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Hey weirdos, I'm Ash.
And I'm Alayna. And this is Morbid.
this is morbid and oh boy is it a doozy that i have for you today you always get this certain look in your eyes when you're about to really fuck me up this story just i have oh even mikey is making a face he's like oh it's i mean dave when we were talking about it was like why is this not its own like movie series like it's a wild tale oh no there's so much to it i'm nervous and like a lot of mystery but it's just really really intense so okay you know i think you need to buckle up for it but uh hold on to your butts hold on to those butts but before we get into it i just want to say um we got
to go on stage with pod meets world it was the coolest thing i think we've ever gotten to do we got to hang out with tapanga eric and sean and boy meets worlds harley and fucking harley kiner and they are just the nicest people i'm telling you you know that whole thing we say it all the time we're like oh you always get scared you're like don't meet your heroes don't do it because they can disappoint you and like meet your heroes i was i'm just always scared because i'm like i i just really hope this doesn't like you know just like blow up in our face i'm telling you guys it's uh daniel official
will friedel rider strong and danny mcnulty as harley kiner and i'm telling you they were the sweetest people truly i like i'm 37 years years old you guys know how many times i referenced like sabrina the teenage witch and boy meets world it's always those two yeah it's always those that just like i go right back to because they were literally my adolescence and walking into a room and seeing just the squad sean hunter topanga and eric yeah just sitting there you were you acted you acted cool thank you for saying that because inside of my body was a fucking a fright see i know that because i know
you but like if you didn't know you i don't think you could tell i had so they all give a really good handshake they do they give a strong handshake and they look you in the eye yes papa always taught me you give a strong handshake because nobody likes a little fishy nobody likes a little sloppy fish i was so impressed by all their handshakes yeah they're just really kind people people they're hilarious so funny very like welcoming it was a lot of fun sitting on a couch next to eric i was like i don't just unreal what the fuck happened here so will invited us to ice cream he did i'm still not over
any and we're going and we're going and oh well if you're walking sammy oh hey hey and also hey to your wife sue because she was awesome she was so sweet but swag too I loved her outfit yeah they were great and it's like and so this is all also to say like the only reason we are able to do this stuff is because you guys listen to this show which is still wild uh thanks for that thank you a lot because like that was a really cool experience weirdos making dreams and I only had it because of you guys so appreciate and appreciate we tell them how it made us feel on stage it made us feel some type
of way it made us feel like Like maybe we wanted to do a show like a hometown show, a hometown show, not a tour.
Yeah, we will not tour.
I'm about to be a wedded woman and you have like 70 kids.
I have three, but it's similar.
Honestly, it feels like three kids and two dogs equates to 70 children.
You know what? Correct.
It does. Yes, you were right the first time.
Trust me, I've been here.
But yeah, I think we want to do a hometown show.
We got the bug. Next year.
So we'll let you, we'll keep you guys updated on that.
Yeah, definitely next year at some point.
It was just really fun.
i have to sneeze to go out there i wanted to warn you i appreciate that i have to sneeze yeah it was just really fun but um thanks to pod meets worlds yeah thanks to all of them and thanks to you guys and thanks to that was an awesome experience and again you guys are the best you guys are now uh i'm gonna ruin your life with this story so i'm sorry that that i'm taking you here you should get a shirt that says that i'm gonna ruin your life with this story so i'm sorry because i the amount of times you've said that to me in my life even about like things that are that we don't talk about on the show
you're like i got a story that's gonna ruin your life or it's i'm like i have a fact that's gonna if i have to know what you have to know it now like i do that to john daily did i ever tell you guys about the time that elena looked at me and she goes the sun could have exploded eight minutes ago and we wouldn't know yeah if the sun explodes we won't know for eight minutes and i'm I'm not going to be alone in knowing that.
No, now you all know that.
Love you. But anyway.
And you're also going to have to know about the horrific case of O .C.
Sneed. Okay. This is an older one, but I promise you it's not lacking in drama.
Okay. So, the death of O .C.
Sneed in East Orange, New Jersey, what's up, New Jersey, was an undeniable tragedy.
But her death was really only beat the beginning of what would become one of the early 20th century's truly most captivating crime stories.
Oh, man. Like, it's pulled directly out of the pages of some kind of like classic Southern Gothic horror novel.
Got a lot of elements.
and like any good gothic horror story the trial that followed was also full of unbelievable twists and ended up culminating in a pretty shocking conclusion really yeah i feel like we've had a few cases where there's been like gnarly trials lately yeah usually a lot of times the old the older cases have some wily trials yeah because i feel like different things were admissible back then and like they tried to get away with different kinds of fuck shit exactly Exactly, and they had to change laws and shit.
Yeah, yeah. All right, so let's first begin with Ocie.
Who is Ocie Sneed? Tell me.
Now, like many aspects of this story, Ocie's date of birth and several other, you know, details about her are kind of shrouded in a little bit of mystery.
The 1900s of it all.
Yeah, she was born in New York, New York in September of 1885.
I don't know exactly what date it was.
Potentially a Virgo.
Exactly. We couldn't find one that we felt comfortable being like, this is definitely her birthday.
Her name was Oceana Wardlaw Martin.
That's a really pretty name.
I know, Oceana. Yeah, that's gorgeous.
She was the daughter of Caroline Wardlaw and Colonel Robert Maxwell Martin, who was a very celebrated Confederate veteran of the American Civil War.
Now, from the perspective of his Confederate peers, got to be clear about that.
Yeah, let's be clear.
Robert Martin was a war hero.
Oh. Again, remember, perspective is everything.
He served in many key battles in the war.
He was severely wounded while saving the life of General John Hunt Morgan, but managed to survive and went on to lead the Confederate plot to burn New York City.
Oh. Fun. When their attempt to burn New York City ultimately failed.
Yeah, it didn't work out.
I don't know if you guys know it, but New York City is still there.
Still standing. He led an unsuccessful attempt to kidnap Vice President Andrew Johnson.
Wow. He, for that, was eventually captured and imprisoned, and he was released from prison when the war ended and moved back to the South, where he made and lost a fortune in the tobacco industry.
Real interesting fella, this one.
I guess so. Now, it was during this post -war period that he met and married Caroline Wardlaw.
Now, Robert still had a fortune.
like he ended up he was never he was never in dire straits here um and robert supervised the construction of a large mansion in wilder park kentucky in the early 1880s tragedy struck because the family mansion burned to the ground under suspicious circumstances that's ironic yeah i know the couple lived for a short amount of time in a much smaller house on the grounds of the mansion but that quickly became a little unsustainable following the birth of the couple's first child okay so robert relocated the family to new york city and caroline gave birth to osi oceana in the fall of 1885 what a weird
thing to like go live in the city that you plan to burn down yeah it's a little strange yes that is a little strange uh there was a brief period of success and calm for the family until about 1900 when tragedy struck again oh no that's when when robert's son died from brain fever encephalitis uh that's what they used to call encephalitis um he died after so he he has he had encephalitis and that's what he died from but it was after a particularly bad fall down the stairs in their home in new york do you think that could have had something to do with it people don't know what happened there okay
can you also remind me me what encephalitis is please um it's like inflammation of the brain oh so that's why they call it brain fever gotcha gotcha um like the fire that destroyed the family home in kentucky before the circumstances under which you know the robert's son died were somewhat suspicious okay i'm catching on to a theme here if you will what's more suspicious was the speed at which which his father collected a payout from the $22 ,000 life insurance policy.
Damn, and that's $22 ,000 back then.
It was also when they could use money.
They could have used money.
Like it came in interesting timing.
Yeah, which it seems like insurance policies in this story come at, man, they just come at the right time.
Dude, insurance policies, that's.
They're always on time.
They freak me out. Now, that $22 ,000 life insurance policy now would be $700 ,000.
Holy shit. So sizable.
Yeah. I mean, even just $22 ,000 is sizable.
But like $700 ,000. That's on another level, baby.
And it's like, so there's a lot there.
Now, despite this, and it all just went to plan.
Despite this, the insurance payout allowed the family to move to a much nicer home on Fifth Avenue, actually.
Imagine that. Oh, Fifth Avenue.
Silver linings, I guess.
Yeah. Unfortunately, the excitement of the new home wouldn't last long.
Before tragedy struck again.
Because only a few months after moving in, neighbors heard a commotion coming from the Martin house and they ran over to see what was happening and found Robert had suffered a paralytic stroke and was being attended by a rather stern looking Caroline, his wife.
Okay. Who immediately told her hysterical daughter, Osi, not to speak.
Okay, so was that like a stroke or was that something else?
You can't see me, but I'm shrugging.
