Fall River | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

This episode contains mentions of suicide and sexual assault. Please use discretion.
In 1833, a woman named Katherine Williams was beginning to work on a new book. She was a poet. She would write
about the American Revolutionary War and she was a biographer who became very, very respected and wellknown. This is
author Kate Winkler Dawson. Katherine Williams was from a well-known family. Her grandfather had been the
attorney general of Rhode Island. She'd started making a living from writing 5 years earlier. She'd published her first
book when she was in her 40s. She was successful enough to support her daughter by herself.
Catherine had divorced her husband a few years earlier. And so for a woman, I cannot stress this enough, for a woman
to file for divorce in the 1820s, especially a woman with a one-year-old baby and for it to be granted. He must
have been a really bad person. So, it was almost like an act of God to get that. She wrote that her ex-husband had
deceived her and that while they were married, quote, "His social character was fast deteriorating, although he
never was implicated in the commission of any crime." By 1833, she'd written four books, but
this book was going to be different than anything she'd written before. It was about a woman named Sarah Cornell
from Fall River, a town on the border between Rhode Island and Massachusetts. She'd been found dead about 6 months
earlier. Her death was all over the newspapers, and people everywhere in New England
were talking about the case. Catherine overheard people criticizing Sarah Cornell, saying things like, "No
matter who killed her, such a person were better out of the world than in it." Someone else called her a drab and
didn't think it was worth having a trial over her death. But Catherine thought there was more to
say about the case. She wrote that it wasn't fair for people to talk about Sarah Cornell when, quote, "She cannot
answer them back again." So, this was a story she was passionate about and I think she saw an awful lot
of herself in Sarah Cornell. Before Sarah Cornell came to Fall River, she had lived all over New England. She
had to move a lot to find work. She'd started working as a teenager after her father had abandoned their family. And
Sarah at a very young age decided to become a tailor, an apprentice. And so she was trained very well in um
tailoring dresses and suits and and she was you know somebody who actually had a
lot of great skills and she left very early. This is a time period 1820s to 1830s where there were factories popping
up, mills popping up all across the east coast in New England. And so she with these skills was able like a lot of
women to move from mill and factory um and kind of explore up and down the coast which was very new for for women
in the country in general. This was the kind of the first taste of independence for a lot of them. And so Sarah went
from place to place exploring different areas. She was able to travel by herself. If she didn't like a factory
she could quit and move to another one. Her mother had called her quote a moving
planet. What was the work like in these textile mills? Hard. Very, very difficult.
There's all these newspaper articles about fires where the doors had been locked to prevent thieves from coming in
and and so women had to jump out of windows. And there were women and girls losing fingers and limbs and looms. They
were paid half as much as men, but there weren't a lot of job options for women.
Factory work paid more than what they could earn on their family farms. Kate Dawson says that the factory owners
liked hiring young women because they were considered more obedient than men. I think that the um mill and uh owners
and and the factory owners really enjoyed employing young women. They were sort of used to being under their
family's thumb already and um they weren't out getting drunk at night. You know, they were very dutiful. There was
a a bell that would send them off to the factories in the morning and then a bell
to go to church and then, you know, to come home. And so it was very regimented. And I think there were very
very high expectations that even though these women were able to have a lot of independence, manage
their own money, at the same time they were certainly expected to have decorum to not go walk around the block with a
young man unless they were really officially courting. And so there were an awful lot of rules for girls who and
women who were being offered an awful lot of freedom at the same time. Once she started working in in the factories
and moving up and down, would she see her her family often? >> No. And I think that she was unmed from
her family. Sometimes she would go a long time without receiving any letters from them. When you read the letters
that she wrote her sister and her mother and her brother-in-law, they're pretty painful because she'll say, "I haven't
heard from you all in months. I want to try to come back to Providence or Connecticut at one point. Um, and
sometimes she wouldn't receive a response. In 1822, when Sarah was 19 years old,
she was in Providence visiting her mother and sister. It was the first time she'd seen them in years, and she was
excited to be in a big city with fancier shops. when she belonged to two different churches, she gave quite a bit
