July 9, 2026

Two Deaths, One Date: Patience Boston & the Purrinton Family | York & Augusta, Maine

Two Deaths, One Date: Patience Boston & the Purrinton Family | York & Augusta, Maine
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On July 9, 1734, a Native woman named Patience Boston confessed to drowning an eight-year-old boy in a well — then walked two miles to turn herself in. Seventy-two years later, to the day, a respected Maine farmer spent an evening sharpening an axe and reading his Bible by candlelight before murdering nearly his entire family.

Two tragedies. Same calendar date. Both set in colonial Maine, centuries ago.

Two documents, centuries-old that survive only because someone who knew the people involved decided to write down what happened — a pair of Puritan ministers shaping one woman's last words into a lesson for their congregation; a midwife, recording only what she witnessed, with no agenda at all, though her heartbreak is apparent.

This episode pairs both cases – set in York and Augusta, Maine – tracing the unlikely survival of their stories throughout history, and asking who gets to tell the story of the dead, and why it matters.

This episode exists because July 9 is our cohost Cassie's birthday — and when that date flagged two colonial Maine tragedies separated by exactly seventy-two years, it felt like too strange a pairing to pass up. I had no idea quite how dark it would get when I picked up the mantle of telling these stories – sorry, Cassie.

Visit our website! Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Patreon, & more! There are so many ways that you can support the show: BuyMeACoffee, Spreaker, or by leaving a rating & review on Apple Podcasts.

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When I had the moment, I had the epiphany. I

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was like, this very specifically has to be my next

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one because of the.

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Date, because it's my birthday.

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Yes, barring any unexpected circumstances, this episode is going to

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come out on your birthday, July nine.

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Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday.

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Do you so?

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This episode pairs two unrelated tragedies that happened exactly seventy

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two years apart on the very same calendar date. Hi Cassie,

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Hi Caitlin, Hi creepy people. Oh hellou hell. This is

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PNW Hansen Homicides, where we chat about true crime, the paranormal,

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and all the spooky things that happen in the Pacific Northwest.

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All of them, all of them or the PNW I

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f you're nasty. Oh yeah, And we do a tarot

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reading at the end of every episode for a little

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deeper insight into our topic.

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Oh right, that old thing. So this is like kind

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of a little late in the game sort of. But

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do you remember it? You know, it was like last summer,

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I think right around it was. It was a holiday weekend.

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I want to say it was the Memorial Day weekend.

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I went and did an interview for a true crime

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TV show.

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Yes, I remember, I wasn't there, just Caitlin exactly.

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Well, I bet you remember it because they sent me

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with some goodies.

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Yeah they did. Yeah, it got drunk.

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Yeah, those Irish flag pins and then we were gifted

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a bottle of Jamison.

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Each yo, thank you.

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Yeah. So the show is actually it's it's called Bloodline Detectives,

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and I had to do a little poking around to

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find out where I could watch it. I'm sure it's different,

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like in all different regions and stuff. I think I

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ended up finding it on to Be and it was free.

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To watch, so oh okay.

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So it's actually two episodes that aired actually all the

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way back in I think January that I'm in. It's

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season six, episodes fourteen and fifteen. Pretty exciting. I think

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it goes without saying that at some point I will

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have to cover the two cases that the show talked about.

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They're very interesting. It'll probably be a while because now

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that I've I've talked about it, I don't you know,

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I want to surprise.

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Everybody, right, I haven't watched it yet, so I have

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to go find it. I tried, and I could only

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find it on like YouTube, but then that they didn't

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have those episodes or that season out yet.

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Yeah, it is recent enough that probably you would want

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to watch it on TB or it's on like Pluto TV.

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There's there's actually a bunch of places you can watch it.

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Caitlyn's famous.

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I wonder if anyone like watched it and was like, hey,

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that's Caitlin.

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That would be really to be a hopeful homicide. Why

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didn't you tell us that you watched it? Yeah, female us, Yeah.

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If you watch it, let us know and just know

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that the camera adds ten pounds and I think they

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had at least three cameras on me. And it was

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very hot. So if i'm if I'm like listening at all,

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you know, just a couple of disclaimers.

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You're beautiful. Your skin is just glowing. That's the style

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right now, glowy skin.

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So you're yeah, Well, I will say that after kind

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of taking a break from doing video for the podcast,

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coming across the episodes in that timeframe, I was like, wow,

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I've I guess I didn't realize how I'm like just

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not used to seeing my face and stuff. Yeah, I

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was like self conscious in a way that I haven't

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been since we first started doing video for the podcast,

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and I was like.

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Oh god, I know I would be too, but that's

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not what it's about exactly.

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I was like, well, listen, hopefully I don't look like

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a swamp troll or something. But yeah, it's really not

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about how good or bad I look. But selfishly, you know,

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you do hope that you, you know, look reasonably well put

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together when you appear on camera.

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Yeah. Well, I don't know.

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I've watched a lot of documentaries and some people look

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questionable on camera.

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But yeah, it's fine.

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Yeah, well, everyone go watch it and tell Caylen how

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beautiful she is and what a good job she did.

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Yes, please, Well I'm excited for this. Obviously. We talked

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about this offline before we started recording. I had an idea.

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Last night. I had an episode that was completely ready

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to go. It actually has show notes prepared when we

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upload it to Apple and everything. And then I thought,

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you know what, this pattern of like seemingly kind of

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having my shit together for a little bit, it's really

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rubbing me the wrong way. Love that, so let's introduce

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some chaos. But I'm like, I wasn't looking for this.

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It just happened.

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Okay, it was meant to be.

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It was meant to be. I was watching a show

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that at this point it's like kind of a historical democracy,

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and they were talking about like colonial days in America,

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like back when it was the thirteen Colonies.

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Not Pacific Northwest.

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No. No, But something that I googled last night while

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I was watching this documentary set me off down this path,

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this rabbit hole.

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I love if you will, I love it.

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I love when plans just get switched last minute. It's

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my favorite thing.

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Yeah. Yeah, so I knew it all the time.

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We talk about this all the time, Like I had

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this other episode and I just wasn't feeling it and

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I had to go find something else.

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I mean, I was totally feeling that episode. But the

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thing is, when I had the moment, I had the epiphany,

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I was like, this very specifically has to be my

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next one because of the date, because.

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Because it's my birthday.

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Yes, barring any unexpected circumstances, this episode is going to

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come out on your birthday, July ninth.

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Happy birthday to me, Happy birthday to you.

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So this episode pairs two unrelated tragedies that happened exactly

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seventy two years apart, on the very same calendar date,

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Oh creepy July ninth. That date lines up with, as

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I've already said, a certain co host birthday, and both

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stories are set in and around Portland. That is Portland, Maine.

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Oh you trickster, a city to whom Portland, Oregon is

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considered the coin toss sibling city on the opposite coast.

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That's right. Do you know the other name?

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Oh? I do. I'm about to get into what Okay.

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When Francis Pettygrove of Maine and Asa Lovejoy of Massachusetts

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decided to make the Oregon Territory their new home in

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eighteen forty five, both wanted to name it after their

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own hometown. A Yeah, they did.

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I feel like every time I go on any type

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of tour of this in Portland, we get this story

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and I just love it.

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I honestly, I don't think I had ever heard this before. Really, dude,

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Like it was like being hit with a lightning bolt repeatedly.

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Every time I was like looking at and like I'm

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not even to the actual topics yet, but like, holy shit,

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it was like being hit with lightning bolts repeatedly. Everything

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about this was just like, oh, and this and this.

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I was so excited.

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I'm a vote for coin toss the other direction. But

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it's fine.

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In the end, it was a coin toss that decided

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between Boston and Portland, and the rest is history. But

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did you know, Cassie Today the eighteen thirty five Portland

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penny is preserved by the Oregon Historical Society and on

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display at their downtown Portland Museum.

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Oh well, okay, the penny they used for the coin toss.

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Yep C, I know right, want to see it. That's

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an old Niosh pany. So, the two cases that I'm

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going to be talking about today are a deliberate, intentional

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choice for this episode, precisely because of the odd parallels

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and connections. My research even turned up an additional, genuinely

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unplanned synchronicity. I realized there's another one as I was

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finishing writing the case literally today. What the first one

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is a death that is very, very sad, and I

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feel weird sounding excited about it right now. But in

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the second case, the death occurs at around three am

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on July thirtieth, eighteen oh six, and that is the

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date that was anticipated to be my own date of birth, Aka,

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it was my doo date, but just obviously centuries later, right, Yeah,

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no one else that old. It's me to be born

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in eighteen oh six.

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She actually is a vampire.

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Right. Just strange things like that cluster around this story.

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There's all these like kind of little syncreticities. And I'm

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going to tell you about a couple little things that

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got me going down this road. Both cases also share

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a second, quieter thread. They rely on documents written by

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the people closest to them. In patients Boston's case, two

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Puritan ministers shaping her words into a conversion narrative. In

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the Puritan case, a midwife named Martha Ballard, writing in

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her own diary the same week of the event, with

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no agenda at all beyond bearing witness. In seventeen thirty four,

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Maine was not yet its own state. It was a

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remote district of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and York was

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one of its oldest English settlements, first established in the

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sixteen twenties, repeatedly burned and rebuilt through decades of conflict

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between English colonists and the region's native nations. By the

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time this story takes place, York had a courthouse, a

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meeting house, and a jail, which in the source material

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they referred to it as the old jail, but it's

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spelled gaol, which all, yes, huh, it's apparently an archaic

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or traditional British spelling of jail, but it's literally just

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pronounced jail.

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Okay, fancy jail things in the.

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UK be wild. It was built in seventeen nineteen and

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still stands today as one of the oldest public buildings

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in the United States. Wow, over fifty years before we

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became a country. Yeah, I mean before we even tried

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to become a country. It sets a tone that the

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oldest building still standing today is like, oh, one of

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our earliest jails.

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Yeah, I feel so lico civilized. We are proud of

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ourselves that we can put people away.

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Well, you know, the trend definitely continued, I guess, so

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there's that. It feels like that really captures our vibe.

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Yeah.

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This was also a world built on two intertwined systems

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of forced labor and forced belonging. Native indentured servitude an

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African enslavement. Patience Boston's life touched both. She was indentured

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to an English family as a small child, after her

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mother's death, she would go on to marry an enslaved

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black whaler.

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Oh yes, okay.

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Nearly everyone she lived among, worked for, or was bound to,

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held some form of power over her that she had

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no say in or very little say in her story.

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It's important that that doesn't get separated from the structure

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of it. It's the frame the entire tragedy sits inside.

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Patience was born December twenty sixth, seventeen eleven on Montamoy

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Island to a couple that were members of the Nauset tribe.

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The pronunciation guide that I found says it literally looks

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like it says, nah sit, you know, nah sit, you know,

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go ahead and sit down.

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I am.

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Her parents, John Samson and Sarah Jethrow, are described in

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at least one source as coming from high ranking families

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within their community, which is I feel like kind of

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a significant detail about her history because whatever standing her

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family held ultimately really meant nothing within the colonial system,

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especially when you think about that's the same system that

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would go on to indenture patients as a young child.

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So I mean, these are people that are of some

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you know, whether it may have been more fractional for

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you know, one or the other of her parents, but

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they are of Native descent. I get the feeling that

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they were both like full native. Sarah Jethro died when

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Patience was just three years old. After her mother's death,

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Patience's father indentured her to a man named Paul. Though

233
00:16:10.919 --> 00:16:14.200
it's not a critical detail in the story, his last

234
00:16:14.279 --> 00:16:19.559
name either Krowell or crow. I just couldn't really confirm

235
00:16:19.679 --> 00:16:26.639
definitively across historical records. Okay, kind of fuck that guy though, anyway,

236
00:16:26.759 --> 00:16:31.720
because who's like, yeah, I want to indenture a three

237
00:16:31.799 --> 00:16:32.440
year old.

238
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I have questions about that.

239
00:16:38.399 --> 00:16:41.120
And I do feel like this next little section here

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00:16:41.200 --> 00:16:44.200
is probably gonna have some answers for you, because I

241
00:16:44.320 --> 00:16:47.519
kind of had the same reaction. Actually, wait, I don't

242
00:16:47.519 --> 00:16:48.200
want the answers.

243
00:16:48.240 --> 00:16:50.559
I changed my mind. I don't want to take it back.

244
00:16:52.639 --> 00:16:55.679
Well, I'm afraid we're already into deep.

245
00:16:55.960 --> 00:16:56.799
It's my birthday.

246
00:16:56.840 --> 00:17:04.240
Why nothing bad has even happened on your birthday yet?

