April 2, 2025 • 50 mins
In this week's episode, the conclusion of a two-parter, Kate and Paul head back to 1920 North Dakota where 8 family members are found dead in a farmhouse with no immediate suspect. Luckily, a clever investigator sniffs out a lead.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried bones.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hey, Paul, Hey Kate, how are you?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I'm doing well. That's it, no more. We don't have
time because you know, we're talking about the murder of
an entire family in North Dakota in nineteen twenty and
it's baffling so far. I'm assuming you've been thinking about
this story.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I have, you know, In fact, I got my notes
from last week, you know, so at least you know
what I'm seeing in my notes. We've got the Wolf family,
a family of you know, two adults, a mother, father,
six daughters, plus a thirteen year old farm hand living
in North Dakota in the nineteen twenties, and all of
them end up dead on this.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Farm except for the little girl. Except for baby Emma.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Oh, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
You did a good job summarizing it. I mean, you've
got five daughters who have been murdered, and the parents
and the farm hand, so you've got a total of
eight caskets. I remember from that photo we had discussed
what happened with Jacob and the nine year old Maria
and the seven year old Edna. So the two little
girls shot at the back of the head with a shotgun,
(02:05):
which I'm sure would have been just horrific to see.
And then we've got Jacob, who he was shot in
the back from a far back range, and then he
was shot kind of in the back slash side of
the head at a close range. So, I know, we
don't know the gauge of the shotgun, but how far
back can you be to get an accurate shot off?
(02:27):
Someone like is this when they say in far back,
how far are we talking? I mean this is you know,
this is not a rifle, so it's different.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Well, part of the advantages that a shotgun has and
the reason for the existence of a shotgun, you know
is often times, with the exception of select types of rounds,
like a slug, it's shooting out multiple pellets and as
these pellets travel down range, they start to spread, and
(02:57):
so you don't have to be very accurate with this
weapon in order to hit your target. You know. That
is part of the reason why shotguns exist. So, you know,
for the father Jacob to be shot in the back
at a distance, I would need to see the spread
of the pellets. You know, because doing what we call
(03:19):
a distance determination at burying distances, using a shotgun shoot
at a target and measuring the spread of the pellets,
we were able to determine roughly how far away the
shooter was from Jacob for that shot in the back.
If it was something that was like bird shot or
(03:40):
the double lot buck, if it was just a slug,
then no, you know, then we would be looking. If
it's a closer range shot, we'd need to have the
evidence such as the stippling, the singing, et cetera, also
associated with that wound in order to determine roughly, you know,
how many feet that shotgun was away, you know, so
(04:00):
I think it's just safe to say, you know, you
take a look. Jacob is the male, the adult male
that's on the property. He shot in the back. Makes
sense that of the three that are in the barn,
he is likely the first one shot at and his
back is turned. Who knows that Jacob is even aware
(04:23):
that the shooter is present or not, but that's to
incapacitate him, and then the shooter makes sure to finish
Jacob off, so this male is no longer a threat.
And of course the two little girls are just executed
with shots to the back of their head. And whether
they're standing up or laying down, who knows.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
You know, I thought about, what is the reason why
you would kill all of these kids. Now, it could
be maybe they would recognize him, Maybe this is a
family member or a neighbor who they were very close with,
who knows, But I thought, well, maybe it's because you know,
they would all be screaming. This is a very rule farm.
I don't know who would hear them necessarily. I guess
(05:02):
I'm always trying to figure out what the motive is
to kill kids who are not your kids, and your
aim as a family annihilator, you know.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Right, now, off the top of my head, I'm thinking
of three very broad categories. First one that you alluded
to witnesses eliminating witnesses. The second one is vindictiveness, not
necessarily at the kids, Basically the offender is so upset
(05:33):
with somebody in this family that is just going to
wipe everybody out. And then the last one is psychosis,
absolute random crime. You now have a psychotic offender that
is just going around killing everything in sight.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Okay, well, we do know who the offender is, we
think in this case, so it'll be interesting to see
which category this falls into, or maybe it's all three.
We don't know. Ok I know that I left you
hanging with the fatal wounds for the kids and the
mother in the basement, so let me tell you what
happens there. Okay, when they examine everybody in the basement,
(06:10):
the mother, who is missus wolf Biata, has been shot
in the back at close range and she has a
massive hole in her body. Bertha twelve, she's the eldest
besides the farm hand, had been shot in the face
at close range. This is all with a shotgun. Lydia,
(06:31):
who was five, had been shot behind her left ear
and had a deep gash at the back of her skull.
They believe this was from a hatchet. The hatchet was
found Paul in the kitchen. It was on the floor
of the kitchen. Now I didn't see it in that photo,
but it was on the floor of the kitchen, and
it had blood on the blade. It's clear that that's
(06:52):
what was used. So the five year old had that
deep gash at the base of her skull, and she
had been shot behind her left ear. And then finally Martha,
who is the three year old, no shotgun blast. She
had been hit in the head with the hatchet, the
blunt end of the hatchet. They said. The sheriff has
a theory about sequencing that I'll run by you in
(07:13):
a little bit, but just sort of at first, blush here,
what do you think about all of these you know,
all of these wounds that have taken place here, awful
with a shotgun in a small kitchen.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, you know, it's well, it's it's hard to say,
you know, because we have two different weapons. You know,
does that suggest that you know, we have two different offenders.
We have a shotgun being used out in the barn
and also inside the residence, and then on two of
the girls. We have one girl that is shot, but
she also looks like she's been struck with the hatchet.
(07:48):
And then we have the one girl that's only been
struck with the hatchet, and.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
That's the blunt end. So they're they're making it. It's
a distinction. So Lydia was a deep wound, so the
front of the hatchet, and then Martha they can tell
was from the blunt end.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
You know. And it's hard to say if the offender
is even aware that he's wielding the hatchet and what
orientation he's wielding the hatchet, maybe in the dynamic situation
of inflicting these blows. So it's hard to say for
sure that the offender has purposely chosen to use the
blunt end on Martha and then the cutting end on Lydia.
(08:26):
One of the possibilities for the reason for the two weapons,
and I think this is where it really does depend
on the sequence. I mean, it is possible that the
offender had the shotgun, you know, shoots three bodies, three
victims out there in the barn, and is shooting the
victims inside the house and runs out of Amma and
now picks up the hatchet, you know, So that's one
(08:48):
progression that could occur. It's also possible the offender starts
with the hatchet and recognizes maybe the shotgun is the
family shotgun and ends up taking that and kills the
people inside the house and then goes outside and tracks
down the dad and the two girls out there. I'm
sure there's other possible scenarios, you know, but right now
(09:11):
I think it's those two are the primary ones that
I think in terms of why two different weapons and
the sequencing, And it could go either direction with the
information I have right now.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Do you mean to run by what the sheriff thinks
the sequencing is so far or what do you think?
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, let's hear it.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
So they do believe that the murders happened in different places,
you know, some murders in the kitchen, some murders in
the barn. They think that Jacob, the father, Jacob Wolf,
tried to run from the kitchen and was shot outside
between the house and the barn, and they believe the
killer shot him from a distance in the back while
(09:51):
he was running, and then you know, when he went down,
killed him at close range. And they think the two
little girls whose bodies were found in the barn tried
to hide there and were then shot at close range.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Now, but Jacob was found in the barn, right he was, Yeah, Okay,
So if he is actually receiving this gun shot, the
shotgun blast to his head in between the house and
the barn, that would be obvious in terms of the blood,
brain matter, et cetera, on the ground wherever he ended
(10:26):
up laying, and then he's drug into the barn, you know,
And this is somewhat consistent with what the offender's doing
inside the house. He's trying to hide the body, so
he's not leaving Jacob out in playing view, laying between
the barn and the house. He's taking Jacob's body, which
takes effort and time to go into the barn. Again,
(10:47):
we don't know, you know, if Jacob's running out of
the house and shot in the back, I'm having What
I'm struggling with is he is now leaving behind his wife,
daughters in the farm, hand inside the house with the offender,
and is going out towards the barn where the two
girls are. So there must be something If that's truly
(11:08):
the scenario, there must be some information in which Jacob
thinks the two girls out in the barn are under
a greater threat than the people that are inside the house.
That's the only I think logical thing. I'm just putting
myself in Jacob's position. Right If I have only got
one offender, and the offender is in the house with me,
the people in the house are the ones that are
(11:30):
under the biggest threat. I'm not going to all said
and worry about the two girls that are safe out
in the bar. And why would I abandon my family
inside the house to go out towards the barn. So
I'm struggling with this scenario right now.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
So what I think the sheriff is thinking right now
with his limited information. Everybody was in the kitchen except
for Jacob. They think Jacob was in the barn first. Okay,
And I don't know if this makes sense to you too.
So everybody's in, they're preparing dinner, they're sitting down. She's
probably gonna call Jacob to dinner. Shortly, the attacker comes in,
(12:10):
and the sheriff thinks that Jacob heard the screams of
his wife and the kids and he came running. It
is possible that the two little girls who were found
in the barn pasted him. They took off and escaped
and hid in the barn, and when he got to
the kitchen, you know, maybe that's when they left, or
(12:31):
maybe you know, who knows when this was happening. The
offender is not able to control all of these people.
