WEBVTT 00:00.331 --> 00:04.895 [SPEAKER_00]: And the following podcast, Dialogue, has been condensed from trial transcripts. 00:05.636 --> 00:16.626 [SPEAKER_00]: The story is a recreation of an actual criminal case, and this is a deadbuck podcast, and may not be suited for those of a more sensitive nature. 00:17.346 --> 00:25.714 [SPEAKER_00]: So please, sit back, shut that pleasure given both the ears, smoke them if you got them, and enjoy. 00:32.292 --> 00:50.637 [SPEAKER_00]: New York City in 1857 was becoming something dangerous, not dangerous in the way tourists think of danger now, not the cinematic danger of alleyways and gangsters, and steam rise out of the sewer grates. 00:51.638 --> 00:51.878 [SPEAKER_00]: No. 00:52.977 --> 00:58.300 [SPEAKER_00]: This was a city-transform and so quickly, it barely understood what it was becoming. 00:59.381 --> 01:02.963 [SPEAKER_00]: No a man hadn't grown, but the noise of day and night. 01:04.023 --> 01:08.786 [SPEAKER_00]: Horst is dragged on the bus is through mud, that gets wet cement. 01:11.627 --> 01:15.630 [SPEAKER_00]: I want to rain, raw sewage, come on, on streets. 01:16.590 --> 01:18.231 [SPEAKER_00]: It'd be stepping in your own shit. 01:20.045 --> 01:28.811 [SPEAKER_00]: Dark workers unloaded cargo ships from Europe, all barefoot children slept nearby in the old ways, blackened by cornstarch. 01:30.271 --> 01:45.361 [SPEAKER_00]: The air, huh, must smell like body odor, cigar smoke, salt water, sewage, burning wood, mananimal blood, from the slaughterhouses downtown, 01:50.838 --> 01:57.499 [SPEAKER_00]: And everywhere, that was money or at least the desperate pursuit of it. 01:59.471 --> 02:07.618 [SPEAKER_00]: America, in the 1850s, was still in vending itself, and New York could become the place where fortunes appeared overnight. 02:08.960 --> 02:23.833 [SPEAKER_00]: Man arrived unknown, and within the decade, reinvented themselves as bankers, merchants, landowners, doctors, Manhattan, rewarded, ambition, almost violently. 02:25.283 --> 02:31.385 [SPEAKER_00]: But the city, also rewarded cruelty, especially the most woman. 02:33.845 --> 02:41.848 [SPEAKER_00]: Because for all its wealth and elegance, New York society in 1857 remains deeply unequal. 02:42.788 --> 02:49.790 [SPEAKER_00]: A wealthy man could gamble openly, drink himself senseless, keep mistresses, 02:51.553 --> 03:06.349 [SPEAKER_00]: sleep or prostitutes, beat his wife, even ruin family's financially, and still maintain his position and respectable society, so long as he possessed status and money. 03:08.171 --> 03:11.194 [SPEAKER_00]: Women existed under an entirely different set of rules. 03:12.894 --> 03:18.779 [SPEAKER_00]: a woman without a husband, occupied precarious grounds, socially and financially. 03:20.060 --> 03:23.624 [SPEAKER_00]: Widows, especially lived close to instability. 03:24.905 --> 03:26.406 [SPEAKER_00]: Employment options were limited. 03:27.587 --> 03:29.809 [SPEAKER_00]: Respectability mattered enormously. 03:30.590 --> 03:36.515 [SPEAKER_00]: Reputation could determine whether old men survived comfortably, or disappeared, and the poverty. 03:38.537 --> 03:39.878 [SPEAKER_00]: And poverty in New York. 03:43.536 --> 03:46.478 [SPEAKER_00]: The newspapers understood this hypocrisy perfectly. 03:47.719 --> 03:52.782 [SPEAKER_00]: By the middle of the 19th century, crime reporting had evolved into mass entertainment. 03:54.003 --> 04:04.470 [SPEAKER_00]: Editors competed viciously for readers and the public devoured the stories involving sex, violence, and scandal among the wealthy. 04:05.291 --> 04:08.033 [SPEAKER_00]: Murder cases became serialized dramas. 04:13.839 --> 04:35.358 [SPEAKER_00]: I guess some would say, not unlike today, and in the winter of 1857, no story fascinated New York more than the scandal unfolding in a brown stone at 31 bond street, because bond street represented respectability, at least on the surface. 04:37.027 --> 04:50.360 [SPEAKER_00]: Doctors lived there, merchants, bankers, many attempting to build something resembling European aristocracy in a country still young enough to feel unstable beneath its own feet. 04:51.321 --> 04:57.167 [SPEAKER_00]: And among these men was a wealthy dentist by the name of Harvey Bardell. 