The Murder of Marion Gilchrist

April 22, 2024

In this episode, Payton and Garrett delve into the chilling mystery surrounding the murder of Marion Gilchrist. As the police struggle to solve the case, they seek out unconventional assistance, including none other than the famed author of Sherlock Holmes himself.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland, and I'm Garrett Moreland, and he's the husband. I'm the husband. And we are back. We are back. I know it doesn't feel like we were gone from you guys, but we were just on a week vacation—long time, that's probably the longest vacation we've ever taken. It was great though; we had fun, decompressed a little bit, and here we are, we're back recording, ready to go.

And on top of that, in four days from now, yeah, we willhave our first live show in Phoenix, Arizona. As of the time of recording this,there were still some tickets left to the 9:45 show. The 7:30 show is sold out,so 9:45 show on Thursday, there's some tickets, buy them while you can. We hopeto see you guys there. Thank you so much for supporting us. Yeah, Arizonalisteners, there's a few tickets left to the second show if you've been wantingto see it. Again, it is next week; it's our first show of the spring tour, andwe are so excited.

All right, is your 10 seconds about our vacation? Well, kindof. Okay. While we were on vacation, Payton and I had the wonderful pleasure ofriding some bikes. Oh gosh, um, and I just have a couple things to say aboutit. First of all, we went like 12 miles up and down hills; we didn't know it'dbe like that, not on purpose. We were exhausted, done at the end. It wasinsane. But what I want to talk about is the seat that they have on bikes. It'son a beach cruiser, it's like a regular mountain bike or no, just like a bike.I don't know what you would call, you know, when you just see someone outbiking with the whole uniform on, it's like those seats. Why, like, why arethey so—they're uncomfortable on purpose, and I don't understand. And someonesaid, "Oh, well, you wear the pants with the inserts." That doesn'twhy when you could just have the insert on the seat, that's what I'm trying tosay. Why not just have a comfortable seat then you can wear whatever pants youwant? So there must be something I'm missing; I know we got some bike gangs upin here somewhere, some of our listeners, so let us know what we're doingwrong. But that seat is—no, I will not ride a bike again until that's fixed,and all I know is for us, never ever ride bikes and then ended up going 12.5miles up and down. Um, my butt's still hurting, how's yours? Yeah, it's prettybad, it's pretty freaking bad.

On top of that, I got my hot take of the week. I feel likethese are going to be a little controversial sometimes so I don't want to loseany listeners, I don't want people getting mad, so if you get mad then sorry.But my hot take of the week, we can kind of just breeze past this as soon as Isay it, unless Payton wants to say something else on it, but I think everystate should have the death penalty. Was that—was that too hot of a take? I wastrying to get it true crime related. Can we—do we got to take that out? No. Areyou sure? No, you can keep that. All right, that's your choice, your opinion,that's my hot take of the week. I think every state should have the deathpenalty, and we'll just kind of leave it at that. Uh, I feel like I need to setthe record that I'm not team Garrett on this, disagrees with me on this, andthat's what makes this podcast work so well, and on that note, let's hop intotoday's case.

Our sources for this episode are "Conan Doyle for theDefense" by Margalit Fox, "Circumstances of Unexplained Savagery: TheGilchrist Murder Case and Its Legacy" by Ann Marie Kild, "The Case ofOscar Slater" by Arthur Conan Doyle, University of Glasgow, NationalRecords of Scotland, the Glasgow Police Museum, Glasgow Times, the NorthAmerican Review, Oxford Open Learning, and BBC.

If that is not pronounced "Glasgow" and I justsaid it that many times, that's going to be bad. By the way, if you're watchingon YouTube and my lip is bleeding, my lip's got really burned, so I'm justthrowing that out there right now.

Alright, if you love narratives about crime and policeinvestigations, you've probably read a Sherlock Holmes story at some point orheard of it. Even if you're not a fan of detective stories, you may havechecked them out anyway because Holmes is a classic literary figure. Holmescreator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, wrote 57 short stories and four full-lengthnovels about Sherlock Holmes. Great movies, by the way. That's not counting thecountless adaptations, movies, TV shows, and other reimaginings that have comeout over the years. So, it's no wonder why Sherlock Holmes is wildly popular.He can solve the most complex mysteries solely with his powers of observation.It's pretty impressive, actually. But we all know Sherlock Holmes is fictional.He's never solved a crime in real life, at least in theory. But the legendaryfictional detective Sherlock Holmes actually played a role in helping to bringjustice in more than one real murder case, and we're going to be talking aboutthat today.

