Morbid: Episode 469: Elroy Kent & The Murder of Delia Congdon

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Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash.

And I'm Alayna.

And this is Morbid!

It's Morbid!

It's Morbid in the... what time is it?

Mid-morning.

It's afternoon.

It's 12.

Early afternoons.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we don't really have a song for that.

It's Morbid on an afternoon.

Whoa.

It doesn't slap.

All right.

I mean, we can work on it.

We can kind of workshop that.

I have heartburn, so I feel like it's limiting me right now.

She's living in an Elka Seltzer world right now, so.

You know, you're about to turn 27, and then you just can't put hot sauce on your eggs

anymore.

Everything just falls apart.

Like, what the fuck?

I literally have... all the only thing I've eaten today is my little breakfast burrito

that I made, which slay up.

But you had hot sauce.

But I put the tiniest little bit of hot sauce on it, and I can't take it anymore.

You're living in an angry, tummy world, you know?

I know.

Unfortunately.

My tummy's fine.

It's just my esophagus.

It's being a little bitch because of your tummy.

Well, maybe I need, like, spurtin' that acid right back up there.

Yeah, I don't like it.

Remember when we looked into, like, what heartburn really is?

Yeah, it's a little scary when you really look at what it is.

We won't get into it right now, but you guys should look into it yourselves if you...

We'll get up.

Look it up.

Fuck yourselves up and look at it.

It's pretty gross.

It involves fermentation, right?

Yeah, there's a lot of really gross things that happen in your gut.

What are you doing over there?

I'm just fixing a wire because it was in my face, and I felt like I was getting slapped

by a wire.

That's kind of funny.

The wire.

Because I'm trying to drink my coffee.

Yeah, you drink your coffee while I drink my fucking Alka-Saltzer over here.

I'll drink my Terra Masu coffee.

I feel...

Ooh, yummy.

From Dead Sled?

Yeah, from Dead Sled.

Check that out.

Yummy.

I have a flavor to try later.

I hope that my heartburn goes away so that I can try it.

I hope you can, too.

Because I love Dead Sled coffee.

Who doesn't?

TM.

TM.

I love TM.

That's ours.

It's another company.

Somebody else owns that.

Only I can love them.

Just me.

I own the love of them.

You know?

Why not?

What's up, man?

What's up?

What's up?

What is that?

What is that?

We're going back in time today.

What?

What?

To my favorite kinds of things, which is old-timey things.

You love old-timey things.

Is it in Europe?

No.

It is not.

It's in America, and it's in, you know, our neck of the woods a little bit.

Ooh.

Yeah.

Okay.

Nice little bit.

It's there.

So this is a wild one.

It has to do with, you know, how shitty the death penalty is and how really shitty it

was back then.

Okay.

It has to do with mental illness and how it was handled back then.

Not well, bitch.

And it has to do with whether or not somebody was executed for a crime they potentially didn't

commit.

So it's a big one.

That always stresses me out a little bit.

This one's, this one's a lot.

I will say.

This one's a lot.

So hang in.

Where?

So we're going to be talking about Elroy Kent and the murder of Delia Congdon.

Okay.

Now Elroy Kent is our convicted murderer here.

So I want to talk about him first just because he's the one that we, we're going to talk

about Delia, of course, but I just want to bring up Elroy because you should know what

we're working with here and why it was such a shock that he eventually receives the death

penalty.

Okay.

Because, whoa, like he had a lot going on.

So Elroy Kent was born in Rutland County, Vermont in 1878.

He was born to George and Caroline Kent.

According to the 1880 census, he had one sister, Bel Kent, but later he would end up having

six more siblings.

Oh shit.

The big family.

That census really popped off.

It really did, but for back then that was just like normal, you know, that that's a

family.

Yeah.

That was like having two kids.

Exactly.

So Kent himself said that he always hated school when he was younger.

He was kind of a troublemaker.

He couldn't really focus and he would run away from home a lot and probably just to get

some peace and quiet.

For real.

But each time he did this, he would either be tracked down by the local constable and

just returned back to the family or he would just take it upon himself to come home.

He was like, I never really ran away for a long time.

I just did it all the time.

No, exactly.

Now, when he did bother to show up at home or school, he spent a lot of time, like I

said, getting in trouble.

He liked to prank people.

He just liked to cause havoc.

He liked to cause a lot of trouble for people.

Okay.

Once he actually set fire to a neighbor's plow, when he was younger, like a kid.

That's a dick move.

And it was being stored in the man's barn and he only intended to do it.

This is why his reasoning skills were not great, even from kids' reasoning skills are

not great anyways, but his were shockingly bad because he was like, I thought this was

a joke, lighting fire to this plow in a barn, but luckily it was caught.

But if it wasn't caught, it definitely would have spread very quickly and burned the entire

barn down and probably the surrounding structures.

Oh my God.

And he just couldn't understand that.

He was like, it's a joke guys, get over it.

Do you know like roughly how old he was?

I think when he did this, he was somewhere in like the 12 range.

Okay.

I feel like he should know.

Yeah.

You absolutely should.

Now, not only was he a pain in the ass at this point, getting into trouble, running

away all the time, just causing issues for everybody around him, but Kent's actual criminal

career began way earlier than this.

He began his criminal career when he was just seven years old.

What?

Yes.

Seven years old, he and his friend from school stole a cooking stove for a hut.

How the fuck did they manage to even move a cooking stove?

No idea.

And so they did that.

They got caught, but he was seven, so they weren't going to like throw him in prison for

that.

They were just like, wow, that's really bad.

Don't steal things.

Don't steal ovens, you little shit.

But later when he was in his teens, he stole a horse from a neighbor in Brookline, Vermont,

and rode it for several miles, but then just jumped off it, let the horse go and hopped

a train bound for Townsend.

Okay.

I feel like he's running from something.

Yeah.

And that's a thing you can't really find out a lot about that.

There's just not a lot about his family life.

Yeah, I mean, 1800s.

But once he was in Townsend, he found a short, he actually found work there.

He found like short term work, chopping wood.

And while he's there, he breaks into the train station at night and steals three mileage

books that he later gave to friends and people he knew.

Okay.

So, mileage books are books that like train conductors would use to log their hours and

their mileage.

She just motioned that.

I motioned a car.

But I motioned a car wheel, like I was like steering wheel driving and that's-

Well, you don't know how to drive a train.

Who knows?

Maybe I don't think they have that, but you know, who am I, who am I?

That's just my little pantomime for driving something, anything.

Even though like a plane, I'm like, yep, this is how we do it.

She's really going crazy on the ten and two there.

And now it's like a ship's wheel of like, wow.

But these books were not valuable monetarily.

But like-

They were just valuable to these drivers and to like administration purposes, like for

administration purposes.

So it's just a very strange thing to steal.

And kind of a dick move.

A very dick move.

It'd be like now if somebody stole your Google Calendar.

Yeah, it's like they just stole shit that's important to you because you need it to like

function.

Just function as an adult.

Like do your job.

Yeah.

It's like that's all.

And it's like he couldn't sell those.

He wasn't making any money off of them.

He just stole them to be a dick.

Yeah.

You know?

And they're also very clearly marked as property of the railroad.

So like, I don't know a lot of people that are going to want to take those off your hands

because like that's bad.

Great.

So they were quickly recovered.

Okay, well that's good.

Because people like that he gave them to were like, I don't want this and would just

leave it somewhere like that's not mine.

Because why would you want that?

It's just such a strange thing to do.

So and because he did this, he was quickly arrested and sentenced to 20 months in the

House of Corrections.

Damn.

He stole shit and he broke into a train station.

Yeah.

So.

Wrong.

The casual theft of a horse, which by the way was quickly recovered as well.

Yay.

And the theft of completely valueless mileage books.

These are just like petty crimes in the grand scheme of things.

Yeah.

Like, you know, like they're not violent, you know, again, he's really not doing anything

that he's gaining any kind of value for himself.

He's just doing it to be a dick.

He's just fucking around.

And this was like stuff he did when he was a teenager and it was just kind of like, okay,

he's just, he's just Elroy.

This is Elroy.

This is who he is.

But in 1896, when he was 18 years old, he was brought before a judge for something different.

He was brought before a judge for trying to burglarize a store in Brooklyn, which we're

starting to escalate.

Yes.

As we can see.

That's the thing.

When you were saying like, it's just like petty crime.

It's like slowly.

Yeah.

It's getting worse and worse.

And he claimed that he was like, I did not try to rob this man's store.

That wasn't my intent.

He did admit to the judge that he had destroyed several of the man's beehives.

That's fucking rude.

Which again, just rude shit.

I'm like, wow, you're really, you're playing with fire there, buddy.

Yeah.

Like that's just really rude.

And he had broken a light in the store.

He admitted to that.

So I was just being disruptive as hell is what you're telling me.