04:58.337 --> 05:04.679 [SPEAKER_00]: from the outside, but they'll appear it's successful and exactly the way 19th century New York and Mayard. 05:05.460 --> 05:13.442 [SPEAKER_00]: He was educated, financially ambitious, socially connected, and most importantly, a property owner. 05:14.443 --> 05:20.885 [SPEAKER_00]: But people who knew, bought Dell, often described something darker underneath the polished exterior. 05:22.726 --> 05:25.507 [SPEAKER_00]: He gambled, made chased women, 05:26.825 --> 05:29.946 [SPEAKER_00]: He speculated constantly in business deals in property. 05:30.726 --> 05:37.008 [SPEAKER_00]: And according to Word on the street, he offered free dental work to prostitutes and exchange for sex. 05:37.268 --> 05:37.528 [UNKNOWN]: Nice. 05:38.828 --> 05:39.668 [SPEAKER_00]: That's fucking nice. 05:39.969 --> 05:42.229 [SPEAKER_00]: Sank in the bank for tooth extraction. 05:42.809 --> 05:45.990 [SPEAKER_00]: I guess one in, one out, one may likely wax. 05:46.570 --> 05:50.091 [SPEAKER_00]: Whether every story was true or not, I suppose it didn't matter. 05:50.791 --> 05:52.172 [SPEAKER_00]: Because what matter was this? 05:53.774 --> 06:02.299 [SPEAKER_00]: Harvey Bedell was a kind of man who accumulated enemies naturally, and some time before the winter of 1857 was over. 06:03.620 --> 06:08.143 [SPEAKER_00]: Someone inside his own house decided that they wanted him dead. 06:11.365 --> 06:18.610 [SPEAKER_00]: By the standards of 19th century New York, Harvey Bedell was successful, almost to the point of reinvention. 06:19.708 --> 06:21.570 [SPEAKER_00]: He had not been born in the old money. 06:22.010 --> 06:31.277 [SPEAKER_00]: He built himself upward through ambition, timing, and a certain kind of ruthless adaptability that New York rewarded during that era. 06:31.938 --> 06:35.661 [SPEAKER_00]: America, in the 1850s, admired man who transformed themselves. 06:36.742 --> 06:39.924 [SPEAKER_00]: Reinvention was practically a national religion. 06:41.266 --> 06:43.888 [SPEAKER_00]: And Badele understood how to play the role. 06:45.108 --> 06:50.370 [SPEAKER_00]: Dentistry during the mid-19th century was still primitive enough to terrify people. 06:51.270 --> 06:53.230 [SPEAKER_00]: Most procedures involved pain. 06:54.071 --> 07:02.573 [SPEAKER_00]: Extractions were fast, violent, the fairs carried out with iron instruments that looked more suited for blacksmithing than medicine. 07:03.213 --> 07:10.615 [SPEAKER_00]: Anastasia and Etha existed, but inconsistently, many patients simply endured agony, 07:13.846 --> 07:29.804 [SPEAKER_00]: Yet despite the brutality of the profession, dentistry could make a man wealthy, especially in Manhattan, and especially if one would decal the fate, upscale clients, and but they'll, that exactly that. 07:32.034 --> 07:40.578 [SPEAKER_00]: By his med forties, he had accumulated money not only through dentistry, but through property speculation and banking investments. 07:41.078 --> 07:50.642 [SPEAKER_00]: Manhattan itself was becoming a financial organism, expanding northward year after year, and men clever enough to buy property early. 07:51.183 --> 07:53.704 [SPEAKER_00]: Often became rich, almost accidentally. 07:54.544 --> 08:02.791 [SPEAKER_00]: But while the New York rarely purified people, if anything, it amplified who they already were. 08:03.952 --> 08:08.315 [SPEAKER_00]: And Harvey Badell appears to have been a deeply complicated man. 08:09.777 --> 08:11.778 [SPEAKER_00]: Some describe them as charm. 08:13.260 --> 08:15.141 [SPEAKER_00]: Others describe the mislippery. 08:16.102 --> 08:18.284 [SPEAKER_00]: A bachelor with a well-known reputation. 08:19.180 --> 08:28.182 [SPEAKER_00]: There were stories involved with prostitutes, gambling, manipulation, unpaid debts, and questionable business behavior. 08:29.242 --> 08:33.143 [SPEAKER_00]: Rumors circulated that he exchanged them to work for sex. 08:34.083 --> 08:39.084 [SPEAKER_00]: Another story claimed he once paused his own wedding ceremony over a financial disagreement. 08:40.585 --> 08:46.346 [SPEAKER_00]: Whether those stories were exaggerated, I guess hardly mad at any more, after the murder. 