So when Jacob arrives, he sees the offender turns tail
and runs back to the barn, and the little girls
are already maybe in the barn, and the offender then
goes after Jacob. So the sequence is very confusing to
(12:53):
me because that's a lot of I mean, so what
is he doing. He's killing Boom boom boom. Jacob arrives
at some point, boom boom boom, and he kills everybody
else and then manages to get a shot off of
Jacob hit himing him in the back. All of this
seems like a lot to have happen with one if
this is just one person, one person being able to
(13:14):
do all this. But what do you think, I mean,
I know you've always said it doesn't take very long
to kill somebody.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
No, you know, in terms of the amount of time,
you know, to actually kill this entire family with a shotgun,
and then of course we've got one of them is
killed with strictly just the hatchet. You know, it's not
necessarily a length of time. I'm just trying to kind
of envision if you truly have these two clusters of victims,
(13:45):
If the offender is interacting with the group that is
inside and then leaves that group and then takes off
after Jacob and kills Jacob and the two girls, what's
going on with the group inside the house now? Are
they just huddling in fear. That's a possibility. You'd almost
(14:05):
think that they would disperse, it would get the hell
out of the house, but maybe not, you know, and
then that allows the offender to come back and then
kill them. I will tell you, you know, we took a
look at the photograph of the blood staining in the kitchen.
By no shape or means is that blood staining consistent
(14:25):
with any of these victims being shot in the head
with a shotgun. They're likely being killed or shot down
in the basement after they're put down there, unless there's
other staining in the house that that you haven't described
to me right now, at least with what the sheriff's
theory is I'm struggling to kind of rectify that, you know,
(14:50):
considering a single offender. Yeah, not saying it's impossible, but
I am struggling a little bit with that.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
So one thing I thought of is maybe I'm not
saying he got lucky here, but maybe the timing was
such that he killed everybody in that kitchen that he
needed to kill. The two girls took off, Jacob ran
so everybody was dead, so there was no huddling to
be done because he had killed the five people right there.
(15:18):
The girls had left and snuck out, and then Jacob
shows up.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
They're not being shot in the head with a shotgun
in that kitchen, you don't think. So I can guarantee that,
at least with the photo that you showed me. If
there's other other blood staining, there'd be massive blood pools,
massive massive blood pools. I'm not seeing that. There. There
would be spatter right now. My primary theory is is
(15:44):
that the sheriff must be seeing evidence that Jacob was
killed outside the barn if he's forming that opinion, because
there'd be a huge blood pool from this shotgun blast
to his head right and drag marks you know, with
dripping blood into the barn, it almost makes sense that
(16:06):
Jacob was in between these two, you know, the house
and the barn. He's gunned down. He's drug out to
the barn. Whether the two girls were already in there
or they come in, maybe they're they were told by mom, hey,
go get your dad, it's dinner time, and then they're
they're killed, and then he goes in and now he's
(16:26):
controlling the five that are at the dinner table, and
some of them are bleeding up in that kitchen, but
they have not been shot with a shotgun. Up in
that kitchen. There would be a massive blood pool, and
so it's like, no, they in all likelihood. Maybe the
girl Martha, who was killed with the hatchet, is killed
(16:49):
up up there, but I bet these other family members
were possibly forced down the trap door, and I would
be expecting a fair amount of blood from the victims
that were shot in the back of the head with
a shotgun and one girl was shot in the face.
So you know, I'm thinking the homicides with the shotgun
(17:12):
inside the house are occurring down in the basement. Maybe
the one or two girls that received wounds from the
hatchet are killed up or at least struck with the
hatchet up in the kitchen area. And if that white
material I saw in that fabric on the floor as
brain matter, well, then that's from Martha who's receiving the
(17:33):
blunt and blow from the back of the hatchet. You know,
that'd be a crushing injury that would possibly leave brain matter,
plus the bleeding. If I had all the photos and
everything else, I'd probably be able to tease out exactly
sort of what's going on here. But at least with
the little bit that I'm discerning from the information you've
given me, and then what the sheriff is hypothesizing, I'm
(17:55):
kind of blending all that together to something that makes
sense to me, assuming one offender.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Okay, so the sheriff is very dedicated. He's got neighbors
coming over while they're trying to sort this out. He's
very concerned about securing the crime scene, so he has
a couple of neighbors spend the night with him. Two
other neighbors and the sheriff stay the night in the house.
They keep the bodies exactly where they are, and one
(18:22):
of the neighbors is it sounds like a relative of
the farm hand who is a relative of missus Wolf.
So how awful. They've left all the bodies in place,
which is smart, but you know, to sleep all night,
even as law enforcement, to sleep all night with the
dead bodies and not knowing if somebody is going to
come back, or what the motive is or who did
(18:44):
this must have been really frightening. I would be frightened
at least.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, it's not the way I'd recommend securing a crime scene.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Better than leaving it and leaving the fun door open.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I guess, well, you know, in this day and age,
we put up a yellow crime I'm seeing tape. We
put patrol officers you know, around the perimeter, and yeah,
but yeah, I could see where, you know, back then,
this was this was the mechanism that they chose.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Okay, okay, So it becomes important because the two neighbors
decide to leave and they go to the hope for
farm to get breakfast for the sheriff and for themselves,
and they were going to bring it back. So the
sheriff's on his own at this house with five dead
bodies and three people in the barn and somebody on
(19:32):
the loose because he now, of course realizes that this
was not a murder suicide. When the sheriff is on
his own, you know, he is kind of just making
sure everything is secure. At about five point thirty in
the morning, he hears a car coming, and I think
that he's assuming that this is going to be you know,
(19:53):
the two neighbors who went to go get him breakfast.
The description is he hears a car coming across the prairie.
I love the idea. I don't think I've said prairie
one of our episodes before, but I love that image
coming of like a car and you know, these are
nineteen twenty cars, so there, you know, it's like bouncing across.
So he hears a car coming. They were very loud,
(20:15):
so you can't really sneak up on somebody. I mean,
we're certainly not talking about a Prius or anything. And
he steps outside. He can't identify the car at first,
so it sounds like is very smart. He steps back
into the shadows and kind of hides to see what's
going to happen. He's under a lean to that's just
like right outside the kitchen. Car pulls up and a
(20:38):
guy gets out. The sheriff doesn't know who this man is.
He is looking into the farmhouse living room window and
he starts walking towards the barn, so he's looking through
the window, walks towards the barn, and that's when the
sheriff pops out and says hello, and the man freezes.
I'm not saying this is the offender. I'm not saying
a man is. This man is a suspect. It's just
(20:59):
the sheriff trying to get information about who's on this
private property which has been the subject of a murder scene.
Sheriff introduces himself and the man says that he's the
owner of a neighboring farm. And you know, everybody else
has come out, so I don't think this is a
surprise to the sheriff. And this is the first time
the man has shown up. So there's been activity for
(21:21):
the past twenty four hours at this farm, but this
is the first time that the sheriff is meeting someone
he hadn't met earlier. His name is Henry Layer. He's
thirty six and he is originally from Russia. Remember this
is very immigrant centric this area. And you know, Layer says,
this is awful. I can't even believe this. These were
(21:42):
really good neighbors and understand what happened. They talk for
a while, and this is where Henry Layer starts to
get a little bit iffy. So he is suspicious because
he's got his hand inside a pocket, and the sheriff
kind of blows it off because he doesn't think it's
(22:05):
The pocket's very small, so it's not going to have
a weapon in it. And then the other guys show
up with breakfast, and so, you know, Henry Layer kind
of stays and he says. The sheriff says to one
of the neighbors, did you drive past this guy's house,
Henry Layer's house, Because Henry Lair had said, I live
over in this direction on your way to go get
(22:27):
the breakfast, and I didn't understand why this would be significant,
but I guess it is. So he says, did you
drive by this guy's house as you left the farm?
And the neighbor said yes, And he said, so, would
Henry Layer have heard you leave the farm? And the
neighbor said yeah. And plus we have a lot of
loud cars. So the significance is what that, you know,
(22:51):
Henry is able to hear who's coming and going, and
that's what's signaling him to come to the farm or
what do you think?
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Well, I think if it's the being suspicious about Henry.
You know, of course Henry knows there's activity going on
at the Wolf farm and there's law enforcement being present there.
So when Henry hears the cars go past his house,
(23:19):
he may be making the assumption, well, the Wolf house
and property are abandoned, Now is my time to go
back and do whatever if Henry isn't involved in the crime.
So I think that that's what the sheriff is kind
of keying in on. Is it just so happens that
at the moment that only one person besides the dead
(23:42):
bodies are present, This is when Henry, who's supposedly a
good neighbor of this the Wolf family, that's when he
decides to show up, and he walks up onto the
property and looks into the house and is starting to
head out to the barn where three victims were killed
or at least their bodies found.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
You know, the share of is suspicious of everybody at
this point. So you know, Henry's in the mix. But
I think he's trying to keep an open mind, But
that I think is what he's piecing together exactly what
you said. And it could be Henry just taking advantage
of a tragedy and to steal some copper wire or something.
We don't know. You know, being a thief doesn't certainly make.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
You a murderer. Or is he a luky lou?
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Could be a luky lou.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
He's just like, oh, you know, let's go check things out,
all right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Get a souvenir. If there's eBay in the nineteen twenties
and there's not, I could hawk something you know knows,
but you know, we're still trying to think about gathering evidence. Henry.
I don't know why the sheriff allows him to go
all over the house. He's accompanying him, but maybe he
thinks that he's going to say something that's incriminating. I
don't know. Henry says, let's go out to the barn
(24:55):
and check out the chickens to see if they've laid
any eggs. The bodies are still there of these two
little girls and their dad, and everybody thinks it's weird,
but the sheriff says, sure, let's go. So they go
out to the barn and you know, Henry points out
there are a few eggs, and seems like this is good,
It's great, there are these eggs here. But when everybody
(25:17):
kind of turns and looks at the eggs, he announces
that he has found a clue in the hay. And
in the hay he says he has found some shotgun shells,
which the sheriff had not found before. So, I mean,
Henry is not a rocket scientist. Clearly. I think the
sheriff immediately thinks, oh, this guy doesn't have his hand
(25:39):
in his pocket anymore. Clearly he's planting evidence. I don't
know if that's true, but that's what it seems like.