She's the shrug emoji.
I don't know. Robert did hold on for a little while and ended up living for a short period of time in very bad health and then finally ended up succumbing and dying on January 12, 1901.
It's just weird that she told her daughter not to say anything because, like, what would she have to say if he was just having a stroke?
What would she have to say, I wonder?
Me as well. Now, following Robert's death, Caroline packed up her daughter and moved them both back to her hometown of Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Okay. That's where Caroline's sister, Virginia, was actually in charge of the Murfreesboro Soul Female College, where Caroline's other sister, she had two sisters, Mary, was a member of the faculty.
Cool. So Virginia is the president of the school.
Mary is part of the faculty.
specialty caroline hadn't let them know that she was coming but they took her in right away and they found her a job as the school's new bookkeeper so they're all working at this school together now it seems by all accounts that virginia and mary's existence at the school before this were fairly normal uh -oh uh sewell female college was touted as providing quote a traditional southern education for women in cultural studies and social grace oh social grace now virginia was named president of the school in 1892 and the school really thrived under her leadership and became very highly acclaimed
she was well respected she ran the program with discipline with honor according to all who knew her at the time she was she was brought into this position because of her the respect people had for her wow now virginia had spent her adult life as what people called a spinster and focused on her responsibilities at the school that was what she she really focused on aka a boss bitch yeah for now i was just gonna say i don't know anything else i don't know what happens so yeah okay yeah i get it um and mary had raised two sons and when they had grown and married she joined the faculty at school so everybody
seemed like they had you know taken a good path okay again seemed to be killing it then caroline arrives okay caroline seems to be the issue here the arrival of caroline was like a weird reset button and no one really understood why like again everything seemed to be going pretty chill people said the sisters like mary and virginia could be like i just said virginia you did i didn't mean to say that virginia uh they seemed they were like a little strange but like okay but relatively you know they weren't like problematic or anything you know like they were just living on you know existing okay
but mary and virginia completely changed when court caroline showed up the three sisters began dressing in all black together what and wearing heavy black veils all the time what the fuck just out of nowhere all of a sudden we're like yep coven like she showed up and they were just like boom literally like a h has a covered witch straight up the fuck and people People were curious about this.
One might be. More curious, though, was the very marked change in their behavior.
They were once known to keep very ordinary schedules.
They were a president of a female college and a part of the faculty, after all.
It's not like they were doing these crazy things.
But the sisters now had a habit of going out very late at night, in the middle of the night, and more disturbingly began entering students' homes or rooms as they slept to just stand and stare at them no shut the fuck up why this is not real this is real what the fuck they would literally break into students rooms while they were sleeping and stand and stare at them for why i do not know what the fuck there's some weird cult thing happening here something's going on because they also hired a driver to drop them off at evergreen cemetery every evening where they were said to carry on with strange
rituals and chanting honestly fucking metal is fuck if you take the b and e out of it yeah exactly that's what i said i was like up to this point like i love it out of it and i'm like go off queen like this is cool but man do they take it somewhere oh god and people saw them dancing around graves and all manner of odd behavior and just like they would i mean later you'll see like the behavior gets even stranger they would like like move people out of classrooms and into other classrooms and move them back and like they were just being weird like it's never explained why they did this no what well
and the thing is in 1904 the obvious and very dramatic and strange change in mary and virginia's behavior was very unsettling to the students of soul female college who had known them forever right as like as pretty normal and very disciplined and like you know respectful people yeah and one accounts said frightened students started to leave the school, and it wasn't long before the school was in chaos, and the Black Sisters, as they were known to be called, were asked to leave. Summer is in full swing.
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Oh, I mean, yeah, I do understand why they were asked to leave. Because they lost money.
The school is losing money left and right.
Students were literally leaving the school because of their behavior.
They're waking up in the middle of the night to these three cuckoo nut ladies at the foot of their bed.
They're being beanied by the supreme witch in her coven in the middle of the night.
Like, that's a lot to handle.
There were also rumors that Caroline was maybe pocketing some money from the school.
Okay. Allegedly. now fortunately no she's not now fortunately the sister's great aunt oceana polak who needed help at montgomery female college in virginia okay so she looked at this whole like them leaving in disgrace thing is like ah it's fine so she invited them all to join her she's like you're just kooky yeah it's okay they don't get you i love how chic you are now when virginia came to run the program it was like she fell back into her old ways her old ways of teaching her old ways of running things everything was great virginia was back she was like oh i know i'm kooky but like i'm back
okay and it felt like okay the school was a boarding school in one program described it as the remarkable purity and healthfulness of the atmosphere render the location peculiarly eligible for a seat of learning hot so i guess it's a great place to learn sounds sounds great but mary came after virginia she joined the faculty and everything was still okay they seemed to fall back into their old things like caroline's the common denominator here then caroline joins i'm sorry all i can think of is the outcast song caroline literally like she joins and it's like oh shit like fuck and the thing is caroline
joined with osi her daughter okay and things fucked up again what power did this woman have over her sisters i I don't know.
She is the supreme.
I think she might be because apparently Caroline was in charge of administration.
She was put right in charge of administration.
That's a thought. And she messed with the curriculum immediately.
And this is when she began the strange behavior of like moving students from classroom to classroom like during the day.
For no reason. Like just ripping them out of a classroom, putting them in another, then moving them back.
Like she was just doing weird stuff.
And she would put like several padlocks on random doors.
What? So it made people, like, very unnerved and, like, unsettled because they're like, what the fuck's behind that door?
And, like, why are there three padlocks on it?
What the fuck? And then they were doing the same peekaboo routine with the sisters in the residence halls.
They're breaking in?
Yeah, like, doing the same, like, whoo, I'm just looking in on you.
Like, what the fuck, ladies?
Why? I hate it. So everybody just fell back into the old, like, strange shit.
I need an answer. You won't get one.
I need, I require one.
I also kind of required one, but I wasn't given one like why the fuck did like history will not give me an answer god damn Caroline is OC's mom Mary and Virginia's sister she's the problem gotcha it's her she's the problem it's Caroline uh so Caroline ended up visiting Mary's son John Sneed okay who was her nephew oh the look in your eye tells me we in danger oh god I'm so upset your weird face right right now i'm so nervous reports say she quote unquote caused trouble and quote unquote interfered in john's marriage that just means that she didn't like his wife and she said get out of here right totally
nothing else happened right what happened here i don't know what does it mean what does it mean what does it mean there are even reports that john told the neighbors and i quote that that he wouldn't let her wreck his home.
Okay. I don't know if you've ever heard of the term home wrecker.
I sure have. I sure have. I'm sorry, what?
Oh, no. There's a lot of, when you read about this particular time in this story, nothing's outwardly said, but it's all said.
Well, because they didn't say shit like that back there.
It's there. there so was she trying to wreck the home and he wouldn't let her so while she was she was interfering and you know while she was interfering and not wrecking her nephew's home gross yep um she was trying to convince him to come teach at montgomery female college in virginia with all of them and leave his wife uh -huh and he refused at first he was like no yeah i'm not gonna run away with my aunt stop i don't like i'm not gonna do that but she returned a couple of weeks later her and uh interfered again and this time her uh interference convinced him to leave his fucking wife anna she
had a cosmo article come with her and he did he came with her and left anna just abandoned her you know what anna was better off yeah apparently anna had like struggled though i guess like she had some yeah it really did a number if my man's left me for his aunt yeah it It really did a number.
So, curiously, though, John became seriously injured on the way back to Virginia.
Oh, no. He fell or was pushed.
That's strange. From the train as it approached Roanoke.
Oh, Roanoke. He survived.
But weeks later, he was found almost drowned in a cistern on the school's campus.
Why is he having so many accidents?
By his Aunt Virginia.
Virginia and his aunt Virginia was like oh don't worry he was checking the water supply for the school oops don't worry that he fell in there and the lid went over and I'm the one who found him yeah don't worry about that he managed to survive that how does Mary feel about all this isn't that her kid I don't think any of them are mother of the year okay I would say okay uh but he managed to survive that and then one week later he was found on fire in his bed what the fuck is happening here this man was on fire in his bed he was doused with kerosene oh my god but they claimed it was an accident
and who found him who found him uh caroline of course his aunts of course how do you accidentally douse someone in kerosene you don't yeah where Where are we?
Where are we is correct.
I've quite literally never heard a tale such as this.
It is. This is for reals.
This is for reals. This is not legend.
No, the newspapers to back this up.
There's trials to back this up.
I would also like to put this out here.
I had never heard of this case.
And then a one Mikey.
You found this? Was the one to bring this up.