08:48.005 --> 08:55.611 [SPEAKER_00]: Because once someone dies violently, every ugly rumor begins hardening into mythology. 08:56.672 --> 09:03.417 [SPEAKER_00]: And by the time the New York Papers finished with Harvey Bardell, he had become something larger than a man. 09:03.437 --> 09:06.119 [SPEAKER_00]: He'd become a symbol. 09:08.002 --> 09:22.975 [SPEAKER_00]: but wealthy Victorian gentlemen live behind Polish facade while moral decay spread quicker than the decay in the hookahs that he would treat and then there was Emma Cunningham. 09:25.197 --> 09:29.701 [SPEAKER_00]: If Harvey Badell represented masculine privilege in the 19th century New York, 09:30.644 --> 09:36.550 [SPEAKER_00]: Emma Cunningham represented the instability women were forced to navigate just to survive. 09:37.211 --> 09:38.092 [SPEAKER_00]: Emma was widowed. 09:39.210 --> 09:42.911 [SPEAKER_00]: and widowhood during the 1850s could be terrifying. 09:44.031 --> 09:46.532 [SPEAKER_00]: I guess his terrifying was dentistry. 09:47.332 --> 10:00.536 [SPEAKER_00]: 18-year-old Emma Hamstead was an attractive young woman, known for her long legs, just as much as she was known for her quick wit, when she met and married successful business man George Cunningham in 1835. 10:00.896 --> 10:05.457 [SPEAKER_00]: By all accounts, their union was a happy one and produced five lovely children. 10:05.637 --> 10:22.928 [SPEAKER_00]: When he tragically died of a heart attack, in 1852, his life insurance policy amounted to about $10,000, a tiny sum, and although it could keep a family in the lifestyle that they were used to, she wouldn't be able to live off it forever, and I'm a new then, after all. 10:23.708 --> 10:29.737 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm still a man's world, and she also knew that all her husband's contacts would dissipate. 10:30.218 --> 10:35.867 [SPEAKER_00]: Just as her husband's body rotted, and the cemetery down the road, I'm yield to the maggots. 10:38.537 --> 10:50.003 [SPEAKER_00]: Today, people often romanticize the Victorian era as refined and orderly, but for women with their financial protection, the reality could become desperate very quickly. 10:50.443 --> 10:55.786 [SPEAKER_00]: There were few safety nets, few respectable careers, and limited legal protections. 10:56.186 --> 11:04.030 [SPEAKER_00]: A woman with children and no husband often survived through negotiation, taking in borders, relying on relatives. 11:04.930 --> 11:08.432 [SPEAKER_00]: entering relationships with man who possess money and influence. 11:09.633 --> 11:16.498 [SPEAKER_00]: Emma had five children, which meant every decision she made carried enormous stakes. 11:19.285 --> 11:29.752 [SPEAKER_00]: At some point around 1854, Emma Cunningham, entered Harvey Burddale's orbit, a count's differ about precisely how they met. 11:31.013 --> 11:35.796 [SPEAKER_00]: But before long, she had moved into the house at 31 Bonds Street. 11:36.736 --> 11:43.281 [SPEAKER_00]: officially she functioned as a kinder housekeeper or land lady managing the borders of the home. 11:43.702 --> 11:49.406 [SPEAKER_00]: And officially, nearly everyone understood she and Padall were romantically involved. 11:49.927 --> 11:56.772 [SPEAKER_00]: And from the beginning, the relationship appears unstable, volatile, and obsessive. 11:59.438 --> 12:18.432 [SPEAKER_00]: When this is led to describe the arguments between them as emotional and confrontational, they could hear banging, unyelling, tension flowing through the house in ways that servants and borders could feel, and here, even when the doors remained closed, Emma reportedly wanted marriage. 12:19.312 --> 12:21.314 [SPEAKER_00]: Harvey, he didn't. 12:22.194 --> 12:22.855 [SPEAKER_00]: And why would he? 12:23.395 --> 12:28.219 [SPEAKER_00]: I was a good-looking guy, bachelor around town, women throwing themselves at him. 12:29.189 --> 12:31.530 [SPEAKER_00]: Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free? 12:32.511 --> 12:34.672 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's exactly what he told his friends. 12:35.573 --> 12:42.357 [SPEAKER_00]: When they had drinks at the gentleman clubs at night, while ammo was home, menace bed, keeping it warm, waiting. 