He is the only one who has discovered in this
hay some shotgun casings.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
You know, I'm I'm I'm thinking about it from a
sort of a crime scene reconstruction standpoint. You know, the
location of these of these expended shotgun shopes. Is that
consistent with how the shotgun would have ejected these shells
considering the type of you know, where the shooter would
have been standing to kill these three victims, you know,
And since I don't have that information, I can't say that.
(26:15):
So I can, on one hand say, Okay, maybe this
is consistent with the gun used and where the shooter
would have been standing From an ejection pattern standpoint, are
the shotgun shells just laying on top of the hay,
you know? Or were they found underneath like they had
been hidden? Now? Could an offender, after killing the three victims,
(26:36):
taking the time to grab up the expended shotgun shells
and hide them. Sure? This is also where it's interesting
in terms of, well, what kind of shotgun are we
talking about? You know? Is this a shotgun like a
pump action shotgun? Is this a lever shotgun where you
(26:57):
you know, snap it down and have to manly take
out these shells? You know? Some of this is where
it's you know, is the shells even being present at
the crime scene consistent with the gun used. If Jacob
is shot outside and then drug into the barn, you know,
how many shelled? There should only be two shells expended
(27:19):
because those are the two girls that are being killed
inside because Jacob. The shells for Jacob should be outside
unless the offender pulls them out or rejects them inside
the barn before shooting the girls. So this is all
what I'm kind of starting to Okay, there's a lot
of variables that I don't have the information on. But
(27:42):
the sheriff is most certainly savvy, you know, to how
shotguns operate, and knows this crime scene and he immediately
is going, Okay, this isn't right. You know, Henry threw
out a distraction and now sounds like the sheriff is suspecting.
He pulls out the shells out of that little pocket
and is planting them there. Well, why is he doing that. Well,
(28:04):
he's probably planting shells from a different gun, you know,
to throw off the investigation. He is trying to literally
stage this crime scene in front of the sheriff who's
investigating the crime.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
And luckily we have a smart sheriff here, so that's good.
I have been searching and I really can't find what
kind of shotgun it is. I'm sorry, sure it's you know,
but I think you're making some good assumptions. They bring
in hounds, and of course they interview everybody around. The
hounds are useless because it's been raining so much. There's
(28:38):
no help there. You know, the sheriff is suspicious of Henry,
but there's not a lot of evidence that is, you know,
kind of directly pointing at him. Even though I know
we're talking about it's clear that he's trying to plant evidence.
They have some rewards out to one thousand dollars rewards,
which is more than fifteen thousand dollars today, So that
(28:59):
means you've got to be more people out there trying
to figure out what happened. Later that morning, the other
murder weapon, in addition to the hatchet, is located, and
I still don't have the exact gauge here, but there's
a swampy area close by where someone notices the stock
of a shotgun sticking out. It's slightly rested, but it's
(29:19):
consistent with having been in the water for two days,
which is how long they think that this has been happening.
No one knows who bought it, and the manufacturer of
the gun is contacted and they have no idea. I mean,
you know who knows. But it sounds like they did
find the murder weapon. There's nothing they can really do
about that. In nineteen twenty. There's ballistics, but I don't.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Know shot well, shotguns are different than your handguns and
your rifles. So shotguns are smooth bored weapons, so there's
no rifling inside of most shotguns, So when the projectiles
travel down this smooth they're not marked like projectiles out
(30:03):
of a rifled handgun or a rifled rifle. The marks
that a shotgun would leave that could be intercompared would
be on the shotgun shelves, the firing pin impression, the
breach face stamp, whether or not it's a shotgun that
had like a ejector extractor, which nineteen twenties. You know,
(30:24):
I'm not a firearms expert that has the you know,
in depth familiarity of what types of guns would have
existed back in the nineteen twenties. But my guess is
is you're not having a in all likelihood, this is
not like a semi auto shotgun. You know, That's my guess.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
So we have a funeral and Henry Layer comes to
the funeral. He's part of the community. I mean, everybody
came to this funeral. As you can tell from that photo.
He's being weird and the sheriff is watching. He insists
that each of the cast gets be opened so he
can look at each one. But he doesn't cry or
have any emotion or anything.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
This is Henry, Yeah, what is he doing?
Speaker 1 (31:06):
So he's having each casket opened and he looks at it.
He doesn't really do anything, and that's it, and everybody
thinks this is bananas.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Oh yeah, it is. Is that, you know, I guess
the only thought, well, I would need to know more
about Henry, But right now I'm going to assume Henry
is your average farm person, not involved in homicidal violence
(31:35):
on a periodic basis. You know, it's not a hitman,
not mafia, you know, doing these types of homicides. And
I'm almost wondering if there is a sense of guilt
and making peace with each of the victims, if he's
responsible making the assumption, you know, he's responsible to look
(31:59):
at one of them. I can't see how that would
unless he's having to he's trying to acquire details for
subsequent interviews. You know. I think maybe it's a personal thing,
something inside that he needs to do. But that is bizarre.
I mean that the sheriff is spot on. That's a
(32:19):
behavior that I have to pay attention to.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
So we've got in reacting weird Henry probably planting evidence
because it's under the hay, which we've already kind of said,
makes no sense, no sense. I mean, you know, Michelle
is not going to die of its way into Hey,
so I don't think he understood that when he was
planting it, right, So we have that information.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Just that that bit of information and relying a little
bit upon that the you know, the sheriff's own observations,
and I'm putting some fair amount of weight on the
veracity of the sheriff and his observational abilities in this case.
This really if Henry truly is planting those shotguns, and
he now becomes prime suspect.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Yeah, and they go to his house and his daughters,
they're not trying to protect their dad. They said he
wasn't home for a large part of Thursday, which is
when they think this happened. Okay, he said he wasn't there,
so he doesn't have a good alibi. So the motive,
this is what's mysterious. What do you think? So this
is a neighbor Yeah, but we don't know anything about
(33:23):
There is a motive, but we don't know anything about
a motive. What are the possibilities here?
Speaker 2 (33:28):
The first thing that comes to my mind is that
there is a dispute, kind of a neighbor dispute, possibly
related to farming land boundaries. You know, do they have cattle?
You know any yep? Okay, so you know I've watched Yellowstone.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Are you comparing this to Yellowstone?
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Yeah? I mean you could see that these cattles are
the livelihood and maybe there's a dispute between them over
something that is a you know, high stakes financial you know,
financial situation for one or the other. So that's probably
right now my my top theory without knowing I mean,
(34:11):
it's possible that maybe Jacob was you know, doing criminal
work for Henry and didn't live up to his end
of what he was supposed to do. You know, But
considering the little bit of victimology that you talked about
Jacob at the beginning in the first episode, in terms
of there he's not abusive to his family, and he
(34:31):
seems to be a good guy and this and that,
I'm going to say, no, you know what, I think
Henry's a bad guy here, and somehow he feels that
he's been stiffed by Jacob and this family. And now
you're getting into that vindictive category of why the whole family. Basically,
you know, Henry is like, not only am I going
(34:54):
to take out Jacob, I'm going to take out this
entire family, and maybe there's some sort of aspect in
which Henry could end up taking over Jacob's property and
expand his own farm. So by Jacob no longer having
any heirs to inherit the land, yeah, Henry can now
(35:16):
somehow swoop in and expand his business and financially profit.
So that's kind of the direction that I'm thinking right now.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
What we find out is that neighbors start to say
Jacob the father, was having problems with the neighbor. There
was a disagreement that he was actually worried about this neighbor,
but they never named Jacob, never named the neighbor. So
when the sheriff presses other neighbors who he hadn't spoken
(35:45):
to yet about information about this mysterious neighbor, we find
out it's Henry Lair. Tell me what you think about
this as a motive, Apparently, Henry Lair's livestock had trespassed
on to the wolf land, as livestock is apt to do.
Wolf's dog had bitten Layer when he came on to
try to retrieve the cattle. There was then sort of
(36:08):
this feud, and it sounds like both men were spreading
rumors and gossip about each other. Really, this is a
motive to kill an entire family. I started watching this
show called fear Thy Neighbor, and I cannot believe the
stupid reasons why people kill each other, like over fence,
(36:29):
being too tall, Like it's unreal. So at first I
thought this is stupid that I thought. No, I could
see this on fear Thy Neighbor, the TV series.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
No, absolutely, I'm gonna throw out at a different analogy. Okay,
road rage. You know, you get pissed off at somebody
because they cut you off or do something in traffic. Right,
and now you got two people that are just you know,
they're not thinking, they're just pissed off at each other.
And one runs the other off the road and pulls
out a gun and kills them. You know, it's just
(37:00):
how dare you? You know? And so this this neighbor dispute,
you know, originating with the dog bite, you know, it
escalated and Henry has the psychology of how dare you?
Right and took out Jacob and his entire family. That's
my opinion right now, I think it's crystal clear what
(37:22):
happened here.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Well, let's find out, because the sheriff is aware it's
been three weeks now, he's aware that there's a lot
of public pressure on him and the investigators to make
an arrest. Now everybody thinks it's Henry, and Henry has
not confessed, and he's denying all of this, and there's
not a ton of concrete evidence. It's kind of circumstantially, except,
(37:45):
of course, we know we do think he planted evidence.