So let's go all the way back to December 21st, 1908. So,that's a long time ago. That evening, right around 7:00 p.m., a 21-year-oldwoman named Helen Lambie went out to buy a copy of the evening paper. Helenworked as a maid for 83-year-old Marion Gilchrist. Now, from the sound of it,Marion was quite the loner. She lived all on her own, and she never had friendsover. The only visitors who ever came by were Marion's business associates,like her lawyer, maybe her financial managers. She was very careful about whoshe let into her home because Marion was wealthy and constantly afraid thatsomeone might try to rob her. In fairness, she lived in Glasgow, Scotland, andthe city was changing rapidly in the 1900s. The population was exploding, andwith it, crime rates were going up every day.

The newspapers were full of stories about robberies,assaults, murders. It left Marion feeling very frightened of the outside world,and she had her apartment set up to be extremely secure. She had a safe in herbedroom, and she hid her most valuable jewelry in her clothing drawers so itwould be harder to find. Marion also had a deal with her downstairs neighborsthat if she ever felt unsafe, she'd knock on the floor three times so theycould come up and rescue her. That was assuming that they were able to get in;see, her apartment had its own private entrance. The other tenants in thebuilding had to use other doors to get into the building. Even those downstairsneighbors didn't have a key to Marion's area, and visitors had to go throughtwo sets of doors just to get inside. One opened to the streets; then, guestswould walk down a long private hallway and up the stairs to the second door,which would be dead-bolted from the inside.

Marion was very particular about who she'd open that innerdoor for; even those business associates all had to be carefully vetted beforeMarion would let them in. This meant every evening when Helen went out to buy apaper (remember, Helen is the maid), she pulled the inner door closed behindherself and then she locked it. Helen did have her own key, but if Marionwanted, she could have bolted the door from the other side to stop her fromcoming back in.

Now, once the door was secure, Helen walked down thatprivate hallway and out the door to the street, and she closed and locked thisdoor too. Then, finally, she could run her errands. That night, she only tookabout 10 minutes to get her copy of the paper. Before Helen could unlock thedoor and go back inside the house, she spotted a man on the street. His namewas Arthur Adams, and Helen knew him because he lived in the unit beneathMarion's.

Arthur told Helen that he was worried about Marion, hisupstairs neighbor and her boss. In the past 10 minutes, during the brief windowthat Helen was gone, Arthur had heard a loud noise coming from Marion'sapartment. It reminded him of that secret code they had where she was supposedto knock on the floor if she needed help. But since he couldn't get through theprivate door into the hallway, he'd run outside to look for help. It was justsheer luck that he ran into Helen at that moment. This was really concerning,so Helen unlocked both of the doors and let Arthur into the apartment.

At first, they didn't see anything suspicious, but theydecided to search the entire apartment to see if they could find Marion. Helenwalked into the kitchen just in time to see a man coming out of one of thebedrooms. This wasn't Marion's room; it was a spare room. Now, to be clear,this wasn't Arthur, and Helen didn't know if any other man was supposed to bethere at this time. She also didn't recognize the guy, who was acting weirdlycasual as he just strolled through the house. He went right past Helen, rightpast Arthur, without saying a word. That's weird. Then, the moment he got tothe top of the staircase, he breaks out into a run. Okay, he sprints the restof the way out to the street. So Arthur is like, doesn't even know what'shappened in the room, he begins to chase him because now there's a guy runningfrom the house. But he lost track of the man as soon as he got outside, andsince he couldn't find the intruder, Arthur ran to the police station insteadto report what had happened, that there had been a stranger in this house.

Now, the whole situation was very weird, and Helen wasterrified, so she runs into the same bedroom that the man ran out of to checkon Marion. But Marion wasn't there, so Helen kept looking. When she did, herboss, she was lying on the dining room floor. A rug had been pulled up overher, but it couldn't hide the puddle of blood all around her. Her face wascompletely smashed in; her head wasn't even the same shape anymore.