12:43.587 --> 12:52.130 [SPEAKER_00]: They was in no hurry to give up his freedom, and that balance in between the two mattered more in 1857 than it might today. 12:52.671 --> 12:55.512 [SPEAKER_00]: For Bedell, marriage represented a choice. 12:56.252 --> 12:59.213 [SPEAKER_00]: For Emma, it may have represented survival. 13:00.174 --> 13:08.297 [SPEAKER_00]: Without legal recognition as Bedell's wife, a future remained uncertain, her children's future remained uncertain. 13:08.936 --> 13:13.637 [SPEAKER_00]: Everything depended on maintaining his affection and financial support. 13:14.258 --> 13:17.979 [SPEAKER_00]: But Harvey Bardell was not a man-known festibility. 13:18.779 --> 13:25.441 [SPEAKER_00]: And rumors swirled constantly around him and other women in him partaken in pleasures of their flesh. 13:26.247 --> 13:33.718 [SPEAKER_00]: Witnesses would later testify that Badal became unusually close with a younger female cousin staying in the house. 13:34.359 --> 13:39.686 [SPEAKER_00]: Servants describe jealousy, resentment, whispered arguments later night. 13:40.573 --> 13:48.157 [SPEAKER_00]: As far as MSR, she could live with him getting the occasional blow job for a tooth extraction, but him getting balls deep in his own cousin. 13:49.017 --> 13:50.438 [SPEAKER_00]: You gotta drive the light somewhere. 13:51.078 --> 13:53.840 [SPEAKER_00]: And by all accounts, he's 18-year-old cousin. 13:54.500 --> 14:02.184 [SPEAKER_00]: While she was his sweetest, the gingerbread molasses, cakes, that the street fenders sold just outside of Badell's dental practice. 14:02.384 --> 14:06.186 [SPEAKER_00]: The only difference was when he stuck his tongue inside his cousin. 14:06.606 --> 14:10.008 [SPEAKER_00]: There was sticky, but there was no risk of tooth decay. 14:11.823 --> 14:17.826 [SPEAKER_00]: He was around this time, neither by accident or in an attempt to lock Bodell into the relationship. 14:18.366 --> 14:24.869 [SPEAKER_00]: Emma became pregnant, but supposedly Bodell didn't want any kids, so he forced to have an abortion. 14:25.967 --> 14:34.030 [SPEAKER_00]: It's undocumented whether he had performed that abortion himself or one to one of the backstreet clinics who performed this dangerous procedure. 14:34.730 --> 14:45.514 [SPEAKER_00]: Now there is no definitive proof that any of these stories were true, but the fact that they circulated so aggressively tells how toxic the relationship appeared outside us. 14:46.214 --> 14:49.996 [SPEAKER_00]: People looked backward at the relationship and saw a rod everywhere. 14:50.956 --> 14:56.461 [SPEAKER_00]: Because by the winter of 1857, 31 barn street no longer felt like a home. 14:57.481 --> 14:58.743 [SPEAKER_00]: I felt like a pressure cooker. 14:59.843 --> 15:05.028 [SPEAKER_00]: Borders overheard arguments through walls, servants traded gossip downstairs. 15:06.009 --> 15:12.274 [SPEAKER_00]: Later night those opened and closed and you could hear footsteps sneaking up and down the stairs. 15:13.886 --> 15:28.912 [SPEAKER_00]: People watched one another constantly, and in houses like that, resentment rarely disappears quietly, it builds slowly, and silently, until eventually, something ruptures. 15:31.082 --> 15:35.764 [SPEAKER_00]: The final days before the murder unfolded beneath the freezing January skies. 15:36.424 --> 15:39.726 [SPEAKER_00]: New York winters during the 19th century could feel brutal. 15:40.186 --> 15:45.949 [SPEAKER_00]: Caught smoke hung low across Manhattan, while dirty snow collected along the crowded streets. 15:46.469 --> 15:51.091 [SPEAKER_00]: When the horse is pissed on the streets, but almost froze before it hit the ground. 15:52.071 --> 15:59.695 [SPEAKER_00]: When those frosted over, inside homes, fires burned constantly while servants carried hot water from room to room. 16:01.145 --> 16:04.886 [SPEAKER_00]: At 31 Bonds Street, life appeared outworldly normal. 16:05.807 --> 16:07.047 [SPEAKER_00]: Borders came and went. 16:08.108 --> 16:09.128 [SPEAKER_00]: Meals were served. 16:09.748 --> 16:10.728 [SPEAKER_00]: Business continued. 16:11.489 --> 16:14.190 [SPEAKER_00]: But beneath the surface, tension lingered. 