So the sheriff tries to do The sheriff tries to
do a couple of things. He's very creative, i have
to say, especially for nineteen twenty. So on the way
to taking Henry, they arrest him, and on the way
to taking him to the jail house, there's a man
that darts across the street and the sheriff's deputies run
(38:08):
out of the car that Henry's in and chase him down.
They put him next to Henry. This is a plant, Yeah,
and they stick him both in jail and Layer doesn't
ever confess. Henry doesn't ever confess to this, so they
really are trying to get a confession out of him.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Yeah, this day and age, there's definitely restrictions on how
you do that type of scenario. But you know, that
is a tactic that is employed from time to time. Okay, Again,
there's a lot of legalities that restrict what law enforcement
can do, particularly under this set of circumstances.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Okay. So the reason I say that is because it's
very clear that the sheriff wants a confession, that he
doesn't think he has a strong case against Henry if
he doesn't get a confession. So this and this is
why I said, remember what happened at the funeral with
Henry looking at the bodies and the caskets and making
a big deal out of that. So the sheriff gets
(39:09):
him back to the jail and interrogates him. They are
not getting anywhere with him until they show the sheriff says.
They show crime scene photos of the bodies, and the
sheriff says that when they show a photo of Emma
in her crib, you know the one I showed you,
(39:30):
they I think made that photo up and you know,
showed it to him to show that she's alive and
that all of these people are dead. He breaks down
in tears and confesses he will later Paul, he will
later say I was beaten into a confession. I certainly
think that Henry was guilty. I don't know how you
(39:51):
feel about this, but why would photos of the people
he killed have a bigger reaction that forces confession out
of him then actually being in front of their caskets
and looking at their dead. But it didn't make any
sense to me. Why would you have a reaction in
one way and not the other. That's why I'm wondering
if Henry really did get beaten to get this confession.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
But also I think it's also within the context of
when he is looking at the cast gets versus when
he's looking at the photos. You know, when he's looking
at the photos, he's under suspicion. He's recognizing, you know,
he's under jeopardy in terms of his freedom and potentially
his life if this is a death eligible case. So
(40:37):
time has passed, reflection, emotions, you know, maybe he's now
recognizing that. You know, you said he had some kids.
He's not going to be around for his kids. You know,
who knows the differences. I don't think the difference between him,
you know, looking at the bodies in the casket versus
(40:59):
now he's breaking down looking at the photos, that that
is somehow indicative that he was mistreated during the interview.
It would not be surprising to me if there was,
let's say, a level of corporal involvement in terms of,
you know, he's you know, getting whacked a bit, you know,
as he's being interviewed, you know, nineteen twenties, you know,
(41:20):
it's It wouldn't surprise me at all. However, I in
terms of utilizing the difference in his response from the
caskets to the photos, I don't put any weight on
that at all.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Okay, Well, I told you he confessed. So I'm going
to just tell you what he says, from start to
finish happened, and you tell me if it makes sense
based on what you know. Now, Okay, you ready, because
there's some differences from what you and I said. So
he confesses, whether it was you know, a real heart
and soul confession or beaten out of him. He says
that he was pissed off about the dog and that
(41:57):
he went over to the wolf's house and they got
into an argument. Jacob got into an argument, and Jacob
grabbed his own shotgun. We don't know whether the shotgun
in the swampy area was Jacob's, but Henry says, I
wasn't armed, he had the shotgun. The two men fought
over the gun and Henry got it. He says that
when they were fighting, the gun went off accidentally two times,
(42:20):
one shot that killed the wife in the kitchen and
the other one that killed Jacob. Ho for the farm hand.
He said that everybody else is there, and Jacob was
in the kitchen at the time. Jacob freaks out and
runs into the field and Henry gets more ammunition out
of a drawer. How he knew there would be ammunition
(42:43):
in this particular drawer, I have no idea, This is
what he says. He shot Jacob once in the back
as he was running, and then of course in the
head at close range. She said. Two of the little
girls ran into the barn when he was chasing after
their dad. He shot both of them there. He said
that the wife and the farmhand were dead. In the house,
three little girls were still alive. He said he killed
(43:05):
two of them with the shotgun, one with the hatchet.
And he said, I had no idea that the baby
was there, otherwise he probably would have killed her too, Emma,
He just didn't know. He said that after that it
was all done, he dragged Jacob's body to the barn
and covered him and the little girl's up with the
hay and then he pushed the bodies of the rest
of the family through the trap door into the cellar.
(43:28):
Of course, he says his memory is hazy, as killers
will say, but he said this all started with an accident,
two shots, and that was it, and he was defending
himself and then everything else just sort of fell apart,
and the sheriff it basically feels like, well, there's inconsistencies
which looked like, you know, the killer really this was
an attack, a full offense, not defense. So then the
(43:50):
rest is just kind of what happens to Henry, which
is not very much. What do you think about his
version of events?
Speaker 2 (43:56):
You know, the problem with Henry's confession has to do
with how much access Henry had at the crime scene
to visualize everything, to be able to see everything, to
see what the victims look like in the casket, you know,
because he's giving some specific information that's adding up to
(44:16):
you know, what actually happened in terms of the types
of injuries, you know, and who he had, you know,
the hatchet was used on. So this is where it
gets hard to truly assess. You know, is this bona
fide information that he knew because he's a killer, or
is this something he could discern because he had so
much access to the crime scene, the victims' bodies. Was
(44:38):
this a coerced confession and now details are being fed
to him, you know, by the interviewers, by law enforcements,
so it adds up with what they think happened. You know.
It is interesting that he's saying that this was you know,
Jacob initiating, so he's minimizing that, and that the two
shots to the mom and to the farm hand were
(45:01):
accidental over the struggle of the shotgun. There is a
that's a level of minimizing in my opinion. So I'm
not sure you know what to to really make but
it's close enough to the evidence, though I still have
problems with, you know, the number of people that were
shot in the head inside the house and the lack
(45:24):
of the you know, the blood pools you know that
would show where they were laying. Henry's confession is close
enough at least on face value that yeah, you know
this this could be indicative that he's truly the killer.
Just there's there's those issues that I'm having about, you know,
(45:45):
his knowledge of the crime scene and whether or not
he was fed to details during the interview.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't put it past the sheriff to
really just try to nail this down. So he pleads guilty.
The judge even says, are you sure you want to
do that? He says, yes, He's given life in prison
with hard labor. I'm surprised, you know that this was
even an option, that they were even going to have
him plead guilty. But I don't know. I don't know
(46:12):
why that happened. I was expecting him to hang, for sure.
So later on he says, I'm recanting and it's too late.
He says, really, you think I could have killed all
those people? And you know there's ample evidence that he
likely did. And he dies five years into his life sentence.
(46:32):
I mean, he's thirty six. So he died at forty one. Ironic,
so did Jacob Wolf died at forty one. But I
don't know, something something might be amiss there in the
prison system.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
I don't know, well, hard labor. That might take a
toll on you.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Yeah, in North Dakota in the winter, Oh for sure.
Emma Wolf is adopted by her mom's sister and she
lives the rest of her life near Turtle Lake, and
she dies at eighty four in two thousand and three.
So this story is something else. And I think we
don't do a lot, but we do talk about families
who have all been murdered in the impact of that,
(47:09):
and we've had stories where you have a survivor and
thankfully oftentimes they go on and live a good life.
And it sounds like that's what happened here. But what
is nauseating to me is when he essentially makes the
statement that well, I didn't even know she was there,
which indicates that he would have killed her a bait
and eight month old baby. That is what you're saying.
(47:32):
It's rage, it's road rage, it's rage over cattle and
a dog, and that's it.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
You know.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
You and I talk about that all the time. Every
time I hear someone say he would have never killed
somebody over an affair from fifty five years ago or whatever.
I mean. You and I I know both always think
you don't have any idea what in their head, what
they're saying to themselves, you.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
Know, And that's a scary part, right, It's just that
you don't know who you're dealing with. Sometimes from a
my own family, when you're talking to the kids who
are now driving, it's like, don't get into some sort
of beef with somebody on the road, you know, no,
because you don't know who they are, what they're capable
of doing. And this is the reality is is. You know,
(48:16):
Jacob sounds like he talked to some neighbors that he
was having problems with Henry. You know, he recognized that
Henry was kind of a jerk, but he probably had
no idea that Henry would be somebody that would come
over and kill his entire family.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Yeah, I mean, he did say he was a little
scared of him, but nothing. He didn't alert any authorities
about it. Yeah, who knows what a mess. So hopefully
next week we won't have something that involves eight victims.
It particularly children. You know, I always say it's hard
for me to do the stories about children, but there's
(48:50):
sometimes they're so significant and we learn so much that,
you know, I will visit those types of stories. I
think they can be important, and I think you and
I tell those stories compassionately through the lens of the victim.
Hopefully so that's the goal.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
All victims and especially children need to be remembered.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely, Well, next week we'll have a different story.
I promise I will move heaven and Earth to get
us something non involving kids, and in North Dakota, in
the wild, in the prairie, even though I love saying prairie.
Have a good week and I'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
All right, Kate, thanks again, Thanks.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
This has been an exactly right production for our sources
and show notes go to exactlyrightmedia dot com slash Buried
Bones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Emirosi.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarreff, Georgia hard Stark and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Baried Bones pod.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decode the
criminal mind, is available now, and
Speaker 1 (50:14):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life Solving America's Cold
Cases is also available now.
