Pearl Bryan | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

Sarah Bryan: It's not known whether they themselves thought they could perform the abortion or
whether they took her to a doctor who was willing to do it. It was a felony at the time in most states, including Ohio and Indiana.
Phoebe Judge: Pearl Bryan was a 22-year-old woman from Greencastle, Indiana. She was five months pregnant and she wasn't married.
The year was 1896, and so she had a big problem. Sarah Bryan: She's from a fairly well-to-do family and she had a boyfriend named Scott
Jackson, who was a dental student from Cincinnati. She got pregnant, either by Scott Jackson or by her cousin Will Wood, who was another
boyfriend of hers. When she found out she was pregnant, she contacted Jackson and Wood, asking for help.
We don't know what nature of help. Phoebe Judge: We're hearing Pearl Bryan's story from folklorist Sarah Bryan.
Sarah Bryan: Jackson and his roommate in dental school, who was a young man named Alonzo Walling,
told Pearl that she was to come to Cincinnati and they would arrange for her to have an
abortion. Phoebe Judge: She arrived in Cincinnati on February 1st with a small suitcase, and either
the men did take her to a doctor who botched the abortion, or they attempted to use their
dental school training to perform the procedure themselves. Sarah Bryan: But either way, she ended up dead, and they panicked and carried her body
across the Ohio River to Fort Thomas, Kentucky... Cut off her head so they wouldn't be able to identify her, they thought, and left her
in a farmer's field. Phoebe Judge: They left her body in the field, but they took Pearl Bryan's head with them.
Little did they know that even without her head, her identity would be figured out pretty
easily, and that generations of strangers would do their best to make certain that Pearl
Bryan's name was not forgotten. I'm Phoebe Judge, this is Criminal. Sarah Bryan: There was blood all over the ground around the body, but also higher up,
which suggests that she was both standing and that her heart was still beating. So it does sound like there's a good chance she was alive when they cut her head off.
Phoebe Judge: And had gone through this horrible series of events preceding that.
Sarah Bryan: Yeah, an absolutely physically and emotionally traumatic experience, ended
by realizing that these two men that she thought she could trust were going to kill her.
Phoebe Judge: Because they were terrified that they had screwed up. Sarah Bryan: Right, that's the theory is that they realized that
Phoebe Judge: They were in over their head. Sarah Bryan: Exactly. They're in over their head, panicking, not just that she was pregnant but that whatever
had happened during the attempted abortion had injured her so grievously that they would
be blamed for her murder. Phoebe Judge: Pearl Bryan's body was discovered in the farmer's field by a 9-year-old boy
who ran to get help. Sarah Bryan: And it was apparently an incredibly nasty, bloody scene, blood on the bushes and
trees around her, blood where the body was lying, and no head, of course, which would
have been absolutely shocking to everybody who saw it. Within a fairly short space of time, lots and lots of people started descending on the
crime scene — thrill seekers, basically. And they collected souvenirs, leaves and twigs, ideally ones that had blood on them, that
was the most exciting, but they essentially denuded this place where the body was found,
taking apart all the bushes and trees around to take back souvenirs of the crime scene.
Phoebe Judge: Pearl had told her parents she was going to visit friends in Indianapolis,
and so they didn't think it was too strange that they hadn't heard from her for a few
days. But when they read about a headless young woman in the newspaper, they traveled to Kentucky
to see the body. Sarah Bryan: She was formally identified when they found a shopkeeper's tag in one of her
shoes, which they traced back to a shoe store, I believe, in Greencastle, where she had bought
her shoes. Also, a strange detail that her mother pointed out, that Pearl apparently had webbed feet,
webbed toes, and so did the body. So that was a fairly positive identification as well.
Phoebe Judge: Was her head ever found? Sarah Bryan: Her head has never been found.
Phoebe Judge: It's now tradition to leave a penny heads up on her grave when you visit
in order to "provide Pearl a head." Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling were caught, and each man accused the other of the murder.
The trial was a total spectacle, huge front page stories around the country. Sarah Bryan: There was one newspaper that said it was the greatest tragedy of the 19th
century — evidently somebody who'd forgotten about the Civil War. It was truly sensational, and the two young men, despite what they were accused of, became
sort of heartthrobs. There was a problem at the jail because so many young women were showing up trying to
visit them. They got letters from young women proposing marriage and, in some cases, at least a couple
of girls invented alibis and tried to float them to the police, saying that Jackson, or
Walling, or both had been with her and trying to get them released. Phoebe Judge: The two men were found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.
Sarah Bryan: It was a double hanging. It was the last hanging in Newport, Kentucky.
My understanding is that there was word that Pearl Bryan's family and friends were putting
together a lynch mob, were going to break the men out of jail to lynch them. Phoebe Judge: In fact, while the men were in jail awaiting their execution, there was
a big prison break and all of the prisoners made a run for it. But Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling stayed behind in their cells just to hide from Pearl
Bryan's family. So the men who killed Pearl Bryan went down in history basically as heartthrobs, but her
legacy was a little more complicated. She was a murder victim, but because she was unmarried and pregnant, her story and her