16:15.390 --> 16:18.311 [SPEAKER_00]: And then came the night of January 30th. 16:19.291 --> 16:23.193 [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody knows exactly what happened inside Harvey but those room night night. 16:24.462 --> 16:25.743 [SPEAKER_00]: Except those who were there. 16:26.443 --> 16:28.545 [SPEAKER_00]: Only fragmented accounts survive. 16:28.845 --> 16:34.068 [SPEAKER_00]: But sometime, after darkness settled over Bond Street, violence entered the house. 16:35.747 --> 16:41.192 [SPEAKER_00]: The next morning servants began moving through the home, a usual, then someone made the discovery. 16:41.612 --> 16:45.576 [SPEAKER_00]: And yelled murder, a word that echoed throughout the building. 16:46.376 --> 16:48.678 [SPEAKER_00]: Harvey Badell was dead. 16:49.159 --> 16:53.723 [SPEAKER_00]: Met's document that the scene was horrifying, Badell was nude. 16:54.403 --> 16:59.308 [SPEAKER_00]: His body lay upstairs, surrounded by signs of a violent struggle. 16:59.868 --> 17:01.429 [SPEAKER_00]: furniture had been displaced. 17:02.270 --> 17:03.771 [SPEAKER_00]: Blood marked the room. 17:04.232 --> 17:16.543 [SPEAKER_00]: Investigators later determined that Padall had been strangled and stabbed 15 times, with wounds on his face, his chest, his back, and his buttocks. 17:18.074 --> 17:18.574 [SPEAKER_00]: 15. 17:19.015 --> 17:25.579 [SPEAKER_00]: The number itself fascinated in those papers because it suggested fury, rather than a efficiency. 17:26.199 --> 17:39.268 [SPEAKER_00]: This was not the clean violence of a robbery, but felt personal, intimate, almost emotional, and almost immediately suspicion drifted towards Emma Cunningham. 17:40.108 --> 17:54.924 [SPEAKER_00]: partly because she lived inside the house, partly because of the known tension between them, and partly because 19th century investigators often relied as much on intuition and social assumptions as actual evidence. 17:55.705 --> 18:01.708 [SPEAKER_00]: Modern forensic science didn't exist, though in no fingerprints, no DNA, no blood typing. 18:02.189 --> 18:03.530 [SPEAKER_00]: Crime scenes were chaotic. 18:03.890 --> 18:07.052 [SPEAKER_00]: Detectives barely resembled modern investigators. 18:07.632 --> 18:10.994 [SPEAKER_00]: Curious onlookers contaminated evidence constantly. 18:11.494 --> 18:16.337 [SPEAKER_00]: Reporters wandered through the scene gathering details before the police fully secured them. 18:17.257 --> 18:21.520 [SPEAKER_00]: And newspapers played an enormous role in shaping the public's perception. 18:22.262 --> 18:26.724 [SPEAKER_00]: This was an era where tabloid speculation was read by the reader. 18:27.104 --> 18:33.107 [SPEAKER_00]: As gospel truth, the Badell murder exploded across New York almost instantly. 18:33.727 --> 18:36.329 [SPEAKER_00]: Crowds gathered outside the bond street home. 18:37.069 --> 18:39.930 [SPEAKER_00]: Newspaper readers devoured every update. 18:40.831 --> 18:44.993 [SPEAKER_00]: A well-to-do naked businessman found in his bedroom hacked up. 18:45.993 --> 18:55.519 [SPEAKER_00]: Witnesses suddenly found themselves treated like characters inside a serialized fiction, with all the newspapers running the story in serialized form. 18:56.199 --> 18:56.760 [SPEAKER_00]: Who did it? 18:57.760 --> 18:58.441 [SPEAKER_00]: What happened? 18:59.321 --> 19:01.543 [SPEAKER_00]: Who were the players in this grizzly murder? 19:02.559 --> 19:14.683 [SPEAKER_00]: And at the center of it all, stood Emma, cunning ham, a woman already vulnerable, the public suspicion, because she violated Victorian expectations of femininity. 19:15.684 --> 19:20.766 [SPEAKER_00]: She was outspoken, emotionally expressive, socially ambitious. 19:21.926 --> 19:24.349 [SPEAKER_00]: And let's not forget that she was good looking. 19:25.110 --> 19:25.971 [SPEAKER_00]: Very good looking. 19:26.672 --> 19:31.218 [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, sure, she'd popped out five kids, but she still stood out in a crowd. 19:31.798 --> 19:35.863 [SPEAKER_00]: And this made other women instinctively and naturally dislike her. 19:36.545 --> 19:42.149 [SPEAKER_00]: And her being a widow, no self-respect of woman will let her a mile, now a man. 19:42.889 --> 19:51.435 [SPEAKER_00]: And the way the press in the public now saw it was that Emma lived in a house containing a brutally murdered man, she had desperately wanted to marry. 