And what happened was his uncle ended up paying a fine and he was free to go after this.

But only two months later, he was caught again, trying to break into the home of a man named

Royal Mars.

Yes.

His name is Royal.

Yes.

Mars.

Me too.

That's an awesome name.

Royal Mars, baby.

And you don't get away with trying to break into Royal Mars's house.

I don't know if you thought you would.

I never did.

I never thought that.

I never did.

I don't know why Elroy thought he could.

I was born with the knowledge that you do not attempt to break into Royals home.

I thought we all were, to be honest, but maybe that's a more modern knowledge that we are

born with.

Maybe they didn't have it then.

But for this one, he was sentenced to jail.

And I don't know how many months because I couldn't find the exact.

It just said many months, many, many months, many months, how every move you feel is many.

That's how many I could be anything.

So at this point, he's just a pain in the ass.

He's kind of an asshole.

But so far, sure he's escalating, but he's not really stealing again anything of value.

He's not reselling things.

He's not hurting people physically.

Of course, it's like the 1800s, so nobody's like, Hey, what's going on with you?

Why are you doing this?

Why are you taking random shit?

Because it did seem at times that the act of stealing was equally or more important as

the value of items that he was stealing.

It seemed like he just liked doing it to do the act of breaking in somewhere, the act

of stealing worthless shit that would just make someone's life like slightly inconvenient.

Right.

Like a very strange set of events that is weird.

This changed in 1899 when he was 21 years old.

He said, it's the brink of the 1900s.

What's crazy to me, he's like, we're entering a new era, but what's crazy to me is he's

getting older and escalating and I'm like, so your punishment gets greater the older

you get.

Yeah.

So why are you escalating your crimes so that the punishment you get is going to be

far worse?

De-escalate.

So he's 21 years old, 1899, and that year he was caught robbing a store in Milton, Vermont.

No, he just broke a light.

No, he stole seven gold watches, a suit of clothes, a hat, and a pair of shoes.

And he thought he was going to get away with that?

Yeah.

Damn.

And the thing that's cool, well, this one's wild to me because during the while he was

in the middle of robbing this store, a night watchman saw him and the night watchman fired

his double barreled shotgun at him, hit him in the leg and the back with buckshot.

What?

I was like, whoa.

In the back you said?

Yeah.

Holy cow.

He was left in really bad shape and the injury from the shotgun, he had to end up being hospitalized

for several weeks from it.

Wow.

But he recovered and once he was finished healing, his crime set earned him three years

in the state prison in Windsor.

Straight to jail.

So they were like, you feeling good?

Cool.

They are going to prison.

Not for long.

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So after his release from Windsor in 18, I think it was, so the timelines between these

ones get a little hairy because this was in 1899, but they say like after his release

in Windsor in early 1900, so they say it was a three year prison stint.

I'm not sure if he actually served the whole three years because it seems like it's about

1901, like somewhere around there that this happened.

Okay.

Maybe he got off for good behavior and maybe like time served in the hospital or something.

So either way, he was sentenced to the three years in the state prison in Windsor.

He did serve some time.

Now after he was released from there, he traveled to Brattleboro.

Where's that?

Brattleboro and, is that a main?

I don't know.

Brattleboro?

I need to look it up now because I need to know.

I'll vamp.

Don't go to Maine that often, so I don't know a lot about it.

I've been to like, I think Portsmouth is Vermont.

It's Vermont.

We're in Vermont.

I only went to Vermont one time.

Vermont's cool.

Yeah, I liked it.

Yeah.

We like Vermont.

Anyway.

Brattleboro, Vermont.

Okay.

So he traveled to Brattleboro and he was traveling there to visit his cousin W.G. Kent.

I always love how everyone's name back then was like W.G.

Yeah.

It wasn't a full name.

I like it, but like it's nothing really goes past Royal Mars.

No, nothing will beat that.

And I obviously know that like they had real names and that those are initials.

Wait, what?

They did?

Yeah.

Oh, like I'm not saying like his name was W.G., like that's, I know that, but I like

how they referred to them as that.

Yeah.

It's like, like D.W.

Exactly.

My favorite.

Where my Arthur heads out there.

What was?

So while staying with that family, his cousin, his actual family, he learned that his cousin

W.G. had recently got a payment of some sort of $50.

Oh honey, a big money.

Yeah.

So one evening while everyone was asleep, L. Roy Kent just goes through his cousin's

shit looking for that money and he's staying in my G.D. house, W.G.'s house and he only

ended up finding $12 of it, but I'm sure he stole it and he fled the house in the middle

of the night.

What a shit bag.

I don't know L. Roy.

I don't like you.

And so the next morning when W.G. realized my cousin has stolen all my money and then

he's $12, he reported it to the chief of police.

He was like, hello feds, I'd like to report a crime.

He said, fuck this guy.

Fuck blood.

My cousin is from a school.

Blood is not thicker than water, my friends.

It's like Teresa says.

It's not thicker than money.

I can tell you that.

Blood might be thicker than water, but it's harder to clean when it spills.

Oh.

It's her fucking quote this year.

Shit.

Blood may be thicker than water, but it's harder to clean when it spills.

I was like, who okayed that?

I feel like, damn, just casual murder references.

I was like, Andy, what?

Shit.

Wow.

Okay.

Damn.

But like Teresa says.

Yeah.

W.G.

felt that.

W.G. felt that in his heart of hearts.

911, I'd like to report a crime.

Yeah.

So the chief of police traced L. Roy's movements back to his mother's house in Manchester.

Now he's getting his mama involved.

So they call Caroline Kent and they're like, hey, your son who has been a jackass his whole

life and has been tainted all of our asses.

He was like, what?

We know he's there.

We're like, traced him here.

And Caroline was like, no, he's not home.

She's aiding in a bedding.

But oops, because they searched the home and they found him hiding in the basement.

Oh my God, it's giving good fellas.

Right.

And he was taken to New Fane jail.

So by the time he was sent to New Fane for taking $12 out of his cousin's belongings.

Oh wait, also I meant blow, not good fellas.

Don't yell at me.

Don't yell at me.

That's okay.

I'm sure in good fellas somebody hid in the basement.

I love that movie.

Yeah, probably.

I do too.

But Kent had become kind of a notorious local criminal, but mainly due to this myth he had

created around himself.

Right.

Because like we're saying he did some shit.

But it wasn't like cray-cray.

But it was all more like head-scratching shit.

I see, Mikey.

Mikey sneezed.

It was a cute one.

It was.

It's okay.

You did not have to.

I'm sorry.

God damn it, Mikey.

Shut up.

How dare you.

There's no sneezing in the workplace.

Unpublish this episode.

Fuck it.

Ruin it.

So like I said, all his shit that he's doing is more just like chin-scratching, head-scratching.

I'm confused by him kind of shit, more less than like, wow, he's like physically harming

people.

Yeah.

Like nobody's a violent.

Yeah, like it's more just people are like, oh my god, it's that Al Roy Kent.

He's kooky.

Put your $50 away.

But in according to a news report from January 1902, it said, Kent has a dark record.

He knows it and does not hesitate to talk about it.

Indeed, he relates his experiences on occasions with considerable gusto.

Ooh, gusto.

So they're basically like, that man loves to talk about his shit.

Like he's just running around being like, yes, yes, dark passenger.

That's me.

But by the time he was in his early 20s, he had been arrested in jail at least six times

at this point.

And had spent more than a quarter of his life locked up for petty crimes, all of it.

So he kind of looked at jail stretches as just like inconvenient at this point.

And he also just kind of like loved that everybody was like, oh, that's that, that kooky

criminal Al Roy Kent.

He loved his reputation.

So he was just like, he's, he's honestly kind of giving, and again, I've never seen it,

but it's giving peeky blinders like, like, like it's giving like he likes that reputation.

Yeah.

But I could see that, you know, he's one of the outsiders.

They're definitely more violent.

I would say, well, they're more violent than him at this point.

Oh, no.

But yeah, so, but I would say like, you're right.

Like the kind of like, like that attitude he's walking around like he owns the place.

Yeah.

You know, so yeah, the red right hand is playing

at all times when he's walking.

It's love, love, love.

So he actually said to a reporter in 1902, because they would like press,

would ask him and like be like, hey, what's your deal?

He's still being kooky Al Roy.

And he's like, I am.

I mean, really, what else happens in Vermont?

Yeah, exactly.

At that point, like nothing.

Yeah.

So he said, the two things I love best are whiskey and railroad rides.

Let's go, baby.

He's living life.

Now we're right now being like, Al Roy Kent, he's a kooky guy.

Yeah.

Oh, it's going to change.

Okay.

I'm going to, I'm going to quiet down.

It's going to change.

But I believe there are extenuating, there it is, extenuating factors that come

into play later that I think we're a little ignored.

