Episode 517: The Black Sisters and the Murder of Ocey Snead

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

Hysterical, a new podcast from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free on Wondery. Plus. Hey weirdos, I'm ash.

And I'm Elena, and this is morbid.

This is morbid. And oh boy, is it a doozy that I have for you today. You always get this certain look in your eyes when you're about to really fuck me up this story. Just, Mmm, I have.

Oh, even Mikey is making a face. He's like, Ah, oh, it's, I mean, Dave. When we were talking about it was like, Why is this not its own, like movie series, like It's a wild tale? Oh, no.

There's so much to it, I'm nervous and like a lot of mystery, but it's just really, really intense. Okay, you know, I think you need to buckle up for it, but hold on to your butts.

Hold on to those butts. But before we get into it, I just want to say, Um, we got to go on the stage with Pod Meets World. It was the coolest thing I think we've ever gotten to do. We got to hang out with Topanga, Eric and Sean from Boy Meets World and Harley.

And fucking Harley Kiner. And they are just the nicest people. I'm telling you, you know that whole thing. We say it all the time, we're like, Oh, you always get scared. You're like, don't meet your heroes, they can disappoint you.

No, meet your heroes, I was. I'm just always scared because I'm like, I. I just really hope this doesn't like, you know, just like blow up in our face.

I'm telling you guys, it's Daniel Fishel, Will Friedle, Ryder Strong and Danny McNulty as Harley Kiner. And I'm telling you they were the sweetest people truly I like. I'm 37 years old, you guys know how many times I referenced like, Sabrina, the teenage witch in Boy Meets World.

It's always those two, yeah, it's always those that just like I go right back to. Because they were literally my adolescence. And walking into a room and seeing just the squad, Sean, Hunter, Topanga and Eric just sitting there, you were, you acted, you acted, cool.

Thank you for saying that because inside of my body was a fucking a fright. See, I know that because I know you, but like, if you didn't know you, I don't think you could tell. Also, they all give a really good handshake, they do, they give a strong handshake and they look you in the eye.

Yes, Papa always taught me you give a strong handshake, because nobody likes a little fishy handshake. Nobody likes a little sloppy fish handshake. I was so impressed by all their handshakes, yeah.

They're just really kind people, they're hilarious, so funny, very like, welcoming. It was a lot of fun.

Sitting on a couch next to Eric, I was like, I don't. Just unreal what the fuck happened here? Will invited us to ice cream. He did.

I'm still not over any of this and we're going, and oh, will, if you're walking. Sammy Hey, oh, hey, hey.

And also, hey to your wife Sue, because she was awesome. We love Sue. She was so sweet. Sue was swag too. I loved her outfit.

Yeah, they were great. And it's like, and so this is all. Also to say like, the only reason we are able to do this stuff is because you guys listened to this show, which is still wild.

Thanks for that, thank you a lot because, like, that was a really cool experience. Weirdos making dreams come true. We only had it because of you guys.

So, appreciate, and should we tell them how? It made us feel on stage? It made us feel some type of way. It made us feel like maybe we wanted to do a show like a hometown show.

A hometown show, not a tour. Yeah, we will not tour. I'm about to be a wedded woman and you have, like, 70 kids, I have three, but it's similar.

Honestly, three kids and two dogs equates to 70 children, you know what? Correct it does, yes.

You were right the first time, trust me, I've been here, but yeah.

I think we want to do a hometown show. We got the bug next year, so we'll let you, we'll keep you guys updated on that. So.

Definitely next year at some point, it was just really fun. I have to sneeze to go out there.

I wanted to warn you, I appreciate that I have to sneeze. Yeah, it was just really fun.

But thanks to PodmeetsWorlds, yeah, thanks to all of them, and thanks to you guys, thanks to everybody.

That was an awesome experience. And again, you guys are the best, you guys are the teats. So now I'm going to ruin your life with this story, so I'm sorry.

No, that I'm taking you here, you should get a shirt that says that I'm going to ruin your life with this story, so I'm sorry.

Because the amount of times you've said that to me in my life, that's so true. Even about like things that we don't talk about on the show. You're like, I got a story that's going to ruin your life, or it's, I'm like, I have a fact that's going to. And if I have to know it, you have to know it now, like, I do that to John Daily.

Did I ever tell you guys about the time that Elena looked at me and she goes? The sun could have exploded eight minutes ago and we wouldn't know, yeah, if the sun explodes, we won't know for eight minutes, yeah.

And I'm not going to be alone in knowing that. No, now you all know that love you, but anyway.

And you're also going to have to know about the horrific case of O.

C sneed Okay, this is an older one, but I promise you it's not lacking in drama, okay?

So, the death of O.

C sneed.

It was an undeniable tragedy, but her death was really only beat. The beginning of what would become one of the early 20th century's truly most captivating crime stories. Oh man, like it's pulled directly out of the pages of some kind of like. Classic Southern gothic horror novel, got a lot of elements and like any good gothic horror story. The trial that followed was also full of unbelievable twists and ended up culminating in a pretty shocking conclusion.

Really, yeah, I feel like we've had a few cases where there's been like, gnarly trials lately. Yeah, right.

Usually, a lot of times, the old, the older cases have some wily trials. Yeah, cause I feel like different things were admissible back then. And like they tried to get away with different kinds of fuck shit exactly. And they had to change laws and shit.

Yeah, yeah, all right. So let's first begin with OSI, okay?

Who is OSI? sneed Tell me now. Like many aspects of this story, OsI's date of birth and several other, you know, details about her are kind of shrouded in a little bit of mystery. The 1900s of it all.

Yeah, she was born in New York, New York, in September of 1885. I don't know exactly what date it was, we couldn't find one exactly.

We couldn't find one that we felt comfortable being like. This is definitely her birthday. Her name was Oceana Wardlaw Martin. That's a really pretty name, I know, Oceana.

Yeah, that's gorgeous. She was the daughter of Caroline Wardlaw and Colonel Robert Maxwell Martin, who was a very celebrated confederate veteran of the American civil war. Hmm, hmm.

Hmm. Now, from the perspective of his confederate peers, gotta be clear about that. Let's be clear, Robert Martin was a war hero. Oh.

Again, remember, perspective is everything. He served in many key battles in the war. He was severely wounded while saving the life of General John Hunt Morgan, but managed to survive and went on to lead the Confederate plot to burn New York City. Oh fun.

When their attempt to burn New York City ultimately failed, yeah, it didn't work out. I don't know if you guys know it, but New York City is still there, still standing, still standing.

He led an unsuccessful attempt to kidnap Vice President Andrew Johnson. Wow. He, for that, was eventually captured and imprisoned, and he was released from prison. When the war ended and moved back to the South, where he made and lost a fortune in the tobacco industry. Heh heh, real interesting fellow this one.

I guess so now. It was during this post-war period that he met and married Caroline Wardlaw. Now Robert still had a fortune, like he ended up making it back. He was never in dire straits here.

And Robert supervised the construction of a large mansion in Wilder Park, Kentucky, in the early 1880s. Tragedy struck because the family mansion burned to the ground under suspicious circumstances. That's ironic, yeah, I know. The couple lived for a short amount of time in a much smaller house on the grounds of the mansion. But that quickly became a little unsustainable following the birth of the couple's first child.

So Robert relocated the family to New York City, and Caroline gave birth to Osie Oceana in the fall of 1885.

What a weird thing to like, go live in the city that you plan to burn down. Yeah, it's a little strange. Yeah, that is a little strange.

There was a brief period of success and calm for the family until about 1900, when tragedy struck again. Oh no, that's when Robert's son died from brain fever, encephalitis, brain fever, that's what they used to call encephalitis.

He died after, so he had encephalitis, and that's what he died from. But it was after a particularly bad fall down the stairs in their home in New York. Do you think that could have had something to do with it? People don't know what happened there. Okay, can you also remind me what encephalitis is, please?

It's like inflammation of the brain. oh okay, so that's why they call it brain fever. Gotcha, gotcha. Like the fire that destroyed the family home in Kentucky before, the circumstances under which, you know, the Robert's son died were somewhat suspicious.

Okay, I'm catching on to a theme here, if you will. What's more suspicious was the speed at which his father collected a payout from the $22,000 life insurance policy. Damn, and that's $22,000. Back then, it was also when they could use money.

Mm-hmm. They could have used money like it came in interesting timing. Yeah, which it seems like insurance policies in this story come at, man, they just come at the right time.

Dude insurance policies, that's, they're always on time. They freak me out. Now. That $22,000 life insurance policy now would be $700,000. Holy shit, so sizable.

Yeah, I mean, even just $22,000 is sizable, but like, $700,000, that's on another level, baby, and it's like, So there's a lot there.

Now, despite this, and it all just went to plan. Mm-hmm. Despite this, the insurance payout allowed the family to move to a much nicer home on Fifth Avenue. Actually, imagine that, Oh, Fifth Avenue.

Silver linings, I guess, yeah. Unfortunately, the excitement of the new home wouldn't last long before tragedy struck again. Because only a few months after moving in, neighbors heard a commotion coming from the Martin House.