19:52.436 --> 20:06.682 [SPEAKER_00]: and for many people that alone made her guilty and the fact that she seemed emotionalists even indifferent to the crime while still proclaiming her innocence made her a number one suspect. 20:08.123 --> 20:13.545 [SPEAKER_00]: But then she made an announcement to the press that blew the scandal wide open. 20:15.958 --> 20:26.585 [SPEAKER_00]: Amma Chamberlain claimed that she'd secretly married Harvey Bardell, Montzolia, a revelation that stunned New York society, because nobody seemed aware of any marriage. 20:27.165 --> 20:38.973 [SPEAKER_00]: Amma insisted the ceremony had occurred privately, and after all, she possessed a legitimate claim over Badal's lucrative estate, but almost immediately doubts emerged. 20:39.693 --> 21:08.467 [SPEAKER_00]: Servants contradicted aspects of a story, associates at Burdell's men's club expressed their skepticism, and it seemed that every hooker with good teeth was selling their story to the papers, saying that claims of marriage by the widow were flopped doodle, a popular word meaning bullshit, used by the servants in the day, and yet Emma refused to back down, which only intensified the public's fascination with the case, 21:09.487 --> 21:18.413 [SPEAKER_00]: Because Victorian society had a strange relationship with women like Emma Cunningham, people simultaneously pitted and feared them. 21:19.374 --> 21:37.806 [SPEAKER_00]: A widow attempting to secure financial survival could be viewed sympathetically, but a woman, especially a good-looking woman, perceived as manipulative or sexually calculating, became monstrous almost instantly in the public's imagination. 21:38.932 --> 21:44.273 [SPEAKER_00]: and Emma increasingly drifted towards monstrosity and the newspaper coverage. 21:45.274 --> 21:49.775 [SPEAKER_00]: And the inquest became a sort of grotesque theater. 21:51.155 --> 21:58.317 [SPEAKER_00]: Witnesses described to the police, jealousy, flirtation, and emotional conflict inside of the home. 21:59.641 --> 22:04.727 [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes defied about buddhal's relationships with other women, ones that he was related to. 22:05.268 --> 22:14.438 [SPEAKER_00]: Others hinted Emma herself had become involved with one of the bodice, a young banker nearly half a rage that had mysteriously moved out the day after the murder. 22:14.939 --> 22:16.781 [SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps he'd help killing buddhal. 22:17.620 --> 22:34.885 [SPEAKER_00]: The entire case took on an atmosphere of social collapse among supposedly respectable people, which fascinated the gas of hungry readers, because Americans in the 1850s remained obsessed with hidden corruption beneath the wealth and status. 22:36.265 --> 22:45.893 [SPEAKER_00]: Bonds tree represented respectability, but the murder suggested something ugly looking beneath the polished surface. 22:47.254 --> 22:52.879 [SPEAKER_00]: And meanwhile, investigators kept circling Emma Cunningham as a number one suspect. 22:53.799 --> 22:57.542 [SPEAKER_00]: One particularly strange detail drew enormous attention. 22:58.342 --> 23:01.704 [SPEAKER_00]: Corn is believed the killer might have been left handed. 23:02.965 --> 23:06.227 [SPEAKER_00]: Now today, that sounds almost absurd. 23:07.528 --> 23:16.234 [SPEAKER_00]: But 19th century criminal investigation frequently attached significance to observations modern detectives will consider nearly meaningless. 23:17.254 --> 23:20.616 [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually Emma Cunningham was arrested and charged 23:24.749 --> 23:30.152 [SPEAKER_00]: The trial that followed became one of the great public spectacles of 19th century New York. 23:31.072 --> 23:37.235 [SPEAKER_00]: Crowds packed outside core rooms daily, hoping the glimpse am I entering or leaving. 23:38.276 --> 23:51.603 [SPEAKER_00]: Newspapers described the clothing, her emotional reactions, even the expressions on her face during testimony, and in many ways the trial became less about evidence, and more about morality. 