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the
last twenty five years writing about true crime.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And I'm Paul Hols, a retired cold case investigator who's
worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most
compelling true crimes.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring
new insights to old mysteries.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime
cases through a twenty first century lens.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Some are solved and some are cold, very cold.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
This is buried bones.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hey, Paul, Hey Kate, how are you?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I'm doing well. That's it, no more. We don't have
time because you know, we're talking about the murder of
an entire family in North Dakota in nineteen twenty and
it's baffling so far. I'm assuming you've been thinking about
this story.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I have, you know, In fact, I got my notes
from last week, you know, so at least you know
what I'm seeing in my notes. We've got the Wolf family,
a family of you know, two adults, a mother, father,
six daughters, plus a thirteen year old farm hand living
in North Dakota in the nineteen twenties, and all of
them end up dead on this.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Farm except for the little girl. Except for baby Emma.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Oh, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
You did a good job summarizing it. I mean, you've
got five daughters who have been murdered, and the parents
and the farm hand, so you've got a total of
eight caskets. I remember from that photo we had discussed
what happened with Jacob and the nine year old Maria
and the seven year old Edna. So the two little
girls shot at the back of the head with a shotgun,
(02:05):
which I'm sure would have been just horrific to see.
And then we've got Jacob, who he was shot in
the back from a far back range, and then he
was shot kind of in the back slash side of
the head at a close range. So, I know, we
don't know the gauge of the shotgun, but how far
back can you be to get an accurate shot off?
(02:27):
Someone like is this when they say in far back,
how far are we talking? I mean this is you know,
this is not a rifle, so it's different.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Well, part of the advantages that a shotgun has and
the reason for the existence of a shotgun, you know
is often times, with the exception of select types of rounds,
like a slug, it's shooting out multiple pellets and as
these pellets travel down range, they start to spread, and
(02:57):
so you don't have to be very accurate with this
weapon in order to hit your target. You know. That
is part of the reason why shotguns exist. So, you know,
for the father Jacob to be shot in the back
at a distance, I would need to see the spread
of the pellets. You know, because doing what we call
(03:19):
a distance determination at burying distances, using a shotgun shoot
at a target and measuring the spread of the pellets,
we were able to determine roughly how far away the
shooter was from Jacob for that shot in the back.
If it was something that was like bird shot or
(03:40):
the double lot buck, if it was just a slug,
then no, you know, then we would be looking. If
it's a closer range shot, we'd need to have the
evidence such as the stippling, the singing, et cetera, also
associated with that wound in order to determine roughly, you know,
how many feet that shotgun was away, you know, so
(04:00):
I think it's just safe to say, you know, you
take a look. Jacob is the male, the adult male
that's on the property. He shot in the back. Makes
sense that of the three that are in the barn,
he is likely the first one shot at and his
back is turned. Who knows that Jacob is even aware
(04:23):
that the shooter is present or not, but that's to
incapacitate him, and then the shooter makes sure to finish
Jacob off, so this male is no longer a threat.
And of course the two little girls are just executed
with shots to the back of their head. And whether
they're standing up or laying down, who knows.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
You know, I thought about, what is the reason why
you would kill all of these kids. Now, it could
be maybe they would recognize him, Maybe this is a
family member or a neighbor who they were very close with,
who knows, But I thought, well, maybe it's because you know,
they would all be screaming. This is a very rule farm.
I don't know who would hear them necessarily. I guess
(05:02):
I'm always trying to figure out what the motive is
to kill kids who are not your kids, and your
aim as a family annihilator, you know.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Right, now, off the top of my head, I'm thinking
of three very broad categories. First one that you alluded
to witnesses eliminating witnesses. The second one is vindictiveness, not
necessarily at the kids, Basically the offender is so upset
(05:33):
with somebody in this family that is just going to
wipe everybody out. And then the last one is psychosis,
absolute random crime. You now have a psychotic offender that
is just going around killing everything in sight.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Okay, well, we do know who the offender is, we
think in this case, so it'll be interesting to see
which category this falls into, or maybe it's all three.
We don't know. Ok I know that I left you
hanging with the fatal wounds for the kids and the
mother in the basement, so let me tell you what
happens there. Okay, when they examine everybody in the basement,
(06:10):
the mother, who is missus wolf Biata, has been shot
in the back at close range and she has a
massive hole in her body. Bertha twelve, she's the eldest
besides the farm hand, had been shot in the face
at close range. This is all with a shotgun. Lydia,
(06:31):
who was five, had been shot behind her left ear
and had a deep gash at the back of her skull.
They believe this was from a hatchet. The hatchet was
found Paul in the kitchen. It was on the floor
of the kitchen. Now I didn't see it in that photo,
but it was on the floor of the kitchen, and
it had blood on the blade. It's clear that that's
(06:52):
what was used. So the five year old had that
deep gash at the base of her skull, and she
had been shot behind her left ear. And then finally Martha,
who is the three year old, no shotgun blast. She
had been hit in the head with the hatchet, the
blunt end of the hatchet. They said. The sheriff has
a theory about sequencing that I'll run by you in
(07:13):
a little bit, but just sort of at first, blush here,
what do you think about all of these you know,
all of these wounds that have taken place here, awful
with a shotgun in a small kitchen.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, you know, it's well, it's it's hard to say,
you know, because we have two different weapons. You know,
does that suggest that you know, we have two different offenders.
We have a shotgun being used out in the barn
and also inside the residence, and then on two of
the girls. We have one girl that is shot, but
she also looks like she's been struck with the hatchet.
(07:48):
And then we have the one girl that's only been
struck with the hatchet, and.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
That's the blunt end. So they're they're making it. It's
a distinction. So Lydia was a deep wound, so the
front of the hatchet, and then Martha they can tell
was from the blunt end.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
You know. And it's hard to say if the offender
is even aware that he's wielding the hatchet and what
orientation he's wielding the hatchet, maybe in the dynamic situation
of inflicting these blows. So it's hard to say for
sure that the offender has purposely chosen to use the
blunt end on Martha and then the cutting end on Lydia.
(08:26):
One of the possibilities for the reason for the two weapons,
and I think this is where it really does depend
on the sequence. I mean, it is possible that the
offender had the shotgun, you know, shoots three bodies, three
victims out there in the barn, and is shooting the
victims inside the house and runs out of Amma and
now picks up the hatchet, you know, So that's one
(08:48):
progression that could occur. It's also possible the offender starts
with the hatchet and recognizes maybe the shotgun is the
family shotgun and ends up taking that and kills the
people inside the house and then goes outside and tracks
down the dad and the two girls out there. I'm
sure there's other possible scenarios, you know, but right now
(09:11):
I think it's those two are the primary ones that
I think in terms of why two different weapons and
the sequencing, And it could go either direction with the
information I have right now.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Do you mean to run by what the sheriff thinks
the sequencing is so far or what do you think?
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, let's hear it.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
So they do believe that the murders happened in different places,
you know, some murders in the kitchen, some murders in
the barn. They think that Jacob, the father, Jacob Wolf,
tried to run from the kitchen and was shot outside
between the house and the barn, and they believe the
killer shot him from a distance in the back while
(09:51):
he was running, and then you know, when he went down,
killed him at close range. And they think the two
little girls whose bodies were found in the barn tried
to hide there and were then shot at close range.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Now, but Jacob was found in the barn, right he was, Yeah, Okay,
So if he is actually receiving this gun shot, the
shotgun blast to his head in between the house and
the barn, that would be obvious in terms of the blood,
brain matter, et cetera, on the ground wherever he ended
(10:26):
up laying, and then he's drug into the barn, you know,
And this is somewhat consistent with what the offender's doing
inside the house. He's trying to hide the body, so
he's not leaving Jacob out in playing view, laying between
the barn and the house. He's taking Jacob's body, which
takes effort and time to go into the barn. Again,
(10:47):
we don't know, you know, if Jacob's running out of
the house and shot in the back, I'm having What
I'm struggling with is he is now leaving behind his wife,
daughters in the farm, hand inside the house with the offender,
and is going out towards the barn where the two
girls are. So there must be something If that's truly
(11:08):
the scenario, there must be some information in which Jacob
thinks the two girls out in the barn are under
a greater threat than the people that are inside the house.
That's the only I think logical thing. I'm just putting
myself in Jacob's position. Right If I have only got
one offender, and the offender is in the house with me,
the people in the house are the ones that are
(11:30):
under the biggest threat. I'm not going to all said
and worry about the two girls that are safe out
in the bar. And why would I abandon my family
inside the house to go out towards the barn. So
I'm struggling with this scenario right now.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
So what I think the sheriff is thinking right now
with his limited information. Everybody was in the kitchen except
for Jacob. They think Jacob was in the barn first. Okay,
And I don't know if this makes sense to you too.
So everybody's in, they're preparing dinner, they're sitting down. She's
probably gonna call Jacob to dinner. Shortly, the attacker comes in,
(12:10):
and the sheriff thinks that Jacob heard the screams of
his wife and the kids and he came running. It
is possible that the two little girls who were found
in the barn pasted him. They took off and escaped
and hid in the barn, and when he got to
the kitchen, you know, maybe that's when they left, or
(12:31):
maybe you know, who knows when this was happening. The
offender is not able to control all of these people.