247
00:17:04.880 --> 00:17:12.039
So the fact that Patience is indentured to presumably a

248
00:17:12.400 --> 00:17:17.440
you know, maybe not even wealthy, but essentially an English family,

249
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it says a lot about the precariousness of Native family

250
00:17:23.079 --> 00:17:28.480
life under English colonial law, her father grieving the loss

251
00:17:28.480 --> 00:17:31.839
of his wife, handing his daughter over to an English

252
00:17:31.920 --> 00:17:36.400
household because the system really gave him few other paths

253
00:17:36.440 --> 00:17:42.119
to ensure she'd be fed and housed. Oh, I don't

254
00:17:42.160 --> 00:17:46.119
know that it was necessarily a situation where he couldn't

255
00:17:46.400 --> 00:17:51.119
care for her outright, or maybe more so that just

256
00:17:51.559 --> 00:17:55.079
like I can't deal. I don't know that it was

257
00:17:55.160 --> 00:17:58.680
necessarily that he didn't have the resources. It might have

258
00:17:58.839 --> 00:18:03.119
just been more like, personally, I don't have the bandwidth.

259
00:18:03.920 --> 00:18:06.039
Yeah, that would be really hard.

260
00:18:07.200 --> 00:18:12.000
Yeah. In either case, it's ultimately like Sucksville for patients,

261
00:18:12.400 --> 00:18:13.599
I will say, uh.

262
00:18:13.720 --> 00:18:14.480
Yeah.

263
00:18:14.519 --> 00:18:18.759
So after the death of Paul's wife, patients began to

264
00:18:18.920 --> 00:18:24.519
exhibit what most would categorize as either typical teenage behavior

265
00:18:25.559 --> 00:18:29.079
kind of keeping bad company and sneaking out.

266
00:18:29.359 --> 00:18:31.400
Okay, she could have been a kid of.

267
00:18:31.440 --> 00:18:36.519
The nineteen nineties. When I read some of that they

268
00:18:36.519 --> 00:18:42.240
did back then, I honestly was like, we're teenagers sneaking

269
00:18:42.319 --> 00:18:46.599
out in the seventeen hundreds. I guess, yeah, probably since

270
00:18:46.640 --> 00:18:47.480
the dawn of time.

271
00:18:48.279 --> 00:18:51.799
It's probably easier because they didn't have cameras or cell phones,

272
00:18:52.279 --> 00:18:54.519
right alarm system exactly.

273
00:18:54.720 --> 00:18:59.359
Yeah, though perhaps In hindsight, these behaviors may have been

274
00:18:59.440 --> 00:19:04.039
the earliest signs of her childhood trauma and unprocessed grief

275
00:19:04.920 --> 00:19:08.400
experiences and feelings that she had neither the language to

276
00:19:08.559 --> 00:19:13.440
express nor the tools to heal from. Patients began drinking

277
00:19:13.559 --> 00:19:18.480
heavily as her term of servitude ended. Later, she would

278
00:19:18.480 --> 00:19:22.559
marry Caesar Boston, who was well acquainted with the struggles

279
00:19:22.559 --> 00:19:28.839
of bondage as a literally enslaved black man working on

280
00:19:29.119 --> 00:19:30.359
whaling ships.

281
00:19:30.880 --> 00:19:34.960
So that would be just crazy. You have to be

282
00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:35.559
a whaler.

283
00:19:35.799 --> 00:19:40.359
Like to listen, there's sh there's a lot that like

284
00:19:40.640 --> 00:19:45.400
intellectually from like looking back through like a twenty twenty

285
00:19:45.480 --> 00:19:49.240
six lens that I'm like, like, my head doesn't really

286
00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:56.359
I can't go there. Yeah, Patience was a real one

287
00:19:57.000 --> 00:20:02.519
choosing to bind herself in servitude along inside him. Wow,

288
00:20:03.279 --> 00:20:07.079
though Massachusetts law did not require it of her as

289
00:20:07.119 --> 00:20:10.480
a free native woman. And at this point, like I said,

290
00:20:10.559 --> 00:20:15.160
her you know, indentured servitude, like that term had ended

291
00:20:15.279 --> 00:20:18.839
from when her dad basically you know, handed her over.

292
00:20:19.680 --> 00:20:23.640
But if she wanted to stay with her husband, binding

293
00:20:23.680 --> 00:20:28.200
herself to the same household was practically speaking, kind of

294
00:20:28.240 --> 00:20:32.400
the only way to do it. Because Caesar, as an

295
00:20:32.559 --> 00:20:36.640
enslaved person, uh literally had no say in the matter

296
00:20:36.759 --> 00:20:41.240
of like where he went, what he did, had no

297
00:20:41.519 --> 00:20:43.039
bodily autonomy.

298
00:20:43.799 --> 00:20:48.039
So it's interesting to me that he could get married though.

299
00:20:48.559 --> 00:20:52.359
Yeah, the documentary that I was watching, you know, they

300
00:20:52.440 --> 00:20:56.839
talked quite a bit about the Transatlantic slave trade, but

301
00:20:56.960 --> 00:21:01.079
they also, i mean just about slavery in general in

302
00:21:01.160 --> 00:21:05.799
the colonies. And one of the things that kind of

303
00:21:06.279 --> 00:21:11.200
obviously we know about the three fifths, it was designed

304
00:21:11.240 --> 00:21:15.200
basically to give the South more votes, oh, because they

305
00:21:15.240 --> 00:21:17.799
had a ton more people, but just most of them

306
00:21:17.880 --> 00:21:20.119
weren't even really counted like people.

307
00:21:20.400 --> 00:21:20.519
Right.

308
00:21:21.039 --> 00:21:24.039
I'm just trying to do like a super service level

309
00:21:24.519 --> 00:21:29.680
explanation here. But one of the things that kind of

310
00:21:29.720 --> 00:21:33.200
the Founders and the Framers had to sort of negotiate

311
00:21:33.440 --> 00:21:36.680
was there were a lot of people in northern States

312
00:21:36.720 --> 00:21:41.279
that were like very adamantly opposed to slavery. I think

313
00:21:41.319 --> 00:21:45.720
we all, you know, intellectually understand that on some level,

314
00:21:46.319 --> 00:21:50.720
but seeing how passionate the debate was as they were

315
00:21:50.799 --> 00:21:54.920
writing the Constitution, and seeing how close our country in

316
00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.359
the very very early days came to like very nearly

317
00:21:59.559 --> 00:22:03.240
just not even like just dissolving because they're like, hey,

318
00:22:03.440 --> 00:22:06.400
this is you know what, we can't agree on anything,

319
00:22:06.559 --> 00:22:07.240
so fuck it.

320
00:22:07.759 --> 00:22:12.319
Wow weird. Yeah, I know, not a lot's changed.

321
00:22:12.519 --> 00:22:20.200
Yeah, strange. One of like the really like the sticking

322
00:22:20.279 --> 00:22:24.279
points was sort of the South did not want to

323
00:22:24.279 --> 00:22:28.480
do away with specifically the Transatlantic slave trade, which meant

324
00:22:28.599 --> 00:22:34.839
they were still actively kidnapping people from Africa and bringing

325
00:22:35.079 --> 00:22:40.839
them here versus you know, having to essentially depend on

326
00:22:41.799 --> 00:22:48.680
your enslaved workforce reproducing to kind of maintain.

327
00:22:49.119 --> 00:22:51.759
That makes sense. Yeah, this is gross.

328
00:22:52.359 --> 00:22:55.839
Yeah. When they were writing up the Constitution, one of

329
00:22:55.880 --> 00:23:00.440
the things that was negotiated was that Congress would not

330
00:23:01.200 --> 00:23:05.799
make the Transatlantic slave trade and bringing in new slaves.

331
00:23:05.799 --> 00:23:09.240
They could not outlaw that for twenty years. And the

332
00:23:09.359 --> 00:23:14.079
reason is that the plantation owners in the South firmly

333
00:23:14.160 --> 00:23:18.359
believed that if they could keep bringing importing essentially more

334
00:23:18.400 --> 00:23:23.319
humans for the next twenty years, that once that twenty

335
00:23:23.400 --> 00:23:27.039
year period ended, either they would just you know, they

336
00:23:27.039 --> 00:23:31.079
would just basically like, oh, well, we're going to either

337
00:23:31.200 --> 00:23:36.599
convince or browbeat the Northern States, or worst case scenario,

338
00:23:36.839 --> 00:23:40.880
if they do end that aspect of you know, slavery

339
00:23:41.079 --> 00:23:47.920
and you know, new trading, we will have enough literal

340
00:23:48.000 --> 00:23:54.400
humans that we own that they will just reproduce. We

341
00:23:54.480 --> 00:23:57.400
won't have to bring in more because we'll have enough.

342
00:23:57.440 --> 00:23:59.759
Then twenty years is a long time.

343
00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.119
It's so upsetting, it's so gross. Oh my god, so gross.

344
00:24:05.079 --> 00:24:08.480
And I say all I mean just the timing of

345
00:24:08.559 --> 00:24:11.880
like coming across this case as I was watching that

346
00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:15.880
documentary about like you know, the formation, the founding of

347
00:24:16.119 --> 00:24:20.359
America and you know, our War for Independence, like so

348
00:24:20.440 --> 00:24:26.480
many unique and interesting like details about like America's history,

349
00:24:26.680 --> 00:24:30.960
like from basically like day one. It's like, uh BC

350
00:24:32.359 --> 00:24:33.200
versus a D.

351
00:24:34.440 --> 00:24:36.519
Yeah, oh jeez.

352
00:24:37.599 --> 00:24:40.400
But it's like it's such a huge component of her

353
00:24:40.559 --> 00:24:46.640
story because she's a native woman who was you know, crazy,

354
00:24:47.039 --> 00:24:49.839
She actually was supposedly part of a family that had

355
00:24:49.920 --> 00:24:52.839
some sort of status and standing in society, and she

356
00:24:53.079 --> 00:24:57.160
ends up becoming an indentured servant. Then she goes on

357
00:24:57.400 --> 00:25:03.000
to marry a black man who is enslaved. Literal bondage

358
00:25:03.200 --> 00:25:07.839
was such a huge theme in her life from from

359
00:25:07.960 --> 00:25:13.119
start to finish. It just is like, I don't know, anyways,

360
00:25:13.319 --> 00:25:16.359
I really went I really went hard there for a

361
00:25:16.440 --> 00:25:17.799
little bit. And probably some of.

362
00:25:17.759 --> 00:25:21.880
That nobody you've explained it good because I had the question, right.

363
00:25:22.359 --> 00:25:24.160
I know, but it like I was, like, this is

364
00:25:24.200 --> 00:25:27.599
totally off book. I have so much here, but like

365
00:25:27.960 --> 00:25:31.119
I just I found it so interesting watching that and

366
00:25:31.160 --> 00:25:33.319
then like the tie in with this, I can't I

367
00:25:33.319 --> 00:25:35.640
can't help myself. I don't know how to shut up.

368
00:25:35.799 --> 00:25:37.559
It's not in the script, but here we are.

369
00:25:38.160 --> 00:25:38.680
That's okay.

370
00:25:40.960 --> 00:25:46.240
The couple had two children together, both sadly dying in infancy.

371
00:25:47.480 --> 00:25:49.599
Oh oh god.

372
00:25:50.920 --> 00:25:52.960
Yeah, a lot of infant death.

373
00:25:53.920 --> 00:25:57.000
Yeah, yeah, on that time. Mm hmm.

374
00:25:58.000 --> 00:26:01.240
I think between the two famis that were kind of

375
00:26:01.680 --> 00:26:06.359
focusing on, like the two kind of main pillar women

376
00:26:06.519 --> 00:26:10.519
of these stories, I think they have a combined like

377
00:26:10.599 --> 00:26:14.000
at least six infant deaths between the two of them.

378
00:26:15.119 --> 00:26:18.240
Why babies, I know.

379
00:26:18.759 --> 00:26:21.799
Very very sad. That's why I guess a lot of

380
00:26:21.839 --> 00:26:26.119
times they would hold off on naming babies until they

381
00:26:27.240 --> 00:26:31.319
or they would give them like a placeholder name. Yeah,

382
00:26:31.599 --> 00:26:35.559
Like they wouldn't give them like the you wouldn't become like,

383
00:26:36.160 --> 00:26:39.880
oh I'm John's son, you wouldn't become John junior until you, like,

384
00:26:40.079 --> 00:26:42.880
you know, prove that you weren't just gonna die of

385
00:26:42.960 --> 00:26:49.640
dysentery immediately. Yeah, Or they would name more than one boy,

386
00:26:49.880 --> 00:26:52.960
John right, because that's the namesake.

387
00:26:53.079 --> 00:26:55.720
Like God, you get one of them to stick.

388
00:26:55.960 --> 00:27:01.359
Jesus just so dark. According to the roughly three hundred

389
00:27:01.480 --> 00:27:06.680
year old court and church records, Patients told people, including

390
00:27:06.680 --> 00:27:10.920
her husband and later even the authorities, that she had

391
00:27:11.000 --> 00:27:14.839
thoughts of murdering both children before they were even born,

392
00:27:16.400 --> 00:27:20.279
though authorities declined to act on her confession for lack

393
00:27:20.319 --> 00:27:24.519
of any evidence that a crime had actually occurred. Twice

394
00:27:25.119 --> 00:27:30.480
twice they said, she's confessed and there's no evidence twice.