of her money from the factories to these churches. And so, she didn't have a lot
of extra spending money. And so, she had never really been able to have nice things. And so, she was in Providence
and kind of going in and out of clothing stores and fell in love with um some material and a dress. And she ended up
shoplifting. >> The shop owner saw her and chased after her. He found Sarah at her family's
house and she was caught and had kind of an extreme reaction which I would say is
just pure nerves. She would cry and then she would laugh and the shopkeepers kind
of finally let her go. But then Sarah bought Silk on Credit at another store and never came back to pay for it.
The store owner found her two months later in another town. from another store. She stole a shawl
and bonnet. At the time, shoplifting was a felony. Convicted shoplifterss sometimes faced
the death penalty. This really cemented her as um a criminal. And this followed her from place to place. And you know, I
think, oh, New England, it's so large, but everybody knew everything. And especially in these factory communities,
being a somebody who was caught shoplifting a couple of different times, what that means, one time's a mistake
multiple times is compulsive. And that was a really big deal in in New England at a time period when, you know, a man's
handshake is indicative of his character. You know, if he made a promise, he made a promise. And sort of
that spills over into all of society. And the perception of Sarah was if she were this petty thief, then she was a
criminal in general and a weward woman who, you know, would sleep around, do improper things, maybe be lazy at work.
Um, there was one instance where her loom accidentally broke and she was just scared to death of that because there
was so much more scrutiny on her than on anywhere else. If you make one mistake,
it just dooms you. And that's what happened. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal.
What is her relationship like with the church at this point? Um Sarah was able to choose what church she would belong
to, which we of course you would have, you know, gone with whatever church your family was with. And so there were a lot
of choices that could be made. She was raised um in a congregationalist church, you know, mainstream Protestant, what
you would imagine um which would be, you know, brickandmortar church and um you know, a minister who had been formally
trained. And that was the expectation of I think the majority of the people in New England, sort of those Puritan
values, very conservative. But there was this also um there were a couple of of other denominations that were popping up
and and this wild one called u Methodists which everybody every time I say that nobody believes me but um you
know Methodism had only been in the United States for 50 years. John Wesley had come. And this really began as an
appeal to workers in England who felt like they were left behind by the Church of England. And so when the Methodists
came to the United States, the same thing happened. So the Methodists would have these massive tent revivals, which
I joke is like the burning man of religious ceremonies and and festivals. I mean, they would go on for days. They
were very exciting. um evangelical, I would say. Certainly a lot of passion, a lot of good-looking
young ministers. And so, it's no surprise that a lot of these what they would call factory girls were attracted
to the Methodist church. Sarah wrote to her family after she was baptized in the Methodist church. She
said, quote, "God and mercy has shown me the depravity of my own wicked heart." Sarah also wrote, "I want you should
forgive me." So, she fell in love with the Methodist church. She really did. She She was
god-fearing. She um was very proud to be a Christian. She gave a lot of money. She was beautiful and, you know, she was
respected in churches until they found out about her background. After she'd been caught shoplifting,
Sarah was forced to leave Providence. Eventually, she moved to Fall River in the fall of 1832.
She rented a room in a boarding house. And so, there would be a matron kind of in charge and would provide her meals
and, you know, of course, receive rent, but someone who kind of would keep an eye on these young women and and their
morals. And of course, the matrons would not allow men to spend the night. And so
Sarah was working for a factory. Um she was going to different meetings. She mentions going to a tent revival uh in
Cape Cod. And so she seemed um to be doing fairly well. 2 months later she was dead.
We'll be right back. Very early on the morning of December 21st, 1832, a farmer named John Dery took his horses
out in Fall River and he saw something strange. He sees a figure who appears to be kind of hovering above the ground
just slightly. As he approaches, he realizes it's a woman. He gets off um his cart and runs over and he sees that
it's a woman dressed in a winter flock, you know, and and has a bonnet on and she is um has a noose around her neck
which is attached to one of his hay stack poles which is a very large pole that helps sort of stabilize these
massive bales of hay. And uh her knees are almost touching the ground. She's clearly deceased and he screams for help
immediately. Someone went to get a doctor in town, a man named Thomas Wilbur. He was Sarah's personal
physician who she had visited in about within the 3 or 4 months of her death. So he gets up and he goes and he sees