Needless to say, Marion was dead, and whoever had killedher—presumably the man that went running out of the house—had trashed her room.Marion kept a lot of her personal papers in a wooden box, and the attacker hadbroken its lid open, then dumped all of the documents all over the floor.Weirdly, he'd also lit the gas lights in the spare bedroom; the matchbox he'dused was still sitting near the fixtures. Helen and Arthur thought the mancould have been a robber, but when they checked over Marion's things, only oneitem was missing. It was a brooch that Marion liked to wear when she was havingdinner or tea. It was shaped like a crescent and had a single line of diamondsalong one edge.

Now, weirdly, this wasn't the only expensive piece ofjewelry that Marion owned. She had a lot of rings, she had a watch, othervaluable items sitting literally out in the open. If the killer had reallywanted to rob her, he could have helped himself before he walked out. But forwhatever reason, the brooch was the only thing he took from 83-year-old Marion.It's like a real-life Sherlock Holmes murder. There's two entrances, basically;she's already has it locked up, there's only one thing missing. Yeah, she'sdead, two witnesses, two witnesses, interesting.

Okay, so the police arrived pretty soon afterward, and theybegan investigating right away. They determined that there was no sign offorced entry. Now, this made sense because Marion's apartment was almostimpossible to get into if she didn't let you in for herself. This told thepolice that the killer must have been someone she knew or trusted. She had tohave opened the door so her murderer could come inside. Yeah, but given howisolated Marion was and how few friends she had, they couldn't imagine who theattacker could be. They put out a call for tips; you know, a few witnesses cameforward.

One young woman said she saw someone run out of MarionGilchrist's apartment at around 7:00 p.m. The running man actually bumped intoher and then kept going. Her description did match the same man that Helen andArthur had already reported. They all agreed that the suspect was clean-shaven;he had dark hair, which was just generic enough that the killer could have beenabout anyone.

But a few days later, on Christmas, someone approached thepolice station with an even better tip in this case. This man said that hesuspected someone named Oscar Slater. Oscar was a German immigrant who was newin town. He also had dark hair; he had recently shaved off his mustache, andever since December 21st, which was the day of Marion's murder, Oscar had beentrying to sell a pawn ticket he had for a crescent-shaped diamond-studdedbrooch.

Okay, so basically Oscar had pawned a brooch, but now hedidn't want to go back to the pawn shop and pick it up for some reason.Assuming the brooch was the one that had gone missing from Marion's apartment,it sounded like Oscar was afraid that he'd be caught and arrested if hereturned for it. And even more suspiciously, Oscar did have a criminal history.For his whole life, he'd been drifting from one town to another. During thattime, he'd used a lot of different aliases to avoid arrest. In fact, Oscar Slaterwasn't even his real name. But in the interest of clarity, I'm going to keepcalling him Oscar because that's how he's best known today.

He had been arrested three times for violent crimes. Once,he got into a fight while he was drunk; he was slapped with a disorderlyconduct charge. Another time, he allegedly injured another man during aconfrontation. He went all the way to trial, but the jurors found him notguilty. And then, his third arrest was for threatening a police officer;apparently, he told a patrolman that he was going to shoot him, even thoughOscar didn't have a gun on him at the time. When he wasn't threatening peopleor getting into brawls, Oscar worked as a pimp. And if he needed to make itsound like he had a legitimate job, he'd tell people he bought and soldjewelry.

The police also suspected he was involved in some kind ofillegal bookkeeping, and they'd been investigating him for a while for thatpossible crime even before anyone had connected him to Marion's case. So, thepolice put out another call for tips, this time they wanted to learn more aboutOscar, particularly any information that put him at the scene of the crime.

They learned that several weeks before the break-in, a dozenwitnesses saw a man who fit Oscar's description standing on the street outsideof Marion's apartment. It's just, I'm still trying to think about it because ifhe went in there to rob something, like, he would have grabbed more than whathe grabbed, so he obviously went there to kill her. Why he killed her, yadayada yada, I'm sure we'll get to it, but she's in her, yeah, just none of it'sreally adding up. She never really went outside, like, she didn't have manyacquaintances or friends, so why kill her? Well, and also, it was a prettyviolent death, like, her face was smashed in. Mhm.