And I said, holy shit.
Yeah. yeah where the fuck did you find this in the depths of hell i was gonna say he said in hell in hell in hades what the fuck it is a tale that just keeps you guessing till the very end but i want the answers i need concrete answers and unfortunately in the beginning it's like wild and kooky and like it starts getting really dark and then it gets dark yeah at the end so it's like in the beginning you're like what is happening and then at the end you're like what the fuck happened like you're just like oh god keep going so yeah so keep going keep going so his aunts are the one who call that in now
remember he fell from a train approaching roanoke that caroline was on weird he almost drowned in a cistern on campus where virginia found him coincidence and then he was lit on fire with kerosene in his bed and his aunts were the ones who found him like virginia Yeah, Aunt Caroline.
Interesting that Mary's never around.
Mary's just like, whoopsie.
Now, following his death, the sisters, all three of them, collected an insurance payout.
Those bitches love insurance.
Which they had taken out.
So, strange. Now, in 1906, around the time of John Sneed's unexpected and very tragic death.
Because he died after the fire, obviously.
He sure did. Caroline paid a visit to his brother, Fletcher, her other nephew.
i love the name fletcher um he was still living in tennessee he should say there this is mary's other son her other nephew caroline explained that there would be some family property near chattanooga that needed looking after and asked whether fletcher would be willing to pay a visit to the property okay but fletcher's wife was like i heard about you well and she was like okay but she was like i'm you can go but like i want to make sure we're in constant contact Yeah, because I heard about this girl.
Because I heard about what's happening here.
So she attempted to contact him on the phone a few weeks later and Caroline answered and told her, no, he can't come to the phone right now.
And she was like, what the fuck do you mean he can't come to the phone right now?
And she was like, he's sick.
And she was like, well, I want to talk to him.
And she was like, too sick to talk.
And she was like, the fuck do you mean too sick to talk?
And she was like, I don't know, bitch. And then she hung up the phone.
Directed. That's quotes.
Literally, like the trids.
script so she was like i don't know about that so she contacts again and she's like how's he doing can i talk to him and she's like nah still can't talk to him still too sick and then she's like you know what he'll he'll i'll send him home in a few weeks when he's better a few weeks so in a few weeks had come and gone with no word from fletcher call the police fletcher's wife set out for chattanooga and was like i'm coming i'm coming i'm coming for you baby oh my god now when she She arrived at the boarding house that he had supposedly been staying at.
The woman there told her that Fletcher had indeed been there.
But then he had been moved to another house by Caroline.
Caroline loves moving people places.
Moved him to another house.
So Fletcher's wife follows.
She fucking Sherlock Holmes it.
Good for this girlie.
She detective Aberlines this.
Love it. Like she follows Caroline's trail, always a few steps behind, but following her.
She's like, I'm going to find my husband.
But eventually she ran out of leads.
No. And she couldn't find him without any information regarding her husband's whereabouts and seemingly no fucking way to find him.
And he didn't exist anymore.
She had, she was granted a divorce because she was like, he abandoned me.
She didn't involve the police.
I guess she was like, there's nothing to really, because she was just like, I guess Caroline later was just like yeah he just left what and it's like no he didn't what no he did not why is caroline like this i do not know but she couldn't find him because he was already on his way to rejoin the sisters in virginia with caroline he fell in love with auntie i don't know i don't know what's happening there deeply upset by this but she was convincing him now once there caroline Caroline began encouraging a romance between Fletcher and Osi.
Cousins. Her daughter, they are first cousins.
Oh, that's heinous.
That's illegal in many, many places.
So let me just back, back, back it up.
Go ahead. She goes after interfering in her first nephew's marriage, convincing him, bamboozling him into following her.
Bamboozling. She tries to kill him twice.
and then eventually they succeed and light him on fire in his bed collect that insurance payment she goes to the other nephew mary's other son mary's just letting this all happen that's the thing i'm like mary how many sons you got goes to her other son convinces him to come back to the the virginia with her yeah then ices out his wife pretends that fletcher just up and was sick first first of all, too sick to talk and then just abandoned her and who knows where he went.
And instead she takes Fletcher back to the school in Virginia with her and then encourages OC and Fletcher to get married.
First cousins. And it seems as though like there was already something romantic happening between Caroline and Fletcher.
There's something weird happening there.
I don't know what, like, I don't know.
I wasn't there. This is real.
This is real life. You know, in Bluey, when they go for real life, for real life.
i felt that the entire time i read this story i said for real life every five seconds and it is for real life like we need the blue eclipse that says for real life your kids have a toy that's that's so that's happening so now she's encouraging osi and fletcher to get married she's like first cousins i never heard of them so before the so then before long the two You, Fletcher and Osi, were married in a secret ceremony because they had to make it secret.
Because that's not legal.
They were in Christianburg, Virginia.
They had to make it secret because they are first cousins.
Is there even anywhere that you can marry your first cousin?
Not sure, but I don't want to go.
I'm not going there.
Wherever it is. Remember that true life?
Yes. Oh my God. Anyways.
It's very upsetting.
It is. People were already suspicious of this trio of wild women.
This trio of incest. Of wily, wily women.
and so when this happened they had to do it in secret because it was just really gonna and who know i'm like what was your end game here but when the first when they first arrived at the montgomery female college things at the school like i said it seemed stable and well managed yeah they were fine but just as it had been at sewell family college it didn't take long for caroline's influence to cause even more problems well because they're still going into the rooms and like still doing all the things padlocking the doors not long after they arrived I have rumors began spreading around town about,
like, their weird behavior, about them holding midnight rituals in the cemeteries around.
I mean, there were even, there were, like, rumors about, like, a quote -unquote illegitimate baby that was born at the school that disappeared.
What? And they believed, like, something might have happened.
What? That those are rumors.
But, like, these are the things people were talking about.
This is one of those things where it's like, all the rumors are true.
It's really scary. Oh, my God.
Within two years of their arriving there and all this crazy, strange behavior.
Okay. The sisters, again, had started to frighten students.
Yeah, I would be frightened.
Students were dropping out again.
Yeah. Because they were like, I'm not going to the - Like, this is too wild for me.
Like, fuck this school.
By 1908, the school had to close.
They had to close? They had to close.
Why didn't anybody intervene before that?
I do not know. Damn.
But having once again found themselves in dire financial straits - They had to kill someone.
yeah the sisters well first they tried to sell off the school's minor assets okay like five pianos a church organ rosewood wardrobes and the school itself here's the thing there's no evidence to indicate that they had any ownership what the fuck on the property just sell it they're like like do you have the deed they're like fuck that they were like hey you want this building oh my god who are these women who raised these women are these lucifer's children i think it's like a confidence thing if you just walk up to a building and you're like hey you want this like they hired a real estate agent
and everything it comes time to sign the paperwork they're like what paperwork like what the fuck just give us the money give me the check take the building whatever that's like weird to have me have it's so strange but they sold the school to a man named sydney sheltzman who was so confused sydney was so confused he's like you own this place they're like nah you do oh man it's wild when the school was abandoned Because it was abandoned at the time, even when he bought it.
It became a popular spot for vandals and older boys on marauding expeditions.
Now, they tore through the halls and classrooms, took everything out of there.
Like, the whole place had been destroyed.
In the meantime, the sisters were like, what can we do next?
We can woo some older men into marriage.
That's true. And get some money.
They weren't gaining any traction on that front because they didn't have the lyrics.
They're a little strange.
i feel like their methods might be weird love like guys love a little you know what i'm saying that i feel like maybe they they were approaching it the wrong way they were too can i look them up and like see what they look like yeah i think so and you can i think a lot of like the rumors that were swirling about them were keeping people's distance away from them well and the fact that you know i'm like any man in a five foot radius of them like weirdly got kerosene doused over them.
Probably didn't help.
So they had creditors growing impatient, not being paid, and they were going to be taking legal action against them at this point.
So the sisters and Fletcher and Osi began leaving town anytime something like this would happen.
OK. So they went off in the direction of New York and they didn't all go at once.
They went one after the other.
So not to arouse suspicion.
All righty. Now, they were trying to put some space.
so Fletcher and Ocie were trying to put space between themselves and their aunts and her mother um so they settled in East Orange New Jersey in 1908 and by some accounts they were happy I don't want to know about that I know I don't pretty though I know I I don't know what has happening it's upsetting it's like oh my god this rendition of Caroline line.
Yes. No. This just sent me.
Stop it. That's why they weren't having luck with the men's, baby.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
That's so terrifying.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
This is a lot to unpack.
I'm so upset. So, Virginia's fine.
Up until this point, we've had some tragedies.