So when Jacob arrives, he sees the offender turns tail
and runs back to the barn, and the little girls
are already maybe in the barn, and the offender then
goes after Jacob. So the sequence is very confusing to
(12:53):
me because that's a lot of I mean, so what
is he doing. He's killing Boom boom boom. Jacob arrives
at some point, boom boom boom, and he kills everybody
else and then manages to get a shot off of
Jacob hit himing him in the back. All of this
seems like a lot to have happen with one if
this is just one person, one person being able to
(13:14):
do all this. But what do you think, I mean,
I know you've always said it doesn't take very long
to kill somebody.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
No, you know, in terms of the amount of time,
you know, to actually kill this entire family with a shotgun,
and then of course we've got one of them is
killed with strictly just the hatchet. You know, it's not
necessarily a length of time. I'm just trying to kind
of envision if you truly have these two clusters of victims,
(13:45):
If the offender is interacting with the group that is
inside and then leaves that group and then takes off
after Jacob and kills Jacob and the two girls, what's
going on with the group inside the house now? Are
they just huddling in fear. That's a possibility. You'd almost
(14:05):
think that they would disperse, it would get the hell
out of the house, but maybe not, you know, and
then that allows the offender to come back and then
kill them. I will tell you, you know, we took a
look at the photograph of the blood staining in the kitchen.
By no shape or means is that blood staining consistent
(14:25):
with any of these victims being shot in the head
with a shotgun. They're likely being killed or shot down
in the basement after they're put down there, unless there's
other staining in the house that that you haven't described
to me right now, at least with what the sheriff's
theory is I'm struggling to kind of rectify that, you know,
(14:50):
considering a single offender. Yeah, not saying it's impossible, but
I am struggling a little bit with that.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
So one thing I thought of is maybe I'm not
saying he got lucky here, but maybe the timing was
such that he killed everybody in that kitchen that he
needed to kill. The two girls took off, Jacob ran
so everybody was dead, so there was no huddling to
be done because he had killed the five people right there.
(15:18):
The girls had left and snuck out, and then Jacob
shows up.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
They're not being shot in the head with a shotgun
in that kitchen, you don't think. So I can guarantee that,
at least with the photo that you showed me. If
there's other other blood staining, there'd be massive blood pools,
massive massive blood pools. I'm not seeing that. There. There
would be spatter right now. My primary theory is is
(15:44):
that the sheriff must be seeing evidence that Jacob was
killed outside the barn if he's forming that opinion, because
there'd be a huge blood pool from this shotgun blast
to his head right and drag marks you know, with
dripping blood into the barn, it almost makes sense that
(16:06):
Jacob was in between these two, you know, the house
and the barn. He's gunned down. He's drug out to
the barn. Whether the two girls were already in there
or they come in, maybe they're they were told by mom, hey,
go get your dad, it's dinner time, and then they're
they're killed, and then he goes in and now he's
(16:26):
controlling the five that are at the dinner table, and
some of them are bleeding up in that kitchen, but
they have not been shot with a shotgun. Up in
that kitchen. There would be a massive blood pool, and
so it's like, no, they in all likelihood. Maybe the
girl Martha, who was killed with the hatchet, is killed
(16:49):
up up there, but I bet these other family members
were possibly forced down the trap door, and I would
be expecting a fair amount of blood from the victims
that were shot in the back of the head with
a shotgun and one girl was shot in the face.
So you know, I'm thinking the homicides with the shotgun
(17:12):
inside the house are occurring down in the basement. Maybe
the one or two girls that received wounds from the
hatchet are killed up or at least struck with the
hatchet up in the kitchen area. And if that white
material I saw in that fabric on the floor as
brain matter, well, then that's from Martha who's receiving the
(17:33):
blunt and blow from the back of the hatchet. You know,
that'd be a crushing injury that would possibly leave brain matter,
plus the bleeding. If I had all the photos and
everything else, I'd probably be able to tease out exactly
sort of what's going on here. But at least with
the little bit that I'm discerning from the information you've
given me, and then what the sheriff is hypothesizing, I'm
(17:55):
kind of blending all that together to something that makes
sense to me, assuming one offender.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Okay, so the sheriff is very dedicated. He's got neighbors
coming over while they're trying to sort this out. He's
very concerned about securing the crime scene, so he has
a couple of neighbors spend the night with him. Two
other neighbors and the sheriff stay the night in the house.
They keep the bodies exactly where they are, and one
(18:22):
of the neighbors is it sounds like a relative of
the farm hand who is a relative of missus Wolf.
So how awful. They've left all the bodies in place,
which is smart, but you know, to sleep all night,
even as law enforcement, to sleep all night with the
dead bodies and not knowing if somebody is going to
come back, or what the motive is or who did
(18:44):
this must have been really frightening. I would be frightened
at least.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, it's not the way I'd recommend securing a crime scene.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Better than leaving it and leaving the fun door open.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I guess, well, you know, in this day and age,
we put up a yellow crime I'm seeing tape. We
put patrol officers you know, around the perimeter, and yeah,
but yeah, I could see where, you know, back then,
this was this was the mechanism that they chose.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Okay, okay, So it becomes important because the two neighbors
decide to leave and they go to the hope for
farm to get breakfast for the sheriff and for themselves,
and they were going to bring it back. So the
sheriff's on his own at this house with five dead
bodies and three people in the barn and somebody on
(19:32):
the loose because he now, of course realizes that this
was not a murder suicide. When the sheriff is on
his own, you know, he is kind of just making
sure everything is secure. At about five point thirty in
the morning, he hears a car coming, and I think
that he's assuming that this is going to be you know,
(19:53):
the two neighbors who went to go get him breakfast.
The description is he hears a car coming across the prairie.
I love the idea. I don't think I've said prairie
one of our episodes before, but I love that image
coming of like a car and you know, these are
nineteen twenty cars, so there, you know, it's like bouncing across.
So he hears a car coming. They were very loud,
(20:15):
so you can't really sneak up on somebody. I mean,
we're certainly not talking about a Prius or anything. And
he steps outside. He can't identify the car at first,
so it sounds like is very smart. He steps back
into the shadows and kind of hides to see what's
going to happen. He's under a lean to that's just
like right outside the kitchen. Car pulls up and a
(20:38):
guy gets out. The sheriff doesn't know who this man is.
He is looking into the farmhouse living room window and
he starts walking towards the barn, so he's looking through
the window, walks towards the barn, and that's when the
sheriff pops out and says hello, and the man freezes.
I'm not saying this is the offender. I'm not saying
a man is. This man is a suspect. It's just
(20:59):
the sheriff trying to get information about who's on this
private property which has been the subject of a murder scene.
Sheriff introduces himself and the man says that he's the
owner of a neighboring farm. And you know, everybody else
has come out, so I don't think this is a
surprise to the sheriff. And this is the first time
the man has shown up. So there's been activity for
(21:21):
the past twenty four hours at this farm, but this
is the first time that the sheriff is meeting someone
he hadn't met earlier. His name is Henry Layer. He's
thirty six and he is originally from Russia. Remember this
is very immigrant centric this area. And you know, Layer says,
this is awful. I can't even believe this. These were
(21:42):
really good neighbors and understand what happened. They talk for
a while, and this is where Henry Layer starts to
get a little bit iffy. So he is suspicious because
he's got his hand inside a pocket, and the sheriff
kind of blows it off because he doesn't think it's
(22:05):
The pocket's very small, so it's not going to have
a weapon in it. And then the other guys show
up with breakfast, and so, you know, Henry Layer kind
of stays and he says. The sheriff says to one
of the neighbors, did you drive past this guy's house,
Henry Layer's house, Because Henry Lair had said, I live
over in this direction on your way to go get
(22:27):
the breakfast, and I didn't understand why this would be significant,
but I guess it is. So he says, did you
drive by this guy's house as you left the farm?
And the neighbor said yes, And he said, so, would
Henry Layer have heard you leave the farm? And the
neighbor said yeah. And plus we have a lot of
loud cars. So the significance is what that, you know,
(22:51):
Henry is able to hear who's coming and going, and
that's what's signaling him to come to the farm or
what do you think?
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Well, I think if it's the being suspicious about Henry.
You know, of course Henry knows there's activity going on
at the Wolf farm and there's law enforcement being present there.
So when Henry hears the cars go past his house,
(23:19):
he may be making the assumption, well, the Wolf house
and property are abandoned, Now is my time to go
back and do whatever if Henry isn't involved in the crime.
So I think that that's what the sheriff is kind
of keying in on. Is it just so happens that
at the moment that only one person besides the dead
(23:42):
bodies are present, This is when Henry, who's supposedly a
good neighbor of this the Wolf family, that's when he
decides to show up, and he walks up onto the
property and looks into the house and is starting to
head out to the barn where three victims were killed
or at least their bodies found.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
You know, the share of is suspicious of everybody at
this point. So you know, Henry's in the mix. But
I think he's trying to keep an open mind, But
that I think is what he's piecing together exactly what
you said. And it could be Henry just taking advantage
of a tragedy and to steal some copper wire or something.
We don't know. You know, being a thief doesn't certainly make.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
You a murderer. Or is he a luky lou?
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Could be a luky lou.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
He's just like, oh, you know, let's go check things out,
all right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Get a souvenir. If there's eBay in the nineteen twenties
and there's not, I could hawk something you know knows,
but you know, we're still trying to think about gathering evidence. Henry.
I don't know why the sheriff allows him to go
all over the house. He's accompanying him, but maybe he
thinks that he's going to say something that's incriminating. I
don't know. Henry says, let's go out to the barn
(24:55):
and check out the chickens to see if they've laid
any eggs. The bodies are still there of these two
little girls and their dad, and everybody thinks it's weird,
but the sheriff says, sure, let's go. So they go
out to the barn and you know, Henry points out
there are a few eggs, and seems like this is good,
It's great, there are these eggs here. But when everybody
(25:17):
kind of turns and looks at the eggs, he announces
that he has found a clue in the hay. And
in the hay he says he has found some shotgun shells,
which the sheriff had not found before. So, I mean,
Henry is not a rocket scientist. Clearly. I think the
sheriff immediately thinks, oh, this guy doesn't have his hand
(25:39):
in his pocket anymore. Clearly he's planting evidence. I don't
know if that's true, but that's what it seems like.