once he reaches there his um you know patient who is dead and he said this is I know who this is. She's Sarah Maria
Cornell. >> The coroner called for a preliminary jury to determine the cause of Sarah's
death. >> These were not people who um who had to have any kind of medical expertise.
There's their job was to to essentially decide if this was murder or suicide or accident. And so this group of men shows
up and um they they pretty quickly believe that this was a suicide and they make a a pretty rash decision and decide
to go ahead and bury her um the next day and have a very quick funeral because there was no other reason for them to
think this was murder or anything else. Two of John Dery's sisters and some of the women from town helped prepare
Sarah's body for burial. Um, so you know, they took all of her clothes off and saw grass stains on her legs. Uh, it
looks like a lot of defensive wounds. She definitely had been in some sort of a um altercation, physical altercation.
She had thumb prints and large handprints on um her body. And um you know one of
the women there who was a more sort of broad woman who had large hands said this was certainly a man because these
are you know bigger handprints than mine even and lots of bruises that they described as as very dark bruises. At
first the women didn't tell anyone else about what they'd seen. One of the women asked John Dery if he
could get Sarah Cornell's trunk from the boarding house where she lived so they could find clothes to bury her in.
When he brought the trunk back, he found some of Sarah's letters inside. There was one she had written to her minister,
and then there were three letters addressed to Sarah. They were unsigned. The letters very clearly pointed her to
meet with a mystery person. One read, "Write me some time and place where I shall see you. Write soon. Say nothing
to no one. Yours in haste." Sarah Cornell was buried on John Dery's land on December 22nd, 1832.
That morning, Sarah's letters have been read into evidence at a second meeting of the coroner's jury.
This time, they formally ruled that Sarah's death was a suicide. But there was one letter they weren't
shown from Sarah herself. It was written in pencil and signed SMC. It's this note that says, "If I am to go
missing, please inquire of Reverend Ephraim Avery, who was a minister at the Methodist church where she had once
attended." The letter had been found in a hatbox in Sarah's trunk by John Dery's sisters.
And so, you know, I think this was alarming to the women. And then they ended up showing the note to John Dery.
He became very alarmed. The day after Sarah's funeral, John Dery talked to a neighbor who'd found something near the
haystack where Sarah had been. It was a piece of broken comb. John Dery had found a similar piece when
he had found Sarah's body. He brought it to the woman who ran the boarding house where Sarah had lived.
She told him it belonged to Sarah. She recognized it because Sarah had recently taken it to the jeweler to be fixed.
Two neighbors told John Dery they'd seen a strange man while they were out working the night Sarah had died. They
told him that some of the twine they were using to tie burlap sacks together was missing. It was the same kind of
twine that had been used for Sarah Cornell's noose. John Dery went to visit the coroner and
told him that he thought the corer's jury had been wrong. The coroner agreed. He called for a new
jury and he asked to dig up Sarah Cornell's body. At the second corer's jury, two doctors
examine the body. Her own doctor, Thomas Wilbur, and another man named Dr. Hooper. And they do a proper examination
with these two doctors, as well as this group of men who are completely uncomfortable with the whole thing. And
they take all of her clothing off of her and they start to examine her and see, of course, the violence that the women
had described, made notes of it. Sarah had been pregnant. They estimated she was about 4 months along.
Dr. Wilbur knew who the father was. At one of her appointments, Sarah had told him she'd gotten pregnant because
Ephraim Avery had raped her. Reverend Ephraim Avery from the infamous note, "Please inquire of Reverend Ephraim
Avery." And so, of course, this was their their immediate suspect. On December 24th, the corner's jury
decided on a new verdict. They wrote that Sarah Cornell had been strangled and quote, "From strong circumstantial
evidence, Ephim K. Avery was principal or accessory in her death." But Ephraim Avery had disappeared.
In 1833, Ephraim Avery was 33 years old. He was married with four children. He'd
become a minister about 10 years earlier. When he went missing, a sheriff asked his deputy to look into him. The deputy
learned that Ephraim Avery had friends in New Hampshire. There was one woman in particular who'd
almost been kicked out of her church until Efim Avery had stepped in. The deputy visited the woman. When he
arrived at her home, he noticed she went into one room of the house that was totally dark.
He followed her and found Efim Avery. He had uh grown a beard. He had been gone for for I think it was a few weeks and
they were hiding him. When you have somebody who's a member of your church who um needs help, that's what you're
going to do. And the deputy sheriff said he was polite and he came back willingly