395
00:27:30.480 --> 00:27:34.400
In fact, it was clear that she blamed herself for

396
00:27:34.480 --> 00:27:41.119
their deaths, which is rooted in the Puritan religion and

397
00:27:41.160 --> 00:27:45.359
culture of the period. Bad things happened for a reason,

398
00:27:46.119 --> 00:27:51.160
because you're a goddamn sinner. That's terrible, really awful.

399
00:27:51.720 --> 00:27:55.079
But she said that she had thoughts of harming.

400
00:27:54.640 --> 00:27:57.799
Them, of killing them before they were even born.

401
00:27:58.160 --> 00:28:01.759
I mean, that's rough mental health stuff right there.

402
00:28:02.279 --> 00:28:06.920
Mm hmmm, nailed it. It's gonna come back. Perhaps that

403
00:28:07.039 --> 00:28:12.200
explains her insistence and the eventual charge for their second

404
00:28:12.359 --> 00:28:17.640
child's death. While in jail awaiting trial, she became afraid

405
00:28:17.680 --> 00:28:21.799
of dying with what she called a lie in my mouth.

406
00:28:22.480 --> 00:28:26.200
This led to her eventually changing her plea to not guilty,

407
00:28:26.279 --> 00:28:31.079
and the court actually acquitted her. It's possible that postpartum depression,

408
00:28:31.759 --> 00:28:36.039
complex trauma from a lifetime of forced removal and servitude

409
00:28:36.079 --> 00:28:40.119
as a child, an undiagnosed mental health crisis, or some

410
00:28:40.200 --> 00:28:43.440
combination that honestly none of us are going to be

411
00:28:43.519 --> 00:28:48.799
able to readily name or understand from the distance of

412
00:28:50.079 --> 00:28:55.039
literal centuries later. It's possible that those were contributing factors,

413
00:28:55.079 --> 00:29:00.839
and her bizarre documented pattern of false self accusation occurring

414
00:29:00.920 --> 00:29:07.440
years before the actual crime she would ultimately undeniably commit.

415
00:29:08.400 --> 00:29:13.640
Oh shit, oh shit. After her acquittal, Patience left her

416
00:29:13.720 --> 00:29:17.200
husband and asked to be bound instead to a man

417
00:29:17.319 --> 00:29:22.720
named Joseph Bailey of Casco Bay. It seems almost unfathomable

418
00:29:23.359 --> 00:29:28.200
Patients essentially chose her own next master, rather than remaining

419
00:29:28.240 --> 00:29:32.279
with the husband that she literally married and had bound

420
00:29:32.279 --> 00:29:36.680
herself to up to that point. While in Bailey's household,

421
00:29:36.880 --> 00:29:41.960
Patients confessed to murdering a third child. Authorities took this

422
00:29:42.160 --> 00:29:47.599
confession seriously enough and did investigate. Though midwives examined her

423
00:29:47.799 --> 00:29:52.680
and searchers looked for a grave, ultimately they found nothing because,

424
00:29:52.759 --> 00:29:56.440
as it turned out, the child had never existed at all.

425
00:29:57.359 --> 00:30:01.519
Oh, I was thinking maybe she had like a miscaracter something, which.

426
00:30:01.279 --> 00:30:06.160
Would also be another lovely parallel to modern day America.

427
00:30:07.000 --> 00:30:11.279
Right, it's not murder if you have a miscarriage.

428
00:30:10.680 --> 00:30:15.720
It certainly isn't hot take. I don't whoo call us

429
00:30:15.720 --> 00:30:20.839
two hot takes. This is yet another documented instance of

430
00:30:20.920 --> 00:30:24.799
patients confessing to a murder that she did not commit,

431
00:30:24.920 --> 00:30:28.720
that literally did not happen, and it raises the same

432
00:30:28.960 --> 00:30:34.359
unanswerable questions as the first. I mean, what was actually

433
00:30:34.480 --> 00:30:38.240
happening inside this woman's mind in a world with absolutely

434
00:30:38.279 --> 00:30:44.079
no framework, no vocabulary, and no compassion available to even

435
00:30:44.200 --> 00:30:48.240
ask or question seriously, like what is going on in

436
00:30:48.279 --> 00:30:52.279
your mind? Like? Yeah, it's so sad to look back

437
00:30:52.319 --> 00:30:55.960
on cases like this and just see these stunningly clear

438
00:30:56.160 --> 00:31:00.799
examples of like this is some sort of you know,

439
00:31:01.079 --> 00:31:06.240
mental health issue that's present, and it doesn't take away

440
00:31:06.400 --> 00:31:11.720
from obviously the eventual crime. But it's like, Yo, she's

441
00:31:11.759 --> 00:31:15.400
been confessing to murder for like years at this point.

442
00:31:15.720 --> 00:31:16.519
Yeah help her.

443
00:31:17.240 --> 00:31:19.599
Yeah they couldn't.

444
00:31:20.559 --> 00:31:23.519
I know, there wasn't the tools.

445
00:31:23.079 --> 00:31:30.160
There's nothing Joseph Bailey for reasons, the record doesn't actually specify,

446
00:31:30.359 --> 00:31:36.000
but can probably be guessed. Eventually sold Patience's contract for

447
00:31:36.640 --> 00:31:41.759
her indentured servitude to another master, and that's the household

448
00:31:41.880 --> 00:31:46.000
where the story turns from false confession to real tragedy.

449
00:31:47.279 --> 00:31:52.079
Patience was eventually transferred to the household of Benjamin's skill

450
00:31:52.160 --> 00:31:56.920
Ins in York. Also living in the same household was

451
00:31:56.960 --> 00:32:01.480
his eight year old grandson, Benjamin Trott. Basically, he was

452
00:32:01.519 --> 00:32:06.279
being raised like he was Benjamin Senior's own son. Not

453
00:32:06.400 --> 00:32:09.839
exactly sure what the circumstances were that brought that about,

454
00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:15.440
but it's kind of cute. Benjamin being raised by his grandpa.

455
00:32:15.480 --> 00:32:23.559
Also Benjamin Benjamin Troll. Benjamin Troll. Patients stated both that

456
00:32:23.640 --> 00:32:26.519
she grew to love the young boy and vice versa,

457
00:32:27.200 --> 00:32:32.559
while also developing some, as she put it, groundless prejudice

458
00:32:32.839 --> 00:32:38.480
against the senior Benjamin. In time, the latter instinct seems

459
00:32:38.480 --> 00:32:42.480
to have won. In the fall of seventeen thirty three,

460
00:32:43.359 --> 00:32:48.200
in her own words, she bound herself by a wicked

461
00:32:48.319 --> 00:32:57.759
oath ooh to kill Skillen's grandson. No, the contradiction of

462
00:32:57.799 --> 00:33:02.160
her clearly stated pre medic intent to kill a child

463
00:33:02.279 --> 00:33:06.759
she also described as loving is kind of the dark

464
00:33:06.880 --> 00:33:08.440
center of this case.

465
00:33:09.119 --> 00:33:14.519
Yeah, this makes like no sense so far right. I

466
00:33:14.519 --> 00:33:16.160
don't know if you're going to make it make sense.

467
00:33:18.359 --> 00:33:21.680
I mean, unfortunately in cases of child murder, I feel

468
00:33:21.680 --> 00:33:23.680
like you can't really make it make sense.

469
00:33:24.400 --> 00:33:26.480
Yeah, there ain't no sense.

470
00:33:27.160 --> 00:33:32.720
Ain't no sense in that. On July ninth, seventeen thirty four,

471
00:33:33.039 --> 00:33:36.319
while both mister and Missus Skillens were away from home,

472
00:33:36.839 --> 00:33:41.400
patients lured the boy out into the woods. She intended

473
00:33:41.440 --> 00:33:43.599
to beat him over the head with a large stick,

474
00:33:44.160 --> 00:33:48.160
but as she attempted to do so, she started trembling

475
00:33:48.240 --> 00:33:49.720
and she just kind of lost her nerve.

476
00:33:50.599 --> 00:33:55.119
Well, yeah, you're trying to kill a kid that you love.

477
00:33:56.559 --> 00:33:59.720
Why would for some reason with a stick?

478
00:34:00.240 --> 00:34:00.920
Oh God.

479
00:34:01.759 --> 00:34:08.079
She decided instead to drop the stick into a well nearby,

480
00:34:08.320 --> 00:34:11.559
asking Benjamin to climb down and retrieve.

481
00:34:11.159 --> 00:34:14.360
It for her. I don't this is the worst birthday

482
00:34:14.360 --> 00:34:15.440
gift you've ever given me.

483
00:34:16.440 --> 00:34:17.679
I'm so sorry.

484
00:34:17.880 --> 00:34:19.119
I'm not happy with you.

485
00:34:19.440 --> 00:34:22.760
I know, I'm gonnat you. I'm gonna fix this, Okay,

486
00:34:22.800 --> 00:34:26.480
I'm gonna make it better. I don't believe you, I promise.

487
00:34:27.320 --> 00:34:29.079
Okay, I'm gonna mute you for the rest of the.

488
00:34:30.559 --> 00:34:30.920
Wow.

489
00:34:31.320 --> 00:34:35.119
Rude, I don't want to Okay, go do it. Rip

490
00:34:35.159 --> 00:34:36.440
off the band dude.

491
00:34:36.199 --> 00:34:39.440
All right, it's gonna get Game of Thrones here for

492
00:34:39.480 --> 00:34:44.800
a sec. Only when he reached the edge, she just

493
00:34:44.920 --> 00:34:49.239
pushed him in. She used a long pole to hold

494
00:34:49.360 --> 00:34:53.280
him under the water within the well until he drowned.

495
00:34:55.119 --> 00:35:00.719
I didn't realize how dark this crime was, but the

496
00:35:00.800 --> 00:35:04.480
fact that these two stories that we're talking about today

497
00:35:04.519 --> 00:35:07.679
have the connection to July ninth. I was like, listen,

498
00:35:08.320 --> 00:35:10.559
who am I to tell the universe?

499
00:35:11.320 --> 00:35:11.639
Nah?

500
00:35:12.039 --> 00:35:12.679
I don't wanna.

501
00:35:13.199 --> 00:35:19.159
I would. I don't want this to be in my mind.

502
00:35:19.719 --> 00:35:23.360
I know well, regardless of the day that it happened on,

503
00:35:23.480 --> 00:35:25.800
it was going to be in your mind, because you

504
00:35:25.880 --> 00:35:30.719
know through crime and all that what happened immediately afterward

505
00:35:30.880 --> 00:35:35.320
is recorded with unusual specificity for a case. This old

506
00:35:36.239 --> 00:35:41.039
Patience raised her hands to the sky and said, now

507
00:35:41.159 --> 00:35:45.719
I am guilty of murder. Indeed, though formerly I accused

508
00:35:45.719 --> 00:35:52.199
myself falsely, yet now God has left me. Afterwards, she

509
00:35:52.360 --> 00:35:56.639
walked to a neighboring house about two miles away. She

510
00:35:56.840 --> 00:36:00.800
confessed what she had done and turned herself in.

511
00:36:02.159 --> 00:36:06.280
Just so so strange, my mouth is just open.

512
00:36:06.639 --> 00:36:12.480
Yeah, you're like, oh man, Patience was arrested and remained

513
00:36:12.599 --> 00:36:18.719
in York's Old Jail, Old Gail Jail for roughly a year.

514
00:36:19.079 --> 00:36:22.800
As she awaited her trial. She was visited dozens of

515
00:36:22.880 --> 00:36:27.000
times by the Reverend Samuel Moody and his son, the

516
00:36:27.079 --> 00:36:33.039
Reverend Joseph Moody, pastors of York's Church. Perhaps as a

517
00:36:33.039 --> 00:36:37.280
result of their visits, Patience seems to have experienced a

518
00:36:37.400 --> 00:36:44.639
spiritual transformation. Something seems to have genuinely shifted in Patience.

519
00:36:44.719 --> 00:36:48.920
During that year, she read scripture, and after years of

520
00:36:49.000 --> 00:36:52.039
drinking quite heavily, she found sobriety.

521
00:36:52.639 --> 00:36:53.440
Well that's great.

522
00:36:54.119 --> 00:36:57.800
Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine that you have a

523
00:36:57.880 --> 00:37:01.400
choice in beverage when you're in prison, so right, some

524
00:37:01.480 --> 00:37:04.639
of that may not necessarily have been my choice. Hard

525
00:37:04.679 --> 00:37:05.199
to say.

526
00:37:05.519 --> 00:37:07.719
There could be toilet wine, could.