And they ran over to see what was happening and found Robert had suffered a paralytic stroke and was being attended by a rather stern-looking Caroline. His wife, Okay, who immediately told her hysterical daughter Osie not to speak Okay, so was that like a stroke, or was that something else?

You can't see me, but I'm shrugging, she's the shrug emoji, I don't know. Robert did hold on for a little while and ended up living for a short period of time in very bad health. And then finally ended up succumbing and dying. On January 12th, 1901..

It's just weird that she told her daughter not to say anything. Because, like, what would she have to say if he was just having a stroke? What would she have to say? I wonder, me as well.

Now, following Robert's death, Caroline packed up her daughter and moved them both back to her hometown of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. That's where Caroline's sister, Virginia, was actually in charge of the Murfreesboro Soul Female College, where Caroline's other sister, she, had two sisters. Mary was a member of the faculty. Cool, so Virginia is the president of the school, Mary is part of the faculty.

Caroline hadn't let them know that she was coming, but they took her in right away and they found her. A job as the school's new bookkeeper. So they're all working at the school together now. It seems, by all accounts, that Virginia and Mary's existence at the school before this were fairly normal. Uh-oh. Soul Female College was touted as providing quote, a traditional Southern education for women in cultural studies and social grace.

Ooh, social grace now. Virginia was named president of the school in 1892, and the school really thrived under her leadership and became very highly acclaimed. She was well-respected, she ran the program with discipline, with honor, according to all who knew her at the time, she was brought into this position because of the respect people had for her.

Now, Virginia had spent her adult life as what people called a spinster and focused on her responsibilities at school. That was what she really focused on. A.k.a. a boss bitch. Yeah, for now.

For now, I was just going to say, I don't know anything else, I don't know what happens. Yeah, okay.

I get it. And Mary had raised two sons, and when they had grown and married, she joined the faculty at school. So everybody seemed like they had, you know, taken a good path. Okay, again, seemed to be killing it.

Then Caroline arrives, Okay, Caroline seems to be the issue here. The arrival of Caroline was like a weird reset button and no one really understood why. Like, again, everything seemed to be going pretty chill.

People said the sisters like Mary and Virginia, could be like, I just said, Virginia, you did. I didn't mean to say that, Virginia, Virginia.

They seemed they were like a little strange, but like, okay, but relatively, you know, they weren't like, problematic or anything, you know, like they were just living, you know, existing.

Okay, but Mary and Virginia completely changed. When court Caroline showed up. The three sisters began dressing in all black together and wearing heavy black veils all the time.

What the fuck, just out of nowhere. All of a sudden, we're like, MM. Coven, like she showed up, and they were just like, Boom, literally like, Ahs, Covens.

She's covering wood straight up the fuck. And people were curious about this. One might be more curious, though, was the very marked change in their behavior.

Once they were once known to keep very ordinary schedules, they were, you know, a president of a female college and a part of the faculty. After all, it's not like they were doing these crazy things, yeah. But the sisters now had a habit of going out very late at night, in the middle of the night. And, more disturbingly, began entering students homes or rooms as they slept. To just stand and stare at them.

No, shut the fuck up, why? I'm not kidding, this is not real, this is real.

What the fuck they would literally break into students rooms while they were sleeping and stand and stare at them for why? I do not know what the fuck.

There's some weird cult thing happening here, something's going on because. They also hired a driver to drop them off at Evergreen Cemetery every evening, where they were said to carry on with strange rituals and chanting. Honestly, fucking metal is fuck if you take the B and E out of it, Yeah, exactly.

That's what I said. I was like, up to this point, like, take the B and E out of it, and I'm like, go off. Queens like this is cool, but man, do they take it somewhere?

Oh, God. And people saw them dancing around graves and all manner of odd behavior, and just like they would. What I mean, later you'll see like the behavior gets even stranger. They would like move people out of classrooms and into other classrooms and move them back.

And like, they were just being weird, like, just strange, and no one ever explained why they did this. No, what.

Well, and the thing is, in 1904. The obvious and very dramatic and strange change in Mary and Virginia's behavior was very unsettling to the students of Soul Female College, who had known them forever. Right? As like, pretty normal peeps, as pretty normal and very disciplined, and like, you know, respectful people, yeah. And one account said frightened students started to leave the school.

And it wasn't long before the school was in chaos and the Black sisters, as they were known to be called, were asked to leave.

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like, at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't.

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, like doubling and tripling. And it's all these girls with a diagnosis. The state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back.

Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, no, it's hysteria, it's all in your head, it's not physical.

You're, oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem, or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here, something's not right.

Leroy was the new dateline, and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

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Oh, I mean, yeah, I do understand why. They were asked to leave because they lost money. The school is losing money, left and right. Students were literally leaving the school because of their behavior.

They're waking up in the middle of the night to these three cuckoo nut ladies at the foot of their bed. They're being b&e'd by the Supreme witch and her coven in the middle of the night. Like, that's a lot to handle. There were also rumors that Caroline was maybe pocketing some money from the school, allegedly okay.

She's not around anymore. No, she is not now. Fortunately, the sister's great aunt Oceana Pollock, who Oceana yeah, needed help at Montgomery Female College in Virginia. Okay, so she looked at this whole like them leaving in disgrace thing as like, Ah, it's fine.

So she invited them all to join her at the school. She's like, You're just kinky. Yeah, it's okay, they just don't get you. I love how chic you are.

Now, when Virginia came to run the program, it was like she fell back into her old ways, her old ways of teaching, her, old ways of running things. Everything was great, Virginia was back. She was like, Oh, I know I'm kooky, but like, I'm back.

And it felt like, okay. The school was a boarding school, and one program described it as the remarkable purity and healthfulness of the atmosphere rendered the location peculiarly eligible for a seat of learning hot. So I guess it's a great place to learn.

It sounds great. But Mary came after Virginia, she joined the faculty and everything was still okay. They seemed to fall back into their old things. Seems like Caroline's the common denominator here.

Then Caroline joins, I'm sorry, all I can think of is the outkast song, Caroline, Caroline, that's literally like, she joins, and it's like, Oh, shit.

Like, fuck and the thing is, Caroline joined with Oce, her daughter, Okay, and things fucked up again. What power did this woman have over her sisters?

I don't know she is the supreme, I think she might be, because apparently Caroline was in charge of administration, she was put right in charge of administration. That's a thought.

And she messed with the curriculum immediately. And this is when she began the strange behavior of like, moving students from classroom to classroom, like during the day, for no reason. Like just ripping them out of a classroom, putting them in another, then moving them back, like she was just doing weird stuff.

And she would put like several padlocks on random doors. So it made people like, very unnerved, unsettled. And like, unsettled. Because they're like, what the fuck's behind that door? and like, why are there three padlocks on it?

What the fuck? And then they were doing the same peekaboo routine with the sisters in the residence halls. They're breaking in, yeah, like, doing the same, like, whoa, just looking in on you, what?

Like, what the fuck, ladies, why I hate it? So everybody just fell back into the old, like, strange shit. I need an answer.

You won't get one, I need, I require one, I also kind of required one, but I wasn't given one. Like, why the fuck did? Like, history will not give me an answer, Goddamn.

Caroline is o.

C.

's mom, Mary and Virginia's sister, she's the problem, gotcha, it's her.

She's the problem, it's her, she's the problem, it's Caroline. So Caroline ended up visiting Mary's son, John. Sneed, Okay, who was her nephew?

Oh, the look in your eye tells me we in danger. Oh God, I'm so upset, your weird face right now. I'm so nervous. Reports say she quote-unquote caused trouble and quote-unquote interfered in John's marriage. That just means that she didn't like his wife, and she said, Get out of here, right?

Totally nothing else happened, right? What happened here, I don't know. Do you know what does it mean?

What does it mean? What does it mean? There are even reports that John told the neighbors, and I quote, that he wouldn't let her wreck his home.

Well, because they didn't say shit like that. Back there, it's there. So was she trying to wreck the home and he wouldn't let her? So, while she was interfering, and, you know, while she was interfering and not wrecking her nephew's home? Gross. She was trying to convince him to come teach at Montgomery Female College in Virginia with all of them and leave his wife. Uh-huh.

And he refused. At first, he was like, No, I'm not going to run away with my aunt, Stop, I don't like it, I'm not going to do that.

But she returned a couple of weeks later and interfered again. Uh-huh, and this time her interference convinced him to leave his fucking wife, Anna. She read a Cosmo article and come with her, and he did.

He came with her and left Anna. just abandoned her. You know what? Anna was better off? Yeah, apparently Anna had, like, struggled, though, I guess.

Like, she had some, she really did a number. I don't know, too, if my man's left me for his aunt. Yeah, it really did a number. So. Curiously, though, John became seriously injured on the way back to Virginia. Oh, no.

He fell or was pushed, that's strange, from the train as it approached Roanoke. Oh, Roanoke. He survived, but weeks later, he was found almost drowned in a cistern on the school's campus.

Why is he having so many accidents? He was in Virginia and his aunt, Virginia was like, Oh, don't worry, he was checking the water supply for the school. Oops, don't worry that. He fell in there and the lid went over, and I'm the one who found him.

