Murder Farm

Hey, true weirdos. We just wanted to take a minute and thank you so much for your support. True weird stuff has won the best history podcast and the women in podcasting awards. And we've also won a signal award in the paranormal category. Plus a communicator award for excellence, for writing, for audio and voice. And that's only happened because of you, our fellow strange people.

Thanks. Stick around if you want after the episode for a little bonus content and conversation. For well over half a century, visitors to the Sheriff's office in Allen County, Ohio, were confronted with an unusual piece of decor, a hangman's noose. That rope hung the last and only man to die on the scaffold in this County.

Brittlinger was his name, hanged more than 50 years ago for the murder of his wife. Gesturing to the noose, Sheriff Crossan said, I don't know much about that case, except that Andrew Brittlinger killed his wife. Cut up her body, buried it in the orchard on his farm, then turned an unused wagon over the grave. That's all I ever heard about it.

For decades, the murder of Sarah Brentlinger was one of the most brutal in the history of the state of Ohio. In some ways, it's a too familiar, tired tale of betrayal and violence. Except in this case, the betrayal was imagined, but the violence was real. In this case, the perpetrator mounted a horse and galloped around the countryside, telling anyone who'd listen exactly what he'd done.

I stuck her with a knife four or five times. She was ornery. Trouble was, no one really believed him. Which is weird, since he'd spent more than a year loudly ranting about his marital misery. The farmer took a wife. The farmer took a wife. Hi-ho, the dairy-o, the farmer took her life. And they got a small beam of light.

True, weird, stuff. This is the kind of tragic true story that has you rooting for the perpetrator to be a serial killer. A serial killer is a far more comforting sort of villain to imagine than any familiar beloved that we should know better, right? In our modern world, isn't the fact that the perpetrator is a serial killer the first suspect in any murder, the spouse or intimate partner?

It is. And with good reason. In the US, nearly 50% of female homicide victims and 10% of male homicide victims are killed by their partners and spouses, which is, you know, pretty chilling statistic. And of course it's nothing new. Judges and all-male juries back in the day, though, didn't look kindly on men who killed their lives.

A man was expected to be sober-minded and capable of restraint. A murderous spouse's best bet to dodge the gallows was to successfully argue a heat-of-the-moment infidelity defense, something the common law of the time allowed for. Under the common law, the heat of passion defense was limited to five forms of provocation.

Extreme assault or battery on the defendant, mutual combat, illegal arrest of the defendant, injury or serious abuse of a close relative, and sudden discovery of a spouse's adultery. A defendant was ineligible for heat of passion mitigation if he merely suspected infidelity, but had not actually caught his wife in the sex act, or if enough time had elapsed between the provocation and the homicide for his emotions to cool.

Andrew Brentlinger had lived in Allen County for 36 years without incident. His first wife bore him six children before being found dead in her bed. It wasn't long before Brentlinger remarried a young widow, age 27. Andrew was 18 years older than his new bride. For four years, all went smoothly. The woman working well and giving satisfaction in every way to her simple-minded husband, who appeared to be very fond of her, then came into the household, the demon of jealousy.

As you demons go, Andrew found himself in the clutches of a bad one. Andrew began to talk to his children and even to his neighbors about his wife having criminal intimacy with an old man named Jake Hall, with Jesse Hall, his son, with Bill Kring, and even with his two brothers, Daniel and George Brentlinger, and even with Hall's dog.

The dog. But wait, there's more. Brentlinger talked of the Halls threatening his life, but said that every time they tried to shoot him, two caps snapped, for he had read certain spell passages in the Bible which protected him. Andrew Brentlinger also accused the Halls of throwing some substance on his horse, which he claimed spoiled the animal.

Weeping, he told of how the Halls had given his wife drugs with which to poison him. Things got so crazy that in the summer of 1870, Brentlinger insisted his wife leave and go to Cincinnati. His jealousy was extreme, but his obsession with Sarah made it impossible for him to be without her. In September, he wrote to his wife, begging her to come back to the farm.

She did. And it would be the last and worst decision she would ever make. Early on the morning of October 24th, 1870, Sarah and Andrew left the farmhouse together to work on repairing a fence. The four youngest children remained behind. The two older sons, who still lived at home, were away working on neighboring farms. There was obvious tension between the couple.

The children said later that they heard harsh words passing between their parents, something that apparently escalated after the midday meal. The Brentlingers returned to the house. After eating, the children were outside when they heard the sounds of a violent quarrel and then Sarah's scream. Have mercy upon me. God damn you.