We've had some deaths that have been very sad And like very scary Correct But it's about to get real dark Okay let me just breathe This is all wacky crazy But then it gets like oh Like all of a sudden you're just gonna go oh And it gets like real So OC and Fletcher are living in Orange Yes New Jersey And the aunts are still in the south Yes and they're making their way To New York because they're trying to get away from the creditors that are now after them okay okay but they're doing it like one after the other yeah okay and again this is all up until this point this would just be a wacky kooky
at times tragic story definitely but then now it's just like oh it's about to go down and it's it's still wacky like they are wacky humans yeah you can't take that out of it but you can't take the wacky out of them but uh but unfortunately so and again fletcher and oc are first cousins um you don't have you know i'm gonna keep reminding you that you don't have to a few months later o .c gave birth to a baby girl they named mary after fletcher's mom and and uh her aunt yep but the child unfortunately died shortly after she was born that's really sad i'm sure there was some complications and things
only got worse when virginia mary and caroline showed up at o .c and fletcher's doorstep in early 1909 i would say we don't have anything for you They were out of money and they said, hi, we're here.
Their arrival reminded Fletcher of the last time the sisters had found themselves in financial trouble.
I don't know if you can remember that time.
It coincided with the mysterious and very brutal death of his brother, John.
Yes. And an insurance payout came after that very conveniently for the sisters.
And you know what? It solved all their problems at the time.
Sure did. Yeah. So Fletcher saw this and said, oh, hi.
I'm getting out of here.
Aunties and mom and said, fuck this.
And he fled the country to Canada.
No, he didn't. In March 1909.
But did he leave OC?
He left OC. That's your wife cousin.
It was also, that's your wife cousin.
You don't just abandon your wife cousin.
That's your wife cousin.
You don't do that. Well, and what's sad is that OC had not had a chance to tell him that she was pregnant again.
Oh God. hot now totally she's abandoned by her husband at this point cousin cousin and left in the care of three people who had always treated her like shit oh they weren't nice to her because they were never nice to her it's a lot of people thought that they were jealous of her well she's like her mother and her aunts were jealous of her i bet they were um they had always kind of treated her like shit so her mental health began to decline in the spring when she's pregnant And her physical needs are increasing because of the pregnancy, which makes it even worse.
And to make it even worse, the sisters had taken Osi out of the comfort of her home that she had with Fletcher and brought her back to Brooklyn to live with them in some sparsely furnished building.
Oh, and they had created their own space.
Yeah. And aware that they, you know, luckily they were aware that they lacked any knowledge or resources to provide any basic level of care for a pregnant woman or really anyone else for that matter, because they are wild.
The sisters did call a doctor, Dr. William Pettit, who started treating O .C.
that spring. OK, well, that's good.
Now, O .C. does die, obviously, at the end of this.
We've talked about that in the beginning.
I literally forgot that one.
So after her death later, Dr. Pettit would recall the incredibly strange experience of arriving at the Sneed house that spring.
Oh, no. Now, at the time, only Virginia and Mary were living in the house with Ocie, not her mother, Caroline.
Sus. But he said at the time a third woman, who he believed to be Ocie's mother, would occasionally stop by and check on her.
Yeah. He said, all these women must have slept on the floor For the only cot in the house on the second floor Was occupied by the ailing niece Okay And he said, aside from meager furnishings in Osie's room The house was pretty much empty of anything else Damn Which only made everything even stranger Right And you're like, he's like You're bringing a baby into this house?
Yeah, like what the fuck?
Like what are we gonna do with the baby?
And Dr. Pettit also found the three sisters' behavior Really strange and off -putting What were they doing?
After he initially evaluated Osi, who appeared very frail and very depressed, Pettit diagnosed her as suffering from general weakness, the result of lack of nutrition and proper care.
And that's not good because if she's malnourished and the baby is.
So what he had prescribed for her was fresh air, a restorative diet, and medicine.
Okay. He was like, this will improve her.
But upon a follow -up visit, he found that the women had made no effort to provide even one of those things to her when he asked why they hadn't made even the slightest effort to do any of his recommendations one of the women he said said later he believed it was virginia told the doctor they couldn't afford the medicine due to all their money going to the high premiums they were paying in insurance what that doesn't even make any sense so during this period osi was dealing with the emotional pain of losing her husband and also losing a a daughter and the physical pain of a very difficult pregnancy
of which she is malnourished and sick.
Oh man. And also living with three women who are jealous of her and have been her whole life and have treated her like shit.
That's the thing. And it's for all of these reasons, all those stressors that she's under that she probably, this is why she probably didn't have any idea that after Fletcher left, the sisters had taken out three life insurance policies on O .C.
with Equitable Life Insurance Society, each in the amount of $7 ,500.
How did they get three out on her?
Nobody double -checked it?
Damn. I have no idea, but it's wild.
Now, a few months later, in late spring, Dr. Pettit became concerned about OC's declining health and her ability to even give birth to a baby successfully.
Yeah, because she's so weak at this point.
So Pettit was on hand to guide OC through the process of giving birth.
to her baby in the home um and it was on august 1st 1909 she gave birth to a baby boy who she named david pollock's need okay um unfortunately the labor process was very difficult and the baby was born quote -unquote sickly and when pettit told the two aunts that osi actually might need a very risky postnatal operation that could prove fatal for her no he said he was very surprised and very disgusted with how the women reacted he said they were fairly jumped at the idea because they wanted her they wanted to cash in now despite david the little baby's poor health at the time of his birth dr pettit
and osi were both confident that with the right diet right care he would survive and eventually thrive that's great um but that would require the sisters to provide anything any support uh -huh that they clearly were not capable of including spending money on the baby's care and instead over the objections of pettit and ose they quote fed the baby condensed milk and other foods at variance with those dr pettit specified oh my weeks later david was still in poor health and was taken to saint christopher's hospital by virginia and mary who returned home a short time later to inform ose that the baby had
died oh though it would later be learned that was a lie they just got and they had simply left david at saint christopher's honestly in a horrible way that was probably the best thing for that baby but so horrible but for oc that's like you just kidnapped her baby yeah and then told her she did died like wow now in the wake of what she believed was another child's death yeah she's gonna lose it declined mentally physically physically and at his insistence the sisters allowed Pettit to perform the postnatal surgery on Osi uh but when he attempted to return you know a little time later to remove
the stitches and do some aftercare because she managed to get through it wow the sisters refused to let him inside the house but they did allow periodic visits from a nurse okay and just a week or so later Pettit returned to the house when he learned that Virginia had dismissed the nurse wouldn't allow her back and his attempts to reach the women went unanswered my god and it's like he i'm like can you involve the police well yeah don't worry he does okay good um now because from the moment he had been summoned to treat her in the first place he was very uncomfortable with those three women yeah
and he said they made him feel very unwelcome each visit he went to that house he was more and more unwelcome more unnerved and he said it wasn't just like bad attitudes and like weird behavior which they had comments that troubled him but he said the fact that the women were intentionally treating osi poorly and seemed to care very little whether she lived or died and on one particular visit pettit recalled virginia showing him osi's will that's strange and in it osi had left the majority of her stuff to her grandmother leaving aside one thousand dollars to pay Pettit for his services so she
put in her will I want him paid for what he's done like just in case now the doctor was like oh that's far too much for what I've provided like you don't need to give me that much like and also she's alive yeah um but more importantly he was like this is weird and suspicious that you're showing me this like why do you have her will what are you doing I don't get it so he reported the treatment of OC and this whole thing to the police good and later he recalled that officers quote made a routine inquiry and it led nowhere and this is also the police failed on an epic level here now it was his suspicions
that led the doctor to take extreme measures upon his last visit to the house so after knocking and ringing the bell several times and not getting an answer dr pettit became concerned for rossi's safety And he went into the house through an open front window I love this man I love this doctor This man's for the win So he reached the girl's bedroom And he said he was shocked to find her, quote, nearly starved with no food in the house Despite her serious condition, he said that Osi was so happy to see him And said she wanted to talk to him about something important But before she could say anything,
one of the sisters came in the room and forced Pettit out of the room I wish he could have, like, rescued her and taken him with her Right?
They said they were willing to placate him by being like, fine, we'll have food delivered to the house for her.
Wow. Like, what the fuck?
But they were like, you need to leave now and like, don't come back or we're calling the police.
So, he knew. He was like, OC's in danger.
Like, she's going to die.
So, he felt, I'm going to report it again.
So, he reported it to the police again and was like, you need to fucking do something about this.
And he was, so the police went, Brooklyn police, checked on the women, found no evidence of anyone having committed a crime.