Okay.

I also wonder if he actually committed the crime that he is, um, was convicted

for, and I wonder what you guys will think.

So the paper said poor, poor Al Roy Kent, finding enjoyment only in whiskey

and railroad rides and seeing nothing before him, but prison life.

Okay.

So everybody just kind of gave up on him too.

They were like, this guy's a loser and he's just going to be in prison forever.

That's sad.

Which again, he didn't really give them much of a choice, but to look at him

that way.

Truth.

So the theft of the money from his cousin actually resulted in him.

So he went to prison for, he was sentenced to the three year prison

stint.

He didn't serve the entire thing.

Like I said, I don't know exactly how much he served of it, but he ended up

having to go back to prison because they had given him parole for the cousin

stealing thing.

He broke it.

He broke the parole because he robbed a store in Milton while he was on parole.

He's got to stop it.

Wow.

And actually this was the first example of someone violating parole in

Vermont's history.

Whoa, look at that.

Good old Al Roy.

Yeah.

So it was actually Governor William Stickney, who was the one who insisted

he be sent back to prison to finish his sentence out because he said he just

had a flagrant disregard for the law.

Truth.

And he did.

Yeah.

So 100%.

I'm on the governor's side.

No, once he was released finally from Windsor again, Kent found Brattleboro

Brattleboro authorities waiting for him with a warrant for his arrest right away

because they said, Hey, you violated parole after we let you out for stealing

your cousin's $12, but now you have to go back to jail and finish that sentence.

Cause they were like, we got you out.

We paroled you.

You broke the parole.

You went back to jail for violating the parole and now you've come out.

We're going to make you finish off that sentence.

Yeah.

It was only a few more months in New Fein at this point, but now he had to go back.

Okay.

So we just got out and they were like, ding, ding, ding, you're going to that one.

Goodbye.

Now on December 6th, 1902, he actually escaped from prison.

Of course he did.

Honestly, I was waiting for that.

Yeah.

That was the obvious next.

He has the vibe of somebody that escapes prison.

He does.

Now this is where shit gets wild.

And this is where his life changes again from being a petty criminal who we can all

go, Oh my goodness, that Al Roy.

He's so kooky.

That's funny.

This is when it turns and this is when something happened that makes it turn.

In my opinion, at least.

Yeah, sure.

So he escapes from prison and he hops on a train in West Dumberston, headed

away from the city.

Everything's going according to plan.

Everything's smooth.

He's hanging out on this railroad car.

He's thinking about the whiskey he's going to have.

He's like my two favorite things.

I'm excited.

I'm free.

And then someone on the train car looks at him and recognizes him and calls

him right the fuck out.

He freaks out thinking everyone else is going to hear this and everyone else is

going to recognize him and he does not want to go back to prison.

Cause now he's thinking like, I'm just going to get away from here and

start living my life.

So he jumped from the moving train and it was as it was approaching Williamsville

station, he jumps out and his head hit one of the railroad ties.

Oh, and they, and according to the Boston Daily Globe in 1902, it hit with great

force, you would think.

Now, according to reports that were came out later, Elroy had sustained

a skull fracture when he hit the tracks.

Holy shit.

He hit, he had a skull fracture and he lay unconscious on the tracks for

several hours.

Oh my God.

No one helped him.

He just woke up and he wandered away to a nearby farmhouse.

And when he got to this farmhouse, the owner of the home called the local

doctor, Dr.

Pee-Pee White.

And I know I saw Ash's face.

I had to.

Now, when he, when the doctor came, he saw that Kent not only had a skull

fracture, but he was like, um, this man has a piece of rotten wood that was

driven into his brain when he fell.

I'm sorry.

Hwa?

This man has a skull fracture from diving out of a moving train.

And when that happened, somehow a piece of rotten wood had been driven into

his brain, not just his skull, his brain.

He basically had like a road pick lobotomy.

Literally.

Holy shit.

So the doctor took out as much wood as he was able to and dressed the wounds and

just kind of like, it was like, you're going to die.

I hope you're going to survive this.

And the next day the doctor saw him again and he was there to kind of examine

the wound, make sure it was, make sure he was like drain everything.

Do what he had to do during this whole thing.

He discovers that quote, the wood had been driven through the top of the

head diagonally through the brain to the base of the nose.

What?

How is he even functioning?

A piece of wood, two and eight, seven eighths inches long and an inch in

diameter was removed.

How is he functioning?

Two and one fourth ounces of brain tissue were cut off and a piece of gauze,

just a yard square was packed into the opening.

They put gauze into his brain.

So as you can see, anything that happens from here on out, likely the result of

some mental illness and some severe, like cognitive issues.

I was just going to say that's like the most traumatic brain injury I think

I've ever heard of.

Which does not excuse anything that happens later, but means that he should

have been sent to a hospital for anything that had happened after this and

probably not executed for anything that happened after this.

So this is honestly what sad is if they had sent him to a hospital, it

probably would have been worse.

I know it's true.

It's very true, especially back then.

You know, now we, it's obviously it's impossible for us to sit here and say

for sure that any of this, that this injury that he got when he jumped out of

the train affected his behavior and like.

Impossible, but like impossible for us to like totally sit there and say

we've 100% doctors, but like, come on, it seems like that would have a pretty

bigish like effect on what was going on here.

Please sit there and tell me with two inches of wood stuck into the middle of

your fucking cranium that you'd act normal.

Feels like this is, and what we know is that by 1903, his behavior and his

thinking was becoming very disordered and very unpredictable enough for

officials at the prison where he was brought back to after this.

Oh my God.

They just threw him back in prison.

But the officials actually had him transferred to this from the state

prison in Windsor to the quote unquote.

This is what they called it hospital for the insane in Waterbury.

Sure.

Now that was because the officials at the prison were like, something's wrong.

He's a different, like this is a different beast.

Like that's got to go that way.

Was he like violent now?

I think he was becoming so disordered.

He was like unpredictable.

He was bizarre.

And he's, I mean, he still has rotten wood in his brain.

And pieces of his brain were taken out.

Oh my God.

Like that.

Yeah.

Holy shit.

This is really wild.

This is insane.

This case did bring, as you'll find out, like at the end of it, like this

brought up a lot of discussion about one, the death penalty as a whole.

Two, how, you know, executing the, like what they referred to as the

criminally insane back then.

And also just like what we're going to see is like this was kind of a

circumstantial case.

Yeah.

So it's like, and it's kind of based off of stuff that it's like, you executed

this guy and you didn't even really know if this is like, oh, I don't know about

this one.

Oh no.

So it did bring up a lot of discussion and it did also lead to like the death

penalty in Vermont, like stopping.

Like this was, this was at least part of the discussion.

It was cited many times while people were fighting to get the death penalty.

Abolished.

Abolished.

That's what I was looking for.

Thank you.

No problem.

And it also gets brought up now as like a way of being like the death penalty is

barbaric, like look what happened here.

Wow.

So this case really did have a lot to do with that, which I guess is the positive

that comes out of it because this is what I don't understand when some people

don't like old timey cases because I'm sitting here right now.

Like, holy shit, what?

It leads to so much.

It does.

And it's like, this was before the forensic, you know, science boom that

had happened.

So it's like, it's interesting to see the scrappy way in which cases had to be

solved and what happened when you didn't have the tools to solve it correctly

and what comes out of that.

I just think that's really interesting.

Don't worry.

My case this week has a lot of forensic DNA.

And there you go.

So, you know, we're, we're balancing.

Yeah, I like it.

Yeah.

And what's the, and we haven't even talked about Delia yet.

We're going to get to Delia, who is the victim in this case.

And it's like, she also, like this is, there's a lot here.

There's a lot here.

There's a lot of different victims here.

There's a lot of, it's sad.

Yeah, the whole case is very, very sad.

But sometime in the evening hours of, because he's been transferred to the

hospital now, in the evening hours of August 12th, 1905, he had spent 18 months

in confinement at this point in the hospital.

He escaped from the hospital, disappeared out into the night.

The press went wild immediately.

They're really terrified.

Pretty terrified.

Again, at this point, he hasn't been outwardly violent in his crimes still.

But I'm sure people were worried.

But now they're a little worried.

But what they really went after was criticizing the hospital and criticizing

the state for the administrative insecurity failure.

Yeah.

Like, why was he left alone?

Yeah.

Like, what's happening here?

Why was that allowed to happen?

Now, according to reports, quote, in order to make his escape, this was in the

Rutland Daily Herald, by the way, or excuse me, no, it was in the St.

Albans Daily Messenger.

The next one is in the Herald.

Excuse me.

It said, in order to make his escape, he was obliged to unlock three doors

and make his way out through an attic window, which was not barred.

Y'all.

So they were like, why was that able to happen?

We got to fix these things.

And in hospital, staff just checked his cell during the morning rounds,

and he just wasn't there.