Yeah, don't worry about that. He managed to survive that. How does Mary feel about all this? Isn't that her kid? I don't think any of them are mother of the year, I would say.

But he managed to survive that, and then, one week later, he was found on fire in his bed. What?

What the fuck is happening here? This man was on fire in his bed, he was doused with kerosene. Oh my God. But they claimed it was an accident.

And who found him? Who found him? Caroline? Of course, it was his aunts, of course. How do you accidentally douse someone in kerosene?

You don't, yeah, where are we? where are we? is correct?

I've quite literally never heard a tale such as this. This is for reals, this is for reals, this is not legend. There are newspapers to back this up.

There's trials to back this up. I would also like to put this out here. I had never heard of this case. And then one, Mikey, you found this.

Was the one to bring this up and I said, Holy shit, yeah, where the fuck did you find this in the depths of hell?

I was going to say, he said, In hell, in hell, in Hades, what the fuck. It is a tale that just keeps you guessing.

Till the very end. But I want answers, I need concrete answers, and unfortunately, in the beginning it's wild and kooky, and it starts getting really dark.

And then it gets dark at the end. In the beginning, you're like, what is happening? and then at the end you're like, what the fuck happened? You're just like, Oh, God, keep going.

So his aunts are the ones who call that in now. Remember, he fell from a train approaching Roanoke that Caroline was on? Weird. He almost drowned in a cistern on campus where Virginia found him.

Coincidence? And then he was lit on fire with kerosene in his bed, and his aunts were the ones who found him. Like Virginia and Caroline, interesting that Mary's never around.

Mary's just like Whoopsie. Now. Following his death, the sisters, all three of them, collected an insurance payout, Those bitches love insurance, which they had taken out. So strange.

Now, in 1906, around the time of John Sneed's unexpected and very tragic death, because he died after the fire, obviously he sure did. Caroline paid a visit to his brother Fletcher, her other nephew.

Stop, I love the name Fletcher. He was still living in Tennessee. Again. This is Mary's other son. Her other nephew, Caroline, explained that there would be some family property near Chattanooga.

That needed looking after and asked whether Fletcher would be willing to pay a visit to the property, Okay, but Fletcher's wife was like, I heard about you.

Well, and she was like, Okay, but she was like, you can go. But I want to make sure we're in constant contact. Yeah, because I heard about this girl, because I heard about what's happening here.

I heard about Auntie over here. She attempted to contact him on the phone a few weeks later, and Caroline answered and told her, No, he can't come to the phone right now. And she was like, What the fuck do you mean?

He can't come to the phone right now. And she was like, he's sick, and she was like, Well, I want to talk to him. And she was like, too sick to talk? and she was like, Fuck, do you mean too sick to talk?

And she was like, I don't know, bitch, and then she hung up the phone. That's quotes, literally like the transcript.

So she was like, I don't know about that. So she contacts again and she's like, How's he doing? can I talk to him? and she's like, Nah, still can't talk to him.

Still too sick? And then she's like, you know what? I'll send him home in a few weeks when he's better, a few weeks, so in a few weeks. Had come and gone with no word from Fletcher.

Call the police. Fletcher's wife set out for Chattanooga and was like, I'm coming, I'm coming for you, baby now. When she arrived at the boarding house that he had supposedly been staying at, the woman there told her that Fletcher had indeed been there.

But then he had been moved to another house by Caroline. Caroline loves moving people. places moved him to another house, so Fletcher's wife follows.

She fucking Sherlock holmes it good for this girly she Detective Aberline's this love.

It like she follows Caroline's trail, always a few steps behind, but following her, she's like, I'm going to find my husband. But eventually, she ran out of leads.

No, and she couldn't find him without any information regarding her husband's whereabouts, and seemingly no fucking way to find him, and he didn't exist anymore. She was granted a divorce because she was like, he abandoned me.

She didn't involve the police. I guess she was like, there's nothing to, really, because she was just like, I guess Caroline later was just like, Yeah, he just left what? and it's like, No, he didn't.

What? No, he did not. Why is Caroline like this? I do not know. But she couldn't find him because he was already on his way to rejoin the sisters in Virginia with Caroline.

He fell in love with auntie. I don't know, I don't know what's happening there. I'm so deeply upset by this. But she was convincing him.

Now, once there, Caroline began encouraging a romance between Fletcher and OSI cousins, her daughter. They are first cousins. Oh, that's heinous.

That's illegal in many, many places. So let me just back back, back it up, go ahead, she goes after.

Interfering in her first nephew's marriage, convincing him, bamboozling him into following her, bamboozling, she tries to kill him twice. Fuck.

And then eventually, they succeed and light him on fire in his bed. Collect that insurance payment. She goes to the other nephew, Mary's other son, Mary's. Just letting this all happen, that's the thing.

I'm like, Mary, how many sons you got? Goes to. Her other son, convinces him to come back to the Virginia with her, then ices out. His wife pretends that Fletcher just was sick, first of all.

Too sick to talk and then just abandoned her and who knows where he went? And instead, she takes Fletcher back to the school in Virginia with her, and then encourages Osi and Fletcher to get married.

First cousins. And it seems as though there was already something romantic happening between Caroline and Fletcher. There's something weird happening there, what I don't know.

What like, I don't know. This is not a movie, I wasn't there, this is real.

This is real life, you know, in Bluey, when they go for real life, for real life. That's how I feel right now. I felt that the entire time I read this story, I said, for real life.

Every five seconds. And it is for real life, like we need the bluey clip that says, For real life, don't your kids have a toy that says it? They do.

Go find it for real life. That's so that's happening. So now she's encouraging Osi and Fletcher to get married, She's like first cousins.

I'd never heard of them so before the so then before long. The two, Fletcher and OSI were married in a secret ceremony because they had to make it secret because that's not legal. They were in Christianburg, Virginia.

They had to make it secret because they are first cousins. Is there even anywhere that you can marry your first cousin? Not sure, but I don't want to go, I'm not going to wherever it is.

Remember that true life? Yes, it's very upsetting. People were already suspicious of this trio of wild women, this trio of incest.

Of wily, wily women. And so when this happened, they had to do it in secret because it was just really gonna. And who knows? I'm like, what was your endgame here? But when the first? When they first arrived at the Montgomery Female College, things at the school, like I said, it seemed stable and well managed. Yeah, they were fine. But just as it had been at Sewell Family College, it didn't take long for Caroline's influence to cause even more problems there.

Well, because they're still going into the rooms and like, doing the weird shit, still doing all the things, padlocking the doors. Not long after they arrived, rumors began spreading around town about, like, their weird behavior, about them holding midnight rituals in the cemeteries around. I mean, there were, even there was. There were like rumors about, like, a quote-unquote illegitimate baby that was born at the school that disappeared.

What? And they believed like something might have happened, what, that? Those are rumors, but like these are the things people were talking about.

This is one of those things where it's like, all the rumors are true. It's really scary. Oh my god. Within two years of their arriving there and all this crazy, strange behavior, the sisters again had started to frighten students. Yeah, I would be frightened.

Students were dropping out again. Yeah, because they were like, I'm not going to the like. This is too well for me. Like, fuck this school. By 1908, the school had to close.

They had to close, they had to close. Why didn't anybody intervene before that? I do not know.

Damn. But having once again found themselves in dire financial straits, they had to kill someone. Yeah, the sisters. Well, first, they tried to sell off the school's minor assets. Okay?

Like five pianos, a church organ, rosewood wardrobes and the school itself, do they even own it? Here's the thing. There's no evidence to indicate that they had any.

If you just walk up to a building and you're like, Hey, you want this?

They hired a real estate agent and everything. It comes time to sign the paperwork. They're like, what paperwork, what the fuck? Just take the building.

Give us the money, give me the check, take the building. That was like, weird Tommy Haverford vibes. It's so strange.

What, but?

It's wild when the school was abandoned because it was abandoned at the time. Even when he bought it, it became a popular spot for vandals and older boys on marauding expeditions. They tore through the halls and classrooms, took everything out of there. The whole place had been destroyed. In the meantime, the sisters were like, What can we do next?

We can woo some older men into marriage, that's true, and get some money. They weren't gaining any traction on that front because they didn't have the lyrics. They're a little strange.

I feel like their methods might be weird.

Guys love a little woo, you know what I'm saying? I feel like maybe they were approaching it the wrong way. Can I look them up and see what they look like? Yeah, I think so.

I think a lot of the rumors that were swirling about them were keeping people's distance away from them. The fact that any man in a five-foot radius of them weirdly got kerosene doused all over them probably didn't help. They had creditors growing impatient not being paid, and they were going to be taking legal action against them at this point. So the sisters and Fletcher and O..C. began leaving town.

Anytime something like this would happen, okay, they went off in the direction of New York, they didn't all go at once, they went one after the other.

So, not to arouse suspicions, alrighty. They were trying to put some space, Fletcher and O..C were trying to put space between themselves and their aunts and her mother.

They settled in East Orange, New Jersey, in 1908.

By some accounts, they were happy. I don't want to know about that. O..C. is still pretty, though.

