think he probably committed the murder.
Yeah. He was a pretty good suspect.
Something. And I think they just looked at it as like, well, he did this.
So this is a way to get rid of the problem.
I think so, too. But the jury only deliberated for less than a day, only a few hours.
They came back to the courtroom on April 10th and they delivered a verdict of guilty.
Yeah. Yeah. His sentencing was going to be put off until the fall.
That's when he could appeal and everyone pretty much assumed he was going to get the death penalty.
And as he was being let out of the courtroom by the deputies, he was heard saying, I don't care a damn anyway.
Wow. So it's like, I don't know if it's, I don't care what I did or I don't care what happens to me.
Either way. Now, in October 1909, the Vermont State Supreme Court came together to hear the cases in their fall session.
Elroy Kintz was in this caseload.
And the defense argued that the state's strongest evidence against Kintz was those initials carved in the barn.
Right. That was really the number one thing.
And they said that was not the same as handwriting samples and it couldn't be treated or analyzed like that.
And the court considered the case as a whole.
They considered everything.
And then they came down and said, nope, the original sentence is going to stay.
In their decision, the justices wrote, a circumstantial or circumstance which makes his genuine writings available to establish the authenticity of a disputed one but the respondent's connection with the carving carving in the congdon barn does not depend entirely upon the similarity of letters the evidence of the respondent's admission that he passed the night of the 23rds in this barn the evidence tending to show a practice of cutting his initials as a pastime the evidence that the hay was thrown upon upon the barn floor on the 22nd, and that fresh whittlings were found on this hay just below
the carving, their evidence tending to show that the respondent made the letters.
So that's a fancy way to say he said he did it.
Yep. So I think he did it.
Denied. That's essentially what they, he did it.
So. Bye. Bye. So they rejected his appeal, and the court sentence Kent, quote, to be hanged in the yard of the state prison at Windsor on January 13, 1911, between the hour of 1 and 3 p .m. Wow.
The court also ordered that Kent be, quote, employed at hard labor in the state prison until October 13, 1910.
After that, he was going to be held in solitary confinement until the day of his execution.
Oh, wow. That is so fucked up.
Kent's response to this was, I am not guilty.
So in mid -December 1910, the Vermont legislature actually broke for their holiday recess and they made a boo -boo because they didn't complete all of their end -of -year business and when they didn't do this they unintentionally granted Kent a brief reprieve.
State laws stipulated that the legislature must issue a formal warrant before anyone can be executed which they did not do before they They went out for recess and luckily the problem was fixed and a new execution date had to be set though for January 5th, 1912.
So they keep pressing him like a year reprieve unintentionally.
But was he still in solitary at that point?
He was going to be in solitary for that.
For a year? Yep. Oh my god.
Now after that. That is like inhumane.
That's the thing. It's like this really got like.
This is a sad case.
Now all of this and he's going to be executed and the the execution did not go off without a hitch no when the day finally came he was taken from his cell in solitary confinement and let out to the yard by 1 18 p .m everything was done and prepared to go kent was standing over the trap door on the gallows he had a noose around his neck this was going to be the first execution in the state of vermont to employ an electrical trap door door this electrical trap door was controlled by one of six switches now this new system required six men to each push one of the buttons wow they did this so that no one
none of them would ever know which button caused the door to open it's almost like a firing squad like that kind of thing when the warden gave the signal all six men pushed the button the door dropped out from beneath kent as planned but when the rope pulled taut it snapped immediately and he fell to the ground so they had no other option the rope was then tied over the gallows and kent's body was hoisted up and left to hang in the prison yard for more than a half hour so he just slowly was like like asphyxiated yeah oh my i mean yeah what a punishment if he really was responsible that's quite
a punishment now when the prison doctor examined the body he said that he initially said that kent was most likely killed during the first drop and suffered no conscious thought after the first tightening of the noose i don't know about that but many across the state were horrified by this whole thing because reports came out later that That said, after seven minutes of strangulation from the gallows, he still had a pulse.
Also, this reminded a lot of people of the 1905 execution of Mary Rogers, which she was a woman who was convicted of killing her husband.
Very similar kind of rope break situation that happened there.
Very botched. I want to cover that case, so I'm not going to tell you a lot about it right now because I looked into it more and I was like, that's actually a very interesting case.
say that because while i was googling to find out if his initials were anywhere i found that and i was going to suggest you do it yep i'm going to do it so the unexpected errors in the execution um resulted in people really getting angry a flood of letters and telephone calls to the governor's office came out mostly by people who were like i don't know uh maybe this is barbaric maybe you think um others were just outraged that the execution had taken place at all like Not even just the way it was done, they were like, no, no, no. Because they didn't think there was enough evidence.
Well, not even that, they said, it's very clear he has mental illness.
Yes. It likely influenced his behavior in some way.
And in response, Governor John Meade addressed a group of press, and he said, my wish and prayer is that I may never again be called upon to undergo an experience like that of the last week.
I tried, in short, to do my duty, no matter how unpleasant, as I bound myself to do when I took my oath of office.
the execution of Elroy Kent, like I said earlier, really became a point of rallying basically for death penalty opponents.
And for decades, it was one of the cases that was cited as an example of one, like the questionable morality here of executing somebody that is clearly mentally ill.
And also just the barbaric way that the death penalty kind of goes about itself, you know, You know, like especially this kind of execution.
It's like that is, woo.
Yeah. Then again, you know where we all stand here.
Like my view has very much evolved way more towards against death penalty.
Yours really has. I'm still pretty in the middle.
Which I think is what it should do is it should always be evolving.
Yeah. And it didn't help the case that there were rumors when decades after Kent had been executed, executed another man made a deathbed confession that said he was the one who'd murdered Delia Congdon and that he had allowed L.
Roy Kent to take the fall because he was an easy fall guy.
Quite literally. It's unclear whether they investigated this further.
Or if they said, let's bury that deep, deep down.
It is what it is. This guy's dying.
That guy's dead. Whatever.
We're just going to move on.
Holy shit. But it definitely raises a question of, oh shit, was Elroy Kent the one to murder Delia Congdon?
Because why confess?
Why? Like, and a deathbed confession to me is always very compelling.
I know, deathbed confessions are the most compelling because it's like, why?
Because I think people are in their most scared state if they have done something.
Yeah, they just want to release it all.
Lying at the end of your life is not, you know, why do it?
Wow. Yeah. and that is the case of elroy kent and the murder of delia condon that's wild it's that case blew my mind poor delia she did nothing except be the most like brightest light in her community vibrant just like thriving lady and like had overcome so much throughout her life and that's the end she met like giving off pieces of her farm for people to use because she's just like cookies cookies for school children is just attacked while she's making breakfast well she's just and all because she unlocked her door that's so scary it's so scary wow but yeah what a fascinating case so i'm left
very unsettled i have to say that's how i always like to leave everybody so that's good that's how you usually leave us wow um well thank you for that you're welcome and thank you guys for listening we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird weird but not so weird that just not this weird i guess not this weird yeah love you If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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