And it's also like, why were there not like rounds on rounds on rounds?

Exactly.

And they made note of that that they saw that he had procured in some way

a new suit of clothes, and his old one was found in its usual place,

which is just outside the cell door.

Yikes.

So they're like, how did he even get new clothes?

Like, what was going on there?

Like, what do you do?

You believe that possibly he was helped?

I don't think so.

I think he just was able to walk through three doors and up into an unbarred

window and was like, by because he still had some, you know, he he wasn't like,

you know, unfunctioning, you know, at this point, like he was functioning,

but his behavior and his thinking was definitely scattered, scattered and

mightily different than what it was before.

So once he had escaped and they had discovered that he escaped,

Sheriff F.H.

Tracy was sent from Montpelier to Waterbury to lead the search for him.

He told reporters a basic description of Elroy.

He said his height is five feet four inches, weight one hundred and sixty

pounds. He has hazel eyes and brown hair.

He wore a light mustache when the last scene has a deep scar on the left side

of his forehead. I bet he does two inches long, one inch, one half inch wide

and one half inch deep at lower end.

He also has scars on the back.

Remember from being shot with a buckshot and six shot scars on the left leg

or on the right leg. Excuse me. Six. Yeah.

Oh my God, he was shot in like six times or it's a buckshot.

So it's like, I think those are the ones and I should probably look it up

before I say this, but I'll look it up.

I think that I believe those are the ones that it like, like several pieces

shoot out like it explodes a little bit.

Oof. That sounds absolutely terrible.

It does sound pretty terrible.

I keep feeling that in my egg.

I think, yes.

So it's a it's a big shock.

It's like shotgun shells for hunting game, I guess, or a buckshot.

And basically it says the most commonly produced buckshot shell is a 12 gauge,

which we've heard of. Yeah.

And they hold eight pellets inside of them.

So when they hit, it's like the pellets explode.

It's one of those things or when they shoot at the pellets explode, I think.

Schematics.

I'm not completely familiar with all that,

but I believe that's like a very rudimentary way of saying it.

I like that word rudimentary.

But but basically when you shoot someone with it with a buckshot,

they're going to be they're going to have several scars.

They're going to get fucked up.

Yeah, it's not going to be great.

So he had they explained his description,

but unfortunately investigators lost his trail pretty quickly

and he didn't really come back into their focus until like two months later.

Oh, shit.

That's when his brother, Luhlin, I think it's called Luhlin.

It's called, I said, it's it's pronounced is what I meant.

His brother Luhlin reported that Elroy had attacked him.

Oh, no, he reported it to a police.

Now, according to news reports on the morning of September 29th,

both of them, the two brothers, apparently Elroy had been like with.

Yeah, they had been transported a load of potatoes to the market

in nearby Rockingham and had returned with supplies

and some provisions like flour, sugar and apparently liquid fire.

What is liquid fire?

I looked this up and I cannot find an actual response.

I think it could mean many things.

I think it could be like oil of some kind.

Like I think it's something like that, but they called it liquid fire.

Well, it sounds like it sounds like wildfire from like Game of Thrones.

Like I feel like it's like this green, glowy liquid that they have.

And I'm like, why do you have that for real?

But it just makes me think of baked Alaska.

There you go.

Liquid fire, you know, I don't know.

No, later that evening, I guess Luhlin's young son, George, said,

he heard shouts and groans outside the house.

So he went out there to investigate what was going on.

And according to him, he said about, quote, 40 rods from his house,

which, thanks to Dave, I now know is 220 yards.

Why does Dave know that?

Yeah, 40 rods. Dave knows all.

He does. It's true.

Apparently George Kent, the son, found the family wagon overturned

and he saw a large pool of blood next to it.

Oh, no.

So a little bit further away, he found his father lying beside a creek

with his nose broken, a large gas gas in the back of his neck

and his face and head badly cut.

Oh, no, that's very violent.

Yeah. Now, once he'd regained consciousness,

Luhlin told police that he and Elroy had been out on the road.

They got into an argument and the argument scared the horses.

So the horses ran off.

When this happened, the wagon overturned.

According to Luhlin, the wagon flipped with him underneath it.

Now, when that happened, the force of that drove an iron bar into his neck.

Dude, what the fuck?

Yeah. And when he asked Elroy, he was like freaking out,

asking Elroy to pull the metal bar out of his neck.

Can we stop with the impalement of everyone?

He said that Elroy, quote, tried to drive it in still farther.

And then he said he lost consciousness

and couldn't remember anything after that.

But when he came to later, he said Elroy was gone

and he had taken Luhlin's wallet.

That's your brother, dude.

So after all this petty theft, generally nonviolent crimes,

everything is turned now because if his brother was to be believed,

Elroy didn't just attack his brother and steal his wallet,

he had tried to kill him.

And it kind of seems like maybe he thought he was dead.

I think he probably did.

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Now, luckily, Elroy was arrested about three weeks later

in Hadam, Connecticut.

A local constable actually spotted him crossing a railroad bridge

and just recognized who he was.

Just Elroy still walking out across railroad bridges.

Elroy still just doing whatever the hell he wants to do.

I would never, ever approach another railroad ever again.

No, he loves railroads.

He does, but like even after that, I love the love is deep.

You can take the boy from the railroad,

but you literally cannot take the railroad from the boy.

But it's still in his head.

Accurate.

So the constable questioned him.

And during the course of the questioning,

he determined that Elroy was definitely responsible for a burglary

that had also occurred the day before in town.

Oh, another one?

Yeah.

Confirmation of this came quickly when he searched his pockets

and discovered all the stolen shit from the house.

Oh, my God, Elroy.

So he was confirmed to be Elroy Kent

and the constable contacted Sheriff Tracy,

who traveled to Connecticut and brought him back to Vermont.

My goodness.

So Elroy said that he had managed to escape the hospital

by picking the locks with a piece of metal from his shoe

and a length of wire.

The fuck?

So he said once he was outside,

he had just climbed down the wall wearing only a shirt.

And then he swam down the Winooski River

until he felt like he was far enough away and he just got away.

This man has lived a life

and he's probably like 25 at this point.

Truly. Now, the next day,

he said he stole a new suit of clothes

and then he made his way to his brother's house in Townsend.

Hey, Brewey.

When asked about the assault on his brother,

Kent said he was like,

well, he was like, I don't really have any explanation for that.

So he was returned to the hospital in Waterbury pretty quickly.

OK. Now, once he was brought back to Vermont by the sheriff,

he spent several more years in the hospital in Waterbury.

And that was in until the that was in until the early.

I don't know why I keep can't say until that was until.

Yeah, I haven't had enough coffee and it's tiramisu coffee.

It's making me excited, so I can't speak.

Do more. Do more coffee. Do more coffee.

It is a drug. I will do your coffee.

Ready? Oh, my God, guys, she's doing coffee right now.

Whoa. I just did some coffee.

OK, so that's really yummy.

Now, dead slide, tiramisu.

Yeah, this was until the early morning hour.

See, that worked. Check it.

Of July 11th, 1908, when he and a fellow inmate named John Keenan

escaped again.

They need to close this hospital right before it's out.

If he the same guy,

like you would think that you'd be keeping even more tabs on him a little bit.

Like tabs on him anyways, but even more so now because he's escaped.

Y'all. Yeah, he's escaped again.

This was years later.

He escaped again and he even told you how he did it the first time.

And you're not checking this out.

Oh, and this is even worse.

He escaped using a duplicate key that was given to them by another inmate

who tried to escape the previous week.

What? It was like, here's my duplicate key.

You can use it. How did you get?

Like what? They created a 3D printer out there in the 1908.

They created a ladder using pieces of Keenan's bed sheets

and used it to climb over the wall surrounding the hospital.

Oh, I was like, right this way, just this way.

Hospital administrators said they were confident

that both men would be recaptured within a few days.

Confidence is a nice thing to have.

Yeah, especially at that point.

It's a nice thing to have.

I think that's all you have at this point.

It's really all you got because that confidence was pretty unfounded.

You fukin idiots.

Now let's talk about Delia Congdon.

Yeah.

So Delia had a lot of struggle in her life as well.

But she was seemed like she was kind of thriving out of it, which is really cool.

It's sad though.

Yeah, she was born into one of Wallingford, Vermont's founding families.

Oh, wow.

But she contracted scarlet fever at age eight.

Back then scarlet fever is a crazy that she lived.

And this rendered her completely deaf at age eight.

Oh, wow.

So until then, she had been able to hear and it was like a

like just that all at once terrible.

And it also affected her speech to such a degree

that it was difficult for people to understand what she was saying.

So she would get frustrated and like it was tough.

Now, several family members also said that Delia had actually been born

with a cognitive impairment and scarlet fever kind of exasperated that whole thing.