23:53.048 --> 23:56.770 [SPEAKER_00]: and what society deemed right and wrong. 23:57.470 --> 24:06.716 [SPEAKER_00]: And it seemed like every hooker and town with nice teeth who took the stand went on about what a lovely fellow but though was and how he wouldn't hurt a flea. 24:07.616 --> 24:14.260 [SPEAKER_00]: With the brass prescribing that he wouldn't need to have gone to hookers if Emma would take care of business in the bedroom. 24:14.986 --> 24:21.731 [SPEAKER_00]: Prosecutors knew that if they wanted to convict them a conning ham, they would have to convince the public that she was morally corrupt. 24:22.391 --> 24:33.178 [SPEAKER_00]: Then many people would assume she'd automatically be capable of the murder, but despite enormous public suspicion, the actual evidence against cutting ham remained weak. 24:34.159 --> 24:42.945 [SPEAKER_00]: There were no eyewitnesses to the killing, no definitive murder weapon tied directly to Emma, no confession, only suspicion. 24:44.459 --> 24:54.861 [SPEAKER_00]: circumstance, and emotion, and then had the fans deployed one of the strangest arguments imaginable, the modernies. 24:55.361 --> 25:02.442 [SPEAKER_00]: They argued Emma Cunningham was physically incapable of carrying out such a brutal murder, because she was a woman. 25:03.903 --> 25:07.963 [SPEAKER_00]: The weakest sex defense, Victorian society viewed 25:11.487 --> 25:21.074 [SPEAKER_00]: Women were portrayed as morally pure, yet dangerously seductive, emotionally fragile, yet capable of manipulating men through sexuality. 25:22.815 --> 25:26.298 [SPEAKER_00]: But extreme physical violence remained coded as masculine. 25:27.167 --> 25:32.711 [SPEAKER_00]: Emma's lawyers leaned directly into that assumption, and astonishingly, it worked. 25:33.752 --> 25:35.373 [SPEAKER_00]: Emma Cunningham was acquitted. 25:36.674 --> 25:42.137 [SPEAKER_00]: After all this area, all the headlines, all the moral outrage. 25:43.518 --> 25:49.662 [SPEAKER_00]: She walked free, but the story, now, is still wasn't finished. 25:50.603 --> 25:53.325 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the strangest chapter was only beginning. 25:57.285 --> 26:01.150 [SPEAKER_00]: Emery nude efforts to claim Harvey Badell's estate. 26:02.852 --> 26:04.874 [SPEAKER_00]: And then she announced something extraordinary. 26:05.916 --> 26:09.340 [SPEAKER_00]: She claimed she was pregnant with Badell's child. 26:10.940 --> 26:15.821 [SPEAKER_00]: If true, the inheritance, implications, could become an illness. 26:17.042 --> 26:19.602 [SPEAKER_00]: But authorities quickly grew suspicious. 26:20.383 --> 26:23.263 [SPEAKER_00]: Investigators hired by Pedal's family. 26:23.803 --> 26:34.046 [SPEAKER_00]: Discovered Anama had allegedly approached the doctor privately seeking help obtaining an infant she could later present as her own after pretending to give birth. 26:34.966 --> 26:36.667 [SPEAKER_00]: The scandal exploded again. 26:37.583 --> 26:45.088 [SPEAKER_00]: And during the investigation, another revelation emerged that seemed almost unbelievable if by 19th century standards. 26:45.949 --> 26:49.131 [SPEAKER_00]: Emma's secret marriage itself may have been fraudulent. 26:49.892 --> 27:04.602 [SPEAKER_00]: Authorities claimed another man had impersonated Harvey Badell during the ceremony, a fake husband, a fake marriage, possibly a fake pregnancy, by now the public barely knew what to believe anymore. 27:05.598 --> 27:12.487 [SPEAKER_00]: Emma Cunningham had transformed from a murder suspect into something mythological within New York tabloids. 27:13.348 --> 27:24.161 [SPEAKER_00]: Depending on which newspaper someone read, she was either a manipulative criminal mastermind, a desperate widow driven beyond reason, or a convenient villain. 27:24.842 --> 27:30.683 [SPEAKER_00]: created by society made deeply uncomfortable by an attractive and vicious woman. 27:31.184 --> 27:46.087 [SPEAKER_00]: And yeah sure, in this modern world, there are hillbilly neckbeards who make all Emma a hall, but at the end of the day, she was a woman with five kids in a male oriented, unjust world trying to survive. 