and just asked for a shave. >> Ephraim Avery was charged with the murder of Sarah Cornell.
Katherine Williams, who at this point had written a few books, began attending the trial.
She really despised the Methodist. She always had. She thought they were lower than the low and pandering to the lowest
common denominator. She'd attended a Methodist tent revival in Rhode Island about 10 years earlier. She wrote in her
journal that she saw people convulsing and that the services were so chaotic that she could hear people from the inn
where she was staying. Katherine described people speaking in tongues, laying on the ground, writhing around
um and and there was a lot of I guess passion. And so I think when you combine that with good-looking men who were
relatively young, they did not have to be educated particularly and I don't mean with schooling, I mean in in the
Bible. They just had to have the spirit, the Holy Spirit. And so I think that created almost a fervor following for
these ministers of people who would just, you know, can you imagine being in in a a church meeting like a traditional
congregational church meeting for three or four days and and that's what happened with the Methodists. It was so
much fun for a lot of these people. So I think it created a lot of personal relationships.
uh to be frank there was a lot of sex. So it was very different and I think there was already a big chasm between I
would say you know the the traditional mainstream Protestants and the Methodists and you know Methodist
ministers because they were literally circuit writers. I mean they would ride out west to try to recruit people. They
were seen as sort of interlopers and trash and and um and they were a threat. They were growing very quickly. And so
you have now turned a murder victim and a murder suspect into avatars for a a giant clash between the established and
very powerful mainstream Protestants versus um you know the Methodists who were growing and had quite a lot of
money too. Catherine wrote that she saw an army of preachers arrive at the courthouse to
watch the trial. When Ephraim Avery was brought out, she described him as middle-aged and tall.
She said his face, quote, might have passed for good-looking had he not a certain iron look and a most unpleasant
stare of the eyes. How is that from Avery described at trial by the prosecution?
Oh, sleazy. and and you know, one of the swarming methodist ministers um you know, a man who was a predator I think
and and really what the prosecutor was trying to lean on was physical evidence more than anything else. But Ephraim
Avery once you get into the trial, he had no real alibi. He went on like what I describe as a walkabout where nobody
knew where he was and um and the prosecutor just said, "This is a joke. He doesn't have an alibi.
The defense brought in six doctors to testify about whether it was possible for Sarah to have hung herself or not.
Ephraim Avery's lawyers argued that Sarah was depressed and suicidal in December,
but her landlad said that Sarah seemed cheerful in the days before she died. One of the women Sarah worked with at
the textile mill said that she remembered Sarah had left early on December 20th. She said she was going to
meet someone. And what do we learn at the trial about how Sarah Cornell and Efim Avery know
each other? Well, Sarah's version through her letters, thank goodness she wrote such, you know, long, beautiful,
wonderful letters to her family. So, we have her voice. Sarah's version is that she had seen Avery
um you know preach at a tent revival and in uh one of the towns where he lived she was looking for work and she told
her family she ended up working for him. She was supposed to be a helper for his
wife if you believe from Avery. He said she never worked for me. Uh she knocked on the door. My wife answered, took one
look at her and said no. Sarah continued working in textile mills and factories.
She tried to attend church but she was kicked out of Afram Avery's church in l Massachusetts. So he said, "Because of
your reputation," he said, "I don't want you to be a member of my church." And what you could
do if you were kicked out by a church, by one, you know, uh, church in a certain town, you could go to another
town and join another Methodist church, but you needed to have what was called a
certificate of good standing. A certificate of good standing was a letter written by a clergy member that
vouched for you as a good person and quote worthy of joining another Methodist church as a member.
>> And Ephraim Avery had refused to do that. He wouldn't give her a certificate of good standing. And so you know she
was of course very upset about that and it and it made her again already unmed from her family. She then becomes unmed
from the Methodist church. She's kind of going from place to place and and it becomes very difficult for her.
>> Katherine Williams wrote that for Sarah to be out of the pale of the church was
to be excluded from salvation. What Avery had said is, "I will give you a certificate of good standing. If you
write down all your sins, everything that you've ever done wrong, write them down. Give them to me and um you know,
I'll I'll forgive all of this." Sarah wrote to Ephraim Avery, "I will confess all if I can only be continued
in the church." Sarah detailed everything she'd done wrong, writing to him multiple times,
but he never answered, and he refused to vouch for her. He did the opposite. He told one minister that Sarah was