Exasperated, excuse me.

It's hard to say.

By the time she had become an adult, Delia's parents and several of her

siblings had actually died from various illnesses.

And her remaining siblings had just moved away.

And she left her.

Yeah, I think I don't know what the whole story was,

but it made me sad too.

But she made the best of it, though, because because of all this,

she inherited the family home, which was this large farm on Sugar Hill.

She's doing the hill.

Yeah, she said, I got this house.

And she.

So she had a little bit of a reputation that people call her like a spinster.

She was only like 40, by the way else.

Yeah, of course, she's 40.

But in reality, Delia was never alone and she was never lonely.

She had mostly was surrounded by friends.

Her neighbors were like all surrounding her at all times.

Hell, yeah, they all took care of her, looked out for her, looked out for her

greatly, and they didn't look out for her in a way that like made her feel

like they were like pitting her.

We have to look out for you.

People genuinely liked her and we spent time with her a lot.

She always had friends over.

She was just she was like thriving.

I was like, you know what, like I'm a cool person and everybody knows that.

Yeah, it sounds like it.

Also, she had local schoolchildren at her farm all the time

because she would bake them cookies regularly.

Oh, my God, shut your fucking face.

She's just like this nice person that's like I was Delta tough set of cards,

but like here I am working with it like everybody likes me and I'm awesome.

Yeah, I'm going to be kind and just like live my life.

She sounds really cool.

Yeah. So on the morning of July 23rd, 1908, two of Delia's

neighbors named the Sprague Brothers, they were working in the field

next to the Congdon House because she allowed them to farm on her land

because they were so close all of her neighbors.

And that's a huge deal back then.

You don't just give up your land for farming.

So while they're working, they said they were approached by a small man

who said he was looking for work.

Five, four, five foot, four, exactly.

According to the Sprague Brothers, they said the man noticed Delia in her yard

and they noticed they saw that he noticed this and he said, who's that woman?

And they were like, why do you need to know that?

Yeah, who's asking?

And then they said he, quote, proceeded to say what sort of things

he would like to do to her. Oh, I don't like that.

So horrified by these statements, I guess the brothers looked at him

and said they would, quote, shoot full of holes.

Anyone who tried such a thing.

Fuck yeah.

And they said, you better move along and you better seek work somewhere else.

Yeah, like you're not finding it here over here.

Like not after saying that, which I was like, fuck yeah.

They said, we will make you Swiss cheese.

Yeah, like these men are like, you know, they're brothers.

Don't you dare fuck with Delia.

Like she's our girl.

I love community.

Now the next day, Delia didn't get the bottle of milk

that was left on her front porch by the milkman.

Neighbors, of course, noticed this immediately because like I said,

they all love her, they're looking out for her.

So they went right to her home to knock on the door and see if she was OK.

And I'm sure even more so those two brothers now.

Yeah, of course.

So when they entered the home, they found Delia lying dead on the pantry floor.

They said, quote, in a condition

which indicated she had been ravished and with several deep cuts upon the head.

Oh, no.

Now, a large amount of blood was coming from her head.

It had pulled next to her.

There was blood spattered on the walls and the pantry.

Sheriff E.C. Fish was immediately called out to the scene.

He started talking to anyone who was on the farm, around the farm, all the neighbors.

After a pretty quick investigation of the scene,

he actually arrested a man named Frank Rogers, who was an occasional farm hand

and was known as a pretty tough character.

That's a quote, tough character.

Sure. Rogers had actually served three sentences at the House of Correction.

And people said they saw him on the property the previous evening.

OK. So that's why he was taken in.

So they did a little examination of the scene

and they determined that Delia had been probably preparing breakfast for herself

in the pantry when whoever had killed her had approached her from behind

and struck her on the head several times with a wood splitting axe.

How senseless. Yeah.

Now, according to state's attorney, Robert Lawrence,

when she was discovered, Delia, quote, was fully dressed and had a toothbrush

in her hand, which had been broken in two.

Oh, my God.

Her false teeth were in the adjoining room,

and it appears as if she retreated into the pantry when attacked.

Now, so sad.

The killer had then taken the handle of the axe

and wrapped it with fabric and like with her clothing fabric

and had twisted the fabric around her neck

and then used the axe as a grot.

Oh, my God.

And had literally grotted her with the axe and her own clothing.

After.

After.

Brutalizing her after sexually assaulting her,

which they found definitely happened and beating her in the head with the axe.

They then grotted her.

My God. And she was just making breakfast.

Just making breakfast, just woke up.

Oh, my God.

The body also showed signs of bruising

and what they referred to as criminal assaults.

Indicating that she was very likely raped.

Lawrence, the the state's attorney, he also told reporters

she had evidently put up a fierce fight for her life.

But and this is his words, not mine.

Remember, we're in 1900s here.

But as she had been deaf and dumb from an early age,

it was impossible for her to cry out.

Obviously, cognitive impairment was treated and discussed rather differently

back then, so we would never say deaf and dumb.

No.

Like what?

But anybody ever thought that was like, why was dumb?

The word for cognitive impairment from birth.

Like, come on, like, no.

And it's like all you have to say is like, because she was she couldn't hear.

Yeah, she couldn't hear them coming.

And because she like, you don't have to like, she was just unable to cry out.

Right, right.

You know, like we know who Delia is, like people in the area know her.

Just put it simply.

Like, you don't need to make it sound like that.

But it's like, you know, it's disrespectful.

Stupid times, basically, stupid times, stupid statements.

But it's important to say them because that's the time period.

And it's important to look at it and go, my, how far we have come.

But sort of what he was saying was she put up a fierce fight.

Yeah, but that she was able unable to cry out.

She couldn't get the words out.

She obviously probably didn't hear the person coming up behind her when they

attacked her and she's already been struck in the head like immediately.

So maybe she couldn't at that point even yell out to incapacitate her.

Right. And she's in her own fucking house.

Like she's in her own house making breakfast.

Yeah. Like, what the hell?

So after killing Delia, the killer then went through all the drawers, went

through all her stuff and the problem here was that she lived alone.

So nobody could say whether anything had been stolen or not.

Right.

Because they didn't know exactly what she had.

So based on this, they did conclude that the motive was likely robbery

because of the ransacking.

But again, with no evidence that something is stolen, that can be staged.

Yeah. And to me, it looks like she was raped and brutally murdered.

That looks like the motive.

That's what I was going to say is like the rape and the murder of it all.

And the way he said it was evidence was found to indicate robbery is the motive.

Some of the furniture being ransacked and drawers being found open

and the contents of the drawers thrown about, which I'm like, that to me sounds

staged. Definitely. The content of the drawers thrown about.

Yeah. So the evidence against Frank

Rogers, the sometimes farmhand was not great.

OK. Flimsy and circumstantial might be a better way to put it.

OK. He'd been seen in the vicinity the night before.

There's that.

Couldn't easily account for like all his movements in the days leading up to the

murder, but it was really just them going, well, you have a reputation for like

being a criminal and being violent sometimes.

So like, it's probably you. Yikes.

Like that's about it.

That's really all they had.

Right.

It was only after examining his body and the clothes he was seen wearing that day

on the day of the murder that he was actually released, because he had no

evidence of blood. There was no evidence of a fight.

He had no scratches, no.

There was no blood on his clothes.

And there would be.

And that it would have been next to impossible to achieve coming out of that

with no wounds, defensive wounds, no blood on your clothing.

And he would have been covered.

So two days later on July 27th, it was the autopsy of Delia Congdon.

And this was to determine the cause of death and hopefully the order of of

events that had happened.

So doctors B. H. Stone and William Stickney reported that Delia had been

attacked in her home by the assailant who sexually assaulted her first

in the main home of the house.

Then she had run.

She had fled into the pantry to hide.

Oh, my God.

But her attacker had followed her and struck her on the head six times

with the wood splitting axe, which caused six cuts to her scalp.

But the doctors determined the cause of death was actually strangulation caused

by the handle of the axe, having been wrapped in her shirt and grotting her.

This is horrific.

Yeah.

So also what's like a really strange thing here is that, and this also

worked in Frank Rogers' favor of them being like, it's probably not him.

Yeah.

Was they found something in the barn on the Congdon property?

Okay.

Carved into the wall.

Oh, I don't like this next to a pile of hay that was clearly recently

disturbed where the initials E. K.

And you don't know if he did this or not?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You said wait, there's more.

Here's the thing.

I'm not saying he didn't do this.

I'm just I'm saying there were there.

It is really circumstantial evidence.

Oh, okay.

My gut tells me he probably did.

Oh, okay.

I see.

But I don't think they had enough to convince him on.

Oh, okay.

I see what you mean.

And I don't think they had enough to execute him on for sure.

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

Um, now police.

I was like, excuse me.

I was like, I have misunderstood.