so-called mistakes were made into a song. North Carolina Ramblers: [Singing.] Way down in Yander's Valley, / Where the flowers fade and bloom, / Our own Pearl Bryan is sleeping,
/ In a cold and silent tomb... Phoebe Judge: This is a recording by the North Carolina Ramblers.
Back then, a lot of popular music used what we now call a "ripped from the headlines"
formula. Think Law & Order: SVU, with a fiddle. North Carolina Ramblers: [Singing.]
"What have I done, Scott Jackson, / That you should take my life? / I've always loved you dearly, / And would have been your wife"...
Sarah Bryan: Most popular ones by far were the ones about murders of young women, and
they follow a very predictable structure in most cases. There's an innocent young woman who's deceived by an evil lover.
You can sort of read between the lines that she's pregnant. He decides to do away with her.
She follows him naively to some remote place, and there's usually a scene where she pleads
for her life and promises to go away without causing him more trouble. And he usually kills her, either by stabbing or drowning.
And that's the basic plot of most, you'd call them murdered girl ballads, basically.
Phoebe Judge: And these are to do, a lot of times, as you say, with pregnancy, [affirmation]
unwanted pregnancy, [affirmation] inappropriate pregnancy [affirmation]. So are these rather cautionary tales?
Sarah Bryan: Definitely. And you get that feeling, especially with the songs that start with an invitation to
the listener, like, "Come and listen to my story. I'll tell you the sad tale of such and such," and they often end, as well, with, "Don't
let this be your fate. Don't trust a false-hearted lover. Stay home with your parents and be virtuous."
Phoebe Judge: Within four years of her death, there were already several versions of the
ballad of Pearl Bryan, and since then the song has been recorded dozens of times.
And as it passed from one person to the next, it changed a bit, different sets of verses
sung to different tunes. Which is your favorite version? Sarah Bryan: My favorite version is the one recorded by Burnett & Rutherford.
They were very traditional musicians, made great string band records, square dance music,
and their Pearl Bryan has a real traditional feel to it, a real folk feel. Burnett & Rutherford: [Singing.]
Way down in Yander's Valley, / Where flowers fade and bloom, / A-sleeps our own Pearl Bryan,
/ In a cold and silent tomb. / She died not broken-hearted, / Not sick nor lingering ill, / But in one instant parted,
/ From home she loved so well... Phoebe Judge: Do you find the fact that you're surrounded by these murder ballads creepy,
or do you hear them more for the song and not so much the details? I find that I don't really know what they're saying, but I just like the song.
Sarah Bryan: Well, they're great songs. Just their musical value is part of why they survived and part of why I like them.
They also are really the best memorials to these murdered women. If it weren't for the songs, we very likely wouldn't remember Pearl Bryan today, or Omie
Wise, Mary Fagan, the other women and girls who were commemorated in these songs.
Phoebe Judge: Because murder ballads transmit these true crime stories from one generation
to the next, we were interested in what a 2015 arrangement might sound like, so we asked
the band Elephant Micah to create a new version of the ballad of Pearl Bryan 120 years after
her death. Elephant Micah: [Singing.] People, if you'll listen, / A story I'll relate.
/ It happened near Fort Thomas, / In the old Kentucky state. / On January the 31st, / The dreadful deed was done, / By Jackson and by Walling, / How
cold their blood did run. / "What have I done, Scott Jackson, / That you should take my life?
/ I've always loved you dearly, / And would have been your wife." / The driver was the only one / To tell of her sad fate.
/ Now they've murdered poor Pearl Bryan / In old Kentucky state. / A farmer passing by next day, / Her lifeless form he found, / Lying on the cold, dark spot
/ Where her blood had stained the ground. / The message was brought to her home: / Poor Pearl Bryan's dead — / Killed by Walling
and Jackson, / And they took away her head. / [Guitar interlude.] / Then in came Pearl's mother / And to Jackson she said, / "You have killed my daughter,
/ Please tell me, where's her head?" / Scott Jackson stood there stubborn. / These are the words he said: / "When we meet Pearl in heaven, / There'll be no missing
head." / Please tell me, where's her head? / Tell me, where's her head? / Pearl Bryan is dead, / Can't find her head.
/ Walling and Jackson hung. Phoebe Judge: Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer and me.
A lot of people helped out on this episode: Rob Byers, Joseph O'Connell, Matthew O'Connell,
Jason Evans Groth, Emily Hilliard, and Aaron Smithers. Julienne Alexander creates original illustrations for each episode of Criminal.
If you'd like to find out more about Elephant Micah or download this version of the ballad
of Pearl Bryan, you can find out more on our website, thisiscriminal.com. We're coming to the West Coast to do a little tour this fall.
We'll be in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and we're going to start the tour
at Motorco Music Hall here in Durham. Tickets go on sale today. Criminal is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of the 13 best podcasts
around. Check out the other shows at radiotopia.fm. Shows like Strangers, made by our friend, Lea Thau.
She has a new episode out, marking the one-year anniversary of her Love Hurts series.
Speaker 1: And when we first started dating, and this was a reality TV moment, I was dating
someone else. And that was why I was trying to Speaker 2: Hedge your bets? Speaker 1: Yeah.
I mean as unromantic as that is. Speaker 2: I did not know that. Speaker 1: I know.
Phoebe Judge: Go listen. Radiotopia is made possible with support from the Knight Foundation and Mailchimp, celebrating
creativity, chaos, and teamwork. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Jingle: Radiotopia from PRX.