guilty of theft, lying, and fornication. he wrote to another, quote, "We should all of us here be opposed to her joining
anywhere." But that summer, she decided to attend a tent revival in Thompson, Connecticut,
and she saw Ephraim Avery there. Sarah's sister and brother-in-law said that Sarah had told them she spoke to
Ephraim Avery about what she'd written to him, her list of sins. She asked for the letters back.
He says, "Let's go into the woods." And um she does. And in a letter to her sister and her brother-in-law, she
details sexual assault. She was very, very upset, um morose, depressed, and he is still in a position of power over
her. And so when she returns home, she tells her her sister and her brother-in-law what happened. And she
says, "Oh no, I think I'm pregnant." She missed her period. Efim Avery's lawyer argued that Sarah
could have been pregnant before the Thompson camp tent revival. Katherine Williams wrote about this part
of the trial as a long and most indecent examination and discussion of Sarah Cornell's menstrual cycle.
The prosecutor asked Sarah's sister, Lucricia, for evidence of Sarah being unwell as females are, referring to her
having her period. Her sister testified that she knew Sarah wasn't pregnant before the revival because she'd done
her laundry. Ephraim Avery's defense attorney tried to suggest that other people were the
father, including a cart driver who' brought her to the revival. One of the defense's witnesses tried to
discredit Sarah by claiming she was in love with her sister's husband. But Lucriccia stood by her sister.
She and her husband had convinced Sarah to speak with a lawyer for advice on compelling Efim Avery to take
responsibility. And actually an attorney who was a member of the Methodist church
who her brother-in-law introduced her to said, "You need to move to the state where he is to make sure you can file
what you need to file." So Sarah Cornell moved to Fall River. It was across the bay from where Eframe
Avery lived. So it to me was such a pivotal incredible decision for her to say you are responsible for this and I
am going to keep this baby. She had already worked out how much daycare would be while she was at the factory
and she essentially was going to say you're you're responsible for taking care of us.
We'll be right back. The prosecution in Ephraim Avery's trial called a total of 68 witnesses over 6
days. Many of them said they'd seen a man who looked like Efim Avery around Fall River
on December 20th, 1832. He was a little distinct looking. He was very tall and thin and he liked to wear
kind of a certain tall hat and he you know he he was um he stood out but nobody could say this was definitely
Ephraim Avery mailing a letter or wandering around here. The prosecution and defense had interviewed over 100
people to fill the jury. Katherine Williams wrote that so strong was the presumption of the prisoner's
guilt that it seemed almost impossible to find a man who had not made up his mind.
Before the trial, some people in Fall River had started investigating Ephraim Avery. They called themselves the Fall
River Committee. They brought anything they found to the prosecution. Ephraim Avery's defense team were all
Methodists and had been hired by the Methodist church. One of them was a former US senator.
The defense attorneys called over 150 witnesses that took more than 2 weeks to get through their testimony.
Catherine Williams wrote that many of the witnesses testimony was quote entirely irrelevant to the case.
>> These were people who I think Sarah thought were her friends. And when the trial begins and these character
witnesses come up, it is a parade of women who Sarah was close to because they all worked together and in very
difficult conditions. They lived together, they ate together, and these women all sit on the stand and just
decimate her character. And and and from what I've read, this is for me the most
blatant and the really the first instance of I've read of victim shaming in a trial that was high-profile like
this. I mean, they [ __ ] shamed. They said she was a terrible person, that she was crazy, she had venerial diseases,
that she was erratic, she was threatening to take her own life and frame E from Avery in the process.
One person testified that Sarah had gotten pregnant almost 10 years earlier. The prosecution said that there was no
evidence that was true. Another man said he thought she was irrational. When asked what he meant, he
said because her eyes looked red. A doctor testified that Sarah had come in to be treated for an STD and then
refused to pay him. The witnesses told stories about her in a confusing way. They weren't called up in order of where
or when they'd known Sarah. They alleged she'd done and said things at the same time in different places.
Katherine Williams observed all of this in the courtroom. She wrote, "We know she could not have been sinning and
playing the hypocrite in four different places at once." On June 2nd, 1833, the jury found Efim Avery not guilty. He
was acquitted and he was acquitted, I think rightly so. There they just in that time period
did not in 1833 they did not have enough physical evidence to tie him there to that scene.
So there were a lot of holes in the case. He was acquitted. It caused outrage in the community. Um he there
was so much at stake. The factory owners were congregationalists. You know, if if