I think he definitely was sleeping in that barn for sure.

Yeah.

But that doesn't say that he killed her.

Okay.

Um, now police had no luck tracking Al Roy Kent.

So like they found those things and they haven't been able to find him.

And that was since he escaped the hospital two weeks before this.

For the second time.

Yeah.

But several people in the area said they had seen him at least in the area of the

Congdon farm a week earlier.

I bet they did.

So residents of East Wallingford believed he was kind of harmless because up until

this point they didn't know like they, they didn't know what the brother thing was.

Like they were kind of, you know, so in their words, they called him, quote, a

half-witted tramp who had drifted in Jesus Christ.

They really knew how to insult people back.

I'm saying a half-witted tramp, a half-witted tramp.

I know what I'm calling the next person that crosses me.

Yeah, there you go.

You're a half-witted trail.

But they figured he just drifted in to find work.

And so they were like, eh, when they saw him out and about, they were kind of just

like, yeah, I guess he's supposed to be in a hospital.

But like, we can't keep them there.

Problem, which I'm like, did anyone know what he did to his brother?

It doesn't sound like it.

Did you all, that didn't come out?

Apparently it was not widely reported.

Apparently not.

Um, and Elroy, I can't, he definitely matched the description of the man.

The Sprague brothers described seeing the day before Delia's murder.

And like you said, he's looking for work.

So that's why to me, I, most of me believes he did this for sure.

I think it just, I think there, when it comes to the execution is where my problem

lies is like there were other things happening here that I think he should

have just been put back in the hospital.

But do you think maybe, and we'll talk about that question later.

Now investigators searched, um, like abandoned buildings and other areas

that they said they knew that like people who drifted in and out would

kind of hang out and use like unused buildings.

And there was one on a, an unused outbuilding on a nearby farm that they looked at.

And they found an area of, you know, disturbed hay kind of like in the barn.

And they said it looked like it had been used as a bed.

And on the wall near it was carved a Kent.

Oh, another one, another one.

Okay.

Another one, another one.

Now this is why it's like the, so he did it here.

He did it there.

It's clear he's sleeping in these places and then leaving his initial on the side.

Yeah.

Which also I'm like, why are you leaving your initials?

Yeah, that's the thing.

Now the carving matched that of the one found in Delia, Congdon's barn.

And investigators were like, okay.

So Kent had definitely slept in her barn the night before the murder.

That barn we can, we can see is connected to this next one.

We can trace his movements that way.

But they also noted that from the barn, he could probably see into Delia's

bedroom and would have been able to track her movements the next morning from that

barn.

Freaky.

So they theorized he probably watched.

He waited for her to unlock the door to the house.

And when she did, he snuck in and attacked her and then tore the house apart to

search for any money or anything valuable.

And it's, I mean, we have like the account from the two brothers of him explicitly

saying what he wanted to do to her.

Exactly.

And then she was raped.

And that's the part that really stuck in my mind is like, you know.

But again, it's based off of somebody's, somebody's saying something and we never

heard the conversation.

So this is a matter of like, do I think he did it?

Yeah.

Do I think they had enough to convict him and execute him?

Probably not.

Yeah.

Unfa...

But this was a different time.

You didn't need as much.

Yeah, exactly.

Now, this was definitely not the first time that he had been leading the police on

like a wild goose chase at this point.

But this time was a little different because they're not dealing with the

petty criminal Elroy Kent.

They're dealing with a man who has clearly demonstrated that he does have a

capacity for violence.

When he, what he did to his brother was wild.

Terrific.

He also kind of has everything to lose if he's captured at this point,

which is not good.

So the search for Kent began immediately around the area once they found

those carvings, and it was around the areas of Wallingford, Rutland and

Brattleboro.

So for some extra power and some extra help, Sheriff Fish gathered deputies from

the area who had known or dealt with Kent in the past, like so from outside

areas, and they thought maybe they would have like unique insight into who he is.

Like his character, so they could kind of determine where he might be.

Okay.

And the sheriff's office also got some bloodhounds in.

Oh, shit.

And they tracked Kent's trail from the Congdon farm to a spot in the mountains

near his sister's home in Wallingford.

But they soon, they got, like the dogs got super exhausted.

It was a long way.

I mean, it's a mountain.

Yeah.

And they needed to rest.

Yeah.

And, but, and they couldn't even start the search again until the next day.

So they began again the next day, August 1st, and the dogs lost his trail.

Oh, shit.

Handlers tried to get them back on track.

They gave him a pair of his old shoes that he wore at the hospital, but, and

they were able to track him again briefly, but they were only able to track him as

far as an abandoned building on his sister's property.

How fucking cool is like that kind of bloodhounds fucking wild.

That is a whole, like a whole subject that I could just sit there and read about forever.

It's a fascinating to me.

I really do think that would actually make a very cool episode.

That'd be cool, like how it came about, how they are trained.

Like that's just really cool.

I mean, because you could go back to like way long ago, they've been using bloodhounds.

Like bloodhounds, cadaver dogs, all that stuff.

Like dogs are wild.

Even like in royal times when they would go hunting.

It is interesting.

I think you would do a really good job at that too.

That would be a fun one.

Put it in the little jar of ideas.

Jar sounds better than bucket.

So we'll go with that.

It's not a bucket, it's a jar.

But they did try.

They gave them the shoes worn at the hospital.

They only got to that abandoned building on the sister's property in East Dorset.

And then they lost the trail again.

I've never heard of Dorset.

Now, luckily investigators received a tip that afternoon.

Apparently some berry pickers were the ones who gave this tip.

They were working at a nearby farm and they said a man wearing a bloody shirt and pretty

much according to the matching Ken's description had been discovered in some bushes on the

property and was scared away before anybody could call the police.

The dogs managed to pick up a scent where they said, and it followed, they followed

it for nearly 10 miles down the highway and then they lost it again.

Damn it.

And according to the owners of the dogs, really the only reason they would lose the trail

was if the scent was too old.

So that kind of led investigators to think that Kent was definitely no longer in the

area.

He had long gone.

Now, the dogs losing the trail definitely sucked.

But a week later, they became kind of hopeful because a new clue and a pattern was starting

to emerge.

Wherever Kent was, he just couldn't help but leave his initials somewhere.

Anywhere he stayed overnight, he would leave his initials carved into it.

Very interesting.

Yeah.

It began like emerging in different locations around Southern Vermont.

He would do it on trees, abandoned buildings.

Are there any that still exist that you know of?

I don't know.

That's a good question.

We should look it up because I wonder if there are, I'm sure a lot of these buildings

are probably gone, but they said on trees and stuff too.

And in one case, this is pretty wild.

Three boys passing by Red Mill Pond in Woodford on August 8th, they stopped at a local barn

and they carved their initials into the side of the barn because remember, it's like 1908.

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And they returned the next day and they saw that next to their initials, someone had carved

EK.

Oh, creepy.

It's like he saw those initials and I was like, I was here too.

Yeah, right.

Creepy, creepy.

Now, Kent's family was still in the region, so investigators were thinking he might be

making his way through the mountains in the direction of Massachusetts, but they had no

idea where he was going to show up next.

Now as weeks went by and investigators were failing to bring this guy in, couldn't find

him anywhere, the news started focusing more on them and their failures and less on the

murderer on the loose.

Among other things, the articles were saying that the Wallingford deputy sheriff, Alan

Leonard and AC Mason, who were in charge of the hunt for Kent, had been spotted drinking

on the job and when they were refused further alcohol, they produced bottles from their

jackets to like, like they had brought their own liquor.

BYOB baby.

Now in late August, attorneys for Leonard and Mason filed a lawsuit against Olin French,

who was the publisher of the Vermont Phoenix, and they sued him for $5,000 each.

Damn.

And back then.

Holy shit.

That's a lot.

And the basis of the lawsuit was the Vermont Phoenix had published articles that, quote,

falsely, wickedly and maliciously injured the officers by claiming they, quote, appeared

to be as much a menace to the peace and good order as Elroy Kent.

Oh no.

Yeah.

So that's just a little like, woof.

Yeah.

Drama.

Now, while these, the lead investigators are just trying to fight with the press now

over their reputation, sheriff's deputies were just trying to continue the search and

trying to make this happen.

You know the main focus.

The job.

Then they finally caught a break in late October.

It was then that a man matching Kent's description was arrested in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

He was trying to sell a stolen bicycle.

Believe it.

I bet it was over.

Right.

So he was arrested and the man said his name was William Allen and he said, I've never

heard of Elroy Kent.

I don't know why you're talking about several hours of questioning later.

He said, you know what?

I'm Elroy Kent.

Well, shit.

Here I am.

He said he escaped from the hospital in Waterbury and he vehemently denied having anything

to do with Delia Congdon's murder.

And why do you lie about your name?

He was like, sure, I escaped for sure.