I can't be merciful to you. The children froze. There was the sound of something heavy thudding against the wall inside the house. Then Sarah Brentlinger came flying out of a closed window, her body breaking glass and sash as she tumbled to the ground. Andrew followed, flinging himself upon her and stabbing her with a penknife.

As Sarah shrieked, Andrew howled in frustration. The blade was far too small for his purposes. He shouted at 10-year-old Martha to come immediately. The child whimpering and cowering, edged her way closer to her parents. Andrew snatched at her thin arm and pressed the key into her small palm. Bring my dirt from the drawer of my desk.

Do it now. The child was trembling and glassy eyed with fear. Now, girl, or I'll have your life next. Martha did, she was told, and then watched in mute terror as her father plunged the blade over and over into Sarah's abdomen. Then, his chest heaving, he pulled himself upright and lunged toward the stable yard. Shockingly, Sarah Brentlinger was still alive and managed to raise herself to her knees, her blood pooling in the dirt.

She begged for water. Andrew returned at that moment, his horse saddled. The awful tableau, the children silent and in shock, his wife, her blood spilling over her cupped hands, clutched round her wounds. Oh, damn you. Haven't you had enough yet? Andrew Brentlinger attacked his wife again. Eight more thrusts of the blade, each one a fatal blow.

Rising to his feet, the man wiped the bloody blade on his saddlecloth, dragged a nearby wagon bed to the spot and overturned it, covering the corpse. He mounted his horse, pausing only to again threaten his small children into silence. Then he kicked the horse into a gallop and pounded away down the narrow dirt track in a cloud of dust.

It was barely one o'clock in the afternoon. No telephone, that won't even be invented for another five years. The Brentlinger children, witnesses to the vicious murder of their mother, were alone with her battered corpse. The oldest was 10. The two youngest were still toddlers. And it would be more than a full day before the two older boys returned home.

The day after the murder, October 25th, Brentlinger fetched his two oldest sons, Peter and Abe, from the farms where they were working. As the boys later testified, their father threatened to kill them both unless they obeyed his instructions to the letter. Get home now. You got to bury your stepmother. Dig the grave in that potato patch, blow the ground and harrow it over like you were sowing wheat.

Then go around and tell the neighbors that we've gone away. A flawed plan, as any proper fan of Dateline can plainly see. But this was 1870 in rural Ohio. The four young eyewitnesses had no means of sending for help, and there was no reason for anyone nearby to suspect a problem. No reason for what we'd call a welfare check.

When Peter and Abe finally did return home, it wasn't to tend to their abandoned and traumatized siblings. It was to hide a body, which they did. Digging the hole among the potatoes, dragging Sarah's body from beneath the overturned wagon, hitching the old spiked tooth harrow to one of the remaining horses and carefully hiding the evidence of their father's crime.

A crime Andrew Brantlinger had an excellent chance of getting away with, had he managed to get himself away from Allen County instead of turning his horse west and disappearing into the sunset. Brantlinger spent the next several days riding all over Allen and the neighboring counties of Anglaise and Putnam. He didn't come upon many people, of course, not in that sparsely populated country.

But the few he did encounter, Brantlinger told them everything. The words tumbling out in a jumbled rush, he even asked for advice. Every single person thought he was a lunatic, rambling on and on about blades and blood and a faithless wife butchered in a barnyard. Until one enterprising fellow who heard his barely coherent confession and saw an opportunity to benefit himself, he offered to trade Brantlinger a gun for his horse, telling the man to head into the woods, hunt and escape, which Brantlinger did, spending exactly one night on foot in the forest before trying to get his horse back.

The man refused. And so Andrew Brantlinger threw the rifle he'd taken and traded to the ground and proceeded to walk back to his farm, a distance of 35 miles. Attracted by the irrefutable fascination of which murderers tell. Meanwhile, with their older brothers having returned to their jobs, the four youngest Brantlinger children found themselves alone and frightened by the hideous howling of the dogs. It was decided that the oldest would make her way to the home of their grandfather, where she told the story of what Andrew had done to Sarah.

Almost no one believed the child, which is astonishing. Why in the world would a 10 year old walk miles on foot to spin a yarn about mayhem and murder and a body in the potato patch? Those were very stern times indeed out there in the heartland. But it only takes one person, you know, as true in 1870 and 1871 as it is today.

One person willing to do the right thing. One man who heard the girl's story and insisted that it ought to at least be looked into. Surely there was no harm in that. So off that man goes to see the sheriff who basically dismissed the whole thing is too wild to be credible. But the man insisted, demanded that something had to be done.