So, they said, there's nothing we can do.
what? Yeah, failures.
Huge failures. Shame.
Truly. Like they should be ashamed of themselves.
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by fall of 1909 the sisters found themselves again needing money their regular position in life with creditors beginning to call on them regularly and in late october the sisters were no longer able to hold these creditors off so they resorted to their typical strategy you know picking up and moving before the creditors could find them and get what they needed yeah now when when the doctor learned that the Brooklyn police had been unable to do anything, Dr. Pettit returned to the home again himself to check on OC because he was going to go in there and he was like, I don't know what I was going
to do, but I was going back myself because no one was doing anything.
He found it completely abandoned.
Oh, no. So he didn't know where she went.
That's terrible. And he was probably so, so worried.
Now, on November 29th, 1909, only the next month, uh police in east orange new jersey received a call from quote an elderly woman with a southern accent explaining that an accident had occurred at 89 north 14th street and they needed a coroner the assistant county physician dr herbert simmons went three blocks to the address and he was greeted at the door by virginia who was dressed in the typical black attire with the black veil they're so weird and she led him through the house and simmons noted that the building seemed to have no heat or furniture and appeared as though no one had lived there
in a long time okay they reached the bathroom and virginia just points at the bathtub where he sees the nude emaciated body of oc laying beneath just a few inches of water oh god now simmons now this is is the county physician simon dr simmons he scanned the scene for any information that might be useful and found a pile of clothing with what appeared to be a very neatly written suicide note attached to it the note said last year my little daughter died others near and dear have gone before i've been prostrated with illness for a long time when you read this i will have committed suicide do not grieve
me rejoice with me that death brings a blessed relief from pain and suffering greater than i can bear owms need doubt it now virginia explained to the doctor that oc had lost her daughter the previous year and her son had been placed in the hospital four months earlier and then she said she had also become a widow seven months prior fletcher didn't die right right no not that we know of so virginia told the man that she shared the house on 14th street with her niece giving the impression that it was just virginia and osi yeah uh and that they had recently moved in now as an agent of the coroner's
office dr simmons had seen a lot of dead bodies and he had seen a lot of scenes and he said something's not right here well the fact that she's emaciated is one thing for one thing osi had been dead in the bathroom in the only bathroom in this place for at least 24 hours so immediately that's us virginia saying she just She just discovered the body.
She just had an accident.
That's the only bathroom.
For 24 hours, there's been a dead body in the bathroom and you didn't know?
And there was also the house itself.
She's saying that they moved in weeks earlier, but the house was virtually empty.
It appeared like no one had been living there for years.
So he was very suspicious of Virginia and he was like, something's up here.
So Simmons stopped at the nearest phone he could find and placed a call to Sergeant William O 'Neill of the East Orange Police lease and explained everything that he found, all his thoughts, and noted all his suspicions to them.
Now, knowing that Simmons was definitely not the type of man to jump to conclusions, he was a trustworthy guy.
He'd been to a lot of these scenes.
He wouldn't be bringing them out if he didn't need to.
Sergeant O 'Neill took this very seriously and immediately went to the house.
Good. Now, Sergeant O 'Neill arrived at the house around 6 p .m. and Virginia opened the door and she demanded immediately to know what business he had there and o 'neal explained that he had been ordered to inspect the premises so virginia reluctantly let him inside and brought him to the bathroom and she's like there she is like showed him osi now after reading the note o 'neal asked virginia to show him the rest of the house starting with the attic so going room by room he was struck by how empty this house felt and he said not just empty in the sense he's like it was was empty there was nothing
in there but he was like it felt empty oh like there was no love no there was a palpable feeling to this house and in fact he said the only sign that anyone actually lived there was found in what he assumed to be oc's former bedroom on a small table next to a cot was a locket bearing the photo of a baby on one side and a lock of hair on the other that's so sad beside it was a small strip of paper that read lock of david sneed's first hair august 18th 09 that's the saddest thing ever now virginia followed o 'neill quietly from room to room and she was using like a gas lamp like you if you can just
picture this yeah wearing her full attire with the black veil he was probably like where the fuck he was probably this is a house of horrors now there were a few pieces of broken furniture or what maybe could have been personal items scattered about but it looked more like it was like long ago somebody had lived there And when they'd finished going through the whole thing, O 'Neill began to question Virginia about why they'd moved to East Orange and, you know, why she'd only noticed her niece was dead a few hours earlier when it's the only bathroom in the fucking house.
So the woman was short with the sergeant and gave him very simple, very direct answers, but also making it very clear that his presence was not fucking wanted in that house.
Now, if Virginia thought she could simply call the coroner, be like hey sorry i have a dead body here can you go ahead and grab that and thought she was just going to be done with the whole thing after that which she definitely did she must have been pretty surprised when sergeant o 'neill explained that she was going to have to come with him to the station to answer some more questions virginia went she grabbed a small bag some belongings and went out of the house now at the east orange police department she went through a whole interview and this time she was interviewed by police chief james
bell now to bell the entire this was all fucked this was all suspicious she's sitting there in her fucking black veil he said that virginia seemed to have an answer for everything she had a quick answer for everything but it still didn't explain what happened in the house she was because he was like she herself was very poised very polished but o 'neill had described them living in squalor right it just didn't match matchup.
And there was also the manner of the whole thing.
Like if they're claiming this is suicide, how could OC have managed to hold herself underwater long enough to drown herself, especially in such a frail and fragile state?
And again, your body is going to want to take yourself and sit up.
Yeah. And she's not strong enough to keep herself underwater.
So these are all unanswered questions and they're nagging him.
So Bell booked Virginia as a material witness that evening and she was taken to Essex County Jail.
Now the following day, November 30th, an autopsy was performed on OSI and it confirmed that the cause of death was drowning but it also raised a few more questions.
The medical examiner noted that OSI was emaciated to the last degree like that of a person suffering from starvation and she only weighed 80 pounds at the time of her death.
Oh, it's such a haunting picture to think of her being discovered in the bathtub in that state.
Yeah, and in that state, investigators wondered whether she again would have had the strength to do this but also had the strength to write a clear and concise suicide note with a steady hand.
Yeah, no way. It was very steady.
There was no shakiness to it.
There's no way. No, while the coroner examined the body, investigators with the East Orange Police started tracing the two women's movements from the moment they arrived in the city a few weeks earlier.
Right. They managed to track down a cab driver who'd taken them from the train station to the house, but also took Virginia to see a local doctor by the name of Charles Teeter.
When they interviewed Dr. Teeter, he said Virginia had shown up at his house at a late hour on the evening of November 3rd, 24th.
Okay. Not long ago.
And asked that he accompany her back to the house to provide a health certificate for OC.
A health certificate?
Now, although he initially protested, it was clear she wasn't going to take no for an answer, so he agreed to go with her.
Now, at the house, the doctor examined Osi and noted that she was incredibly frail and appeared to have bronchitis, but otherwise, he was like, okay, that's really all I have to say about her.
To Bell and O 'Neil, the request for the health certificate for Osi only made Virginia seem more suspicious.
And what is that? I've never heard of that.
It could be for, like, insurance reasons.
Okay. It's just, like, like almost like a physical kind of yeah now in just a few days their investigation had turned up several people who interacted with virginia in and around east orange and always in the context of her asking questions about medical treatment and local doctors which seemed in keeping with the situation at the house but when they checked the registers of local hotels in new york city they were surprised to find that virginia was staying in several of the city's fanciest hotels in recent months and had been dining at high -end restaurants so there's like wait a second this woman is living
in expensive hotels and leaving this emaciated sick frail niece alone in this abandoned house place what the fuck shut up cold broken house in new jersey and how is she even living in these expensive hotels with no money because she was using the insurance money that she got before she's i'm sure she's scamming some shit there's tons of fraud charges that come up wow eventually bell and o 'neill search led them to a house in brooklyn that the neighbors had taken to calling the house of mystery they called it god it reminds me of that tick tock yes your kids when they're like the ball of mystery
oh my god uh they called this house the house of mystery because the three women in black who occupied it were very strange and had a lot of strange behavior.
According to the neighbors on both sides of this house, they'd often heard strange noises and banging coming from the house all hours of the night.
What are they doing?
The windows had been blacked out.
Stop. Stop it. And the yard was so overgrown that nobody could see inside.
Like, are they witches?
They're bad witches.
Some shit is going down there.
Like, dorks added witches.
Dorks added. Not white witches.
It's given sinister vibe.
Like, white magic. Yeah, like sinister vibe.
Oh my God. Now, once the investigators had located the janitor responsible for managing the home, because they used to have like certain, you know, like a super almost. Yeah, yeah.