And I just didn't want to be caught and put back in the hospital, but I did not murder

that woman.

Okay.

Now, in order to be sure it was the man that they were looking for, state's attorney Robert

Lawrence was sent to Pittsfield to identify him and bring him back and he definitely

was Elroy Kent.

Yeah.

I figured.

So on the morning of October 26th, he was brought to Rutland County in the company of

deputies Leonard and Wilkins.

Again, he admitted to being a fugitive from justice.

He was like, for sure, I've been out running you because I didn't want to go back in the

hospital, but he continued to deny anything to do with Delia Congdon's murder.

And he said he wasn't even in the vicinity of East Wallingford at the time of the murder.

Wow.

When they reached the train station in Rutland, I guess like more than 20 or 200 people had

shown up just to see him be put on the train.

And I guess he was quoted as saying, I don't know.

I didn't know there were so many fools in all the world.

I'm like, damn, that's funny.

You're saucy.

I don't want to laugh at him, though.

No, because you just don't know.

I feel like he did it.

And no matter what, he was like a, he was a shithead from beginning before the trauma.

So it's like he was a bad guy and he hurt his brother.

He did.

And he hurt his brother.

Like really bad.

Yeah.

Like could have killed him.

Like hurt his brother and robbed him and robbed his own cousin.

Like I would low key call that attempted murder.

Oh, that was what they, they called it attempted murder.

So there you go.

That's what they looked at it as that he walked away, probably thinking he had killed him.

Yeah.

Not good.

So Elroy Kent had already been indicted by a grand jury for the murder of Delia Congdon.

So he pled not guilty and was held in a cell to await trial.

The trial began March 30th, 1909 and state's attorney, JC Jones, John Sargent and Robert

Lawrence announced that they intended to call more than 30 witnesses to the stand.

Shit.

What's funny is that most of them apparently, all the witnesses apparently quote, complained

of being kept away from their farms at sugar making time.

I mean.

They were noise.

Hello.

Priorities.

Priorities.

I mean, especially at that time, it's like, this was a big fucking deal.

Well, I'm sure.

I'm away at a serious time here.

And I think sugar was expensive back then, right?

Yeah.

So it's probably like you're really taking money out of my pocket here.

The trial was a bit over two weeks long and throughout it, the prosecution called several

witnesses like the Sprague brothers were called to the stand.

All the sugar farmers and they claim to have seen Kent in the area just before the murder.

And the motive that they were putting out there was robbery.

Wrong.

Yeah.

I don't think that was the full motive.

I think it was rape.

Cause remember, I think he, even before the head injury, he seemed to like just doing

the act of robbery.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

He liked it and I think he escalated into needing more to like what he was doing.

Yeah.

To, yeah.

But the prosecution introduced several pieces of evidence.

They had Delia Congdon's bloody clothing.

They had section of wood bearing Kent's carved initials that they had taken out of various

places.

Where is it now?

Where is it?

I couldn't find.

I just tried to look while you were saying.

Cause I feel like there's gotta be a tree somewhere with his initials on it.

Well, and you would think like some random museum in Vermont would have it.

Would have them, you know.

It would be interesting to see from all those years ago.

Yeah.

You know.

So long ago.

Right.

And just such a freaky weird thing to do.

It's such a weird thing that he did that.

Yeah.

That's why it's, it's just really interesting.

Um, Dr. BH Stone, who was one of the men who completed Delia's autopsy, also testified

and said that Delia quote was subject to the most outrageous treatment before she was

killed.

Um, Herbert Savory, a former inmate testified and he's claimed to have overheard Kent confess

that he killed Delia, killed Delia.

So quote, she couldn't tell.

Um, we know how that goes.

Sometimes when you listen to like former inmates or like present inmates.

It stinks because like you want to, and they could help testimony and be true line of information

here.

And it's like, sometimes it works out.

Right.

It's really like a 50, 50 shot.

If it's going to work out because at the same time, then there's some of the worst because

they're just trying to get out.

Yeah.

They have something to gain.

Right.

And then the next testimony definitely came from deputy Leonard.

He claimed that Kent had practically made a full confession to him following the arrest.

Oh, shit.

He said, quote, Kent told me that Miss Congdon saw him before he reached her and that he

grabbed her and threw her into the milk room.

Now Leonard's testimony was corroborated the following day by Dr. WW Townsend, who was

the physician at the house of corrections.

Um, that was where Kent was staying.

And he said he had also discussed the murder with Kent.

And according to Dr. Townsend, Kent knew very specific and intimate details of the crime

and had even corrected the doctor at one point.

The doctor asked something about the crime happening in the kitchen and he said, no,

it happened in the milk room.

Oh, yeah.

So the final bit of damning testimony came from Elgin Taggart, who was an employee of

the East Wallingford cheese factory.

Oh, the cheese tax, the cheese tax.

That's a great song.

Anytime you hear cheese, you have to sing it.

Anytime.

Taggart told the jury he had spoken to Kent just before the murder and it was when Elroy

saw Delia and made, quote, an obscene remark about her.

Like the Sprague brothers, Taggart had told Kent that, quote, he had better keep away

from that house.

Hell yeah.

I love that our neighbors protected her.

I love that our neighbors protected her too.

And I, the shitty thing here is that we're dealing with like sinister people.

I feel like it almost made it more exciting for him.

I know.

Cause they were like, he is the one that did it, but he was like, or it's even more forbidden.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Now the evidence and testimony against Elroy Kent was unfortunately still pretty circumstantial

like we're saying, you know, like, that's just the reality of it, but there was a lot

of it.

Yeah.

And each piece seemed to kind of corroborate the one before it, you know, so rather than

try to disprove the state's claim, Kent's defense attorneys knew that, you know, circumstantial

evidence can still be pretty compelling.

Yeah, definitely.

And Ernest O'Brien and John Spelman, his defense attorneys, decided to take like a pretty broad

approach to the defense.

They said Elroy was nowhere near the house at the time of the murder.

That was the first one.

And they said, even if he was his prof, he is profoundly mentally ill and could not be

held accountable for what he's done, at least not held accountable in the sense that he

is not sane.

Right.

And held accountable in the sense that he's going to go to prison for this or be executed.

Like he's going to have to, like, we're going to have to do an insanity defense.

And he needs like psychiatric treatment.

Yeah.

So as an alternative, they also suggested that Taggart, the guy who said that he had,

the cheese factory guy, he could have been responsible for the murder.

Okay.

They claim that by his own admission, he knew Congden and was aware of where she lived

and that she lived alone.

They also said that he was a known heavy drinker and had actually been fired from the cheese

factory due to his drinking interfering with his work.

And they pointed out to the jury that when Taggart was called to the hospital in Waterbury

following Kent's arrest, he could not pick Kent out of a lineup.

And he couldn't in any way recognize him as the man who'd shown up at the cheese factory

before the murder.

Well, that's interesting.

And Taggart's response to this was that he had, quote, made the apparent error purposely

to fool Dr. Grout, the superintendent.

Why would you want to fool them?

Why he would want to do that unclear to this day, but still don't know why he would want

to do that.

Yeah.

So it didn't look good for him either.

It was like, survey says, no, survey says, I don't fucking know about that.

Now to kind of bolster their insanity claim, the defense called a bunch of witnesses to

the stand to testify about Kent's like bizarre and unpredictable behavior and his thinking

as well as disorder thinking and the handful of years leading up to the murder.

LD Wright, who was a nurse from the hospital, testified and told the court that he had been

forced to restrain Kent with a, quote, leather jacket on occasions where he had become very

violent.

That's so sad.

And he said he had also heard Kent curse apparently at an imaginary woman.

Oh.

Dr. Grout, the superintendent, agreed while testifying that Kent was, quote, of unsound

mind.

Yeah, obviously.

We are in the hospital.

We know.

And did anybody, like, I'm like, did you guys tell them that he had fucking railroad spikes

in his head?

Yeah.

That's it.

I'm like, was that introduced into any of it?

You would think.

I mean, if you told me that and I was on the jury, I'd be like, we should send him back

to the hospital.

Yeah.

I think so.

Now in April 8th, the defense rested their case and the prosecution had an opportunity

to call one final rebuttal witness of just to kind of testify, a witness to those testifying

as to Kent's sanity, basically.

The witness was Dr. D. A. Sherris.

He was a psychologist from Montreal.

Now this guy told the jury, in his opinion, Kent, quote, was not insane, but had been

faking the delusions, which he appeared to have.

He said he did not react to any questions like a man who had hallucinations.

And he said, I don't believe that he is insane.

Okay.

But I would like to repeat, are we taking into account the wild head injury?

That he sustained years earlier?

Because it's crazier to me that he would not be like what they would have said back then

insane after having had that accident.

To me, there's no way in hell that he didn't have any kind of repercussion from that.