The sheriff, J.A. Colbeth, sent him to the coroner, Gus Weiss, hoping that'd be the end of it. The coroner wanted no part of it and had to be pressed and pushed into taking action. Oh, the coroner finally agreed. And with the utmost reluctance, gathered up a group of men to ride with him to the Brentlinger farm. As they drew closer, neighboring farmers working in their field saw the posse of men, heard what their business was and openly ridiculed them for falling for a child's fever dream of a fable.

Because at this point, Andrew Brentlinger's guilty gallop around the countryside, telling anyone who'd listen that he butchered his cheating wife. Well, word had gotten around. The way folks dismiss Brentlinger is enough to make you wonder what would have gotten their attention. Here's a guy confessing to murder over and over and the general consensus. What a nutcase.

Don't pay him any mind. And now here come these men from town, these slick fools, allowing themselves to be led by the words of a child too young to know the difference between the truth and her own too big imagination. See what happens when you don't know what an honest day's work in the field is like? You fall for anything.

Stung by the jeering and laughter, many of the men turned back, but the coroner had come this far and felt bound by duty to, at minimum, at least see the place for himself. The corpse was found in a grave 55 feet from the house. As it turned out, the older boys had obeyed their father's instructions to the letter. The ground had been plowed and harrowed over as if wheat had been sown.

The search of the property very quickly led to another discovery, the murderer himself found in the garret, cowering in the corner and evidently laboring under the effects of self-administered poison. Immediate medical attention saved his life, and he was committed to a weight trial. A crime of passion, a moment's insanity.

But was it? Months before the murder, Andrew Brentlinger had secretly sold his property to his brother in law, telling the man that he intended to take Sarah far away from the reach of Jake Hall, the old man he was convinced had seduced his wife. In the same breath, Brentlinger told his brother in law that by selling the land and hiding the money away, he could be sure to deny Sarah her legal share of the farm.

The brother in law wasn't the only person Brentlinger confided in. Six weeks before the murder, Brentlinger asked an acquaintance how he could stop his wife from making any claim on his land. When told that Sarah would have to agree to sign her interest away, Andrew Brentlinger shook his head. She won't do it. He then consulted a neighbor who later testified at the murder trial that Brentlinger told him that before he'd give his wife any piece of the property, he'd kill her.

You could call this breathtaking stupidity, but a man in the grip of violent, delusional jealousy is not a man who's likely to exercise good judgment. And this probably sounds now like an easy conviction for almost any prosecutor. After all, hadn't the man confessed to the crime repeatedly? Hadn't the body been found savagely hacked just as the children described?

The fact that Brentlinger tried to kill himself with poison, didn't that seem at least a little bit damning? The trial began in December 1870 and lasted a full 10 days. Two attorneys represented Brentlinger and offered up a defense on the grounds of insanity. Multiple witnesses took the stand and testified that Sarah Brentlinger was guilty of consorting with men outside her marriage.

The fact that there was absolutely no evidence of this didn't stop the judge from permitting the testimony to stand. Then came witnesses who swore under oath that Andrew Brentlinger held strange beliefs. The man bought love potions and charms of protection. There was talk of a huckster from New York City who'd happily taken Brentlinger's money in exchange for phony love powders and so-called love spells.

It was on this that their argument for Brentlinger's mental status rested. Come on, your honor. Would a sane man buy any of that nonsense? Course not. Then there were the witnesses who testified to Brentlinger's state of mind. A man named Israel Bousher was sworn in. He'd known Brentlinger for at least 16 years and described their friendship as an intimate one, certainly for at least the past five years.

The conduct and conversation of the defendant for the past 18 months run in a different channel than previously since I have known him. Before this time, he did not complain of having trouble on his mind is the reason I noticed it lately. Paid no attention to his complaints at first. But afterwards, when I met him without asking any questions, he began to tell me what his words were and to make a statement, a statement that would end up being the backbone of Brentlinger's insanity defense.

He said there were certain men too intimate with his wife that he had either rest day or night, nor could he eat or drink, and that he had sometimes almost come to the conclusion to take his own life and yet was not willing to do that until he had got revenge. Bousher declared that Andrew Brentlinger had never made any threat to kill his wife in his presence. But the Halls, that was another story.