So people are like, maybe Oscar was casing the joint, maybewaiting for the maid Helen to leave so he could break in. The fact that themurder happened during the slim 10-minute window that Marion was alone did makeit seem like the killer must have been watching that place. It's like the one,yep, mhm. But the most damning evidence against Oscar was the fact that he fledthe country less than a week after the murder. Wow.

So Marion died on December 21st, and then Oscar spent thenext 7 days trying to offload that pawn ticket. Then he and his significantother hopped on a ship from Glasgow to New York City on the 26th. Now, thatjourney took 12 days, but the police could send a telegram to the United Statesin an instant, which was what they did. The American officials used the rest oftheir time to draw up a warrant for Oscar's arrest once he landed on US soil.Telegram, man, I know, kind of crazy, right?

So the very first day he arrived in the States, police werewaiting on the docks to apprehend Oscar the moment, literally, that he got offthe boat. When they arrested him, the police found a hammer in his pocket. Bynow, an autopsy had confirmed that Marion had been beaten to death, so they'relike, maybe this hammer is the murder weapon. The evidence was stacking up, butthe police couldn't just send Oscar back to Scotland for his trial; they had togo through an extradition process, and Oscar hired a lawyer who had the powerto slow down or stop the procedure.

So, while they navigated the situation, police officers onboth sides of the pond did what they could to keep the investigation movingforward. Glasgow's detectives arranged for several eyewitnesses to travel toNew York. Helen, Arthur, and the other passerby came to view Oscar in a suspectlineup. So, Oscar stood with 11 other men, and the witnesses had to pick whichindividual was the man that they saw running out of the apartment. Weirdly, thewoman who bumped into the killer on the street had a hard time. She looked atthe dozen men and said none of them looked like the guy who'd run into her. Butthe police weren't willing to accept a non-answer; they said that she had topick someone. So, the woman gave all the men another look-over before shepointed at Oscar. So, in the end, the three witnesses did agree, even if ittook some prodding to kind of get there. It doesn't work like that these days;you can't make someone pick someone if they don't remember, then it goes allright, you don't remember, move on. Because even then in court, they're justgoing to be like you forced her to pick, yeah. But I mean, when you have allthree point to the same guy and you have the evidence, you have him trying topawn the brooch, him leaving town, the hammer, it seems obvious, him being seenthere before the murder. It feels like Oscar had to be the killer.

But even with all the evidence that was stacked against himso far—and I'm saying evidence back in this day 'cause I don't know if all thisevidence would stand up today—Oscar said he didn't do it. His attorney agreedand suggested that he should fight his extradition back to Scotland. Basically,he could have appealed to the American authorities and tried to stop them fromsending him back for the murder trial. But instead, Oscar insisted on boardinga ship back to Glasgow.

He said he wanted his day in court so he could prove he wasinnocent, and he thought the evidence was actually on his side. In fact, someof the clues that initially seemed to implicate Oscar started to fall apartwhen his lawyer dug into them. For example, that brooch that he pawned wasn'tMarion's; it couldn't be. Marion had one single row of diamonds on her brooch,Oscars had three rows, and he pawned it in early November, which was two fullmonths before the murder even took place, so clearly he didn't steal thatspecific brooch from the apartment; the timeline wouldn't fit. And as for thefact that he left the country right after the homicide, it was because Oscarhad learned about a new business opportunity. He'd received a letter in themail on December 21st, the day of the murder, urging him to get to SanFrancisco as soon as possible. So, Oscar said he had already been planning toleave town hours before she was even murdered, and he still had a copy of thatletter to prove his timeline.

Even the witnesses who picked him out of the lineup were alittle questionable. See, the police made Oscar stand with a bunch of men whodidn't fit the killer's description. All none of them probably clean-shaven,yeah, got it, specifically the murderer and Oscar both had dark hair, but theother men in the lineup had lighter-colored hair or beards. Right before thewitnesses looked at the lineup, the police actually showed each a photo ofOscar, which is like, okay, you literally can't do that, that's dumb. So theywere, he was fresh in their minds when they went in. All right, so it'sobviously not Oscar.