He is the only one who has discovered in this
hay some shotgun casings.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
You know, I'm I'm I'm thinking about it from a
sort of a crime scene reconstruction standpoint. You know, the
location of these of these expended shotgun shopes. Is that
consistent with how the shotgun would have ejected these shells
considering the type of you know, where the shooter would
have been standing to kill these three victims, you know,
And since I don't have that information, I can't say that.
(26:15):
So I can, on one hand say, Okay, maybe this
is consistent with the gun used and where the shooter
would have been standing From an ejection pattern standpoint, are
the shotgun shells just laying on top of the hay,
you know? Or were they found underneath like they had
been hidden? Now? Could an offender, after killing the three victims,
(26:36):
taking the time to grab up the expended shotgun shells
and hide them. Sure? This is also where it's interesting
in terms of, well, what kind of shotgun are we
talking about? You know? Is this a shotgun like a
pump action shotgun? Is this a lever shotgun where you
(26:57):
you know, snap it down and have to manly take
out these shells? You know? Some of this is where
it's you know, is the shells even being present at
the crime scene consistent with the gun used. If Jacob
is shot outside and then drug into the barn, you know,
how many shelled? There should only be two shells expended
(27:19):
because those are the two girls that are being killed
inside because Jacob. The shells for Jacob should be outside
unless the offender pulls them out or rejects them inside
the barn before shooting the girls. So this is all
what I'm kind of starting to Okay, there's a lot
of variables that I don't have the information on. But
(27:42):
the sheriff is most certainly savvy, you know, to how
shotguns operate, and knows this crime scene and he immediately
is going, Okay, this isn't right. You know, Henry threw
out a distraction and now sounds like the sheriff is suspecting.
He pulls out the shells out of that little pocket
and is planting them there. Well, why is he doing that. Well,
(28:04):
he's probably planting shells from a different gun, you know,
to throw off the investigation. He is trying to literally
stage this crime scene in front of the sheriff who's
investigating the crime.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
And luckily we have a smart sheriff here, so that's good.
I have been searching and I really can't find what
kind of shotgun it is. I'm sorry, sure it's you know,
but I think you're making some good assumptions. They bring
in hounds, and of course they interview everybody around. The
hounds are useless because it's been raining so much. There's
(28:38):
no help there. You know, the sheriff is suspicious of Henry,
but there's not a lot of evidence that is, you know,
kind of directly pointing at him. Even though I know
we're talking about it's clear that he's trying to plant evidence.
They have some rewards out to one thousand dollars rewards,
which is more than fifteen thousand dollars today, So that
(28:59):
means you've got to be more people out there trying
to figure out what happened. Later that morning, the other
murder weapon, in addition to the hatchet, is located, and
I still don't have the exact gauge here, but there's
a swampy area close by where someone notices the stock
of a shotgun sticking out. It's slightly rested, but it's
(29:19):
consistent with having been in the water for two days,
which is how long they think that this has been happening.
No one knows who bought it, and the manufacturer of
the gun is contacted and they have no idea. I mean,
you know who knows. But it sounds like they did
find the murder weapon. There's nothing they can really do
about that. In nineteen twenty. There's ballistics, but I don't.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Know shot well, shotguns are different than your handguns and
your rifles. So shotguns are smooth bored weapons, so there's
no rifling inside of most shotguns, So when the projectiles
travel down this smooth they're not marked like projectiles out
(30:03):
of a rifled handgun or a rifled rifle. The marks
that a shotgun would leave that could be intercompared would
be on the shotgun shelves, the firing pin impression, the
breach face stamp, whether or not it's a shotgun that
had like a ejector extractor, which nineteen twenties. You know,
(30:24):
I'm not a firearms expert that has the you know,
in depth familiarity of what types of guns would have
existed back in the nineteen twenties. But my guess is
is you're not having a in all likelihood, this is
not like a semi auto shotgun. You know, That's my guess.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
So we have a funeral and Henry Layer comes to
the funeral. He's part of the community. I mean, everybody
came to this funeral. As you can tell from that photo.
He's being weird and the sheriff is watching. He insists
that each of the cast gets be opened so he
can look at each one. But he doesn't cry or
have any emotion or anything.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
This is Henry, Yeah, what is he doing?
Speaker 1 (31:06):
So he's having each casket opened and he looks at it.
He doesn't really do anything, and that's it, and everybody
thinks this is bananas.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Oh yeah, it is. Is that, you know, I guess
the only thought, well, I would need to know more
about Henry, But right now I'm going to assume Henry
is your average farm person, not involved in homicidal violence
(31:35):
on a periodic basis. You know, it's not a hitman,
not mafia, you know, doing these types of homicides. And
I'm almost wondering if there is a sense of guilt
and making peace with each of the victims, if he's
responsible making the assumption, you know, he's responsible to look
(31:59):
at one of them. I can't see how that would
unless he's having to he's trying to acquire details for
subsequent interviews. You know. I think maybe it's a personal thing,
something inside that he needs to do. But that is bizarre.
I mean that the sheriff is spot on. That's a
(32:19):
behavior that I have to pay attention to.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
So we've got in reacting weird Henry probably planting evidence
because it's under the hay, which we've already kind of said,
makes no sense, no sense. I mean, you know, Michelle
is not going to die of its way into Hey,
so I don't think he understood that when he was
planting it, right, So we have that information.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Just that that bit of information and relying a little
bit upon that the you know, the sheriff's own observations,
and I'm putting some fair amount of weight on the
veracity of the sheriff and his observational abilities in this case.
This really if Henry truly is planting those shotguns, and
he now becomes prime suspect.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Yeah, and they go to his house and his daughters,
they're not trying to protect their dad. They said he
wasn't home for a large part of Thursday, which is
when they think this happened. Okay, he said he wasn't there,
so he doesn't have a good alibi. So the motive,
this is what's mysterious. What do you think? So this
is a neighbor Yeah, but we don't know anything about
(33:23):
There is a motive, but we don't know anything about
a motive. What are the possibilities here?
Speaker 2 (33:28):
The first thing that comes to my mind is that
there is a dispute, kind of a neighbor dispute, possibly
related to farming land boundaries. You know, do they have cattle?
You know any yep? Okay, so you know I've watched Yellowstone.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Are you comparing this to Yellowstone?
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Yeah? I mean you could see that these cattles are
the livelihood and maybe there's a dispute between them over
something that is a you know, high stakes financial you know,
financial situation for one or the other. So that's probably
right now my my top theory without knowing I mean,
(34:11):
it's possible that maybe Jacob was you know, doing criminal
work for Henry and didn't live up to his end
of what he was supposed to do. You know, But
considering the little bit of victimology that you talked about
Jacob at the beginning in the first episode, in terms
of there he's not abusive to his family, and he
(34:31):
seems to be a good guy and this and that,
I'm going to say, no, you know what, I think
Henry's a bad guy here, and somehow he feels that
he's been stiffed by Jacob and this family. And now
you're getting into that vindictive category of why the whole family. Basically,
you know, Henry is like, not only am I going
(34:54):
to take out Jacob, I'm going to take out this
entire family, and maybe there's some sort of aspect in
which Henry could end up taking over Jacob's property and
expand his own farm. So by Jacob no longer having
any heirs to inherit the land, yeah, Henry can now
(35:16):
somehow swoop in and expand his business and financially profit.
So that's kind of the direction that I'm thinking right now.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
What we find out is that neighbors start to say
Jacob the father, was having problems with the neighbor. There
was a disagreement that he was actually worried about this neighbor,
but they never named Jacob, never named the neighbor. So
when the sheriff presses other neighbors who he hadn't spoken
(35:45):
to yet about information about this mysterious neighbor, we find
out it's Henry Lair. Tell me what you think about
this as a motive, Apparently, Henry Lair's livestock had trespassed
on to the wolf land, as livestock is apt to do.
Wolf's dog had bitten Layer when he came on to
try to retrieve the cattle. There was then sort of
(36:08):
this feud, and it sounds like both men were spreading
rumors and gossip about each other. Really, this is a
motive to kill an entire family. I started watching this
show called fear Thy Neighbor, and I cannot believe the
stupid reasons why people kill each other, like over fence,
(36:29):
being too tall, Like it's unreal. So at first I
thought this is stupid that I thought. No, I could
see this on fear Thy Neighbor, the TV series.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
No, absolutely, I'm gonna throw out at a different analogy. Okay,
road rage. You know, you get pissed off at somebody
because they cut you off or do something in traffic. Right,
and now you got two people that are just you know,
they're not thinking, they're just pissed off at each other.
And one runs the other off the road and pulls
out a gun and kills them. You know, it's just
(37:00):
how dare you? You know? And so this this neighbor dispute,
you know, originating with the dog bite, you know, it
escalated and Henry has the psychology of how dare you?
Right and took out Jacob and his entire family. That's
my opinion right now, I think it's crystal clear what
(37:22):
happened here.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Well, let's find out, because the sheriff is aware it's
been three weeks now, he's aware that there's a lot
of public pressure on him and the investigators to make
an arrest. Now everybody thinks it's Henry, and Henry has
not confessed, and he's denying all of this, and there's
not a ton of concrete evidence. It's kind of circumstantially, except,
(37:45):
of course, we know we do think he planted evidence.
So the sheriff tries to do The sheriff tries to
do a couple of things. He's very creative, i have
to say, especially for nineteen twenty. So on the way
to taking Henry, they arrest him, and on the way
to taking him to the jail house, there's a man
that darts across the street and the sheriff's deputies run
(38:08):
out of the car that Henry's in and chase him down.