I know I don't know what has happened, it's upsetting. Oh my God, this rendition of Caroline No.

This just sent me, stop it. That's why they weren't having luck with the men's baby. Oh my god, oh my God.

That's so terrifying. Oh my god, oh my God. This is a lot to unpack. I'm so upset.

Stop it, Virginia's fine. Up until this point, we've had some tragedies, we've had some deaths that have been very sad and very scary, correct?

It's about to get real dark. Let me just breathe. This is all wacky, crazy. But then it gets like, Oh, all of a sudden you're just going to go, Oh, it gets real.

So o.

C and Fletcher are living in Orange, New Jersey. Yes, New Jersey, and the aunts are still in the South. Yes, and they're making their way to New York because they're trying to get away from the creditors that are now after them.

But they're doing it one after the other. And again, up until this point, this would just be a wacky, kooky, at times tragic story, definitely, but now it's just like, Oh man, it's about to go down.

And it's still wacky. They are wacky humans. Yeah, you can't take that out of it, but you can't take the wacky out of them. But unfortunately so.

And again, Fletcher and O.

C Are first cousins. You don't have to tell me three times, I'm going to keep reminding you that you don't have to.

A few months later, o.

C gave birth to a baby girl. That's not good. They named Mary after Fletcher's mom and her aunt.

Yep, but the child unfortunately died shortly after she was born. That's really sad, I'm sure. There were some complications and things only got worse when Virginia, Mary and Caroline showed up at O..C.

And Fletcher's doorstep in early 1909.

I would say, we don't have anything for you. They were out of money and they said, Hi, we're here. Their arrival reminded Fletcher of the last time the sisters had found themselves in financial trouble.

I don't know if you can remember that time. It coincided with the mysterious and very brutal death of his brother John. And an insurance payout came after that, very conveniently for the sisters, and, you know what, it solved all their problems at the time.

Sure, did so. Fletcher saw this and said, Oh, hi, aunties and mom, and said, fuck this. And he fled the country to Canada.

No, he didn't in March 1909, but did he leave? O.C, He left O.C. That's your wife's cousin.

You don't just abandon your wife's cousin, that's your wife's cousin, you don't do that well. What's sad is that O..C. had not had a chance to tell him that she was pregnant again.

She's abandoned by her husband at this point, cousin.

And left in the care of three people who had always treated her like shit. Oh, they weren't nice to her because they were never nice to her. A lot of people thought that they were jealous of her. Well, she's really pretty.

Her mother and her aunts were jealous of her. I bet they were. They had always kind of treated her like shit. So her mental health began to decline in the spring and she's pregnant.

And her physical needs are increasing because of the pregnancy, which makes it even worse. And to make it even worse. The sisters had taken O..C. out of the comfort of her home that she had with Fletcher and brought her back to Brooklyn to live with them. In some sparsely furnished building, oh, and they had created their own space, yeah.

Luckily, they were aware that they lacked any knowledge or resources to provide any basic level of care for a pregnant woman. Or really anyone else for that matter. Because they are wild. The sisters did call a doctor, Dr. William Pettit, who started treating O..C. that spring. Okay, well, that's good.

Now o.

C does die, obviously at the end of this. We talked about that in the beginning. Oh, I literally forgot that. So after her death, later, Dr.

Pettit would recall the incredibly strange experience of arriving at the Sneed House that spring. Oh, no, now. At the time, only Virginia and Mary were living in the house with O.C, not her mother, Caroline Sus. But he said at the time, a third woman, who he believed to be O.C.'s mother, would occasionally stop by and check on her.

Yeah.

He said All these women must have slept on the floor for the only cot in. The house on the second floor was occupied by the ailing niece. Okay, and he said. Aside from meager furnishings in O.C.'s room, the house was pretty much empty of anything else, which only made everything even stranger. Right? And he's like, You're bringing a baby into this house.

Like, what are we going to do with the baby? And Dr Pettit also found the three sisters behavior really strange and off-putting, like, what were they doing? After he initially evaluated O..C. who appeared very frail and very depressed.

Pettit diagnosed her as suffering from general weakness, the result of lack of nutrition and proper care. And that's not good, because if she's malnourished, then the baby is. So. What he had prescribed for her was fresh air, a restorative diet and medicine. Okay, he was like, this will improve her.

But upon a follow-up visit, he found that the women had made no effort to provide even one of those things to her. Oh, no. When he asked why they hadn't made even the slightest effort to do any of his recommendations, one of the women, he said later, he believed it was Virginia. Told the doctor they couldn't afford the medicine due to all their money going to the high premiums they were paying in insurance. What? That doesn't even make any sense.

So during this period, o.

C was dealing with the emotional pain of losing her husband and also losing a daughter. Yeah, and the physical pain of a very difficult pregnancy, of which she is malnourished and sick. Oh man.

And also living with three women who are jealous of her and have been her whole life and have treated her like, shit, that's a thing. And it's for all of these reasons, all those stressors, that she's under that she probably this is why she probably didn't have any idea that. After Fletcher left, the sisters had taken out three life insurance policies on O..C. with Equitable Life Insurance Society, each in the amount of $7,500..

How were they gonna? how did they get three out on her? Nobody double-checked it. Damn, I have no idea, but it's wild.

Now, a few months later, in late spring, Dr. Pettit became concerned about O.C.'s declining health and her ability to even give birth to a baby successfully. Yeah, because she's so weak at this point, yeah, so Pettit was on hand to guide O.C.

Through the process of giving birth to her baby in the home, and it was on August 1st, 1909, she gave birth to a baby boy, who she named David. Pollock. Sneed Okay. Unfortunately, the labor process was very difficult and the baby was born. Quote-unquote, sickly.

And when Pettit told the two aunts that O.

C. actually might need a very risky postnatal operation that could prove fatal for her. He said he was very surprised and very disgusted with how the women reacted. He said they were fairly jumped at the idea because they wanted her to pass, they wanted to cash in.

Now, despite David, the little baby's poor health at the time of his birth, Dr. Pettit and O..C were both confident that with the right diet, right care, he would survive and eventually thrive. That's great, but that would require the sisters to provide anything, any support that they clearly were not capable of, including spending money on the baby's care.

And instead, over the objections of Pettit and O.

C.

They quote fed the baby condensed milk and other foods at variance with those Dr. Pettit specified. Weeks later, David was still in poor health and was taken to St. Christopher's Hospital by Virginia. And Mary, who returned home a short time later to inform O..C. that the baby had died.

Though it would later be learned that was a lie and they had simply left David at St Christopher's. Honestly, in a horrible way, that was probably the best thing for that baby, but so horrible to do to O..C.

That's like, you just kidnapped her baby, yeah, and then told her she did die, like, Wow. Now, in the wake of what she believed was another child's death, o..c.

Mentally, physically, and at his insistence, the sisters allowed Pettit to perform the postnatal surgery on O..C. But when he attempted to return a little time later, to remove the stitches and do some aftercare. Because she managed to get through it, the sisters refused to let him inside the house, but they did allow periodic visits from a nurse. And just a week or so later, Pettit returned to the house. When he learned that Virginia had dismissed, the nurse wouldn't allow her back.

And his attempts to reach the women went unanswered. My God, and it's like, I'm like, Can you involve the police? Well, yeah, don't worry, he does.

Okay, good, because from the moment he had been summoned to treat her in the first place. He was very uncomfortable with those three women, and he said they made him feel very unwelcome. Each visit he went to that house, he was more and more unwelcome, more unnerved. And he said it wasn't just like bad attitudes and like weird behavior which they had that troubled him.

But, he said, the fact that the women were intentionally treating O.

C poorly, and seemed to care very little whether she lived or died. And on one particular visit, Pettit recalled Virginia showing him O.C.'s will That's strange, and in it, O..C.

Had left the majority of her stuff to her grandmother, leaving aside $1,000 to pay Pettit for his services, so she had put in her will. I want him paid for what he's done for me now? The doctor was like, Oh, that's far too much for what I've provided. You don't need to give me that much. Also, she's alive.

But more importantly, he was like, This is weird and suspicious that you're showing me this. Why do you have her will? What are you doing? I don't get it. So he reported the treatment of O..C.

And this whole thing to the police. And later, he recalled that officers, quote, made a routine inquiry and it led nowhere, and this is also the police failed on an epic level here now. It was his suspicions that led the doctor to take extreme measures upon his last visit to the house. So, after knocking and ringing the bell several times and not getting an answer, Dr.

Pettit became concerned for O.

C.

's safety, and he went into the house through an open front window. I love this man, this man's for the win. So he reached the girl's bedroom and he said he was shocked to find her quote nearly starved, with no food in the house, despite her serious condition. He said that O..C.

Was so happy to see him and said she wanted to talk to him about something important. But before she could say anything, one of the sisters came in the room and forced Pettit out of the room. I wish he could have rescued her and taken him with her, right. They said they were willing to placate him by being like, Fine, we'll have food delivered to the house for her.

Wow, such great women. They were like, you need to leave now and don't come back, or we're calling the police. He was like, O.C.'s in danger, she's going to die.