Brentlinger had worked himself into a seething rage over the men of the Hall family. And remember, there was not one scrap of evidence to suggest that any of his suspicions were based in reality. Yes, he stated to me that they, the Halls, had connection with his wife and that he could not bear with it any longer and claimed that some of the men in the neighborhood should assist him to take out the Halls and castrate them.

Seems like Brentlinger was a stick of dynamite in search of a match. Why did no one who knew the man intervene? Probably for the same reason we often don't intervene now. It's just venting, we say. He doesn't mean it. Not that way. It's none of our business. And of course, if we're honest, sometimes we're just afraid to call the bad behavior out for fear that we'll become its next target.

The last time I talked with him, he said if he did not get help, he would have to go down to where all the wicked went. You already know that Brentlinger didn't get help. Brentlinger told Bousher that he heard tell of a man in New York who could make up shields of protection as well as love charms. He pleaded with Bousher to write a letter to this person for him.

And soon enough, a reply came. Complete, Bousher said, with instructions for how to cast these charms and spells. Bousher allowed as to how he himself believed a little bit in charms, but drew the line at talking to spirits. Then he went on to describe how Brentlinger's behavior shifted yet again. He would sit and cry like a little child once he said he was sorry for what he had done.

Never learned what he had done. Cried about every time we met and talked about this subject. His appearance, conduct and conversation at these times were not as clear as that of ordinary men or as they had been heretofore. He was cast down and low in spirit. Brentlinger apparently told everyone but the cows of his hatred and suspicion of the Halls. His own son-in-law testified to that, and he'd seen Andrew almost daily.

His talk generally for the last 18 months has been as how Sarah had acted. Whenever we were together, he was very downhearted and would sit and cry. Sometimes he'd cuss about her to me. He said she was telling him that the Halls were meeting at different times at night. That she told him that the Halls were coming on Sunday evening to kill him.

That the Halls were going to shoot him. Has told me that a good many times. Told me that he had been charmed to prevent them from shooting him. Talked as though he believed in it. The son-in-law, John Harsh Barger, also testified about the property sale, saying that as of three weeks before the murder, Andrew Brentlinger owned no property at all.

The old man told Lee Falls we're going to kill him and said that he told Sarah if that was the case, he would have her heart's blood first. Who were these Halls and why on earth was Brentlinger so fixated on them? According to a friend of 25 years, Dr. J.W. Underwood, the conflict seemed to have begun at old man Hall's grocery store.

Brentlinger said that his wife went frequently to Mr. Hall's grocery store for eggs and such things that every time she went in there, he gave her wine that was drugged, had Spanish fly in it. Then he would invite her to sit down and asked her if it didn't make her feel better. Spanish fly. Even the ghost of Hugh Hefner just had a chuckle, though people did believe for a couple of centuries that this powder made from crushed blister beetles was a real aphrodisiac.

It wasn't, though it can cure a wart when a human eats it. It can cause a fiery sensation in the urinary tract that can trigger an erection in which, oh, my God, sir, what the back to what Brentlinger allegedly told Dr. Underwood, then Hall would make his efforts to have intercourse with her by persuasion and otherwise.

She told him, no, it would be wrong. This took place three times. And then Sarah told her mother. Her mother said, why? Yes, yes. Let him do it. He's good to us. Brentlinger said the next time she went there, he gave her wine and accomplished the act. It occurred frequently after that, up until the time of Andrew and Sarah's marriage. After that, she resisted him, but he told her that she must do it, for if she did not, he had her in his power and he would expose her.

And by that means, he continued his conduct right along with her. And she got so she would run after him, even got so bad she would get up at night and go to meet him, pretending she had diarrhea. Ah, the old outhouse diarrhea alibi. That's a little snapshot of life without indoor plumbing. But again, keep in mind, there was no evidence whatsoever to support any of what Underwood described on the stand.

But there was a damning little moment when Underwood stated that Brentlinger denied fathering two of the young children in the home and declared that he had no intention of caring for them, which I suppose could account for why he thought nothing of slaughtering their mother right in front of them. For their part, the prosecution was like, folks, he did this terrible thing.

He did it in front of his children, forcing one to bring him the fatal weapon and two others to bury the body. He told anyone who'd listen that he killed his wife. His actions in selling the property and hiding the fact from his wife showed cunning, not madness. Then he's found crouched in the attic eating poison. Give me a G, give me a U, give me an I-L-T-Y.

Judge McKenzie took his time instructing the jury. And insanity defense is a complicated thing. And many of the defense witnesses had volunteered that Andrew Brentlinger seemed plenty sane to them, even as he was constantly complaining that his wife was in the habit of committing adultery with various men. Those marital troubles didn't appear to impact his ability to transact his business.