They got inside of it and they found that this place was as bleak and empty as the one in East Orange.
And they were about to leave. But then they were approached by a reporter from the New York world who'd been put on the story by one of his New Jersey peers, was like heard all about this.
Because you knew this was going to get reported on.
The reporter is like, wait a second, why are you guys leaving?
Don't you notice those small spots of like what looks like blood on the floor by the door?
I love that the reporter was like, hey, guys.
Like, hey, investigators, did you notice that?
So they follow the faint trail through the hall and up the stairs into one of the bedrooms, but it just led nowhere.
What? Meanwhile, the reporter on the first floor opened the oven in the kitchen and discovered a mass of yellow hair.
Wrapped up in its center were two irregularly shaped bones.
One resembled a femur and the other resembled a skull.
And they were small.
What? You could see, they said you could see nose bones in the socket of an eye.
And, like, this is, like, a child's skull?
It appeared to be. What the fuck?
And obviously this is an OC because we have her body.
Now, what the fuck is going on?
So they asked the janitor, they're like, what the fuck has been going on in this?
Like, what's going on?
And the janitor explained that OC and her husband had moved into that house about a year and a half earlier and then were joined, remember, by the two older women always dressed in black.
And a few months later, a third woman, who was also dressed in black, came to live with them, Caroline.
Yeah. Caroline! The janitor didn't know much else, but he did mention that OC's husband eventually left and the women were constantly behind on the rent so when fletcher left when they showed up was like no i'm not dying he left for canada they moved into that house and turned it into whatever fucking cult bullshit while oc's living there they turned it into that okay and then they ripped oc out of the house made her live in that abandoned place while they kept living in that house oh so they didn't live in the house with oc and they were just keeping her in a house by By herself, ailing and sick
and unable to move and starving her.
And that was the whole time that she was pregnant.
Yep. And they said they—and reports had said they had been starving Osi essentially since she was born.
What? Like, that girl had never been adequately taken care of.
What the fuck? Yeah.
Yep. And so the janitor says when Osi's husband eventually left, the women were always behind on the rent.
And then they would suddenly come into a large sum of money right before they were about to be evicted.
So they were doing some more shit.
Yeah, they were. And who the fuck is the skull in the oven?
Well, the house in Brooklyn and the information given by the janitor eventually led them to Dr. Pettit.
My guy. Who filled in a lot of the gaps here.
And Pettit explained that he had been on hand when O .C.
gave birth to her second child.
And from that point forward, he said, I just couldn't stop thinking about her.
I was so worried for her safety.
My concerns grew and grew and he said, at no time was I able to find out from Mrs. Sneed anything about herself, meaning Osi.
Okay. He had never found anything about Osi out from herself.
Well, because they were always lingering.
He said, every time I asked a question, one of the older women was always ready to give up an answer.
Mrs. Sneed seemed afraid to talk and he said he tried to follow up several times until one day he arrived at the house in Brooklyn and it was abandoned, which he was presumably when they moved OC to East Orange now Dr. Pettit's nurse uh Elizabeth Moog told a similar story she said she'd been assigned to care for OC after the baby was born and the surgical procedure had been performed yeah but she said it was so difficult to take care of her because the sisters were constantly hovering over her she said whenever I went wherever I went one of them kept tagging after me I was not alone with Mrs. Sneed
for a single moment Mrs. Sneed seemed afraid of someone one or something oh that's and just the air of like her being afraid being followed by these women and then you add on their appearance to it and they're terrifying like black veils and all all the time just silently following you oh i hate it now bell and o 'neill explained that what they'd found at the house in brooklyn and we're like what the fuck is do you have any idea what that could be and asked you know for pettit to come with him to look at it pettit agreed agreed and it didn't take long before you know they figured out what was happening
what happened there or not what happened there but what that was now according to dr pettit the stains in the hall he said he didn't think they were blood okay he thought they were uh tobacco juice he said probably left by a careless worker oh he's like that's why there's no like end with a crime scene yeah yeah um the bones in the oven were bizarre but he said he didn't believe they were human He thought they were animal bones But he said still don't know why they're in the oven And there's also like a mass of hair That he was like I don't know what that is Did he think it was human hair or he
wasn't sure He was like I don't know But he's like I think some of these are animals So I'm assuming they're animal bones So Dr. Pettit tried to clear up Some mysteries and did a couple But It didn't stop the New York World The New York World News Publishing a ton of sensational stories about this.
I mean, how do you not in this fucking case?
They called the Brooklyn house a baby farm, which, you know, they didn't really have a lot to go on on that.
They did mention the occult overtones of the whole thing.
And thanks to the information provided by neighbors in Brooklyn, and especially that of Dr. Pettit and his nurse, a picture was beginning to emerge for the detectives.
It was clear that three women had been abusing O .C., and by all accounts, she seemed terrified of them.
But what they couldn't kind of figure out was why they had done this right like they were like this is this is like a long process and it didn't take them long to figure out a motive during an interview with william fee a brooklyn attorney it was revealed that the lawyer had been recommended to virginia by someone she'd met at church and she'd summoned him to the house just a few months before osi's death i can't believe virginia was at church yeah now according to fee virginia had wanted him to help osi write a new will this was before osi died virginia produced the old will completed by osi
just a few months earlier and explained they wanted to write a new one because the previous version didn't make any provisions for osi's baby now osi's only like i think she was only 20 i want to say she was between 23 and 26 yeah and she also was told that her baby died which like that is why well fee thought that That the explanation was like, whatever.
He's like, okay, that, sure.
Yeah. But he did think it was strange that the details of the new will were all being dictated by Virginia.
Right. Not O .C. Yeah.
Now, according to Fee, on that day, Virginia was in the company of Caroline, O .C.'s mother.
The girl appeared to be very on the verge of death at the time.
And Fee was really moved by the sad story that the sisters were spinning to him.
Right. Right. So, he agreed to write the new will because he thought she's dying.
Yeah. This is her mother and her aunts.
Right. Now, in the new will, O .C.
apparently declared that all her debts should be paid out of her estate and that her son should inherit $500.
Okay. And that the rest was to be left to her grandmother, Martha.
That was her original thing.
Yeah. With new evidence in hand, Chief Bell paid a visit to Virginia in her cell at Essex County Jail and interrogated her about the will.
Virginia flatly denied the accusations of neglect and any insinuation that she would conspire to kill her niece for any inheritance.
I mean... And Bell hoped that the woman would crack when presented with the evidence, but he had underestimated how much she would...
He had underestimated her will.
Yeah. I will say, and you will find out what I mean by that in a minute.
Okay. He was just about to give up when O 'Neill entered his office and presented him with documented evidence and witness testimony confirming medical neglect and all evidence of maltreatment, maltreatment and malnourishment of OC.
Yeah. So all the evidence was there.
He didn't need the confession.
And he said, Bell said, at first, I believe Mrs. Sneed attempted to take a bath, was discovered in the tub by her murderer and held underwater until drowned.
Makes sense. But after careful examination of the evidence, which directly contradicted Virginia's story, he believed O .C.
had never intended to take a bath, but had instead been placed in the tub, was too weak to fight back, and was held under a few inches of water by Virginia.
Jesus Christ. Until she drowned.
So she literally carried her, like dragged her into the bath and drowned her.
This is one of the most darkest. Based on the information collected at this point, Bell made the decision to charge Virginia with the murder of O .C.
Sneed. Yeah, rightfully so, it sounds.
So the news of Virginia's arrest made readers go crazy all over the East Coast. They had been following all the sensational stories coming out of here.
And honestly, the news of her behavior and the way she dressed only made it even more macabre.
Of course. And law enforcement were talking also about how strange and uncooperative Virginia was being.
Police Commissioner Sharpe said in a statement to the press, I tried to question her, but she bluntly told me that she saw no reason why she should answer my questions and in his assessment of virginia sharp described her as cool calm and resourceful and cunning now in an attempt to get back at the negative portrayals of virginia mary sneed the the other idiot here yeah granted an interview with several reporters saying family pride should be laid aside and the public should learn the truth about the sisters in black and tell us mary said in the hope of lightening lightening the burden of an innocent
woman speaking of virginia i will tell all i know but hardly she told said nothing she told nothing in fact she flat out refused to address any questions regarding regarding the family's financial history and the fact that virginia had not only taken three life insurance policies out on oc just before her death but had it also had her will changed right she wouldn't talk about any of that instead mary told some stupid sob story of family tragedy and misfortune that more or less upheld the lies the women had told oc including that her husband was almost certainly dead fletcher which he's not he's
also that's mary's son yeah as for oc's death mary insisted that it was suicide motivated by profound loss and you know her declining health i don't know about that now as news of the story spread People in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and Tennessee came forward to tell their tales of the sisters.