this man were allowed to walk free after sexually assaulting and murdering one of
their workers who they were tasked with protecting, then why would any family send their
daughter to work in these factories? They're not safe. The the owners aren't protecting them. And then, of course,
the Methodist church had so much to lose. You know, if one of our ministers is convicted, then that would be awful
for the Methodist church, who was just trying to avoid being [ __ ] and feathered
as they pushed west. 3 days after the trial ended, the Methodist Church held their own review
of Ephraim Avery's case and declared him innocent of murder and quote, improper connection.
Ephraim Avery returned to preaching in Bristol. Some people didn't want him there. And hundreds of outsiders started
to come to his services. They'd read about him and Sarah Cornell in the newspapers.
He didn't like the attention. That year, the town of Fall River burned an effigy of Ephraim Avery four times.
Eventually, he and his family moved to Ohio. He became a farmer. Katherine Williams published her book
shortly after the trial. It was called Fall River, an authentic narrative. She interviewed Sarah's friends and
family and witnesses and doctors and found that many of the claims made during the trial, for instance, about
Sarah seeing a doctor for an STD, were wrong. She'd gone to see that doctor about a cold and he' tried to assault
her. Catherine wrote at the end of the book, "If Fall River was once an object of
interest to the traveler, it is doubly so now." For months, it formed the entire topic
of conversation in every steamboat that pied the river. When Catherine's book was published, it
was some of the only writing about the murder trial that was about Sarah Cornell and not Afram Avery.
>> There was nothing else like this, not even remotely like this. And you know, I'm a connoisseur of very very old old
books and stories. And she had written a book that was a couple hundred pages that read like a novel, but had really
good reporting. And it was the first narrative non-fiction true crime book, which was a big deal. And the book was
well read, but beyond biased. I mean, just I couldn't call it good journalism. Kate says that Katherine Williams didn't
come to write about Sarah completely on her own. She says it's likely Catherine was approached about the case by someone
who was anti-methodist and a factory owner. Perhaps someone worried about how Sarah Cornell's death could impact the
factories where a lot of young women like Sarah worked. And the reason that we think that is is several things. She
had incredible access to the factories where Sarah worked. She was able to talk to the workers who were willing to talk
to her. Um, she had stories from people who Sarah lived with. She had exclusive letters that I don't even know if the
prosecutor had of Sarah's letters to her family. U, she just had access that there there is absolutely no way anybody
else would have access to unless they had been given um a lot of permission from from the people who own these
factories. Scholars have said Katherine writes about Sarah with an almost maternal
bond. The book sold so well the publisher ordered a second printing. In 1838, Nathaniel Hawthorne was taking
a walk in his hometown of Salem, Massachusetts for his birthday on July 4th. There were booths selling food set up in
the town common along with some traveling exhibits. One of them was a display of wax
figures. In his journal, he wrote that it featured a collection of pirates, murderers, and the like in wax.
And there is a depiction of Sarah at a desk, I believe, and Ephraim Avery in wax hovering over her. In his journal,
Hawthorne describes this scene with the two of them as if you as the reader or or whoever would know exactly who these
two people are. And he says, you know, Ephraim Avery hovering like a vulture, you know, as usual, the despicable Efim
Avery. He wrote in his journal that Ephraim Avery's figure was quote an ugly devil said to be a good likeness.
The year before, Nathaniel Hawthorne had published a collection of short stories.
He had trouble making money off his writing. In 1849, he started working on a book
about a woman who was known to be good at sewing and very charitable who has an affair with a minister. She
becomes pregnant and is publicly condemned for adultery. He published the Scarlet Letter in 1850,
18 years after Sarah Cornell's death. So when you then read the Scarlet Letter and read Hester Prin and see the
parallels between Sarah Maria Cornell and Hester Prinn, it seems really clear that that she was at least a very large
inspiration, if not the main inspiration for the Scarlet Letter. Kate Winkler Dawson wrote a book about
Sarah Cornell called The Sinners All Bow. She ends the book with a quote from Sarah.
I have enough of the good things of this life. I brought nothing into this world
and I expect to carry nothing out. A stranger and a pilgrim here. Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and
me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna
Robertson, Jackie Sajiko, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Canain. This episode was mixed by Michael Rael. Our
show is engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode
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I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal.