So he felt, I'm going to report it again. So he reported it to the police again and was like, you need to fucking do something about this seriously. So the police went. The Brooklyn Police checked on the women, found no evidence of anyone having committed a crime. So they said, there's nothing we can do.

What? yeah, failures, huge failures, shame.

Truly like they should be ashamed of themselves.

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By fall of 1909, the sisters found themselves again needing money, their regular position in life. With creditors beginning to call on them regularly. And in late October, the sisters were no longer able to hold these creditors off, so they resorted to their typical strategy.

You know, picking up and moving before the creditors could find them and get what they needed now. When the doctor learned that the Brooklyn police had been unable to do anything, Dr. Pettit returned to the home again himself to check on O..C. Because he was going to go in there and he was like, I don't know what I was going to do. But I was going back by myself because no one was doing anything. He found it completely abandoned.

Oh, no, so he didn't know where she went, that's terrible, and he was probably so, so worried now. On November 29th, 1909. Only the next month. Police in East Orange, New Jersey, received a call from Quote, an elderly woman with a southern accent, explaining that an accident had occurred at 89 North 14th Street. And they needed a coroner.

Huh? The assistant County physician, Dr. Herbert Simmons, went three blocks to the address. And he was greeted at the door by Virginia, who was dressed in the typical black attire with the black veil. They're so weird. And she led him through the house. And Simmons noted that the building seemed to have no heat or furniture and appeared as though no one had lived there in a long time.

Okay, they reached the bathroom, and Virginia just points at the bathtub, where he sees the nude, emaciated body of O.C laying beneath just a few inches of water. Oh God, now, Simmons. Now this is the county physician, Dr.

Simmons. He scanned the scene for any information that might be useful and found a pile of clothing with what appeared to be a very neatly written suicide note attached to it, the note said Last year, my little daughter died, others, near and dear, have gone before. I've been prostrated with illness for a long time. When you read this, I will have committed suicide.

Do not grieve me, rejoice with me. that death brings a blessed relief from pain and suffering greater than I can bear. O.w.m sneed. Doubt it.

Now, Virginia explained to the doctor that O..C had lost her daughter the previous year and her son had been placed in the hospital four months earlier. And then, she said she had also become a widow seven months prior. Hmm, right?

Right, no, not that we know of, okay, so? Virginia told the man that she shared the house on 14th Street with her niece, giving the impression that it was just Virginia. And O..C. Yeah.

And that they had recently moved in, now as an agent of the coroner's office. Dr. Simmons had seen a lot of dead bodies and he had seen a lot of scenes and he said, something's not right here. Well, the fact that she's emaciated is one thing for one thing. O..C.

Had been dead in the bathroom, in the only bathroom in this place, for at least 24 hours. So immediately, that's Sus Virginia's saying she just discovered the body, she just had an accident.

That's the only bathroom for 24 hours, there's been a dead body in the bathroom and you didn't know. And there was also the house itself. She's saying that they moved in weeks earlier, but the house was virtually empty.

Right? It appeared like no one had been living there for years, so he was very suspicious of Virginia and he was like, something's up here. So Simmons stopped at the nearest phone he could find and placed a call to Sgt. William O'Neill of the East Orange Police. And explained everything that he found, all his thoughts and noted all his suspicions to them.

Now, knowing that Simmons was definitely not the type of man to jump to conclusions, he was a trustworthy guy. He'd been to a lot of these scenes, he wouldn't be bringing them out if he didn't need to. Sgt. O'Neill took this very seriously and immediately went to the house.

Good now, Sgt. O'Neill arrived at the house around 6 p..m. and Virginia opened the door. And she demanded immediately to know what business he had there. And O'Neill explained that he had been ordered to inspect the premises.

So Virginia reluctantly let him inside and brought him to the bathroom, and she's like, there she is. She showed him O..C. Now. After reading the note, O'Neill asked Virginia to show him the rest of the house, starting with the attic. So going room by room, he was struck by how empty this house felt.

And he said, Not just empty in the sense. He's like it was empty, there was nothing in there, but he was like it felt empty. Like there was no love, no happiness. There was a palpable feeling to this house.

And in fact, he said, the only sign that anyone actually lived there was found in what he assumed to be O.

C.

's former bedroom, on a small table next to a cot, was a locket bearing the photo of a baby on one side and a lock of hair on the other. Beside, it was a small strip of paper that read Lock of David Sneed's first hair. August 18th, 09. That's the saddest thing ever now. Virginia followed O'Neill quietly from room to room.

And she was using like a gas lamp, like, if you can just picture this, oh, she's so scary, yeah. Wearing her full attire with the black veil, he was probably like, Where the fuck am I? This is a house of horrors.

Now there were a few pieces of broken furniture or what maybe could have been personal items scattered about. But it looked more like it was like long ago, somebody had lived there. And when they'd finished going through the whole thing, O'Neill began to question Virginia about why they'd moved to East Orange. And you know why? She'd only noticed her niece was dead a few hours earlier. When it's the only bathroom in the fucking house. So the woman was short with the sergeant and gave him very simple, very direct answers, but also making it very clear that his presence was not fucking wanted in that house. Now, if Virginia thought she could simply call the coroner, be like, Hey, sorry, I have a dead body here. Can you go ahead and grab that?

And thought she was just going to be done with the whole thing after that, which she definitely did. She must have been pretty surprised when Sergeant O'Neill explained that she was going to have to come with him to the station to answer some more questions. Finally, Virginia went, she grabbed a small bag, some belongings, and went out of the house.

Now at the East Orange Police Department, she went through a whole interview, and this time she was interviewed by Police Chief James Bell. Now to Bell. The entire this was all fucked, this was all suspicious. Well, she's sitting there in her fucking black veil. He said that Virginia seemed to have an answer for everything. She had a quick answer for everything, but it still didn't explain what happened in the house.

She was because he was like she herself, was very poised, very polished. But O'Neill had described them living in squalor, right? It just didn't match up, and there was also the manner of the whole thing. Like, if they're claiming this is suicide, how could O..C?

Have managed to hold herself underwater long enough to drown herself, especially in such a frail and fragile state. And again, your body is going to want to take yourself and sit up, yeah, and she's not strong enough to keep herself underwater.

So these are all unanswered questions and they're nagging him. So. Bell booked Virginia as a material witness that evening, and she was taken to Essex County Jail Ruh Roh Now. The following day, November 30th, an autopsy was performed on O.C and it confirmed that the cause of death was drowning.

But it also raised a few more questions, right? The medical examiner noted that O..C. was emaciated to the last degree, like that of a person suffering from starvation. And she only weighed 80 pounds at the time of her death.

It's such a haunting picture to think of her being discovered in the bathtub in that state, yeah, and in that state. Investigators wondered whether she again would have had the strength to do this. But also had the strength to write a clear and concise suicide note with a steady hand. Yeah, no way, it was very steady.

There was no shakiness to it. There's no way now. While the coroner examined the body, investigators with the East Orange police started tracing the two women's movements from the moment they arrived in the city a few weeks earlier. Right? They managed to track down a cab driver who'd taken them from the train station to the house. But also took Virginia to see a local doctor by the name of Charles Teeter.

When they interviewed Dr. Teeter, he said Virginia had shown up at his house at a late hour on the evening of November 24th. Okay, not long ago, and asked that he accompany her back to the house to provide a health certificate for O..C.

A health certificate now? Although he initially protested, it was clear she wasn't going to take no for an answer, so he agreed to go with her. Now at the house, the doctor examined O..C. and noted that she was incredibly frail and appeared to have bronchitis.

But otherwise, he was like, Okay, that's really all I have to say about her. To Bell and O'Neill, the request for the health certificate for O..C. only made Virginia seem more suspicious. And what is that? I've never heard of that.

It could be for like, insurance reasons. Okay, it's just like, almost like a physical kind of, yeah, now. In just a few days, their investigation had turned up several people who interacted with Virginia in and around East Orange.

And always in the context of her asking questions about medical treatment and local doctors, which seemed in keeping with the situation at the house. But when they checked the registers of local hotels in New York City, they were surprised to find that. Virginia was staying in several of the city's fanciest hotels in recent months and had been dining at high-end restaurants. So they're like, wait a second.

This woman is living in expensive hotels and leaving this emaciated, sick, frail niece alone in an empty place. What the fuck shut up, cold, broken house in New Jersey? And how is she even living in these expensive hotels with no money because she was using the insurance money that she got before?

I'm sure she's scamming some shit. There's tons of fraud charges that come up. Wow. Eventually, Bell and O'Neill's search led them to a house in Brooklyn that the neighbors had taken to, calling the House of Mystery. They called it this.

Oh my God, it reminds me of that TikTok you do with your kids, yes, when they're like, the ball of mystery, Oh my God.

They called this house the House of Mystery because the three women in Black who occupied it were very strange and had a lot of strange behavior. According to the neighbors on both sides of this house, they'd often heard strange noises and banging coming from the house all hours of the night. What are they doing? The windows had been blacked out.

Stop, stop it. And the yard was so overgrown that nobody could see inside. Like, are they witches? They're bad witches.