One after the next of these witnesses said things like, I saw nothing particularly wrong with him and he seemed sane to me. And I think him a man of sane mind. You know, the attorneys for the defense had to be tearing their hair out. The closest the defense was able to get to a mention of insanity is when Dr. Underwood declared.

There is an idiosyncrasy among his brothers and sisters, two or three of them, but more of an imbecile character than of insanity. There was a cousin in the insane asylum 13, 14, possibly 16 years ago. With those exceptions, the family are of ordinary intelligence. See, the judge wanted the jury to be very clear about Brentlinger's mental state because this was a death penalty case.

And in those days, justice didn't sit around waiting for appeals to be filed or for new evidence to be presented. Justice was swift. And when a jury held a man's life in their hands, those jurors needed to be 100 percent certain of their verdict because it wasn't uncommon for a killer found guilty to be taken from the courthouse.

And hanged that same day. In any case, the jury didn't need much time to deliberate. Three hours was all it took to return a verdict of guilty first degree murder. Brentlinger's defense team did their best to try to win a second trial. But Judge McKenzie slapped that effort down, overruling all motions and arguments presented. On December 14th, 1870, the judge imposed sentence, declaring that Brentlinger was to be hanged by the neck until dead on the 20th day of February, 1871.

Luckily for Brentlinger, just a few days before his date with the gallows, word came that the hanging must be postponed due to a new law just recently enacted by the Ohio State Legislature. That law required a minimum of 100 days between sentencing and execution. The law was a sign that the rough and tumble justice of the frontier days was being left behind in favor of a more civilized approach.

During that brief reprieve, Brentlinger's defense team pushed and pushed for the man's death sentence to be commuted to life in prison. With no luck, the governor of Ohio, one Rutherford B. Hayes, as in the Rutherford B. Hayes, who'd go on to become the 19th president of the United States just six years later, declared that there would be no commutation in the case of Andrew Brentlinger.

He would be hanged for the crime of murdering his wife on Friday, April 7th, 1871. In a dark and unfortunate twist, that date happened to fall on Good Friday, one of the holiest days on the Christian calendar. Brentlinger claimed that he slept soundly and sweetly until being awakened on his last morning on Earth. After eating his breakfast and seeing a few visitors, he continued in religious services until the sheriff informed him that the time had come for his execution.

The journey from the jail cell to the gallows wasn't a long one. The gallows had been constructed in a corridor at the jail. Witnesses say that Brentlinger's step as he ascended the scaffold was as sure and firm as anyone's. The Reverend A.S. Bartholomew offered a prayer on behalf of the condemned man. Almighty and merciful God, our heavenly father, of whose compassion there is no end, who are long suffering in goodness and truth, forgiven iniquity, transgression and sin, thy servant has sinned and he has done perversely.

He has forsake and grievously offended thee. Andrew Brentlinger was impassive, silent and unmoving. Reverend Bartholomew began the Lord's Prayer, and after a beat, Brentlinger joined the minister in a clear, firm voice. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Sheriff Colbeth cleared his throat and then read the official death warrant to the doomed man. Colbeth asked Brentlinger if he had any final words.

I have nothing to say. The Reverend Bartholomew began to sing at the prisoner's request. All that I was, my sin, my guilt, my death was all my own. All that I am, I owe to thee, my gracious God, alone. The last notes hung in the air as Sheriff Colbeth adjusted the rope around Brentlinger's neck as he carefully tugged the black cap down over the man's face.

Colbeth grasped his hand, saying, Andy, goodbye. God bless you. The sheriff descended the scaffold and looked at his watch. Andrew Brentlinger, it is 20 minutes past 10 o'clock. Your time is up. There's an art to hanging the man, you know, the weight of the body, tightening the noose around the neck, causing strangulation.

Loss of consciousness is rapid and ideally, at least, death follows in just a few moments. That's the goal of a nice, clean, humane hanging. The goal, but not always the reality. The attended physicians approached to watch the fast ebbing life. In five minutes, the wrist pulse was still beating. The heart pulse was strong.

In eight minutes, the wrist had ceased to throb. And in exactly nine minutes, the heart was still. Life was pronounced extinct, the dread majesty of the law had been vindicated. After 11 minutes more of gentle swaying, the body was cut down and placed in a plain walnut coffin. Grim as all this sounds, Brentlinger was treated with far more tenderness and dignity than he showed his wife, Sarah.