527
00:37:07.639 --> 00:37:12.639
Yeah, certainly, she refused it. Yeah, that's what I Yeah,

528
00:37:13.880 --> 00:37:20.199
as I feel one perhaps should maybe decline. And this

529
00:37:20.320 --> 00:37:24.480
part it's sort of a double edged sword because the

530
00:37:24.559 --> 00:37:30.480
implications are a little bit dark. She also gave birth

531
00:37:30.519 --> 00:37:34.519
to a child while in custody, a boy who at

532
00:37:34.519 --> 00:37:39.199
one point fell dangerously ill with a fever. Patients admitted

533
00:37:39.239 --> 00:37:41.800
to a dark thought in that moment that it might

534
00:37:41.880 --> 00:37:44.679
be better if God willed it for the child to

535
00:37:44.760 --> 00:37:49.719
die before she did. Instead, she asked the congregation to

536
00:37:49.840 --> 00:37:54.519
pray for him, and he recovered oh records never name

537
00:37:54.639 --> 00:37:59.199
his father. And when I say there's kind of a

538
00:37:59.239 --> 00:38:04.880
double edge soared with that, it's like, well, either she

539
00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:08.280
was impregnated by someone before she went to prison. I

540
00:38:08.320 --> 00:38:13.280
don't know. I'm not digging into the timeline on this

541
00:38:13.480 --> 00:38:18.360
that deep. There wasn't enough information about that. Or she

542
00:38:18.519 --> 00:38:23.480
was impregnated while she was in prison, which is completely

543
00:38:23.559 --> 00:38:30.000
plausible based on what I do know about the timeline

544
00:38:30.039 --> 00:38:35.519
and also about incarceration for women, you know, just for

545
00:38:35.599 --> 00:38:36.960
the last three hundred years.

546
00:38:37.320 --> 00:38:38.320
That's what I was thinking.

547
00:38:38.880 --> 00:38:43.920
That's terrible, possibly terrible. I don't it's hard to say.

548
00:38:44.599 --> 00:38:48.039
So this is kind of a weird, kind of a

549
00:38:48.039 --> 00:38:52.079
weird little aside that I almost just completely left out

550
00:38:52.119 --> 00:38:55.800
of my notes. But it's so weird that I was like,

551
00:38:56.639 --> 00:38:57.519
I think we have to.

552
00:38:57.480 --> 00:39:00.239
Have that, okay, I like a weird fact.

553
00:39:00.599 --> 00:39:05.079
Joseph Moody, the younger minister who helped compile her story,

554
00:39:05.639 --> 00:39:09.880
he began a strange practice around the same time that

555
00:39:10.079 --> 00:39:14.000
he was finishing it. He started wearing a black veil

556
00:39:14.119 --> 00:39:17.679
over his face, refusing to remove it except when alone

557
00:39:17.840 --> 00:39:21.119
or facing a wall, and apparently this was a habit

558
00:39:21.199 --> 00:39:24.880
he kept for the rest of his life. History remembers

559
00:39:24.960 --> 00:39:30.320
him today as Handkerchief Moody what in the world hu,

560
00:39:31.360 --> 00:39:35.840
and he is the direct historical inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne's

561
00:39:35.880 --> 00:39:40.760
short story The Minister's Black Veil. It's a strange footnote

562
00:39:41.440 --> 00:39:43.599
in the case, but a true one.

563
00:39:44.079 --> 00:39:46.840
I mean, you do you But that's fucking weird.

564
00:39:47.480 --> 00:39:50.840
Yeah? Yeah, do you think she got to him? Like

565
00:39:52.760 --> 00:39:57.519
I don't know, I don't know what, like like I

566
00:39:57.519 --> 00:40:03.320
don't know, and like, yeah, it's very weird. It's just

567
00:40:03.679 --> 00:40:04.360
it's bizarred.

568
00:40:04.880 --> 00:40:09.800
I'm just gonna do that. Then we can do video again. Oh,

569
00:40:10.440 --> 00:40:12.079
I'll just wear my black veil.

570
00:40:11.920 --> 00:40:16.760
A veil, yeah, why not? Just having a goth moment.

571
00:40:19.719 --> 00:40:24.400
Patience went to trial on June nineteenth, seventeen thirty five.

572
00:40:24.760 --> 00:40:31.679
Pleading guilty. The judge sentenced her to hang July twenty fourth,

573
00:40:32.320 --> 00:40:36.840
seventeen thirty five. On the morning of her execution. Oddly,

574
00:40:37.000 --> 00:40:41.840
Patience reportedly slept very well the night before, not the

575
00:40:41.960 --> 00:40:46.039
vibe I would have, but it's your last sleep. I yeah,

576
00:40:46.639 --> 00:40:50.960
you know. Before the big long sleep. She described having

577
00:40:51.119 --> 00:40:55.719
in her own words, a more realizing sense of death

578
00:40:55.880 --> 00:41:01.320
and some fears, but her hopes were above her fears.

579
00:41:01.679 --> 00:41:05.000
Do you think she was just suicidal like I and

580
00:41:05.159 --> 00:41:08.519
she just you know how people like suicide by cop

581
00:41:08.639 --> 00:41:11.440
or whatever, but they're you know, maybe that was like her.

582
00:41:11.920 --> 00:41:15.760
I don't know her way. I mean, all of this

583
00:41:15.840 --> 00:41:19.840
is so strange. It's anything's possible in my book, to

584
00:41:19.880 --> 00:41:22.639
be honest, there's certain things that I feel like we

585
00:41:22.679 --> 00:41:26.760
can point to and say, like, Okay, well I think

586
00:41:27.880 --> 00:41:31.320
like I can make some assumptions or you know, yeah,

587
00:41:31.719 --> 00:41:36.039
some inferences, but like it's just bizarre. It's just bizarre.

588
00:41:37.039 --> 00:41:40.800
She prayed with several ministers that morning, but when the

589
00:41:40.920 --> 00:41:43.679
time came, it was quite hard for her to part

590
00:41:43.719 --> 00:41:47.440
with her infant son, who'd been born there in the jail.

591
00:41:48.039 --> 00:41:50.639
Yeah, which is just really.

592
00:41:50.440 --> 00:41:53.840
Sad for so many reasons, but just to think about

593
00:41:54.039 --> 00:41:58.639
like that is, you know, the only living child that

594
00:41:58.840 --> 00:42:03.360
she had to that point. When the sheriff arrived, patients

595
00:42:03.440 --> 00:42:07.800
asked for a few more minutes alone. Then she emerged

596
00:42:07.840 --> 00:42:12.440
from her cell and said, simply, I am ready. She

597
00:42:12.480 --> 00:42:15.000
walked calmly to the cart that would carry her to

598
00:42:15.039 --> 00:42:19.360
the gallows, where a noose hung from a sturdy tree limb,

599
00:42:19.719 --> 00:42:24.039
and hundreds of people had gathered to watch, because that

600
00:42:24.360 --> 00:42:25.880
was what people did back then.

601
00:42:26.800 --> 00:42:27.639
Yeah, that's.

602
00:42:29.719 --> 00:42:32.880
I mean, listen, I get it. There's nothing on TV.

603
00:42:33.119 --> 00:42:35.920
Back then, I was thinking that there was no Game

604
00:42:35.920 --> 00:42:36.519
of Thrones.

605
00:42:37.000 --> 00:42:37.320
Yep.

606
00:42:37.960 --> 00:42:39.880
Now we just watch fake deaths on TV.

607
00:42:40.519 --> 00:42:45.039
Yeah. A minister read from scripture to the assembled crowd.

608
00:42:45.679 --> 00:42:50.320
Then Patience herself stood and spoke, declaring her love of God,

609
00:42:51.000 --> 00:42:54.719
asking mercy for her sins, praying for the child that

610
00:42:54.880 --> 00:42:58.559
she was now leaving behind, and then turning to the

611
00:42:58.559 --> 00:43:02.039
crowd itself to pray for them that they would take

612
00:43:02.159 --> 00:43:07.480
warning from her life and be aware, especially the sin

613
00:43:07.679 --> 00:43:12.159
of drunkenness, which she clearly believed had played its own

614
00:43:12.239 --> 00:43:14.320
role in everything that led her there.

615
00:43:15.079 --> 00:43:15.559
Oh shit.

616
00:43:16.599 --> 00:43:20.760
Patience Boston, just twenty three years old, was hanged at

617
00:43:20.840 --> 00:43:26.679
York on July twenty fourth, seventeen thirty five. Before her death,

618
00:43:26.920 --> 00:43:29.519
she was assured her child had been placed with a

619
00:43:29.559 --> 00:43:32.960
family who would care for both his body and soul.

620
00:43:34.039 --> 00:43:39.639
Patience's story didn't end with her execution. It became something else,

621
00:43:39.800 --> 00:43:42.280
entirely in the hands of the people who outlived her.

622
00:43:43.199 --> 00:43:46.440
In seventeen thirty five, around the time of her death,

623
00:43:46.800 --> 00:43:52.840
a short pamphlet was published, the Confession Declaration, Dying, Warning

624
00:43:53.039 --> 00:44:00.960
and Advice of Patience Samson alias Patience Boston. Then in

625
00:44:01.000 --> 00:44:04.880
seventeen thirty eight, the Moody's published a much longer and

626
00:44:05.039 --> 00:44:11.360
more elaborate work, and the title is half a paragraph,

627
00:44:11.440 --> 00:44:18.199
Oh Sure, Deep Breath. A faithful narrative of the wicked

628
00:44:18.280 --> 00:44:25.159
life and remarkable conversion of Patients Boston alias Sampson. It

629
00:44:25.199 --> 00:44:31.639
belongs to his genre historians call gallows literature, narratives assembled

630
00:44:31.719 --> 00:44:36.320
by Puritan clergy from the words of condemned prisoners, intended

631
00:44:36.400 --> 00:44:39.400
less to document the facts of a crime than to use,

632
00:44:40.760 --> 00:44:45.599
shall we say, a sinner's spiritual journey toward repentance as

633
00:44:45.639 --> 00:44:46.800
a lesson for the living.

634
00:44:47.880 --> 00:44:51.480
I thought, I thought that's where it was going. Yeah, yeah,

635
00:44:51.559 --> 00:44:52.760
it's still kind of cool. Though.

636
00:44:53.559 --> 00:44:55.800
I do think it's cool, and I do think that

637
00:44:55.960 --> 00:45:01.159
is still kind of a service to those individuals in

638
00:45:01.239 --> 00:45:05.280
a way, if that's something that they respond to, and

639
00:45:05.679 --> 00:45:09.360
you know, perhaps also to the broader community. I wish

640
00:45:09.440 --> 00:45:14.280
it maybe wasn't tied to like organize religion specifically, but

641
00:45:14.360 --> 00:45:20.559
like beggars can't be choosers, right, So the version of

642
00:45:20.639 --> 00:45:25.679
Patients Boston that has survived through this work is filtered

643
00:45:25.719 --> 00:45:30.440
and shaped by two Puritan ministers with their own theological agenda,

644
00:45:31.159 --> 00:45:34.840
men who were, by the era's own standards, more interested

645
00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:38.400
in her conversion than in her guilt, or her innocence

646
00:45:38.679 --> 00:45:43.679
or any of the conditions in her life. Patience Boston

647
00:45:44.360 --> 00:45:48.360
really did kill an eight year old boy. There's no

648
00:45:48.519 --> 00:45:53.199
ambiguity about that specific fact, and Benjamin Trott deserves to

649
00:45:53.239 --> 00:45:57.199
be remembered as a real child with a life cut short,

650
00:45:58.280 --> 00:46:02.519
not just a supporting detail and someone else's tragic narrative.

651
00:46:03.639 --> 00:46:07.800
But I mean, god damn, in a very real way.

652
00:46:07.880 --> 00:46:13.079
They very much are both victims. She just also happens

653
00:46:13.119 --> 00:46:15.000
to be a perpetrator.

654
00:46:14.760 --> 00:46:18.440
Of violence, which happens a lot. I mean, it does,

655
00:46:18.519 --> 00:46:20.760
I feel like probably most of the time.

656
00:46:21.400 --> 00:46:26.199
Yeah, I mean yeah, I would argue, yes, I have

657
00:46:26.679 --> 00:46:30.079
observed a pattern, shall we say, in the last handful

658
00:46:30.119 --> 00:46:35.440
of years. And at the same time, Patience's documented history

659
00:46:36.079 --> 00:46:41.599
of multiple separate false confessions to murders that never happened

660
00:46:42.199 --> 00:46:48.480
involving infants preceding the one murder she actually committed is

661
00:46:48.519 --> 00:46:52.119
the kind of pattern that in any modern court would

662
00:46:52.159 --> 00:46:58.639
trigger a serious psychiatric evaluation before anyone moved toward a verdict,

663
00:46:58.800 --> 00:47:02.880
let alone a death sentence. But obviously that wasn't happening

664
00:47:02.920 --> 00:47:07.880
in seventeen thirty five. No, there was no language at

665
00:47:07.880 --> 00:47:12.400
the time for what we would describe now as potentially

666
00:47:13.039 --> 00:47:20.280
postpartum psychosis, complex trauma, or the cumulative psychological toll of

667
00:47:20.920 --> 00:47:26.360
a childhood spent, indentured, orphaned, and passed between households that

668
00:47:26.480 --> 00:47:30.079
held all of the legal power over her existence with

669
00:47:31.119 --> 00:47:36.199
no say on her part. There was only sin, confession

670
00:47:36.519 --> 00:47:41.440
and the gallows. This is also, unavoidably a story about

671
00:47:41.559 --> 00:47:46.079
whose voice gets preserved and whose doesn't.