Well, there were also problems with the other 12 witnesseswho saw someone loitering outside of Marion's apartment before the murder.Their descriptions of the man varied a lot; some said he had a mustache, somesaid he was shaven, some said he was wearing a black hat, others were like,"No, it was brown or tan." A few of them said he had a bent nose,while others were just like, "No, it was a straight nose." Basically,no one could prove that these witnesses had even seen the same man hangingaround Marion's apartment, let alone that that man was Oscar. And as for thehammer in his pocket, Oscar couldn't prove it wasn't the murder weapon. Butinterestingly, no one could prove it was either. All the police knew was thatMarion's killer had beaten her with a blunt object. They couldn't say that itwas a hammer, but one of the chairs in her bedroom had blood all over one ofits legs, leading some to believe that it wasn't a hammer at all; it was theleg of the chair that she had been beaten with. So despite all of this, theytake Oscar to trial. Weird.

Okay, so Oscar's trial came down to the question of whichversion of the story seemed more persuasive: did this man who bore aresemblance to the killer, who had a criminal history, and who fled rightafterward, do it? Or had the police charged an innocent man? Everyone had anopinion, and the trial became big news in Scotland. I'm trying to figure outwhere the guy is that said it was Oscar in the first place, because he'sobviously going to come into play. He's suspicious, right? Yeah, so that'swhere this is starting not to make sense.

So a ton of spectators actually turned up to watch the triallive. Every morning before the courthouse could open up, people would line upoutside like bargain shoppers before Black Friday. And the more these peopleheard during the hearing, the more convinced they were of Oscar's innocence.The prosecutors didn't do themselves any favors either. They noted that Oscarwas clean-shaven, and so was the man who was spotted at Marion's apartment.They even brought in a hairdresser who testified that she'd shaved Oscar'smustache off around the time of the murder, specifically four days after it,meaning even their own witness admitted that Oscar actually still had amustache on the day of the murder. But the prosecutors acted like it was a hugedeal that he had shaved around that time. Maybe they were hoping the jurorswere having a hard time keeping track of the dates, like, I don't know.

They also talked a lot about Oscar's criminal history, andthey hit on the fact that Oscar lived with a woman that he wasn't married to,which at the time, not so great. But it's so funny because these days it's likethat has literally nothing to do with murder. That's so funny. I guess theythought maybe the jury would just, like, disapprove of this, yeah. Now,obviously, this sounds a little backwards hearing it today, but it fits withhow a lot of people understood crime and criminals in the early century.Attitudes were starting to change, but the change was happening slowly. When itwas time to vote on his verdict, nine jurors thought Oscar was guilty, only onesaid he was not guilty, and five voted for "not proven" in theScottish criminal justice system. Not proven is the same as a neutral vote.Here, it means it's not clear if the accused did it or not. If a person isfound not proven, they still get to go free, just like if they're not guilty.

Still, the guilty votes outnumbered the other ones, so Oscarwas convicted. Wow, there's no way he did it. There's no way he was sentencedto death by hanging. Holy crap, this is a little weird when you think aboutwhat you said earlier. But okay, not sure, still thinking about this one. Now,understandably, a lot of people in Glasgow were outraged. Almost everyone whowatched the trial thought Oscar was innocent. By hanging too, that's nuts. Andall the newspapers that covered the case highlighted how little evidence therewas against him. It seemed like the officials were going to execute someone whohad nothing to do with this murder. More than 20,000 people signed a petitiondemanding the authorities to reexamine Oscar's case, and the outcry was enoughfor them to reopen his file. Thanks to this, he got a reduced sentence to lifein prison. Okay, see there we go, but no one was willing to completely overturnhis conviction. Now, Oscar learned this news just one day before he wassupposed to be hanged. His life was saved just in the nick of time.

But Oscar still didn't want to spend the rest of his lifebehind bars, especially because the prison was dreary. Every day, he spenthours breaking concrete blocks in the yard, even when it was raining orsnowing. The only food he ever got to eat was broth and bread, seven days aweek, 365 days a year. That would be Oscar's life. Dang, prisons were hardcoreover there. So, he reached out for help to the one person that he could thinkof who might be able to assist him: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of SherlockHolmes. This seems fake, like it doesn't seem real. Like I said, Doyle was thefamous author who created the character Sherlock Holmes. But just because youknow how to write good mysteries doesn't mean you can solve them in real life.In fact, before he became an author, Doyle had been a doctor. He based thecharacter of Sherlock Holmes on one of his professors from medical school. Well,I kind of take that back, though, because just because you're not a detective,I mean, I feel like you've done enough true crime stories, I would trust you tosolve a murder. I wouldn't. Well, I would. That's all that matters.