In a farmer's field in Fort Thomas, Kentucky back in 1896, a little boy made a horrific discovery of the body of a headless woman. The identity of the woman remained unidentified but the story certainly escalated headlines in the press like “Hunt for the Head” and “Headless Horror.” This horrific unsolved murder would go on to inspire a bizarre tourist attaction for travelers to collect bloody souvenirs. It also serves as the inspiration for a popular song that has been recorded dozens of times. Sarah Bryan [http://sarah-bryan.com/] talks to us about the true story behind the murder ballad, and the band Elephant Micah [http://www.elephantmicah.com/] performs an original arrangement.

Download Elephant Micah’s “Pearl Bryan” on iTunes. http://apple.co/1Is4pTs

Sarah Bryan is an old-time fiddler and 78 rpm record collector. Specializing in the cultural heritage of the American South, she has conducted documentary work for a variety of organizations including NC Folk, the North Carolina Arts Council, South Carolina Arts Commission, and Levine Museum of the New South. She’s the editor of the music magazine The Old Time Herald. [http://www.oldtimeherald.org/]

You might be interested in the songs of criminals and tragedy collected on this record [https://folkways.si.edu/news-and-press/now-available-classic-american-ballads-from-smithsonian-folkways] from Smithsonian Folkways. https://folkways.si.edu/folkways-recordings/smithsonian

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.

Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. https://link.chtbl.com/n33u0HsA

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We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery.

Artwork by Julienne Alexander http://www.yssrs.com/.

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Episode transcripts are posted on our website https://thisiscriminal.com/.

Episode 24 originally published 8/6/2015 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-24-pearl-bryan-8-7-2015

Brief Summary

Pearl Bryan's tragic story reveals the dark consequences of unwanted pregnancy and societal attitudes in 1896 America.

Key points

The Tragic Story of Pearl Bryan. Pearl Bryan, a 22-year-old woman, faced a dire situation in 1896 when she became pregnant and sought help from two men, leading to a horrific outcome.
The Gruesome Discovery. Pearl's body was discovered in a field, headless, leading to a sensational trial.
The Legacy of Murder Ballads. Pearl's story became a cautionary tale through murder ballads, preserving her memory for generations.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

But either way, she ended up dead.

Describing the tragic outcome of Pearl Bryan's situation.

1:27WatchNov 5, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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