They put him next to Henry. This is a plant, Yeah,
and they stick him both in jail and Layer doesn't
ever confess. Henry doesn't ever confess to this, so they
really are trying to get a confession out of him.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Yeah, this day and age, there's definitely restrictions on how
you do that type of scenario. But you know, that
is a tactic that is employed from time to time. Okay, Again,
there's a lot of legalities that restrict what law enforcement
can do, particularly under this set of circumstances.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Okay. So the reason I say that is because it's
very clear that the sheriff wants a confession, that he
doesn't think he has a strong case against Henry if
he doesn't get a confession. So this and this is
why I said, remember what happened at the funeral with
Henry looking at the bodies and the caskets and making
a big deal out of that. So the sheriff gets
(39:09):
him back to the jail and interrogates him. They are
not getting anywhere with him until they show the sheriff says.
They show crime scene photos of the bodies, and the
sheriff says that when they show a photo of Emma
in her crib, you know the one I showed you,
(39:30):
they I think made that photo up and you know,
showed it to him to show that she's alive and
that all of these people are dead. He breaks down
in tears and confesses he will later Paul, he will
later say I was beaten into a confession. I certainly
think that Henry was guilty. I don't know how you
(39:51):
feel about this, but why would photos of the people
he killed have a bigger reaction that forces confession out
of him then actually being in front of their caskets
and looking at their dead. But it didn't make any
sense to me. Why would you have a reaction in
one way and not the other. That's why I'm wondering
if Henry really did get beaten to get this confession.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
But also I think it's also within the context of
when he is looking at the cast gets versus when
he's looking at the photos. You know, when he's looking
at the photos, he's under suspicion. He's recognizing, you know,
he's under jeopardy in terms of his freedom and potentially
his life if this is a death eligible case. So
(40:37):
time has passed, reflection, emotions, you know, maybe he's now
recognizing that. You know, you said he had some kids.
He's not going to be around for his kids. You know,
who knows the differences. I don't think the difference between him,
you know, looking at the bodies in the casket versus
(40:59):
now he's breaking down looking at the photos, that that
is somehow indicative that he was mistreated during the interview.
It would not be surprising to me if there was,
let's say, a level of corporal involvement in terms of,
you know, he's you know, getting whacked a bit, you know,
as he's being interviewed, you know, nineteen twenties, you know,
(41:20):
it's It wouldn't surprise me at all. However, I in
terms of utilizing the difference in his response from the
caskets to the photos, I don't put any weight on
that at all.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Okay, Well, I told you he confessed. So I'm going
to just tell you what he says, from start to
finish happened, and you tell me if it makes sense
based on what you know. Now, Okay, you ready, because
there's some differences from what you and I said. So
he confesses, whether it was you know, a real heart
and soul confession or beaten out of him. He says
that he was pissed off about the dog and that
(41:57):
he went over to the wolf's house and they got
into an argument. Jacob got into an argument, and Jacob
grabbed his own shotgun. We don't know whether the shotgun
in the swampy area was Jacob's, but Henry says, I
wasn't armed, he had the shotgun. The two men fought
over the gun and Henry got it. He says that
when they were fighting, the gun went off accidentally two times,
(42:20):
one shot that killed the wife in the kitchen and
the other one that killed Jacob. Ho for the farm hand.
He said that everybody else is there, and Jacob was
in the kitchen at the time. Jacob freaks out and
runs into the field and Henry gets more ammunition out
of a drawer. How he knew there would be ammunition
(42:43):
in this particular drawer, I have no idea, This is
what he says. He shot Jacob once in the back
as he was running, and then of course in the
head at close range. She said. Two of the little
girls ran into the barn when he was chasing after
their dad. He shot both of them there. He said
that the wife and the farmhand were dead. In the house,
three little girls were still alive. He said he killed
(43:05):
two of them with the shotgun, one with the hatchet.
And he said, I had no idea that the baby
was there, otherwise he probably would have killed her too, Emma,
He just didn't know. He said that after that it
was all done, he dragged Jacob's body to the barn
and covered him and the little girl's up with the
hay and then he pushed the bodies of the rest
of the family through the trap door into the cellar.
(43:28):
Of course, he says his memory is hazy, as killers
will say, but he said this all started with an accident,
two shots, and that was it, and he was defending
himself and then everything else just sort of fell apart,
and the sheriff it basically feels like, well, there's inconsistencies
which looked like, you know, the killer really this was
an attack, a full offense, not defense. So then the
(43:50):
rest is just kind of what happens to Henry, which
is not very much. What do you think about his
version of events?
Speaker 2 (43:56):
You know, the problem with Henry's confession has to do
with how much access Henry had at the crime scene
to visualize everything, to be able to see everything, to
see what the victims look like in the casket, you know,
because he's giving some specific information that's adding up to
(44:16):
you know, what actually happened in terms of the types
of injuries, you know, and who he had, you know,
the hatchet was used on. So this is where it
gets hard to truly assess. You know, is this bona
fide information that he knew because he's a killer, or
is this something he could discern because he had so
much access to the crime scene, the victims' bodies. Was
(44:38):
this a coerced confession and now details are being fed
to him, you know, by the interviewers, by law enforcements,
so it adds up with what they think happened. You know.
It is interesting that he's saying that this was you know,
Jacob initiating, so he's minimizing that, and that the two
shots to the mom and to the farm hand were
(45:01):
accidental over the struggle of the shotgun. There is a
that's a level of minimizing in my opinion. So I'm
not sure you know what to to really make but
it's close enough to the evidence, though I still have
problems with, you know, the number of people that were
shot in the head inside the house and the lack
(45:24):
of the you know, the blood pools you know that
would show where they were laying. Henry's confession is close
enough at least on face value that yeah, you know
this this could be indicative that he's truly the killer.
Just there's there's those issues that I'm having about, you know,
(45:45):
his knowledge of the crime scene and whether or not
he was fed to details during the interview.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't put it past the sheriff to
really just try to nail this down. So he pleads guilty.
The judge even says, are you sure you want to
do that? He says, yes, He's given life in prison
with hard labor. I'm surprised, you know that this was
even an option, that they were even going to have
him plead guilty. But I don't know. I don't know
(46:12):
why that happened. I was expecting him to hang, for sure.
So later on he says, I'm recanting and it's too late.
He says, really, you think I could have killed all
those people? And you know there's ample evidence that he
likely did. And he dies five years into his life sentence.
(46:32):
I mean, he's thirty six. So he died at forty one. Ironic,
so did Jacob Wolf died at forty one. But I
don't know, something something might be amiss there in the
prison system.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
I don't know, well, hard labor. That might take a
toll on you.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
Yeah, in North Dakota in the winter, Oh for sure.
Emma Wolf is adopted by her mom's sister and she
lives the rest of her life near Turtle Lake, and
she dies at eighty four in two thousand and three.
So this story is something else. And I think we
don't do a lot, but we do talk about families
who have all been murdered in the impact of that,
(47:09):
and we've had stories where you have a survivor and
thankfully oftentimes they go on and live a good life.
And it sounds like that's what happened here. But what
is nauseating to me is when he essentially makes the
statement that well, I didn't even know she was there,
which indicates that he would have killed her a bait
and eight month old baby. That is what you're saying.
(47:32):
It's rage, it's road rage, it's rage over cattle and
a dog, and that's it.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
You know.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
You and I talk about that all the time. Every
time I hear someone say he would have never killed
somebody over an affair from fifty five years ago or whatever.
I mean. You and I I know both always think
you don't have any idea what in their head, what
they're saying to themselves, you.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
Know, And that's a scary part, right, It's just that
you don't know who you're dealing with. Sometimes from a
my own family, when you're talking to the kids who
are now driving, it's like, don't get into some sort
of beef with somebody on the road, you know, no,
because you don't know who they are, what they're capable
of doing. And this is the reality is is. You know,
(48:16):
Jacob sounds like he talked to some neighbors that he
was having problems with Henry. You know, he recognized that
Henry was kind of a jerk, but he probably had
no idea that Henry would be somebody that would come
over and kill his entire family.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Yeah, I mean, he did say he was a little
scared of him, but nothing. He didn't alert any authorities
about it. Yeah, who knows what a mess. So hopefully
next week we won't have something that involves eight victims.
It particularly children. You know, I always say it's hard
for me to do the stories about children, but there's
(48:50):
sometimes they're so significant and we learn so much that,
you know, I will visit those types of stories. I
think they can be important, and I think you and
I tell those stories compassionately through the lens of the victim.
Hopefully so that's the goal.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
All victims and especially children need to be remembered.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely, Well, next week we'll have a different story.
I promise I will move heaven and Earth to get
us something non involving kids, and in North Dakota, in
the wild, in the prairie, even though I love saying prairie.
Have a good week and I'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
All right, Kate, thanks again, Thanks.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
This has been an exactly right production for our sources
and show notes go to exactlyrightmedia dot com slash Buried
Bones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Emirosi.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
Research by Maren mcclashan, Ali Elkin, and Kate Winkler Dawson.
Speaker 1 (49:50):
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Our theme song is by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Executive produced by Karen Kilgarreff, Georgia hard Stark and Daniel Kramer.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at
Baried Bones pod.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded
Age story of murder and the race to decode the
criminal mind, is available now, and
Speaker 1 (50:14):
Paul's best selling memoir Unmasked, My life Solving America's Cold
Cases is also available now.
Hosts And Creators
Kate Winkler Dawson
Paul Holes
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