27:46.547 --> 27:49.848 [SPEAKER_00]: And at the end of the day, there was one uncomfortable fact. 27:50.728 --> 28:01.041 [SPEAKER_00]: No one ever truly proved, who killed Havipadal, because despite the public's obsession with amaconningam, Havipadal possessed plenty enemies. 28:02.143 --> 28:08.170 [SPEAKER_00]: Business rivals eat fucked over, financial disputes, romantic entanglements, 28:09.088 --> 28:12.510 [SPEAKER_00]: Elle, but seemed they were asked fucking every hooker in town with a toothache. 28:13.010 --> 28:20.634 [SPEAKER_00]: They were hardly a stand-up guy, and let's not forget by his 18 year old cousins on account, they were having an affair. 28:20.954 --> 28:31.600 [SPEAKER_00]: And this were New York's high society, not Kentucky for Christ's six, overlooked in the one-sided tabloid coverage, Harvey Badell, was detested in many circles. 28:32.040 --> 28:37.443 [SPEAKER_00]: In our topsy notes and said Badell, had general warts, the size of ginger roots. 28:38.023 --> 28:44.268 [SPEAKER_00]: Some would say that every dog has his day, and but thou was just a mud who met his fate. 28:45.189 --> 28:54.576 [SPEAKER_00]: Many historians now believe that investigators focus too narrowly on Emma, because the story fit Victorian morality too perfect. 28:55.217 --> 28:58.620 [SPEAKER_00]: A sexually independent woman destroying a wealthy man. 28:59.420 --> 29:04.885 [SPEAKER_00]: It was irresistible, especially to newspapers making fortunes from scandal and gossip. 29:05.931 --> 29:09.053 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a cunning ham, never got that money that she chased after. 29:11.275 --> 29:14.417 [SPEAKER_00]: And she spent the rest of her life drifting steadily downward. 29:15.578 --> 29:18.340 [SPEAKER_00]: The notoriety, my own man never disappeared. 29:19.561 --> 29:21.242 [SPEAKER_00]: She will always be a tater woman. 29:22.343 --> 29:29.167 [SPEAKER_00]: She died 30 years after her lover in poverty, and was buried in Brooklyn Greenwood, Cemetery. 29:29.928 --> 29:32.069 [SPEAKER_00]: Only a stone's throw away from her lover. 29:36.570 --> 29:40.335 [SPEAKER_00]: Not the blood, not the fake marriage, the fake baby. 29:41.703 --> 29:46.487 [SPEAKER_00]: Not even the unanswered murder, but how familiar all of it still feels. 29:47.368 --> 29:50.751 [SPEAKER_00]: The public consume and tragedy as an attainment. 29:51.492 --> 30:07.085 [SPEAKER_00]: The press shaping narratives before evidence exists, a woman canceled, a female, judged differently from men and wealth, disguised in corruption, with a truth buried somewhere beneath 30:09.657 --> 30:14.578 [SPEAKER_00]: Almost two centuries later, New York has changed enormously. 30:16.638 --> 30:19.379 [SPEAKER_00]: But human beings, they haven't. 30:30.941 --> 30:33.942 [SPEAKER_01]: Till death, till us part, 30:36.563 --> 30:55.869 [SPEAKER_01]: Till death, till death, till death, till I spawned, until death, until death, until death. 30:56.429 --> 30:59.230 [SPEAKER_01]: I either overtake you, 31:00.405 --> 31:30.198 [SPEAKER_01]: To hold and you have, through dark and to bed To my heart doesn't move, I choose you And I don't take you For better and worse, I'll accept your thirst If smiles and too much I'd want On the wife of a bad man On the lover of the damned Sleep tight with a killer at night Every night despite a kiss a killer good night 31:31.080 --> 31:53.937 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm the wife of a bad man, I'm the lover of the day Sleep tight with a girl at night every night, I kiss a killer good night I don't take you through sickness and health Through dirty cash wealth, through the broken, the bruised eye take you 31:56.706 --> 32:24.360 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't take you to every night I don't sleep Every secret you pee by solidly that was a step by you I'm the wife of a bad man I'm the lover of a damn It's the type with a killer at night every night Despite a kiss a killer at night I'm the wife of a bad man I'm the lover of a damn 32:24.981 --> 32:32.771 [SPEAKER_01]: Sleep tight with the killer at night, every night, Just by a kiss of killer good night. 32:32.891 --> 32:34.433 [SPEAKER_01]: Two, one, two, one.