Yeah, I was gonna say, some shit is going down there, like, dork-sided witches, dork-sided. Not, not.

Sinister white witches, it's given. sinister vibe, like white magic. Yeah, like sinister vibe.

Oh my God, now. Once. The investigators had located the janitor responsible for managing the home. Because they used to have, like, certain, you know, like, a super, almost, yeah, yeah. They got inside of it and they found that this place was as bleak and empty as the one in East Orange, and they were about to leave. But then they were approached by a reporter from the New York World, who'd been put on the story by one of his New Jersey peers.

Was like, heard all about this because you knew this was gonna get reported on. The reporter is like, wait a second, why are you guys leaving? Don't you notice those small spots of, like, what looks like blood on the floor by the door? I love that.

The reporter was like, Hey guys, like, Hey investigators, did you notice that? So they follow the faint trail through the hall and up the stairs into one of the bedrooms, but it just led nowhere. What? Meanwhile, the reporter on the first floor opened the oven in the kitchen and discovered a mass of yellow hair wrapped up. In its center were two irregularly shaped bones.

One resembled a femur and the other resembled a skull, and they were small. What you could see, they said, you could see nose, bones and the socket of an eye, and like, this is like a child's skull.

It appeared to be what the fuck? And obviously this is an OC because we have her body now. What the fuck is going on? So they asked the janitor, They're like, what the fuck has been going on in this?

Like, what's going on? And the janitor explained that OC and her husband had moved into that house about a year and a half earlier. And then were joined. Remember, by the two older women, always dressed in black, and a few months later, a third woman, who was also dressed in black, came to live with them. Caroline, Caroline, the janitor didn't know much else, but he did mention that OC's husband eventually left and the women were constantly behind on the rent.

So when Fletcher left, when they showed up was like, No, I'm not dying, he left for Canada. They moved into that house and turned it into whatever fucking cult bullshit. While OC's living there, they turned it into that okay, and then they ripped OC out of the house. Made her live in that abandoned place while they kept living in that house. Oh so they didn't live in the house with OC in....

They were just keeping her in a house by herself, ailing and sick and unable to move, and starving her. Oh, and that was the whole time that she was pregnant. Yep, and they said, they....

Reports had said they had been starving OC essentially since she was born. What, like that girl had never been adequately taken care of? What the fuck, yeah?

Yep, and so, the janitor says when OC's husband eventually left, the women were always behind on the rent. And then they would suddenly come into a large sum of money right before they were about to be evicted. What the fuck? So they were doing some more shit?

Yeah, they were. And who the fuck is the skull in the oven? Well, the house in Brooklyn and the information given by the janitor eventually led them to Dr. Pettit. Oh.

My guy who filled in a lot of the gaps here. And Pettit explained that he had been on hand when OC gave birth to her second child. And from that point forward, he said, I just couldn't stop thinking about her. I was so worried for her safety, I tried to help.

My concerns grew and grew, and he said, at no time was I able to find out from Mrs Sneed anything about herself, meaning OC okay, he had never found anything about OC out from herself.

Well, because they were always lingering, he said. Every time I asked a question, one of the older women was always ready to give up an answer. Mrs Sneed seemed afraid to talk.

And he said he tried to follow up several times until one day. He arrived at the house in Brooklyn and it was abandoned, which he was presumably when they moved OC to East Orange now. Dr Pettit's nurse, Elizabeth Moog, told a similar story. She said she'd been assigned to care for OC after the baby was born and the surgical procedure had been performed.

Yeah, but she said it was so difficult to take care of her because the sisters were constantly hovering over her. She said Whenever I went, wherever I went, one of them kept tagging after me. I was not alone with Mrs Sneed for a single moment.

Mrs Sneed seemed afraid of someone or something. Oh, that, and just the air of, like her, being afraid, being followed by these women, yeah.

And then you add on their appearance to it, and they're terrifying, like black veils. And all all the time and just silently following you, Oh, I hate it now. Bell and O'Neill explained what they'd found at the house in Brooklyn and were like, What the fuck is? Do you have any idea what that could be?

And asked, you know, for Pettit to come with him to look at it, Pettit agreed. And it didn't take long before, you know, they figured out what was happen, what happened there or not, what happened there, but what that was now. According to Dr. Pettit, the stains in the hall, he said, he didn't think they were blood.

Okay, he thought they were tobacco juice, he said, probably left by a careless worker. Oh, okay. He's like, that's why there's no like end with a crime scene.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The bones in the oven were bizarre, but he said he didn't believe they were human. Okay, he thought they were animal bones, but he said, still don't know why they're in the oven.

Yeah, and there's also like a mass of hair that he was like, I don't know what that is. Did he think it was human hair? He couldn't tell? He was like, I don't know.

But he's like, I think some of these are animals, so I'm assuming they're animal bones. But so, Dr. Pettit tried to clear up some mysteries and did a couple. But it didn't stop the New York World, The New York World News, publishing a ton of sensational stories about this. I mean, how do you not in this fucking case?

They called the Brooklyn House a baby farm, which, you know, they didn't really have a lot to go on on that. They did mention the occult overtones of the whole thing. And thanks to the information provided by neighbors in Brooklyn, and especially that of Dr. Pettit and his nurse, a picture was beginning to emerge. For the detectives, it was clear that three women had been abusing O..C. and, by all accounts, she seemed terrified of them.

But what they couldn't kind of figure out was why they had done this like they were like. This is like a long process and it didn't take them long to figure out a motive. During an interview with William Fee, a Brooklyn attorney, it was revealed that the lawyer had been recommended to Virginia by someone she'd met at church. And she'd summoned him to the house. Just a few months before O.C.'s death.

I can't believe Virginia was at church, yeah, now. According to Fee, Virginia had wanted him to help O.C write a new will. This was before O.C.

Died. Virginia produced the old will, completed by O..C. just a few months earlier, and explained they wanted to write a new one because the previous version didn't make any provisions. For O.c.'s baby, now, O.C.'s only like, I think she was only 20, I want to say she was between 23 and 26..

Yeah, and she also was told that her baby died. Which, like, that is why, well, Fee thought that the explanation was like, whatever, he's like, Okay, sure, yeah. But he did think it was strange that the details of the new will were all being dictated by Virginia.

Right, not O.C, Yeah, now. According to Fee, on that day, Virginia was in the company of Caroline O.C.'s mother. The girl appeared to be very on the verge of death at the time.

And Fee was really moved by the sad story that the sisters were spinning to him, right? So he agreed to write the new will because he thought that she's dying. Yeah, this is what he said.

This is her mother and her aunts right now. In the new will, O..C. apparently declared that all her deaths should be paid out of her estate and that her son should inherit $500. Okay?

And that the rest was to be left to her grandmother, Martha, that was her original thing, yeah. With new evidence in hand, Chief Bell paid a visit to Virginia in her cell at Essex County Jail and interrogated her about the will. Virginia flatly denied the accusations of neglect and any insinuation that she would conspire to kill her niece for any inheritance.

I mean.

And Bell hoped that the woman would crack when presented with the evidence, but he had underestimated how much she would. He had underestimated her will. Yeah, I will say, and you will find out what I mean by that in a minute.

Okay, he was just about to give up when O'Neill entered his office and presented him with documented evidence and witness testimony confirming medical neglect and all evidence of maltreatment and malnourishment of O..C. Yeah, all the evidence was there, he didn't need the confession.

And he said.

Bell said At first, I believe Mrs Need attempted to take a bath, was discovered in the tub by her murderer and held underwater until drowned. Makes sense. But after careful examination of the evidence, which directly contradicted Virginia's story, he believed O..C.

Had never intended to take a bath, but had instead been placed in the tub. Was too weak to fight back and was held under a few inches of water by Virginia. Jesus Christ until she drowned, so she literally carried her, like, dragged her into the bath and drowned her. This is one of the most darkest....

Yeah, ugh. Based on the information collected at this point, Bell made the decision to charge Virginia with the murder of O..C. Snead, Yeah.

Rightfully so, it sounds so. The news of Virginia's arrest made readers go crazy all over the East Coast. They'd been following all the sensational stories coming out of here. And honestly, the news of her behavior and the way she dressed only made it even more macabre, of course.

And law enforcement were talking also about how strange and uncooperative Virginia was being, Police Commissioner Sharp said in a statement to the press. I tried to question her, but she bluntly told me that she saw no reason why she should answer my questions. And in his assessment of Virginia, Sharp described her as cool, calm and resourceful and cunning. Ooh, now, in an attempt to get back at the negative portrayals of Virginia, Mary Snead, the other idiot here, granted. An interview with several reporters saying family pride should be laid aside and the public should learn the truth about the sisters in Black.

Tell us, Mary said, in the hope of lightening the burden of an innocent woman. Speaking of Virginia, I will tell all I know, but hardly she told nothing, she told nothing. In fact, she flat out refused to address any questions regarding the family's financial history and the fact that Virginia had not only taken three life insurance policies out on O..C.

Just before her death, but had also had her will changed, she wouldn't talk about any of that. Instead, Mary told some stupid sob story of family tragedy and misfortune. That more or less upheld the lies the women had told O..C. including that her husband was almost certainly dead. Fletcher, which he's not.