672
00:47:46.599 --> 00:47:50.719
Ooh part two, Part two?

673
00:47:51.159 --> 00:47:54.199
Yeah, because I said there's two stories.

674
00:47:54.400 --> 00:47:56.159
Oh is this just one episode?

675
00:47:56.159 --> 00:47:56.320
Though?

676
00:47:56.400 --> 00:47:58.159
Right? It is? Yeah? Okay.

677
00:47:59.400 --> 00:48:05.320
In August eighteen o five, Captain James Purenton, a handsome

678
00:48:05.639 --> 00:48:09.719
revolutionary war veteran and well regarded farmer said to be

679
00:48:09.800 --> 00:48:14.639
of good character, moved his family to a Ballard neighborhood

680
00:48:14.679 --> 00:48:20.440
just outside Augusta, Originally known to the area's native inhabitants

681
00:48:20.480 --> 00:48:25.719
as Kushnak. Augusta had grown from a fur trading post

682
00:48:25.800 --> 00:48:29.360
on the Kennebec River into a small but established town.

683
00:48:30.400 --> 00:48:36.079
Maine was still not yet a state. She's out there

684
00:48:36.320 --> 00:48:40.360
fighting the good fight. Though it remained part of Massachusetts

685
00:48:40.719 --> 00:48:44.639
and wouldn't receive statehood for another fourteen years.

686
00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:49.360
It was part of Massachusetts. Wow, apparently I don't think

687
00:48:49.360 --> 00:48:49.960
I knew that.

688
00:48:50.440 --> 00:48:55.199
I didn't either. Over the following winter and spring, Purenton

689
00:48:55.320 --> 00:48:59.920
family settled in The Captain's wife, Elizabeth, known as Beth's

690
00:49:00.039 --> 00:49:08.119
see Love, visited neighbors, trading herbs and other goods, quickly

691
00:49:08.159 --> 00:49:11.719
becoming part of the fabric of their new small community.

692
00:49:12.559 --> 00:49:15.159
As soon as I read trading herbs and stuff, I

693
00:49:15.280 --> 00:49:17.880
was like, this, bitch sounds kind of witchy.

694
00:49:19.159 --> 00:49:25.280
Oh, I was thinking, she's drug dealer. What kind of herb?

695
00:49:25.440 --> 00:49:26.800
You trading their bits?

696
00:49:27.280 --> 00:49:31.159
Listen, I'm just saying, technically, this is still part of messages.

697
00:49:31.400 --> 00:49:33.719
That's why I think witchy.

698
00:49:33.840 --> 00:49:37.840
I think, yeah, No, you're ray. I'm just a pie head.

699
00:49:38.199 --> 00:49:42.400
Yeah, I guess. Hey, listen, two things can be true.

700
00:49:43.079 --> 00:49:45.519
Herb means a lot of things to a lot of

701
00:49:45.559 --> 00:49:50.679
different people. One neighbor, Martha Ballard, a midwife in her

702
00:49:50.840 --> 00:49:55.639
seventies that had delivered hundreds of babies all over the

703
00:49:55.760 --> 00:49:59.639
valley for four decades kept a diary and it's actually

704
00:49:59.760 --> 00:50:02.679
like a pretty important historical document.

705
00:50:03.000 --> 00:50:04.800
WHOA. I love that.

706
00:50:05.239 --> 00:50:09.079
Like, her diaries are like kind of a big deal.

707
00:50:11.119 --> 00:50:14.760
The entries throughout the winter and spring of eighteen oh

708
00:50:14.800 --> 00:50:18.480
six are full of small, ordinary contact, Like all of

709
00:50:18.519 --> 00:50:24.199
these details about interacting with the Puritan family, Missus Puringon

710
00:50:24.400 --> 00:50:29.119
stopping by for tea young poly Purenton coming for herbs

711
00:50:29.159 --> 00:50:35.000
for her ailing mother, even Captain Purington himself once walking

712
00:50:35.079 --> 00:50:39.480
Martha home after a difficult birth late at night in May.

713
00:50:40.079 --> 00:50:41.960
Wow, she like wrote all this shit down.

714
00:50:42.440 --> 00:50:45.880
Yeah, she wrote a lot of shit down. I found

715
00:50:46.039 --> 00:50:49.559
all of these really interesting, like little quoted sections of

716
00:50:49.599 --> 00:50:52.519
her diaries, and I was like, bitch, we gotta pick

717
00:50:52.599 --> 00:50:57.280
and choose. Like I started out where I was like, oh,

718
00:50:57.440 --> 00:50:59.440
I'm gonna take that one, and I'm like, oh boy,

719
00:50:59.559 --> 00:51:03.400
we gotta we got to get real. And they're all

720
00:51:03.559 --> 00:51:06.719
just like a lot of them are so wholesome. Even

721
00:51:06.960 --> 00:51:11.800
the entries that aren't strictly speaking wholesome, maybe they're just

722
00:51:11.880 --> 00:51:15.679
so earnest. I feel like I know her now. Martha's

723
00:51:15.719 --> 00:51:20.360
my bitch Martha. But by the summer of eighteen oh six,

724
00:51:20.880 --> 00:51:25.119
something had changed. The Purentan family's entire crop for the

725
00:51:25.159 --> 00:51:29.119
season was threatened by severe drought. And I mean, I'm

726
00:51:29.159 --> 00:51:32.679
sure they weren't the only ones, because drought tends to

727
00:51:32.760 --> 00:51:37.360
kind of affect everybody, right, but they're who we're talking about.

728
00:51:37.400 --> 00:51:42.360
So the family's household of eight living children ranging from

729
00:51:42.519 --> 00:51:46.360
eighteen months to nineteen years old roughly.

730
00:51:46.840 --> 00:51:49.199
Holy shit, Yeah, that's a range.

731
00:51:50.239 --> 00:51:52.960
Yeah, I mean, that's what we gather kind of from,

732
00:51:53.119 --> 00:51:56.719
like the historical records. There's a lot of sources that

733
00:51:56.760 --> 00:52:00.800
have like kind of slightly differing ages for different kids

734
00:52:00.800 --> 00:52:03.920
in the family. And I'm like, listen, they had basically

735
00:52:03.960 --> 00:52:09.880
from toddlers to tiaras and then to teenagers and young adults.

736
00:52:10.079 --> 00:52:12.960
And that's just living children. So how I wonder how

737
00:52:12.960 --> 00:52:13.960
many they had?

738
00:52:14.000 --> 00:52:18.639
At least four children that died in infancy. Oh wow,

739
00:52:19.360 --> 00:52:23.119
And that was before they moved. The family's household of

740
00:52:23.199 --> 00:52:27.159
eight living children, ranging from eighteen months to nineteen years old,

741
00:52:27.199 --> 00:52:32.920
dependent on the farm for survival. The financial pressure was

742
00:52:33.000 --> 00:52:37.559
real and immediate, Like, if we don't have enough food

743
00:52:37.840 --> 00:52:40.880
that our farm is producing, we will not make it

744
00:52:40.920 --> 00:52:45.440
through the winter. Captain Puringon had told neighbors he was

745
00:52:45.519 --> 00:52:49.079
concerned about the state of his farm, worried he might

746
00:52:49.239 --> 00:52:53.000
soon be unable to provide food for his family or

747
00:52:53.199 --> 00:52:58.360
even their livestock. On a Sunday in early July, Purenton

748
00:52:58.480 --> 00:53:01.679
wrote a letter and seal it in black with a

749
00:53:01.800 --> 00:53:05.639
death's head drawn on it, which is essentially like a

750
00:53:05.679 --> 00:53:12.719
skull in crossbones situation. Okay, yeah, Inside he wrote instructions

751
00:53:12.800 --> 00:53:15.840
for his children's futures, as if he would not be

752
00:53:15.960 --> 00:53:20.199
alive to provide for them himself. And this is from

753
00:53:20.360 --> 00:53:23.880
the letter. I cannot see the distress of my family.

754
00:53:24.360 --> 00:53:28.000
God only knows my distress. I would have you put

755
00:53:28.119 --> 00:53:32.599
Nathaniel to Uncle Purrenton, to a tanner's trade. I want

756
00:53:32.679 --> 00:53:36.119
James to go to school until sufficient to attend in

757
00:53:36.159 --> 00:53:40.639
a store, Benjamin, to a blacksmith's trade, or to what

758
00:53:40.679 --> 00:53:44.000
you think best, but to be sure to give them learning.

759
00:53:44.559 --> 00:53:48.199
If it takes all, divide what is left for I

760
00:53:48.239 --> 00:53:48.960
am no more.

761
00:53:50.320 --> 00:53:53.719
Ooh, that's so ominous, like a suicide note.

762
00:53:54.360 --> 00:53:58.360
Yeah, and it definitely could read that way. For sure,

763
00:53:58.880 --> 00:54:01.840
It definitely read that way to me at first. His

764
00:54:01.920 --> 00:54:06.239
wife Betsy found the letter the following day, Monday, and

765
00:54:06.360 --> 00:54:10.679
confronted him. Uh, because you know, she had, of course assumed,

766
00:54:10.920 --> 00:54:13.920
like you said, that he meant to die by suicide,

767
00:54:14.320 --> 00:54:16.920
but he told her that she had it all wrong,

768
00:54:17.760 --> 00:54:21.519
and she's like, uh, pray I do, because if you

769
00:54:21.679 --> 00:54:24.519
saddle me with all of these fucking kids.

770
00:54:24.719 --> 00:54:29.280
Alone, yeah seriously, you.

771
00:54:29.239 --> 00:54:32.320
Know she said something like that, but like it was

772
00:54:32.400 --> 00:54:35.800
more like, uh puritanically, yeah, you know.

773
00:54:36.239 --> 00:54:37.960
And then just leave a note telling me what to

774
00:54:38.000 --> 00:54:39.079
do with all of them, like.

775
00:54:40.159 --> 00:54:43.039
Well, and yeah, you'll note that.

776
00:54:43.480 --> 00:54:43.599
Uh.

777
00:54:43.920 --> 00:54:47.400
I don't know if maybe the source that I found

778
00:54:47.480 --> 00:54:52.400
didn't have all of the note transcribe, but you will

779
00:54:52.480 --> 00:54:57.639
notice that, uh, he only mentions, let's see one, two,

780
00:54:57.800 --> 00:55:00.639
three children. The boys.

781
00:55:01.199 --> 00:55:05.000
Oh well, the girls have obvious futures. They just need

782
00:55:05.039 --> 00:55:08.559
to get married, right, marry them off to the richest bidder.

783
00:55:09.039 --> 00:55:14.039
Yeah yeah, highest bidder, yeah, highest bidder. Yeah yeah yeah yeah.

784
00:55:14.480 --> 00:55:19.360
Rather than intending to kill himself, he said he was

785
00:55:19.400 --> 00:55:23.840
simply taking precautions as a result of a premonition of

786
00:55:24.159 --> 00:55:28.760
his death approaching. He's like, I'm not gonna kill myself.

787
00:55:28.800 --> 00:55:31.599
I just I just know that, like I'm gonna die

788
00:55:32.199 --> 00:55:33.960
and like pretty soon.

789
00:55:34.639 --> 00:55:37.400
I mean, no, how old was he How long do

790
00:55:37.480 --> 00:55:39.000
people live back then? I don't know.