In 1833, a writer named Catharine Williams began working on a new book. She’d published books of poetry and about the Revolutionary War before, but this book was going to be different. It was going to be about a Methodist minister, a mill worker, and a murder.

Kate Dawson’s book is The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/727618/the-sinners-all-bow-by-kate-winkler-dawson/).

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Episode 343 originally published December 5, 2025. https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-343-fall-river-12-5-2025/

Music in this episode: “Notche” by Blue Dot Sessions “The Hairdresser” by Blue Dot Sessions “Rapids” by Blue Dot Sessions “Two Dollar Token” by Blue Dot Sessions “Talltell” by Blue Dot Sessions “Astrisx_Minimal” by Blue Dot Sessions “Marking the Clock” by Blue Dot Sessions “Holo” by Blue Dot Sessions “Distill” by Blue Dot Sessions “Louver” by Blue Dot Sessions “Under the Wire” by Blue Dot Sessions “Descent to Calibri” by Blue Dot Sessions “Momentary Ease” by Blue Dot Sessions “The Summit” by Blue Dot Sessions

Brief Summary

The episode recounts Sarah Cornell's tragic death and the trial of Reverend Ephraim Avery, highlighting societal issues and women's rights in the 1830s.

Key points

The Life of Katherine Williams. Katherine Williams, a respected poet and biographer, wrote about Sarah Cornell's tragic story.
The Mysterious Death of Sarah Cornell. Sarah Cornell's death sparked controversy and speculation, leading to a complex investigation.
The Trial of Ephraim Avery. Ephraim Avery, a minister, was charged with the murder of Sarah Cornell amidst a clash of religious values.
Trial of Ephraim Avery. The trial featured intense testimonies and character attacks against Sarah Cornell.
Katherine Williams' Book. Katherine Williams published a book that shifted the narrative towards Sarah's perspective.
Hawthorne's Inspiration. Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter' was likely inspired by Sarah Cornell's story.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

She cannot answer them back again.

Catherine's reflection on Sarah Cornell's situation.

2:15WatchJul 17, 2026

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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