This to me would be like a slam dunk for the insanity defense.

Nobody's saying it's right to what he did or it's justified in any way or like excused,

but that's a defense.

And it's happened because it clearly seems to fit here at the very least, you know, we

have to take it into account.

Right.

But I do guess it complicates things that he did have a long history of crying.

That's the thing.

That's why this is such a complicated case.

It's a tough case.

Yeah.

It's very complicated because you can see both sides of that either way.

If he did it, he's got to go somewhere.

Yeah.

But execution.

I don't know about that.

And this is the question I was going to ask earlier because obviously we know he's ultimately

executed.

Do you think they thought to themselves, whoever, you know, made the final decision?

I wonder if we can ask what I'm thinking.

I think I probably am.

We keep sending him back to the hospital.

He keeps escaping.

Whether or not he did this crime, are we quote unquote getting rid of a problem that we have

here?

I think you hit the nail on the head.

I think so too.

I think that's really what happened here is like he's been a problem.

So we either eradicate the problem kind of thing.

And this is a perfect excuse.

Again, I don't think the excuse was let's frame him for this murder.

I think he probably committed the murder.

Yeah.

It was a pretty good suspect.

Something.

And I think they just looked at it as like, well, he did this.

So this is a way to get rid of the problem.

I think so too.

But the jury only deliberated for less than a day, only a few hours.

They came back to the courtroom on April 10th and they delivered a verdict of guilty.

Yeah.

His sentencing was going to be put off until the fall.

That's when he could appeal and everyone pretty much assumed he was going to get the

death penalty.

And as he was being let out of the courtroom by the deputies, he was heard saying, I don't

care a damn anyway.

Wow.

So it's like, I don't know if it's, I don't care what I did or I don't care what happens

to me either way.

Now in October, 1909, the Vermont State Supreme Court came together to hear the cases in their

fall session.

Calvary Kent's was in this caseload and they, the defense argued that the state's strongest

evidence against Kent was those initials carved in the barn.

Right.

That was really like the number one thing.

And they said that was not the same as handwriting samples and it couldn't be treated or analyzed

like that.

And the court considered the case as a whole, they considered everything and then they came

down and said, nope, the original sentence, it's going to stay in their decision.

The justices wrote, it will be noticed that this is not strictly a comparison of handwriting.

It is rather the proof of a habit regarding the use of a character, which as ordinarily

made and as made in this case, affords no opportunity for the development of individual

characteristics capable of detection.

If a writer invariably makes the same mistake or always adopts the same two or more legitimate

methods, which presents substantial differences, his practice therein is a circumstantial,

circumstance, which makes his genuine writings available to establish the authenticity of

a disputed one.

But the respondents connection with the carving in the Congdon barn does not depend entirely

upon the similarity of letters.

The evidence of the respondents admission that he passed the night of the 23rds in this

barn, the evidence tending to show a practice of cutting his initials as a past time, the

evidence that the hay was thrown upon upon the barn floor on the 22nd and that fresh

whittlings were found on this hay just below the carving, their evidence tending to show

that the respondent made the letters.

So that's a fancy way to say, he said he did it.

Yep.

So I think he did it.

Denied.

That's essentially what he did it.

So bye.

Bye.

So they rejected his appeal and the court sentence can quote, to be hanged in the yard of the

state prison at Windsor on January 13th, 1911, between the hour of one and three p.m.

Wow.

The court also ordered that Kent be quote, employed at hard labor in the state prison

until October 13th, 1910.

After that he was going to be held in solitary confinement until the day of his execution.

Oh, wow.

That is so fucked up.

Yeah.

Kent's response to this was, I am not guilty.

So in mid and mid December, 1910, the Vermont legislature actually broke for their holiday

recess and they made a boo boo because they didn't complete all of their end of year business.

And when they didn't do this, they unintentionally granted Kent a brief reprieve.

State laws stipulated that the legislature much must issue a formal warrant before anyone

can be executed, which they did not do before they went out for recess.

The problem was fixed and a new execution date had to be set, though, for January 5th,

1912.

So they kept catching him like a year reprieve unintentionally.

But was he still in solitary at that point?

He was going to be in solitary for that.

For a year?

Yep.

Oh, my God.

Now, after that, that's the thing, it's like this really got like, this is a sad case.

Now, all of this, and he's going to be executed and the execution did not go off without

a hitch.

When the day finally came, he was taken from his cell in solitary confinement and let out

to the yard.

By 1.18 p.m., everything was done and prepared to go.

Kent was standing over the trap door on the gallows.

He had a noose around his neck.

This was going to be the first execution in the state of Vermont to employ an electrical

trap door.

This electrical trap door was controlled by one of six switches.

Now this new system required six men to each push one of the buttons.

They did this so that none of them would ever know which button caused the door to open.

It's almost like a firing squad, like that kind of thing.

When the warden gave the signal, all six men pushed the button, the door dropped out from

beneath Kent as planned, but when the rope pulled taut, it snapped immediately and he

fell to the ground.

They had no other option.

The rope was then tied over the gallows and Kent's body was hoisted up and left to hang

in the prison yard for more than a half hour.

He just slowly was like, exfixated.

Yeah.

Oh my.

I mean, what a punishment if he really was responsible.

That's quite a punishment.

Now, when the prison doctor examined the body, he said that he initially said that Kent was

most likely killed during the first drop and suffered no conscious thought after the first

tightening of the noose.

I don't know about that, but many across the state were horrified by this whole thing because

reports came out later that said after seven minutes of strangulation from the gallows,

he still had a pulse.

Also this reminded a lot of people of the 1905 execution of Mary Rogers, which she was

a woman who was convicted of killing her husband.

Very similar kind of rope break situation that happened there, very botched.

I want to cover that case, so I'm not going to tell you a lot about it right now because

I looked into it more and I was like, that's actually a very interesting case.

Say that because while I was Googling to find out if his initials were anywhere, I found

that and I was going to suggest you do it.

Yep.

I'm going to do it.

So the unexpected errors in the execution resulted in people really getting angry, a

flood of letters and telephone calls to the governor's office came out mostly by people

who were like, I don't know, maybe this is barbaric, do you think?

Others were just outraged that the execution had taken place at all.

Not even just the way it was done, they were like, no, no, no, because they didn't think

there was enough evidence.

Well, not even that.

They said it's very clear he has mental illness.

Yes.

It likely influenced his behavior in some way and in response, Governor John Meade addressed

a group of press and he said, my wish and prayers that I may never again be called upon

to undergo an experience like that of the last week.

I tried in short to do my duty no matter how unpleasant as I bound myself to do when I

took my oath of office.

The execution of Elroy Kent, like I said earlier, really became a point of rallying basically

for death penalty opponents and for decades, it was one of the cases that was cited as

an example of one, like the questionable morality here of executing somebody that is

clearly mentally ill and also just the barbaric way that the death penalty kind of goes about

itself.

Yes.

Especially this kind of execution.

It's like, that is woo.

And again, you know where we all stand here, like my view has very much evolved way more

towards against death penalty.

Yours really has.

I'm still pretty in the middle.

In which I think is what it should do is it should always be evolving.

Yeah.

And it didn't help the case that there were rumors when decades after Kent had been executed,

another man made a deathbed confession that said he was the one who'd murdered Delia

Congdon and that he had allowed Elroy Kent to take the fall because he was an easy fall

guy, quite literally.

It's unclear whether they investigated this further or if they said let's bury that deep

deep down.

It is what it is.

This guy's dying.

That guy's dead.

Whatever.

We're just going to move on.

Holy shit.

But it definitely raises a question of, oh shit, was Elroy Kent the one to murder Delia

Congdon?

Because why confess?

Why?

And a deathbed confession to me is always very compelling.

I know deathbed confessions are the most compelling because it's like why?

Because I think people are in their most scared state if they want to release it all.

Lying at the end of your life is not why do it?

Wow.

Yeah.

And that is the case of Elroy Kent and the murder of Delia Congdon.

That's wild.

That case blew my mind.

Poor Delia.

She did nothing.

She didn't accept to be the most like brightest light in her community.

Be this vibrant, just like thriving lady.

And like had overcome so much throughout her life and that's the end she met.

Like giving off pieces of her farm for people to use because she's just like making cookies

for the kids.

Making cookies for school children.

And is just attacked while she's making breakfast.

Yeah.

While she's just in all because she unlocked her door.

That's so scary.

It's so scary.

Wow.

But yeah.

That was a crazy case.

I'm left very unsettled, I have to say.

That's how I always like to leave everybody.

So that's good.

That's how you usually leave us.

Yeah.

Wow.

Well, thank you for that.

You're welcome.

And thank you guys for listening.

We hope you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it weird.

But that's so weird that just not this weird, I guess.

Not this weird.

Yeah.

Love you.

Love you.

Love you.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.

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