791
00:55:39.960 --> 00:55:44.079
Yeah, I mean it seems plausible at any rate. Betsy,

792
00:55:44.239 --> 00:55:48.280
she was inconsolable either way. She's thinking, my husband is

793
00:55:48.320 --> 00:55:53.360
having a premonition about his like approaching death just you know,

794
00:55:53.519 --> 00:55:56.880
right around the corner. And then uh, you know, the

795
00:55:56.920 --> 00:56:00.800
other possibility is uh or or you know, he's planning

796
00:56:00.800 --> 00:56:05.519
to off himself. So really, for a woman in her circumstances,

797
00:56:05.639 --> 00:56:10.159
neither is preferable. Whatever happened in the days between Betsy's

798
00:56:10.199 --> 00:56:16.360
confrontation and the night of July eighth, we have no

799
00:56:16.920 --> 00:56:23.079
further record of, no diary entry, no surviving conversation. Kind

800
00:56:23.079 --> 00:56:26.000
of the only blank spot July eighth is sort of

801
00:56:26.199 --> 00:56:28.760
I mean, there's there's like a little there's a little

802
00:56:28.760 --> 00:56:31.800
bit of information, but not a lot. It's just the

803
00:56:31.880 --> 00:56:35.000
outcome and a letter that reads less like a man

804
00:56:35.039 --> 00:56:40.039
planning murder than a man planning his own absence. Like

805
00:56:40.159 --> 00:56:44.119
it kind of does sound like he thinks he's gonna die. Yeah,

806
00:56:44.159 --> 00:56:47.920
he's giving instructions for what to do, you know, for

807
00:56:48.000 --> 00:56:52.639
the future of their boys. On the evening of July eighth,

808
00:56:53.000 --> 00:56:58.679
eighteen oh six, Captain purrenton ground, his axe sharpened. It

809
00:56:58.679 --> 00:57:02.480
feels very deliberate ahead of whatever it is that he

810
00:57:02.519 --> 00:57:06.159
has planned here. After his wife and children went to bed,

811
00:57:06.239 --> 00:57:10.119
he stayed up alone reading the Bible. His conduct and

812
00:57:10.320 --> 00:57:13.679
demeanor had remained calm all day and into the night,

813
00:57:14.559 --> 00:57:17.719
but then sometime between two and three in the morning,

814
00:57:18.559 --> 00:57:22.760
he moved through the house with the axe. James Purrenton

815
00:57:22.960 --> 00:57:27.800
Junior woke to the sound of his mother screaming. He

816
00:57:27.960 --> 00:57:31.519
ran toward the noise and found his father standing with

817
00:57:31.599 --> 00:57:37.800
a bloodied axe. Purenton swung at his own son, striking

818
00:57:37.880 --> 00:57:42.559
him across the back, but James Junior managed to escape,

819
00:57:43.199 --> 00:57:45.760
fleeing the house in nothing but his shirt.

820
00:57:46.119 --> 00:57:46.719
Holy shit.

821
00:57:47.280 --> 00:57:50.800
He ran to the home of neighbor Dean Wyman and

822
00:57:50.920 --> 00:57:57.320
raised the alarm. Wyman immediately ran for help to Jonas Ballard,

823
00:57:58.039 --> 00:58:03.519
Martha the midwife's son. Small town pretty prey knows, you

824
00:58:03.559 --> 00:58:07.320
know a lot of the same last names floating around

825
00:58:07.360 --> 00:58:11.199
here books. The two men went to the Puritan house

826
00:58:11.480 --> 00:58:16.960
together to find Elizabeth and six of the children's lane.

827
00:58:17.679 --> 00:58:22.760
Oh god, only one child was carried back to the

828
00:58:22.800 --> 00:58:27.119
Ballard house, where surgical aid was called. There was a

829
00:58:27.199 --> 00:58:31.760
quote from her diary about how she had breath left.

830
00:58:32.119 --> 00:58:36.159
That was the one that you know they're trying to

831
00:58:36.239 --> 00:58:39.400
save it just oh it just it gave me chills.

832
00:58:40.280 --> 00:58:44.559
Captain Purrington himself lay on the floor of the outer room,

833
00:58:45.159 --> 00:58:48.760
his throat cut with a razor, dead by his own hand.

834
00:58:49.519 --> 00:58:54.639
Jesus, fuck, dude, couldn't you've just done that? Yeah?

835
00:58:54.760 --> 00:58:58.480
I hate I hate murder suicide. People like just fucking

836
00:58:58.599 --> 00:58:59.440
kill yourself.

837
00:58:59.679 --> 00:59:03.679
Yeah. Family annihilators are like, I don't want to sound

838
00:59:03.719 --> 00:59:08.000
crazy here, but they are a huge fucking bummer. Martha

839
00:59:08.079 --> 00:59:12.480
Ballard and her husband walked to the Purenton house themselves

840
00:59:12.599 --> 00:59:16.920
before sunrise. That next morning. The bodies of the deceased

841
00:59:16.960 --> 00:59:21.840
Purenton family were carried to Jonas Ballard's barn, washed and

842
00:59:21.960 --> 00:59:26.519
laid out side by side. Martha Ballard wrote that many

843
00:59:26.719 --> 00:59:30.880
hundreds of persons came to behold the scene, a detail

844
00:59:30.960 --> 00:59:34.840
that captures something kind of important about how this tragedy

845
00:59:35.079 --> 00:59:41.599
was experienced by their broader community. It's not just, you know,

846
00:59:41.679 --> 00:59:45.360
this private tragedy and grief, but it's kind of a

847
00:59:45.519 --> 00:59:52.199
mass public event and almost immediately. I mean again, it's

848
00:59:52.280 --> 00:59:56.159
a very small town, even kind of by eighteen oh

849
00:59:56.199 --> 01:00:01.840
six terms, so everybody knew each other. This is I mean,

850
01:00:02.559 --> 01:00:05.039
it's got to be devastating for a lot of people

851
01:00:05.079 --> 01:00:11.039
that knew this family. Martha Purenton, the daughter, pulled from

852
01:00:11.079 --> 01:00:14.880
the house, still breathing, lingered at the Ballard house for

853
01:00:15.039 --> 01:00:20.639
roughly three weeks under Martha Ballard's own care. Sadly, she

854
01:00:20.840 --> 01:00:25.039
died at three am on July thirtieth, eighteen oh six.

855
01:00:25.920 --> 01:00:29.159
That's the death that was on my due date. And

856
01:00:29.199 --> 01:00:31.800
I was like, shit, this has kind of a weird

857
01:00:31.880 --> 01:00:35.599
link to both of these synchronicities with important dates in

858
01:00:35.639 --> 01:00:36.440
our lives.

859
01:00:36.800 --> 01:00:40.239
Yeah, oh, poor baby, I know.

860
01:00:41.079 --> 01:00:45.119
But I mean, god, those three weeks were probably so horrific.

861
01:00:45.840 --> 01:00:49.719
Martha Ballard recorded the moment in her diary in exactly

862
01:00:49.840 --> 01:00:55.199
those terms. Martha Purenton expired, and she's got it in

863
01:00:55.360 --> 01:00:59.800
kind of old timey shorthand, but at three am, essentially

864
01:01:00.119 --> 01:01:03.840
what it says. The funeral took place the following day,

865
01:01:03.960 --> 01:01:10.280
on July tenth, Reverend mister Stone offered a prayer, and

866
01:01:10.519 --> 01:01:15.320
a reverend mister Taylor delivered a sermon drawn from Proverbs

867
01:01:15.519 --> 01:01:19.760
twenty five twenty eight. He that hath no rule over

868
01:01:19.840 --> 01:01:24.000
his own spirit is like a city broken down and

869
01:01:24.079 --> 01:01:28.800
without walls. Given what the town had just witnessed, I

870
01:01:28.840 --> 01:01:33.400
feel like that that particular I'm not a fan strictly

871
01:01:33.440 --> 01:01:37.800
speaking of scripture, but that one kind of feels like

872
01:01:37.880 --> 01:01:38.559
it makes sense.

873
01:01:39.440 --> 01:01:40.119
Yeah, it does.

874
01:01:41.119 --> 01:01:47.199
Martha Ballard described a genuinely staggering public turnout. A stage

875
01:01:47.239 --> 01:01:51.320
was erected in front of the meetinghouse, the surrounding houses

876
01:01:51.400 --> 01:01:55.199
were crowded with onlookers, the street was packed, and in

877
01:01:55.280 --> 01:02:00.360
her own words, ye, tops of buildings covered with peace people.

878
01:02:01.199 --> 01:02:04.039
Wow, that's where i'd want to be.

879
01:02:04.840 --> 01:02:09.320
Yeah, I think in a way, you know, they're just

880
01:02:09.679 --> 01:02:13.599
the reverence and respect that you know, was inherent in

881
01:02:14.079 --> 01:02:18.320
society at that point. It makes sense. And it was

882
01:02:18.360 --> 01:02:21.360
such a small town, but you know, for a town

883
01:02:21.639 --> 01:02:24.920
of Augustus size in eighteen oh six, it was such

884
01:02:24.920 --> 01:02:27.800
a monumental event. It was an event on a scale

885
01:02:28.360 --> 01:02:32.960
that nothing else that most of them had seen, certainly recently,

886
01:02:33.079 --> 01:02:35.719
if ever, would have matched it.

887
01:02:35.719 --> 01:02:37.920
It just and they can't go home and like watch

888
01:02:37.960 --> 01:02:38.519
it on TV.

889
01:02:39.280 --> 01:02:44.440
Yeah, true, there is nothing on TV. Captain Purington's body

890
01:02:44.880 --> 01:02:48.400
was laid out in the porch of the meetinghouse, separated

891
01:02:48.440 --> 01:02:54.079
from his family. I mean kind of significant. I mean yeah,

892
01:02:54.159 --> 01:02:59.880
literally physically denied entry into the building where his family was,

893
01:03:00.360 --> 01:03:02.559
you know, for lack of a better term displayed.

894
01:03:02.960 --> 01:03:03.880
I think that's fitting.

895
01:03:04.559 --> 01:03:07.679
The axe and razor he had used were displayed on

896
01:03:07.760 --> 01:03:08.719
top of his coffin.

897
01:03:09.519 --> 01:03:10.760
Oh yikes.

898
01:03:11.199 --> 01:03:14.159
His wife and six children's remains were laid in the

899
01:03:14.239 --> 01:03:20.440
aisle inside. The funeral procession crossed the Kennebec Bridge, turned

900
01:03:20.519 --> 01:03:24.559
up the hill, came down Second Street, passed the jail,

901
01:03:24.719 --> 01:03:29.079
and arrived at the burial ground where Elizabeth and her

902
01:03:29.199 --> 01:03:36.480
children were buried together. James Purenton was interred separately outside

903
01:03:36.519 --> 01:03:42.559
the consecrated cemetery walls ha his murder weapons buried alongside him.

904
01:03:43.400 --> 01:03:45.360
WHOA, yeah, they.

905
01:03:45.199 --> 01:03:50.199
Were big into symbolism. Apparently. A coroner's story of eleven

906
01:03:50.320 --> 01:03:55.840
local men, with John Evelyth serving as foreman, formally found

907
01:03:55.880 --> 01:04:01.119
that Purenton had end quote of his mallee a forethought,

908
01:04:01.719 --> 01:04:05.159
murdered his wife and children that he had as a

909
01:04:05.199 --> 01:04:11.360
felon quote voluntarily killed and murdered himself. That second part

910
01:04:11.360 --> 01:04:15.320
feels a little redundant. But for three weeks, as we know,

911
01:04:16.119 --> 01:04:20.440
Martha Purenton clung to life at the Ballard house. Martha

912
01:04:20.519 --> 01:04:24.920
Ballard's diary tracks her decline almost literally, like, if not

913
01:04:25.079 --> 01:04:29.039
hour by hour, day by day. Her funeral took place

914
01:04:29.119 --> 01:04:33.639
two days later, on August first, which, as you certainly

915
01:04:33.719 --> 01:04:37.599
and maybe some people listening will recall, is my wedding anniversary.

916
01:04:37.719 --> 01:04:41.159
So no one's getting out of this unscathed.

917
01:04:41.760 --> 01:04:42.960
Geez dude.

918
01:04:43.880 --> 01:04:47.159
It's just weird, like all of these important dates. And

919
01:04:47.239 --> 01:04:50.199
I picked them because I was like, oh, what if

920
01:04:50.239 --> 01:04:51.000
I did something?

921
01:04:51.199 --> 01:04:51.559
Be me?

922
01:04:52.519 --> 01:04:56.000
Yeah, and then the theme got really out of control.

923
01:04:57.039 --> 01:04:58.679
Okay, next year for my birthday.

924
01:04:58.760 --> 01:05:04.559
No murder, Okay, no sad child murders, even the worst

925
01:05:04.639 --> 01:05:05.559
what's wrong with you?

926
01:05:05.960 --> 01:05:08.760
I didn't think that they were. They didn't look that

927
01:05:09.000 --> 01:05:12.679
bad with like the short summary when I first found

928
01:05:12.760 --> 01:05:15.599
the cases and I was like, oh, it's our coin

929
01:05:15.800 --> 01:05:24.559
toss city and it started cute anyway. Martha Ballard closed

930
01:05:24.559 --> 01:05:27.639
her account of the entire ordeal with a line that

931
01:05:27.760 --> 01:05:32.760
needs I would argue no embellishment. I attended the funeral

932
01:05:33.079 --> 01:05:36.400
of Martha Purenton, who came to her end by the

933
01:05:36.440 --> 01:05:41.239
wounds which her father gave her. Oh the dreadful scene.

934
01:05:41.480 --> 01:05:44.960
Nearly two hundred and twenty years later, it's hard to

935
01:05:45.039 --> 01:05:48.480
improve on that as a closing thought.