Also, that's Mary's son, yeah. As for O.C.'s death, Mary insisted that it was suicide motivated by profound loss and, you know, her declining health. I don't know about that now. As news of the story spread, people in New York, New Jersey, Virginia and Tennessee came forward to tell their tales of the sisters.

A former student at the Nashville Female School, where Mary was once employed, described her as being quote, regarded by all pupils as being queer now queer, meaning strange. Back then, yeah. And in Christianburg, Virginia, one resident described the sisters as quote crazy, eccentric, and exceedingly smart.

Ooh, exceedingly smart in ties with all of that is horrible now. Reporters followed every lead in the story, and they began reporting on all the mysterious aspects of the women's lives. Including all the things we had talked about before. The weird standing over people's beds at night, the b&es, the cemetery things. Having one driver to bring them to the cemetery all the time, I forgot that they had a fucking driver to bring them to the cemetery. Yeah. And so they started piecing together a story that included a large amount of fraud, very disturbing behavior and a few suspicious deaths and a lot of insurance. Shit. Mm-hmm.

There was the tragic death of Caroline's first child after falling down a flight of stairs. Yup, the unexpected early death of Robert Martin. Her husband John sneeds multiple brushes with death before dying by being lit on fire in his bed. I know.

Did the police, ever, like, investigate that? No, they said, in fact, they could smell kerosene and nobody thought it was suspicious. What the fuck? They said it was an accident.

And then, finally, O.

C.

's drowning. All of these things were followed by large insurance payouts that were received just in the nick of time to avoid financial ruin, right?

So.

In an effort to combat the growing amount of strange stories in the press, Virginia's lawyer, Franklin Fort, presented the press with two unmailed letters that Virginia supposedly had written to family members. Okay. In each letter, Virginia is expressing her deepest sympathies for the recent losses. There were statements like, What a flood-tide of loving sympathy. Slows to you this beautiful Sabbath afternoon. And I would love to hold you dear head on my lap and run my fingers through your hair. And so charm away brain worry.

Brain worry, brain worry. People talked so wild back then. How about, just like feeding her?

Fort's intention was to demonstrate that Virginia was far from this bizarre spinster. She had been portrayed as the press and that no woman who writes such letters would commit murder. Totally like, Wow, now. Despite, you know, what seemed like a rock-solid way to influence the press, the public perception of Virginia Fort simply couldn't hold back the constant sensational news coverage. Because, uh, she was weird, wild.

Moreover, the more the press learned about the family through their investigations and the police, the more it began to look as though Virginia was not the only one involved in all this. Yeah, I'm also like, Where the fuck is Caroline? because Mary's out here talking to the press, Where's Caroline? about her only child now dying? So, as the New Year rolls over, the prosecutor's office had begun to put together a theory as to the events leading up to and resulting in O.C.'s death.

They believed that all four women had been living in the house in Brooklyn when they concocted a scheme to kill O.

C And collect on the insurance money. Yeah, now. According to the prosecutor, one old woman hired the unfurnished house in East Orange, another took the poor girl there, and a third planned her murder.

So they rented that house in East Orange, brought O.

C there and left her there, let her starve there for a while and planned her entire murder and then told the police. We are living here together, even though they're not now. By dividing up the tasks because one of them hired the house, one of them brought her there, one of them planned the murder by dividing up those tasks. The women had hoped to avoid suspicion.

Yeah, and I don't know why. They would have gone through all the lengths when they could like to bring her to East Orange, when they could have just committed this crime in New York. Yeah, I don't know. I wonder if they thought, maybe, like her traveling in such a frail state would just end up with her death.

Maybe, you know, but it's like, even then it's like that would have been great for them. Oh yeah, actually, yeah, you know, like that, either way. So it's like, it just doesn't make, like, like, why wouldn't you just like, do it?

Yeah, like, why'd you bring her somewhere else? and like, involve another place? And like, even though, Oh, wait, no, that's what I meant by that. Oh, you meant going from Brooklyn to East Orange, yeah.

Sorry, I was thinking the other way around. No, that's okay, you are correct. Like, that is also a good point. But even investigators now they're like, I still don't get why they didn't, just like because you didn't really need anything to happen.

You had already done the starvation and the poor treatment and the withholding medical treatment from her. At this point, it's like it looks like what they did was they just dragged her to a bathtub and drowned her. They could have done that, they could have done that all along, but maybe the financial thing was like heating up at that point. Maybe they were like, Okay, like, she's not gonna die soon enough from starvation. So we need to speed this along.

But that's what I mean. They could have just drowned her in the house that they already had. Yeah, like, it doesn't make sense, I don't know.

But what's also unknown to investigators at this point was the whereabouts of, Like, you were asking, Caroline? Yeah, like, where is she? They believe she was obviously an active participant in her own daughter's death. I mean, yeah. Now, despite her absence, or perhaps because of it, the press was able to paint a picture of Caroline as a kind of ringleader among the sisters.

It sounds like she is, yeah, because, again, they weren't quote-unquote normal. Before. Until her arrival, the Sisters lives seemed pretty functional, odd a little bit, but functional.

Yeah, I mean, she was the president of the school, the other one worked there, yeah. But once Caroline entered the picture, her manipulation and overbearing personality completely changed.

Virginia and Mary. According to Luanne Reif, the newspapers described Caroline as an intelligent and highly emotional woman, perhaps with mental illness, who manipulated her family. Yeah, she was a hoarder. She clung on to everything she owned rather than sell them, even when she was financially desperate.

And, most importantly, she lacked any real human connection, even with the closest members of her family, her husband, her son and her daughter. She had no connection to them. It sounds like she has more of a connection to her sisters. Yeah, and this was a strange little thing.

By mid-December, Caroline had been located in New York City and she was registered at a hotel as Mrs. Maybrick. Mrs. Maybrick now remember the case of Florence Maybrick?

Yeah, James Maybrick, yeah, who some people believe to be Jack the Ripper, he's not.

Get this. Florence Maybrick's daughter was named Caroline.

Wait, what? So Caroline, our bad? Caroline is living in New York City in a hotel under the name Mrs Maybrick.

Florence Maybrick was married to James Maybrick and was accused of poisoning him. Uh-huh. Her daughter's name was Caroline. Okay, I don't know what the connection is there, but Mrs.

Maybrick is a strange name to pick, yeah, and the fact that Caroline is going under Mrs Maybrick, and the real Mrs. Maybrick has a daughter named Caroline is a little strange.

That is, and it was heavily reported. Oh yeah, people thought he was Jack the Ripper, right?

What the fuck? And it was a big deal because they thought that Florence had murdered him, right? Was that in the states? No, because they thought he was Jack the Ripper, so that was in Europe.

And it was reported over here. Okay, yeah, sorry, that was like, a lot, what?

Yeah.

Like, it's just a weird.

I was like, what is this? And I tried to find any other kind of connections there, but I was like, I couldn't find....

And no, it's weird, too, is I think it was a big deal, the Florence Maybrick stuff, because Florence Maybrick was from Alabama.

So she's from the south, so that was definitely reported over here because it was like an American woman.

But yeah, like, that's.

Fuck. And it's also like, there's a weird interconnection here that I can't quite put my finger on, but weird, very coincidental, yeah. And it's also if she did do that on purpose, which to me, it kind of sounds like she did.

That's a weird fucking thing to do on purpose because people are going to want to.

You're trying to float below the radar, but you're picking that as a cover name. Yeah, I don't know what.

It's very strange. Do you think? She just thought it was like, funny, yeah, or like?

She just did it to be like.

I don't know because they love that spooky persona they've got there. Maybe it was just like their black dress with the black veil, right?

So maybe it's just part of the whole.

It sounds very mental illness, very strange, you know, like it sounds like she was. There's definitely something.

This is Maybrick and I was like, Oh, Florence, Maybrick, James Maybrick. And I started thinking about it. And then I was like, Huh? And I was like, Wait, Florence was from the United States. I was like, Wait, she was from the South. Wait a second. And I started looking into it again, like just being like, refreshing. And then I was like, Holy shit. Her daughter's name was Caroline.

That's too.

I feel like that's too weird to be a coincidence, right? I think. Yeah, too many connections there, but anyway.

That was my little side track. She ended up, like Florence, ended up getting out of jail eventually and then moving back to the states, right? yeah, she ended up living like, you know,....

Like a quaint life, a pretty quiet life. Yeah, interesting now. Caroline was under surveillance by New Jersey authorities until they had justification to arrest her.

We love a surveillance moment, right? That evidence finally came in the form of several letters written by Caroline that Chief Bell believed bore a remarkable resemblance to the handwriting. In O.C.'s suicide note, she wrote her daughter's suicide note, her own child's fake suicide note.

Finally, by the end of December, Mary, Snead and Caroline were taken into custody by New York authorities and held for the murder of O.

C Wow. On December 22nd, a grand jury indicted all three women for first-degree murder. At this time, prosecutor Wilbur Mott began drawing up the papers to have Mary and Caroline extradited to New Jersey to stand trial. The most compelling piece of evidence presented to the grand jury, according to the press, was more than 50 quote-unquote suicide notes discovered in Caroline Martin's New York hotel room.