So, that man that he based the character off of taught hisstudents to pay close attention to patients' symptoms when they were makingdiagnoses. The professor said it was super important to follow the evidence,make logical conclusions, rather than just rely on gut instinct or hunches.Doyle had the idea to use the same principles in his detective novels, whichobviously were a smash hit. But again, that didn't mean Doyle had experienceinvestigating crimes. Since Sherlock Holmes had become such a popular character,other falsely accused people had actually reached out to Doyle before.Basically, they wanted him to use his powers of observation to help them getout of unfair convictions. And Doyle did actually have a pretty good trackrecord of solving crimes that police officers couldn't. That’s pretty awesome.

So when he heard Oscar's story, especially about all theevidence that seemed to exonerate him, Doyle agreed to take on the case. He wasgoing to help Oscar get his conviction overturned and go free. So, Doyleinterviewed the eyewitnesses for himself, and he reviewed all the evidence,cooperating with the police to get access to their findings. He published an80-page essay laying out all of the reasons that he thought Oscar did notcommit this murder. Wow, this was in 1912, so four years after the murder andthree years after Oscar's conviction. That essay got a lot of attention, andtons of people were talking about it, but it didn't move the needle in terms ofthe criminal justice system. Oscar didn't get a new trial; he stayed behindbars. But he wasn't willing to give up.

Even as more years went by, he found another ally in amember of Glasgow's police force, Detective Lieutenant John Thompson Trench.Trench was a highly decorated police officer with a great track record ofsolving the most difficult crimes. From the beginning, Trench was convincedthat Oscar was not the killer. He said that every step of the way, during theinitial investigation, during Oscar's trial, during the public outcryafterward, that Oscar did not do this. In 1914, so two years after Doyle publishedhis essay, some law enforcement officials agreed to review Oscar's case onceagain, and Trench was one of Oscar's most outspoken supporters this timearound. He shared all the evidence he had that helped to demonstrate Oscar'sinnocence. He also reported on some gut feelings and repeated some rumors thatcouldn't be verified.

So, this was basically the opposite of Arthur Conan Doyle'smethod. Trench wasn't sticking to the facts; he was throwing everything at thewall to see what would stick. And this backfired, honestly. Trench couldn'tback up the evidence that he'd submitted. Specifically, he accused one of theeyewitnesses of lying because she'd changed her story a couple of times. Youcan't prove that. And yeah, in reality, actually, Trench got two differentwitness testimonies confused, so he was like, "Oh, she changed," butit was actually two different people. Come on, man.

So, this was obviously a devastating mistake. The rest ofthe police force didn't like that Trench was accusing them of mishandling thiscase, so they pounced on his error. Pretty much overnight, Trench's reputationwas destroyed. Six months after the inquiry, in September 1914, Trench wasfired from the police force. He never got his old position back. The formerDetective Lieutenant died five years later, and none of this did Oscar anyfavors. He was still fighting to be declared not guilty.

So now we're in 1925, 17 years after the murder. That'shorrible, man. He writes another letter to Arthur Conan Doyle, begging him totry again, just try again, like try again to get me out. Now, the prison guardsdidn't want Oscar communicating too much with the outside world. He knew theywouldn't actually deliver the letter if he tried to send it from the prison'smailbox.

So instead, Oscar gave the note to another inmate who wasscheduled to be released soon. This other prisoner slipped the paper betweenhis dentures and his gums, so even though the police gave him a full pat downto make sure he wasn't smuggling anything out, they didn't look at his mouth.He got out of prison, and before long, the note made its way to Doyle. It wasjust the nudge the famous author needed. Once again, how do you put a notebetween your teeth, your dentures, and your gums? It would get all soaked andwet. I mean, I don't know. I guess it works, but that seems pretty crazy.Something I will never have to do. You'd do it too for a check. What a dogthing.

So, once again, Sherlock Holmes' author is publiclycampaigning for Oscar's release, and this time the authorities listen. Theyreopen the case once again and finally publicly acknowledge that there probablywasn't enough evidence to justify Oscar's conviction. Go, 17 years in prison.17 years in prison. What's crazy is it still happens today, yeah. And hissentence is overturned, so on November 14th, 1927, Oscar Slater was releasedfrom prison, and finally, he was a free man.