936
01:05:48.039 --> 01:05:51.760
Oh the dreadful scene, Like seriously.

937
01:05:51.679 --> 01:05:53.079
Yeah, sums it up.

938
01:05:53.840 --> 01:05:56.519
Why did he write that letter? Then saying like what

939
01:05:56.679 --> 01:05:58.280
to do with his kids. I don't.

940
01:05:58.800 --> 01:06:02.000
That's kind of another parallel with both of these stories.

941
01:06:02.039 --> 01:06:06.960
It's like these kind of inexplicable actions on the part

942
01:06:07.000 --> 01:06:09.039
of the perpetrator. It's just like.

943
01:06:09.000 --> 01:06:12.400
What maybe he was just like thinking that at first

944
01:06:12.440 --> 01:06:15.239
he would just take himself out, and then he's like, eh,

945
01:06:15.480 --> 01:06:17.159
why not just do them all?

946
01:06:17.239 --> 01:06:20.119
I mean, maybe part of him thought that would be

947
01:06:20.280 --> 01:06:24.960
cruel to abandon them. I don't know. Obviously, what he

948
01:06:25.000 --> 01:06:29.719
did do was horrific. In the days that followed, survivors

949
01:06:29.800 --> 01:06:35.639
and relatives of the Puritan family, James Junior and Hezekiah,

950
01:06:35.960 --> 01:06:40.119
Captain Purrington's brother, boarded at the Ballard house while they

951
01:06:40.159 --> 01:06:43.719
sort it through the wreckage of the family's affairs. Martha

952
01:06:43.800 --> 01:06:49.639
Ballard herself helped prepare burial Linen's, carried supplies between households,

953
01:06:49.719 --> 01:06:53.480
and continued tending to the dying Martha Purenton in her

954
01:06:53.519 --> 01:06:56.920
own home. The same woman who had shared tea and

955
01:06:57.000 --> 01:07:02.079
traded herbs with his family for my I mean, arguably,

956
01:07:02.480 --> 01:07:06.559
like very close small town bonds, was now the one

957
01:07:06.800 --> 01:07:10.679
washing their bodies and nursing the gravely injured child left

958
01:07:10.679 --> 01:07:15.639
behind after the tragedy. James Junior, the family's only true

959
01:07:15.679 --> 01:07:20.239
survivor chose Elias Craig, the same man who had served

960
01:07:20.320 --> 01:07:26.199
as coroner, to be his legal guardian. Hezekiah Purenton was

961
01:07:26.280 --> 01:07:31.679
made administrator of his late brother's estate. Record show Hezekiah

962
01:07:31.840 --> 01:07:37.760
continued paying for James's board as late as July eighteen

963
01:07:37.760 --> 01:07:42.000
oh seven, a full year after the murders. By eighteen eleven,

964
01:07:42.440 --> 01:07:47.280
land records place James back in the family's hometown, the

965
01:07:47.320 --> 01:07:51.199
one that they had left six years prior to everything

966
01:07:51.239 --> 01:07:55.400
that had happened. There's no record of him ever marrying,

967
01:07:55.960 --> 01:07:58.159
which is kind of sad because I feel like that's

968
01:07:58.239 --> 01:07:59.360
unusual for the time.

969
01:08:00.119 --> 01:08:02.159
I mean, he's got some trauma.

970
01:08:02.119 --> 01:08:06.880
But lots of traumatized people still got married because that

971
01:08:07.000 --> 01:08:08.280
was just what you did.

972
01:08:08.679 --> 01:08:10.079
Yeah, I don't know.

973
01:08:11.039 --> 01:08:15.800
Within days, a broadside titled Horrid Murder was printed in

974
01:08:15.880 --> 01:08:23.039
Augusta by local publisher Peter Eddies, A graphic, heavily bordered,

975
01:08:23.399 --> 01:08:28.039
single page bulletin featuring woodcut images of coffins lined up

976
01:08:28.159 --> 01:08:34.399
side by side by size, presumably representing the victims. The

977
01:08:34.479 --> 01:08:39.039
story spread fast and far for pre telegraph era. It

978
01:08:39.159 --> 01:08:44.520
reached newspapers along the entire East Coast and reportedly overseas

979
01:08:44.600 --> 01:08:48.479
as well. The Portland Gazette ran its own account on

980
01:08:48.680 --> 01:08:54.000
July fourteenth, just days after the murders. The leading popular

981
01:08:54.159 --> 01:09:01.439
theory regarding the motive was hereditary insanity, of vague sort

982
01:09:01.479 --> 01:09:05.840
of era appropriate term. It's a way of saying that

983
01:09:05.920 --> 01:09:11.880
mental illness ran in Puritan's family, which actually several modern

984
01:09:11.960 --> 01:09:18.800
accounts do confirm that was documented. Interesting others pointed to

985
01:09:19.039 --> 01:09:25.800
religious confusion or fanaticism, though he was never explicitly described

986
01:09:25.880 --> 01:09:29.479
as a religious extremist or a fanatic by anyone who

987
01:09:29.560 --> 01:09:32.800
knew him. In fact, they said, like he was pretty

988
01:09:32.920 --> 01:09:38.319
cash about like religion and spiritual beliefs and stuff.

989
01:09:38.359 --> 01:09:41.039
So and like, why would that make you kill?

990
01:09:41.720 --> 01:09:44.239
I mean it wouldn't be the first or the last,

991
01:09:44.560 --> 01:09:45.199
but I.

992
01:09:45.239 --> 01:09:48.399
Meant, like, other than for unless your whole family you

993
01:09:48.439 --> 01:09:49.520
think is like sinners?

994
01:09:49.560 --> 01:09:54.159
I guess right, which every I mean, Hey, the Puritans

995
01:09:54.159 --> 01:09:56.800
thought everyone was a sinner and we were all just

996
01:09:56.920 --> 01:09:59.600
seconds away from the burning hell fire.

997
01:10:00.000 --> 01:10:02.279
But we're already there, yeah.

998
01:10:02.760 --> 01:10:07.640
And there we are. Financial ruin from the drought is

999
01:10:07.680 --> 01:10:12.560
the most consistently cited practical trigger, and it lines up

1000
01:10:12.600 --> 01:10:16.560
with Purenton's own documented fears about being able to provide

1001
01:10:16.560 --> 01:10:20.680
for his family and their future. This was not a

1002
01:10:20.680 --> 01:10:24.079
man who snapped in a single moment of rage. He

1003
01:10:24.239 --> 01:10:28.640
sharpened the acts ahead of time. I mean, within hours

1004
01:10:28.760 --> 01:10:33.680
of the murders. He sat reading scripture. By all appearances,

1005
01:10:33.800 --> 01:10:39.479
very calmly, very everything about his behavior was deliberate and

1006
01:10:39.600 --> 01:10:43.920
calm that day, that evening, while his family slept just

1007
01:10:44.039 --> 01:10:49.119
rooms away. The coroner's jury used the phrase malice a

1008
01:10:49.159 --> 01:10:55.039
forethought deliberately because it was premeditated. And I would say

1009
01:10:55.079 --> 01:10:59.159
that's one aspect of this case that feels pretty obvious

1010
01:10:59.199 --> 01:11:02.920
to me, just based on the information we have. The

1011
01:11:03.000 --> 01:11:08.079
honest answer regarding his motive then and now is that

1012
01:11:08.760 --> 01:11:13.039
no one really knows for certain. As one broadsheet from

1013
01:11:13.039 --> 01:11:16.680
the time concluded, we have no evidence to lead us

1014
01:11:16.760 --> 01:11:22.119
satisfactorily to the motives for this barbarous and unnatural deed.

1015
01:11:23.119 --> 01:11:29.039
Bars I believe the kids say. In twenty nineteen, the

1016
01:11:29.119 --> 01:11:34.399
Augusta Historic Preservation Commission located the actual site of the

1017
01:11:34.439 --> 01:11:39.520
Puritan family grave, long since unmarked, and placed a memorial

1018
01:11:39.640 --> 01:11:44.000
marker there, finally giving the victims a recognized resting place

1019
01:11:44.520 --> 01:11:46.920
nearly two and a half centuries after.

1020
01:11:46.720 --> 01:11:50.560
They were buried. Oh wow, I know, isn't that cool?

1021
01:11:51.359 --> 01:11:58.079
Local folklore has long claimed that Boden Bowdwin College secretly

1022
01:11:58.159 --> 01:12:03.000
exhumed Captain Purenton's body from his roadside grave for early

1023
01:12:03.159 --> 01:12:11.640
medical research, and that's obviously completely unconfirmed. It's a rumor. Honestly,

1024
01:12:11.680 --> 01:12:12.680
I kind of hope.

1025
01:12:12.399 --> 01:12:15.800
So though, right, that would be crazy, But like, if

1026
01:12:15.840 --> 01:12:18.880
you're going to exhume someone might as well be that guy.

1027
01:12:19.239 --> 01:12:19.479
You know.

1028
01:12:19.600 --> 01:12:23.640
I'm just saying, there's a song that says, give your

1029
01:12:23.680 --> 01:12:28.439
life to science, and you know, if the true fits

1030
01:12:28.680 --> 01:12:32.239
wear the shit out of it Cinderella, And then there's

1031
01:12:32.279 --> 01:12:35.840
the connection that gives this case it's real staying power.

1032
01:12:36.399 --> 01:12:42.600
Martha Ballard's superhistoric Diary and everything that came after it.

1033
01:12:43.079 --> 01:12:48.159
Over two centuries after she wrote those entries, Historian Laurel

1034
01:12:48.279 --> 01:12:53.239
Thatcher Ulrich used Ballard's diary as the foundation for A

1035
01:12:53.279 --> 01:12:57.560
Midwife's Tale, which won the Pulitzer Prize for History in

1036
01:12:57.640 --> 01:13:02.079
nineteen ninety one and was laid adapted into a PBS

1037
01:13:02.119 --> 01:13:05.359
American Experience documentary WHOA.

1038
01:13:05.520 --> 01:13:06.520
I want to watch it.

1039
01:13:06.880 --> 01:13:10.000
I know, isn't that cool? Can you imagine being a

1040
01:13:10.239 --> 01:13:13.079
midwife in the eighteen hundreds?

1041
01:13:13.359 --> 01:13:16.760
I can't imagine being one now in like oh no.

1042
01:13:17.199 --> 01:13:21.760
Like her career was like the seventeen fifty sixties to

1043
01:13:21.960 --> 01:13:28.880
like eighteen the early aughts of the eighteen hundreds, like

1044
01:13:29.119 --> 01:13:33.680
what an entire chapter of that book is devoted to

1045
01:13:33.760 --> 01:13:38.159
the Puritan murders. This small town main tragedy from eighteen

1046
01:13:38.199 --> 01:13:42.680
oh six has improbably already been the subject of serious

1047
01:13:42.680 --> 01:13:47.640
prize winning historic scholarship. That's kind of.

1048
01:13:47.600 --> 01:13:51.840
Cool, think goodness, she like kept such good diary entries.

1049
01:13:52.039 --> 01:13:58.199
Seriously though, Two families, two colonial Maine towns, seventy two

1050
01:13:58.279 --> 01:14:02.600
years apart on the same lie date. One story ends

1051
01:14:02.600 --> 01:14:07.680
with a native woman indentured and enslaved by circumstance, literally

1052
01:14:07.760 --> 01:14:11.880
walking two miles to confess what no one had caught

1053
01:14:11.920 --> 01:14:16.199
her doing. The other ends with a respected farmer who

1054
01:14:16.239 --> 01:14:21.199
planned his family's deaths for days, maybe weeks, while sharpening

1055
01:14:21.199 --> 01:14:26.119
in acts and reading scripture by candlelight. Both stories survived

1056
01:14:26.199 --> 01:14:29.600
because someone close to them wrote them down, and in

1057
01:14:29.680 --> 01:14:33.760
both cases it's worth asking who that someone was and

1058
01:14:33.800 --> 01:14:38.039
what they wanted the story to mean. Two ministers shaping

1059
01:14:38.319 --> 01:14:43.680
Patience Boston into a redemption narrative arc for their congregation.

1060
01:14:44.479 --> 01:14:50.880
A midwife grieving in literal real time writing down exactly

1061
01:14:50.920 --> 01:14:56.279
what she saw. Two very different kinds of witnesses, separated

1062
01:14:56.359 --> 01:15:02.520
by decades, seventy two years, still reaching us today. If

1063
01:15:02.560 --> 01:15:05.960
you're ever in Portland, Maine, our sibling city on the

1064
01:15:06.000 --> 01:15:10.560
other coast, York's Old Jail and the Puritan families marked

1065
01:15:10.560 --> 01:15:15.319
grave near Augusta are both still there, still standing, still

1066
01:15:15.359 --> 01:15:19.840
telling the same two stories they've been telling since seventeen

1067
01:15:19.960 --> 01:15:22.600
thirty four and eighteen o six.