A former student at the Nashville Female School where Mary was once employed described her as being, quote, regarded by all pupils as being queer.
Now, queer meaning strange back then.
And in Christianburg, Virginia, one resident described the sisters as, quote, crazy, eccentric, and exceedingly smart.
Ooh, exceedingly smart and ties with all of that is horrible.
Now, reporters followed every lead in the story, and they began reporting on all the mysterious aspects of the women's lives, including all the things we had talked about before, the weird standing over people's beds at night, the B &Es, the cemetery things, having one driver to bring them to the cemetery all the time.
I forgot that they had a fucking driver to bring them to the cemetery.
And so they started piecing together a story that included a large amount of fraud, very disturbing behavior, and a few suspicious deaths, and a lot of insurance shit.
There was the tragic death of Caroline's first child after falling down a flight of stairs.
The unexpected early death of Robert Martin, her husband.
John sneeds multiple brushes with death before dying by being lit on fire in his bed.
I know, did the police ever like investigate that?
No, they said, in fact, they could smell kerosene and nobody thought it was suspicious.
What the fuck? They said it was an accident.
And then finally, O .C.'s drowning.
All of these things were followed by large insurance payouts that were received just in the nick of time to avoid financial ruin.
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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.
So in an effort to combat the growing amount of strange stories in the press, Virginia's lawyer, Franklin Fort, presented the press with two unmailed letters that Virginia supposedly had written to family members.
Okay. In each letter, Virginia is expressing her deepest sympathies for the recent losses.
There were statements like, what a flood tide of loving sympathy slows to you this beautiful Sabbath afternoon.
And I would love to hold you dear head on my lap and run my fingers through your hair.
And so charm away brain worry.
Brain worry. Brain worry.
Like people talked so wild back then.
I was just like feeding her.
Yeah, it was always that.
Fort's intention was to demonstrate that Virginia was far from this bizarre spinster she had been portrayed as, the press.
I don't know about that.
no woman who writes such letters would commit murder.
Totally. Totally. Now, despite, you know, what seemed like a rock -solid way to influence the press, the public perception of Virginia, Fort simply couldn't hold back the constant sensational news coverage because, uh, she was weird. Wild.
Moreover, the more the press learned about the family through their investigations and the police, the more it began to look as though Virginia virginia was not the only one involved in all this yeah i'm also like where the fuck is caroline because mary's out here talking to the press where's caroline about her only child now dying so as the new year rolls over the prosecutor's office had begun to put together a theory as to the events leading up to and resulting in osi's death they believe that all four women had been living in the house in brooklyn when they concocted a scheme to kill osi and collect
on the the insurance money yeah now according to the prosecutor one old woman hired the unfurnished house hired the unfurnished house in east orange another took the poor girl there and a third planned her murder so they oh they rented that house and in a east orange brought oc there and left her there let her starve there for a while and planned her entire murder and then told the police we are living here together even though they're not now by dividing up the tasks because one of them hired the house one of them brought her there one of them planned the murder by dividing up those tasks the women
had hoped to avoid suspicion yeah and i don't know why they would have gone through all the lengths when they could like to bring her to east orange when they could have just committed this crime in new york yeah i don't know i wonder if they thought maybe Maybe like her traveling in such a frail state would just end up with her death.
Maybe, you know, but it's like, even then it's like, that would have been great for them.
Oh yeah. Actually. Yeah.
You know, like that either way.
So it's like, it just doesn't make it like, like why wouldn't you just like do it?
Yeah. Like, why'd you bring her somewhere else and like evolve another place?
And like, even though that's what I meant by that.
Oh, you meant going from Brooklyn to East Orange.
Sorry. Sorry, I was thinking the other way around.
No, that's okay. You are correct.
Like, that is also a good point.
But even investigators now, they're like, I still don't get why they didn't just, like, because you didn't really need anything to happen.
You had already done the starvation and the poor treatment and the withholding medical treatment from her.
At this point, it's like, it looks like what they did was they just dragged her to a bathtub and drowned her.
They could have done that.
They could have done that all along.
But maybe the financial thing was, like, heating up at that point.
Maybe they were like, okay, like, she's not going to die soon enough from starvation, so we need to speed this along.
But that's what I mean.
They could have just drowned her in the house that they already had.
Yeah. Like, it doesn't make sense.
I don't know. But what's also unknown to investigators at this point was the whereabouts of, like you were asking, Caroline.
Yeah, like, where is she?
They believe she was obviously an active participant in her own daughter's death.
I mean, yeah. Now, despite her absence, or perhaps because of it, the press was able to paint a picture of Caroline as a kind of ringleader among the sisters it sounds like she is because again they were quote -unquote normal before until her arrival the sisters lives seemed pretty functional odd a little bit but functional yeah i mean she was the president of the school the other one worked there like once caroline entered the picture her manipulation and overbearing personality completely changed virginia and mary according to luann reif the newspapers described caroline as an intelligent and highly
emotional woman perhaps with mental illness who manipulated her family yeah she was a hoarder she clung on to everything she owned rather than sell them even when she was financially desperate and most importantly she lacked any real human connection even with the closest members of her family her husband her son and her daughter she had no connection to them it sounds like she has more of a connection to her sisters yeah and this was a strange little thing by mid -december caroline had been located in New York City and she was registered at a hotel as Mrs. Maybrick.
Mrs. Maybrick. Now, remember the case of Florence Maybrick?
Yeah. James Maybrick?
Yeah. Who some people believe to be Jack the Ripper.
He's not. Get this.
Florence Maybrick's daughter was named caroline wait what so caroline our bad caroline is living in new york city in a hotel under the name mrs maybrick florence maybrick was married to james maybrick and was accused of poisoning him uh -huh Her daughter's name was Caroline.
Okay. I don't know what the connection is there, but Mrs. Maybrick is a strange name to pick.
Yeah. And the fact that Caroline is going under Mrs. Maybrick and the real Mrs. Maybrick has a daughter named Caroline is a little strange.
That is. And it was heavily reported.
Oh, yeah. People thought he was Jack the Ripper.
Right. What the fuck?
and it was like a big deal because they thought that Florence had murdered him right and sorry was that in the states or no because they thought he was Jack the Ripper so that was in Europe and it was reported over here because okay yeah sorry that was like a lot what yeah like it's just a weird I was like what is this and I tried to find any other kind of connections there but I was like Like I couldn't find – and though it's weird too is I think it was a big deal, the Florence Maybrick stuff because Florence Maybrick was from Alabama.
Oh, and they're from the South as well.
So she's from the South.
And it's like – so that was definitely reported over here because it was like an American woman.
right now um but yeah like that's and it's also like weird interconnection here that i can't quite put my finger on but weird can very like coincidental yeah and it's also if she did do that on purpose which to me it kind of sounds like she did that's that's a weird fucking thing to do on purpose because people are going to want to like you're you're trying to float below the the radar but you're picking that as a cover name yeah i don't know what it's very strange do you think she just thought it was like funny yeah or like uh like she just did it to be like i don't know like because they love
that spooky persona they've got their maybe it was just like their black dress with the black veil right so maybe it's just part of the whole it sounds very mental illness very strange you know like it sounds like she was there there's definitely something well Well, when I saw Mrs. Maybrick, I was like, Mrs. Maybrick.
And I was like, oh, Florence Maybrick, James Maybrick.
And I started thinking about it.
And then I was like, huh.
And I was like, wait, Florence was from the United States.
I was like, wait, she was from the South.
Wait a second. And I started looking into it again, like just being like refreshing.
And then I was like, holy shit, her daughter's name was Caroline.
That's too, I feel like that's too weird to be a coincidence.
Right? I would, I think, yeah.
Too many connections there.