But this wasn't a completely happy ending for him. All told,Oscar spent 19 years behind bars for a crime that he did not commit, and hislife wasn't exactly easy afterward. During World War II, Oscar spent some timein an internment camp because he was ethnically German, so once again, he waslocked up even though he hadn't done anything wrong. And Oscar, who was Jewish,lost some family members in the Holocaust too, so his life just ended up beingone tragedy after another. And then he passed away in 1948.

Oscar wasn't the only person, though, who was denied justicein this story. Marion's murder was never solved, meaning her killer was gettingaway with it. It's been 116 years since this homicide, so whoever did it, theyare definitely dead, probably by old age by now. No, you're freaking kiddingme. We went for 38 minutes forever in, and this is a cold case? Well, hear meout. So over the years, different historians and criminologists have tried tofigure out who really beat her to death.

One popular theory is that Marion was killed by a member ofher own family. Again, she was pretty wealthy, and at one point, her will saidher $80,000 fortune was going to go to a particular relative. Adjusted forinflation, that would be $12.7 million today. Interestingly, right before hermurder, Marion changed her mind. She said instead she was going to leave herfortune to one of the maid's families. So the idea is maybe one of herrelatives killed her for their inheritance and then went through her papers inthe hopes that they could destroy that new will. Okay, if no one could find theupdated paperwork, they might have to follow the original one. Where did themoney actually end up going? Do we know? No, it was never public. I couldn'tfind it. Interesting, because that would tell a lot, right? And I'm surethere's a million different theories, but, well, and you know, it would makesense why that was more important than stealing jewelry if that was the motivefor the murder. And Detective Lieutenant John Trench, who investigated thecrime until he was fired for advocating on Oscar's behalf when Oscar was thenjust later released, he also thought Marion was killed by a family member.

In his notes, he called the suspect "AB." It's notclear what he was referring to, but according to Trench, AB was the samerelative who was originally supposed to inherit the fortune. He must havegotten inside Marion's apartment because she recognized him, and then he beather to death the moment he was in the dining room. And as for the maid Helen,who didn't recognize the intruder, well, apparently she later told a friendthat she did know him. It was one of Marion's family members, and she washesitant to tell the police his identity because maybe he would come after her.Why does this stuff always happen? I don't know, but apparently the relativeHelen named was the same person that Trench had already identified, so she saidit was the same guy that Trench said.

Unfortunately, Trench only heard that Helen had confirmedAB's identity secondhand. He couldn't get her to admit that she recognized theman during any official interrogation. Maybe she wasn't on it. Maybe he said,"Hey, if you unlock the door for me, 'cause I have the only spare key, andI'll give you some money." Maybe Trench went to his grave without everpublicly naming his suspect. It's likely we'll never know who AB was or ifTrench was right.

So that's the story of Marion Gilchrist and of Oscar Slater.He was saved by detectives who set aside their assumptions and followed theevidence to its logical conclusion, which is exactly what Sherlock Holmes didin all of his books, movies, and TV shows. This whole account just goes toshow, while it's true that real life can sometimes inspire great novels, thereare also times where truth is stranger than fiction. And that is our case fortoday.

Oh, I'm kind of annoyed it was a cold case. You let me downthere at the end. But I don't know. I mean, we don't really have anything to gooff of. Well, at least Oscar got out. Yeah, I think the best part is thatOscar, who served 19 years in prison, eventually got out. That is so long. Youknow, there's so many, like, devastating parts of the cases we cover, murder,you know, the family that live whatever, whatever, serving wrongful time has tobe one of the worst because it's like there's two victims. Yes, it's likethere's two victims of this case. And it's just a very natural process that youalmost forget solving the case because you're so worried about getting theinnocent person out of prison, right?

What are the chances that my hot take this week is that, andthen you give us a case about someone who was wrongfully in prison? Yeah, I hadno idea what the case was going to be. We're just always on the samewavelength. But I don't know, that's wild. Yeah, I mean, it was a long timeago. Everyone that was involved is pretty much gone now. Yeah, but um, yeah,it's an interesting case and one that a lot of people still look into to try tofigure out. Yeah, all right, you guys. That was our episode, and we will seeyou next time with another one.

I love it.

And I hate it.

Goodbye.

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