So she kept writing them over and over and over again. She was practicing, what the fuck, that's her daughter, her child.

I mean, she was already starving her, so I don't know, I'm shocked, but still, whoa, that's fucked now. While all three women continued to be held in prison pending trial, investigators in East Orange kept turning up evidence in the case that strongly supported the theory that O.C.'s death was a murder.

In addition to the insurance policies taken out on her life and other evidence of conspiracy. When he first searched the house, Sergeant O'Neill had found a glass by the bathtub that contained a small amount of liquid. When the autopsy was conducted, a small amount of that same liquid was discovered in O.C.'s stomach. Now. It took a long time for the analysis to be completed, but in mid-January, the results came back and found that that liquid was morphine. Oh, the discovery of the morphine answered the nagging question of how O..C.

Had managed to drown in such a shallow amount of water, right? Especially since the body would instinctively fight to stay alive with this new. So, they had sedated her because that's easy, and that was probably how they even got her into the bath in the first place.

Now, with this new evidence, the prosecutor announced their belief that the women had been administering the morphine for several days. And that when she was put in the bathtub, O..C. was unconscious of what was occurring. Which I guess is the only blessing here that she didn't know what was happening now. They built their case against the three sisters, and the prosecutor announced the trial would begin April 1910, but things started to fall apart because a ton of things delayed the trial.

First, the sister's elderly mother died, followed by the unfortunate death of O.

C.

's son David at St Christopher's Hospital. Then, in the spring, it became clear to authorities that Virginia's health had started to take a turn for the worse. And she's in custody, right? They discovered she was starving herself.

That is so like, just macabre, yep. In August, the prosecutor announced it is feared Virginia Ward Law may not live to be brought to trial by the summer. She had been removed from the House of Corrections and taken to a hospital. She was frequently unconscious, required oxygen, and a few days later, on August 12th, she had died from starvation.

She had starved herself to death in custody. That is wild because that takes a long time. Yeah, now. Prison officials had tried to give her enough food like they were serving her food she just wouldn't eat.

They said she had intentionally killed herself, and they said quote having starved herself to avoid being placed on trial. Wow. Now. Things became even more complicated a month later, in late September, when Franklin Fort produced a document signed by two psychiatrists that declared Caroline Martin insane. I mean, we knew that, they said, the defense argued.

This is a case of whether a woman should be confined in a jail or in an asylum. We have carefully considered all the details of the case and with the relatives of Mrs Martin, and with the relatives of Mrs Martin. Believe that she is not now in her right mind. The request for a new hearing on Caroline's sanity conflicted with the schedule for the acting judge, so the case was transferred to another judge, Judge J.

Ten eck and scheduled for early August. Now, when it finally went underway. Caroline's behavior, whether real or an act to bolster this claim, as people do believe it was, did little to contradict the ways in which she'd been portrayed in the press. At one point, while a former representative from Ward Law College was testifying about how Caroline had negatively affected the school and its finances, Caroline jumped out of her seat and shouted. I never said a thing he is telling, and then was ordered to sit down by the courtroom. Caroline would continue to have outbursts over and over, she would challenge any and all testimony given. And when Caroline's brother, Reverend Albert Ward Law, was called to the stand, he testified that Caroline had always been controlling, manipulative and strange.

He said She directed both my school and daily life in New York. He said of his earlier experience with his sister that he told the court that around 1890 or 1891, he noticed a marked change in his sister's behavior. She was irrational, bizarre and very quick to anger. And at one point, she said to him that she was quote equal to her creator and called herself Salvatore.

Albert Ward Law's testimony was interrupted again by Caroline outbursting, and the judge had to call a recess now. Throughout the trial. Caroline was seen to lift her veil a lot. She was wearing her veil, and basically she would lift her veil subtly during one of her outbursts. To kind of evaluate the judge's reaction, gauging how far she could carry it, or to act out like this, is very clear that she's doing it on purpose.

Like, she would look at him and be like, and see how far she could take it. And after multiple outbursts in the courtroom, the sanity hearing finally concluded in late November. And the judge concluded Mrs Martin is sane within the meaning of the statute, competent to advise counsel and assist in the preparation of defense. That's the thing.

Like, if you can sit there and jump up in an outburst to everything and be like, looking to see how far you can take it, then hello. So, without a formal declaration of insanity to shield her, Caroline's lawyers encouraged her to plead guilty to a lesser charge. And on November 9th, 1911, she pleaded no contest to a charge of manslaughter. But when the plea agreement for manslaughter was read in court, she interrupted the prosecutor and said, Involuntary manslaughter. Please, sir, you can't just change the charge that you're pleading to.

And the prosecutor raised his voice and said, Manslaughter, madam. So the exchange brought on another aggressive outburst from Caroline. But the judge had had fucking enough of this and was like, we're gonna get delayed again. So he literally, like, yelled at Caroline, This is not the time for you to talk. And she just slinked back in her chair, Oh man.

Now, Caroline Martin was sentenced to seven years in the State Penitentiary for Women and began serving her term February 8th, 1911.

Seven years after a little more than a year in prison, officials noted that Caroline was doing very poorly and her mental health had declined considerably. So, in May 1912, she was declared insane and transferred to the New Jersey State Hospital for the Insane to finish out her sentence on June 10th, 1913. Only in the next year, Caroline Martin died from heart disease at the age of 67..

Wow, now. Because the law didn't allow for co-conspirators to manslaughter, the joint indictment of Caroline and Mary had to be severed. As a result, the prosecutor had to drop the accessory charge against Mary. Snead. And she was free to go. She just walked with her husband and one of her sons dead and Fletcher. Living in Canada, Mary's only option was to move to Colorado, where she went to live with a third son that no one knew about.

What the fuck? Mary resurfaced in 1930 when a number of diamonds were discovered in an unclaimed bank vault in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. This would be the way that this fucking thing ends now, according to Mary Quote. Miss Virginia Wardlaw's diamonds were lost or stolen from Sewell College, and she believed them to be the same diamonds found in the vault, No.

As the only living sister, Mary claimed herself the heir to her sister's estate. Those aren't hers, and attempted to claim the diamonds. No, baby, no. It's unclear whether she was successful.

Really? At the time, she was known to be, quote a church worker living in Oakland, California. Mary Snead died in 1937. Wow, 1937, that's something, and that's the end of the story.

What the fucking fuck, dude? That is, first of all, one of the darkest tales that you've ever told, and I shouldn't say tales because it's true. And secondly, what the fucking fuck? what the fucking fuck is right? Holy shit? That's one of the strangest....

The fact that o.

C was wrapped up in. This is so sad, I know, because it sounds like she was just like a sweet girl. Yeah, and she just wanted, like, a happy, normal life. And it pisses me off.

That Fletcher was like, Oh, I'm not gonna die, like, let me get out of here, yeah, and it's like, Fuck you Fletcher, take her with you. Yeah, like Jesus, like she, goddamn, like you had to get married, you agreed to get married.

Yeah, you must have loved her in some capacity, and also it's your first cousin. Get her out of there like Jesus. If you're worried about these women and what they did to your brother, you should be worried about what's gonna happen to your family member. Exactly, you know?

Wow, he just runs up to Canada. I'm like, nice Fletcher, that's the thing. It's like, take her to Canada with you, Jesus Christ. That feels very much like a Fletcher thing to do, though, I know you like that name, but like it feels like a Fletcher thing to do.

You're not wrong, you know? I think that's the guy's name in, like something borrowed, he like cheats on his woman, so I think you might be right.

Yeah, I'm not gonna name my kid. Fletcher. Sorry to all the Fletchers out there. Sorry to all the Fletchers. It's a cool name. it is a cool name.

I'm not gonna lie, but I don't know something about it. FlETch Wow, so that is the story of Holy Bananas.

The quote-unquote Black sisters, because that's what they were called, right? And the murder of O..C. sneed that....

I just can't even stop saying how wild that was. Yeah, I've never heard anything like that. Took me out, my friend for real.

Mikey just like.

Written all over it, How did I miss that? I was like, I've never came across this, that's wild, crazy.

Just had a driver to fucking.

Yeah, you wanna do that. When we're old, let's hire a driver, drive us to the graveyard.

We won't dance around just like headstones, though. That's fucked up. No disrespectful, that's super disrespectful.

He can drive us somewhere else. I do love a graveyard, though I love to walk around a graveyard. We should go to Wendy's Let's dress in all Black when we're older, not murder anybody, just get a four for four at Wendy's.

A four for four. There's a lot of souls happening today. I had a weird accent on my fall out there. Yeah, fall.

Earlier, I said, insanity, she did. I don't know, I don't know.

Well, we hope you keep listening, Holy fuck, and we hope you keep. It's weird.

Weird, but not so weird that you hire a driver to bring you to the cemetery in the middle of the night, and you dance around graves. And then you like, wake up in the middle of the night to people standing over your bed. And not so weird that you kill your own daughter by starvation and then write all the suicide notes for her. Because, wow, that's like, super fucked up.

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