But anyway, that was my little side track.
track like florence ended up getting out of jail eventually and then moving back to the states yeah yeah she ended up living like you know like a quaint life a pretty quiet life yeah um interesting now caroline was under surveillance by new jersey authorities until they had justification to arrest her we love a surveillance moment right that that evidence finally came in the form of several letters written by caroline that chief bell believed bore a remarkable resemblance to the the handwriting in osi's suicide note she wrote her own child's suicide note finally by the end of december mary sneed
and caroline were taken into custody by new york authorities and held for the murder of osi wow on december 22nd a grand jury indicted all three women for first degree murder um at this time prosecutor wilbur mott began drawing up the papers to have mary and caroline extradited to new jersey to stand trial the most compelling piece of evidence presented to the grand jury according to the press was more than 50 quote -unquote suicide notes discovered in caroline martin's new york hotel room so she kept writing them over and over and over again what the fuck that's her daughter her child i mean she
was already starving her so i don't know i'm shocked but still that's now while all three women continue to be held in prison pending trial investigators in east orange kept turning up evidence in the case that strongly supported the theory that oc's death was a murder in addition to the insurance policies taken out on her life and other evidence of conspiracy when uh when he first searched the house sergeant o 'neill had found a glass by the bathtub that contained a small amount of liquid when the autopsy was conducted a small amount of that same liquid was discovered in OC's stomach now it took
a long time for the analysis to be completed but in mid -January the results came back and found that that liquid was morphine the discovery of the morphine answered the nagging question of how OC had managed to drown in such a shallow amount of water right especially since the body would instinctively fight to stay alive with this new so they had sedated her yeah that's easy and that That was probably how they even got her into the bath in the first place.
Now, with this new evidence, the prosecutor announced their belief that the women had been administering the morphine for several days.
And that when she was put in the bathtub, Osi was unconscious of what was occurring.
Which I guess is the only blessing here.
That she didn't know what was happening.
Now, they built their case against the three sisters.
And the prosecutor announced the trial would begin April 1910.
But things started to fall apart.
because a ton of things delayed the trial first the sister's elderly mother died followed by the unfortunate death of oc son david at saint christopher's hospital then in the spring it became clear to authorities that virginia's health had started to take a turn for the worse and she's in custody yeah okay they discovered she was starving herself what if that is so like like, just dark.
Macabre. Yep. In August, the prosecutor announced, it is feared Virginia Ward law may not live to be brought to trial.
Wow. By the summer, she had been removed from the House of Corrections and taken to a hospital.
She was frequently unconscious, required oxygen, and a few days later on August 12th, she had died from starvation.
Jesus. She had starved herself to death in custody.
That is wild because that takes a long time.
Yeah. Yeah. Now, prison officials had tried to give her enough food.
Like they were serving food.
She just wouldn't eat.
They said she had intentionally killed herself and they said, quote, having starved herself to avoid being placed on trial.
Wow. Now, things became even more complicated a month later in late September when Franklin Fort produced a document signed by two psychiatrists that declared Caroline Martin insane.
I mean, we knew that.
He said, the defense argued this is a case of whether a woman should be confined in a jail or in an asylum.
We have carefully considered all the details of the case and with the relatives of Mrs. Martin, and with the relatives of Mrs. Martin, believe that she is not now in her right mind.
The request for a new hearing on Caroline's sanity conflicted with the schedule for the acting judge.
So the case was transferred to another judge, Judge J.
Ten Eck, and scheduled for early August. now when it finally went underway caroline's behavior whether real or an act to bolster this claim because people do believe it was did little to contradict the ways in which she'd been portrayed in the press at one point while a former representative from ward law college was testifying about how caroline had negatively affected the school and its finances caroline jumped out of of her seat and shouted i never said a thing he is telling and then was ordered to sit down by the courtroom yeah caroline would continue to have outbursts over and over she would challenge
any and all testimony given and when caroline's brother reverend albert wardlaw was called to the stand he testified that caroline had always been controlling manipulative and strange we heard that he said she directed both my school and daily life in new york uh he said of his earlier experience with his sister that um he said that he told the court that around 1890 or 1891 he noticed a marked change in his sister's behavior she was irrational bizarre and very quick to anger and at one point she said to him that she was quote equal to her creator and called herself salvatore what albert wardlaw's
testimony was interrupted again by caroline outbursting and And the judge had to call a recess.
Now, throughout the trial, Caroline was seen to lift her veil a lot because she was wearing her veil.
And basically she would like lift her veil subtly during one of her outbursts to kind of evaluate the judge's reaction.
Gauging how far she could carry it or to act out.
Like, this is very clear that she's doing it on purpose.
Like she would look at him and be like, and like see how far she could take it.
And after multiple outbursts in the courtroom, the sanity hearing finally concluded in late November and the judge concluded Mrs. Martin is sane within the meaning of the statute, competent to advise counsel and assist in the preparation of defense.
That's the thing. Like if you can sit there and jump up in an outburst to everything, like looking to see how far you can take it, then hello.
So without a formal declaration of insanity to shield her, Caroline's lawyers encouraged her to plead guilty to a lesser charge.
smart and on november 9th 1911 she pleaded no contest to a charge of manslaughter but when the plea agreement for manslaughter was read in court she interrupted the prosecutor and said involuntary manslaughter please sir you can't just change the charge that you're pleading to and the prosecutor raised his voice and said manslaughter madam so the exchange brought on another aggressive outburst from caroline but the judge had had fucking enough of this and was like we're gonna get delayed again so he literally like yelled at caroline this is not the time for you to talk and she just slinked back
in her chair oh man now caroline martin was sentenced to seven years in the state penitentiary for women and began serving her term february 8th 1911 seven years years after a little more than a year in prison officials noted that caroline was doing very poorly and her mental health had declined considerably so in may 1912 she was declared insane and transferred to the new jersey state hospital for the insane to finish out her sentence okay on june 10th 1913 only in the next year caroline martin died from heart disease at the the age of 67 wow now because the law didn't allow for co -conspirators
to manslaughter right the joint indictment of caroline and mary had to be severed as a result the prosecutor had to drop the accessory charge against mary sneed and she was free to go she just walked with her husband and one of her sons dead and fletcher living in canada mary's only option was to move to colorado where she went to live with a third son that no one knew about.
What the fuck? Mary resurfaced in 1930 when a number of diamonds were discovered in an unclaimed bank vault in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
This would be the way that this fucking thing ends.
Now, according to Mary, quote, Miss Virginia Wardlaw...
Virginia. Yeah, her sister.
Miss Virginia Wardlaw's diamonds were lost or stolen from Sewell College, and she believed them to be the same diamonds found in the vault.
No. As the only living sister, Mary claimed herself the heir to her sister's estate.
Those aren't hers. And attempted to claim the diamonds.
No, baby, no. It's unclear whether she was successful.
Really? At the time, she was known to be, quote, a church worker living in Oakland, California.
Mary Snead died in 1937.
Wow, 1937. That's something.
And that's the end of the story.
What the fucking fuck, dude?
that is first of all one of the darkest tales that you've ever told and i shouldn't say tales because it's true and secondly what the fucking fuck what the fucking fuck is right holy shit that's one of the strangest the fact that oc was wrapped up in this i know because it sounds like she was so sad girl yeah and she just wanted like a happy normal life it pisses me off that fletcher was like oh i'm not gonna die like let me get out of here yeah it's like like fuck you fletcher with you yeah like jesus like she god damn like you got yeah if you had to get married you agreed to get married yeah
you must have loved her and also your first cousin get her out of there like right jesus if you're worried about these women and what they did to your brother you should be worried about what's going to happen to your family member exactly you know wow he just runs up to canada i'm like nice fletcher that's the thing it's like take her to canada with you jesus that feels very much like a fletcher thing to do though i know you like that that name but like it feels like a fletcher thing to do you're not wrong you know i think that's the guy's name and like something borrowed who like cheats on his woman i'm
like i think you might be right yeah i'm not gonna name my kid fletcher sorry sorry to all the flood it's a cool name it is not gonna lie but i don't know something about it fletch yeah wow so that is the story of holy bananas the quote -unquote black sisters because that's what they were called and the murder of O .C.
Sneed. That... I just can't even stop saying how wild that was.
I've never heard anything like that.
Took me out, my friend.
For real. Mikey just found that in the depths of hell.
Yeah, Mikey just found it and was like, you should look at this story.
And I was like, are you fucking kidding me?
Where the hell did this come from?
How did I miss this?
I was like, I've never came across this.
That's wild. Crazy.
I wish I had a driver to fucking...
You want to do that when we're old?
Let's hire a driver.
Drive us to the graveyard. we won't dance around like headstones though that's fucked up no it's kind of disrespectful that's super disrespectful he can drive us somewhere else i do love a graveyard though i love to walk around a graveyard let's dress in all black when we're older not murder anybody just get a 4 for 4 at one piece i know i'm gonna back there's a lot of souls happening today i had a weird accent on my fall out there fall earlier i said insanity she did i don't know i don't know well we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it's weird but not so weird that you you hire a driver
to bring you to the cemetery in the middle of the night and you dance around graves and then you like wake up in the middle of the night to people standing over your bed and not so weird that you kill your own daughter by starvation and then write all the suicide notes for her because wow that's like super fucked up 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 prime members can listen ad free on amazon music Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery .com slash survey.
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