1068
01:15:23.920 --> 01:15:29.960
The history Happy birthday, mey. I do love history, though,

1069
01:15:30.279 --> 01:15:33.640
so yeah, I like that part of it. But it's

1070
01:15:33.680 --> 01:15:34.319
just sad.

1071
01:15:35.000 --> 01:15:38.640
It's horrifically sad. I really truly did not know that

1072
01:15:38.680 --> 01:15:41.920
both of these cases were going to be quite as

1073
01:15:41.960 --> 01:15:43.640
heinous and dark as they were.

1074
01:15:43.680 --> 01:15:45.479
But the fact that.

1075
01:15:45.640 --> 01:15:49.760
Like, there's so many aspects of I mean, we talked

1076
01:15:49.760 --> 01:15:54.960
about like indigenous culture, we talked about like what slavery

1077
01:15:55.079 --> 01:15:59.760
and colonial times, what you know, these aspects of religion,

1078
01:16:00.079 --> 01:16:04.039
all of these different things that affected people living in

1079
01:16:04.079 --> 01:16:08.439
America in this like broad swath of almost one hundred years.

1080
01:16:09.600 --> 01:16:13.119
We covered a lot of ground, Yeah, we did. If

1081
01:16:13.199 --> 01:16:19.880
nothing else, Yeah, they're both really interesting cases. And I

1082
01:16:20.479 --> 01:16:23.079
did start to feel a little bit better when I

1083
01:16:23.239 --> 01:16:30.720
was personally victimized with you know, my own invent dates included.

1084
01:16:31.039 --> 01:16:38.119
So I just thought these are both such interesting, bizarre,

1085
01:16:38.439 --> 01:16:43.359
truly sad, but just such interesting stories. And you know,

1086
01:16:43.920 --> 01:16:46.800
I think sometimes we get caught up thinking that so

1087
01:16:46.960 --> 01:16:51.359
much has changed, or you know, the circumstances of today

1088
01:16:51.439 --> 01:16:54.720
are nothing like you know this or that, and it's like,

1089
01:16:55.520 --> 01:16:58.279
I don't know, part of me thinks, you know, the

1090
01:16:58.279 --> 01:17:00.920
more things change, the more they stay the same in

1091
01:17:00.960 --> 01:17:01.600
a weird way.

1092
01:17:02.279 --> 01:17:03.600
I don't know. I hope that means.

1093
01:17:05.159 --> 01:17:06.880
No, but you know what I think.

1094
01:17:06.920 --> 01:17:11.079
I mean, I know, yeah, I feel like now everything's

1095
01:17:11.199 --> 01:17:16.319
documented on like social media, like that's people's diaries now

1096
01:17:17.000 --> 01:17:17.439
it is.

1097
01:17:18.399 --> 01:17:21.520
I just thought these were really interesting stories, and I

1098
01:17:21.640 --> 01:17:27.279
found like the most bizarre and I don't know, sort

1099
01:17:27.279 --> 01:17:31.479
of tangential ways to kind of tie all of this together.

1100
01:17:33.000 --> 01:17:36.319
I definitely feel like Charlie Day in front of the corkboard,

1101
01:17:36.680 --> 01:17:41.479
like I need a lot of the red string, very

1102
01:17:41.560 --> 01:17:45.279
much my usual, but then also just the historical aspect

1103
01:17:45.359 --> 01:17:48.119
of it and kind of getting to see things from

1104
01:17:48.119 --> 01:17:52.119
a different perspective. I mean, how about that, like at

1105
01:17:52.119 --> 01:17:56.279
the very beginning, Petty Grove and Lovejoy ever heard of them?

1106
01:17:56.800 --> 01:18:00.880
I know right, just saying, and they were both from

1107
01:18:00.920 --> 01:18:04.800
Maine and Massachusetts, and now we know that Maine used

1108
01:18:04.840 --> 01:18:08.359
to be part of Massachusetts. Like, I feel like we

1109
01:18:08.560 --> 01:18:10.399
learned a lot knowledge bomb.

1110
01:18:11.199 --> 01:18:14.159
Should we try to, like maybe learn a little more

1111
01:18:14.279 --> 01:18:14.920
with some taro?

1112
01:18:15.640 --> 01:18:16.199
Some taro?

1113
01:18:17.119 --> 01:18:19.800
Yeah, wonder what kind of vibes we're gonna get?

1114
01:18:20.399 --> 01:18:28.600
Oh boy, wow, all right, what are you thinking? I

1115
01:18:28.640 --> 01:18:31.319
don't know. I feel like I have an idea.

1116
01:18:31.079 --> 01:18:35.239
But yeah, you pickle, I'm guiding your hands from this side.

1117
01:18:36.159 --> 01:18:39.760
Oh you got the mole? Yeah, two of swords.

1118
01:18:40.479 --> 01:18:47.239
It's a coast mole. It is moll.

1119
01:18:48.239 --> 01:18:48.560
All right.

1120
01:18:48.800 --> 01:18:52.880
Oh wow, I turned right to it. That's crazy. Oh

1121
01:18:53.199 --> 01:18:57.199
I just realized my working title for this episode is

1122
01:18:57.680 --> 01:19:03.000
two deaths one date or some variation there are ooh, I.

1123
01:19:02.960 --> 01:19:05.560
Didn't even think about the two that we got two

1124
01:19:05.600 --> 01:19:06.119
of sorts.

1125
01:19:06.199 --> 01:19:08.760
Obviously more than two people died, unfortunately.

1126
01:19:08.880 --> 01:19:13.079
But yeah, but you talk about two event two to two. Yeah,

1127
01:19:13.119 --> 01:19:15.880
and you kept saying two events, two events.

1128
01:19:15.960 --> 01:19:16.800
Yeah.

1129
01:19:17.159 --> 01:19:17.479
Okay.

1130
01:19:17.479 --> 01:19:24.920
So our keywords are combined resources, courage, faith, friendship, conflict,

1131
01:19:25.079 --> 01:19:29.960
and balance. In the traditional deck, this card depicts a

1132
01:19:30.000 --> 01:19:35.560
blindfolded woman holding two swords crossing over her chest. Twos

1133
01:19:35.680 --> 01:19:41.239
generally signify balance or conflict as well as pairing. I

1134
01:19:41.279 --> 01:19:44.000
think if the two of swords as the blind faith

1135
01:19:44.119 --> 01:19:47.760
card because it can represent courage and making decisions on

1136
01:19:47.800 --> 01:19:51.760
your own and in some cases spiritual guidance, which is

1137
01:19:51.880 --> 01:19:55.119
interesting because I feel like there's an element of like

1138
01:19:55.239 --> 01:19:59.920
spirituality with both of these cases. There is the upper

1139
01:20:00.079 --> 01:20:03.960
right to can symbolize balancing the right and left hemispheres

1140
01:20:04.039 --> 01:20:07.640
of your brain. It's interesting that we talk about balancing

1141
01:20:07.840 --> 01:20:08.359
your brain.

1142
01:20:09.039 --> 01:20:12.239
Yeah, there are some imbalances with these two.

1143
01:20:12.680 --> 01:20:19.000
I think so combining intuition with intellect, Drawing this card

1144
01:20:19.079 --> 01:20:22.119
may mean you must make a decision and need to

1145
01:20:22.199 --> 01:20:23.399
call on both.

1146
01:20:24.560 --> 01:20:25.439
This too, can.

1147
01:20:25.319 --> 01:20:28.279
Also advise you to take off your blindfold and look

1148
01:20:28.359 --> 01:20:32.880
at a situation honestly. In a reading about money, the

1149
01:20:33.000 --> 01:20:37.119
upright too recommends trusting your own wisdom and inner guidance

1150
01:20:37.239 --> 01:20:41.199
in a financial matter, pay attention to your intuition as

1151
01:20:41.279 --> 01:20:42.199
well as logic.

1152
01:20:43.039 --> 01:20:45.840
That's interesting that you talk about like intuition because you

1153
01:20:45.880 --> 01:20:49.680
said that he like had like intuition that he.

1154
01:20:49.680 --> 01:20:51.319
Was going to die. Yeah.

1155
01:20:51.399 --> 01:20:54.800
Yeah. If the reading is about your job, you may

1156
01:20:54.840 --> 01:20:59.680
be confused or conflicted about a work related issue. Have

1157
01:20:59.720 --> 01:21:04.079
faith than your own judgment and ideas. Sometimes the upright

1158
01:21:04.119 --> 01:21:08.359
too represents a job that requires both intellect and imagination.

1159
01:21:09.640 --> 01:21:12.840
In a reading about love, this card suggest listening to

1160
01:21:12.920 --> 01:21:16.279
both your head and your heart. It can mean you

1161
01:21:16.319 --> 01:21:20.479
and your partner hold conflicting perspectives, or that you're trying

1162
01:21:20.520 --> 01:21:25.680
to resolve differences and find harmony. I mean the balance

1163
01:21:26.359 --> 01:21:29.399
piece of it, and that it like literally talks so

1164
01:21:29.560 --> 01:21:32.439
much about like kind of the two sides of the

1165
01:21:32.760 --> 01:21:35.000
of the coin, so to speak, with like the head

1166
01:21:35.079 --> 01:21:37.439
and the heart and its soords.

1167
01:21:37.800 --> 01:21:40.960
Yeah, I know that these people were just kind of

1168
01:21:40.960 --> 01:21:44.800
like listening to a part of them but not really

1169
01:21:44.800 --> 01:21:45.720
like seeing.

1170
01:21:46.079 --> 01:21:47.239
Maybe the whole picture.

1171
01:21:47.399 --> 01:21:49.199
Like how you could you don't have to kill your

1172
01:21:49.199 --> 01:21:50.960
family just because you're in debt.

1173
01:21:51.000 --> 01:21:57.359
Or right, Yeah, I mean, please don't. In fact, if

1174
01:21:57.359 --> 01:22:02.439
you could not, that would be so great. Well, on

1175
01:22:02.520 --> 01:22:05.319
that note, I think we better wrap this up. We've

1176
01:22:05.319 --> 01:22:10.119
got we've got some antsy dogs on both ends of

1177
01:22:10.199 --> 01:22:15.920
this recording. Like that's that's it, they said, all done,

1178
01:22:16.239 --> 01:22:16.760
all done.

1179
01:22:17.760 --> 01:22:21.760
Well, hopefully I can get a quiet second to say goodbye.

1180
01:22:22.760 --> 01:22:24.760
That'd be nice.

1181
01:22:25.039 --> 01:22:26.359
Oh there's deer in the yard.

1182
01:22:27.000 --> 01:22:30.760
Oh it's so cute.

1183
01:22:32.760 --> 01:22:34.520
Well, now I'm not letting you fools out.

1184
01:22:34.840 --> 01:22:38.720
Yeah, obviously have a creepy day.

1185
01:22:39.560 --> 01:22:42.960
We'll see you next Thursday. Unless you.

1186
01:22:44.520 --> 01:22:49.319
Ax, murder your family or throw a kid in a well, like,

1187
01:22:50.520 --> 01:22:51.439
don't come back then.

1188
01:22:51.760 --> 01:22:54.119
I just feel like we just yeah, just maybe don't.

1189
01:22:55.479 --> 01:22:59.159
That's terrible. Nobody do that. I feel like it goes

1190
01:22:59.199 --> 01:22:59.800
without saying.

1191
01:22:59.840 --> 01:23:03.479
I almost feel like by saying don't do it, it's

1192
01:23:03.479 --> 01:23:05.680
like we're giving people ideas, you know what I mean.

1193
01:23:06.000 --> 01:23:09.760
No, No, we would never, they would never think to

1194
01:23:09.840 --> 01:23:14.960
do that. Don't. No, but for real, like, hopefully everyone's

1195
01:23:15.000 --> 01:23:17.079
doing okay, check your mental health.

1196
01:23:18.079 --> 01:23:23.560
Yeah, that feels like that particular sentiment feels kind of

1197
01:23:23.600 --> 01:23:24.560
on point for us.

1198
01:23:24.640 --> 01:23:30.239
Right now, right, I'll go check mine health and look

1199
01:23:30.279 --> 01:23:31.800
at some deer on the grass.

1200
01:23:31.880 --> 01:23:36.359
I know they're so cute. I'm so jealous. My allergies

1201
01:23:36.359 --> 01:23:40.880
have been kind of kicking up for me. So Jesus

1202
01:23:40.960 --> 01:23:46.279
Christ Christ, Oh my god, excuse me. I'm about to

1203
01:23:46.319 --> 01:23:54.279
become part three of this episode. I just in my

1204
01:23:54.439 --> 01:24:00.399
peripheral was like, there is a man outside my window. Yeah,

1205
01:24:00.439 --> 01:24:02.520
she's sot on. We're almost done.

1206
01:24:02.640 --> 01:24:02.720
But