Prayers, hymns and well wishes ushered him into eternity. She bled out in the dirt as her children watched in mute horror. Brentlinger's death, like all public executions back then, was even an occasion for merriment. They say that more than a thousand people lined up to view the murderer's body before diving into their picnic baskets for lunch.

That crowd, though, they came to Lima as much to see the traveling carnival that was in town as they did to see Andrew Brentlinger hanged. You could even say that his execution was overshadowed by the sideshow performers who mingled with the townspeople, the living skeleton, the fat lady, the wonderful dwarfs. One newspaper editor thought it was poetic that Brentlinger's body was on display right there with the famous traveling human oddities.

He'd been an insensitive man in life. Why should he be shielded from ridicule in death? The three youngest Brentlinger children, all witnesses to the murder of Sarah Brentlinger, were taken away from Allen County and placed in a Lutheran orphanage in Pennsylvania. What became of them after that? Here's what little we know.

John Sherman, three years old when his mother was murdered, died in April 1939 at age 71. He left behind 12 children. Howard Grant, two years old at the time of the murder, grew up to father four children, dying at age 76 in November 1944. As for little Lucilia, almost nothing is known, not even the date of her birth. How much to feel optimistic about there.

And Martha was lost to history. There's nothing special about Andrew Brentlinger. He killed his wife, something that happens literally every single day in this miserable dumpster fire of a world. He was no criminal mastermind, no diabolical fiend. He was just a man gripped by jealousy and greed, consumed by rage and indifferent to the consequences of his actions.

What gets your attention is the way he galloped around the Ohio countryside, shouting out his guilt like some blood-soaked Paul Revere. And no one believed him. Not until one man decided to take this crazed confession seriously and go to the law, the reluctant law, the unwilling coroner, the mocking neighbors. It's a very different picture of America's heartland than the one doused in sickly, sweet nostalgia and wishful thinking that we've all been spoon fed for generations.

Here's the only really good thing to be found in this ghastly tragedy. It took just one person to stand up and insist that the right thing be done. One person who set the wheels of justice in motion. One person whose refusal to back down may be the only reason that the Brentlinger children survived at all. That's pretty powerful when you think about it.

Makes you hope that you'd have the guts to be that one person, too. The farmer took a wife. The farmer took a wife. I hope the dairy of the farmer took her life. Next time on True Weird Stuff, you know the saying the eyes are the windows to the soul. People used to believe that the eyes worked like a camera, that the very last thing a person saw at the moment of death was preserved forever on the retina like a picture.

It's crazy, right? Unless what if the victim's eyes could bring a murderer to justice? Kill her eyes on the next True Weird Stuff. Special thanks to our voice talents on this episode. Kevin Nash, Caramia, Kary "Doc" Bowser, Stuart Watson, Bridget Goolsby and Sam Moore. Sherry, this is I know, you know, I've got to tell you, I've been watching some stuff as a modern day crimes and and horrifying was not invented recently.

But the thing that's interesting about stabbing is because I guess they had guns. It's 1870s. You know, he could have shot her. Stabbing is this weirdly intimate crime because you have to be right up close to the person to do it. And if he had stabbed her one time, that would have been horrifying enough. But the fact that he did it repeatedly talks to some level of anger and deep seated resentment that is off the scale.

But what I thought was weird is when women murder, they usually poison their men. That seems to be pretty frequent. And that's the very thing he did to himself when he tried to kill himself. This guy, this guy, not only stabbing, but so much time to reflect on his actions, sending the 10 year old in to get the a Dirk is a dagger, basically.

And I only know that thanks to Outlander is a dagger to send the child in to get the longer, more effective weapon, then to come back from the barn with the horse and pounce on the woman again. And those last eight blows with the knife, each one of them was a fatal blow in and of itself. I mean, this was not just killing.

This was an overkilling. This was spread out over. She was stabbed three separate times during this murder. And of course, the children lined up watching. There's so much wrong with this. And I will tell you, I did not know. I don't know if you had ever heard the name Andrew Brantlinger. No, I did not know about this particular case.

And I'm glad because it would have haunted my dreams. I was working on something else and happened to be looking through some material, some archival material in the state of Ohio for a completely different reason. And I come upon this little like lifestyle L.O.L. thing about, you know, how the sheriff was decorating his office with a hangman's noose.

And I thought, well, that's kind of inappropriate. Dark. That's kind of dark. Hey, Sherry, that's real gallows humor. Yeah. Let me. What I mean, is this one of those, you know, real law and order sheriffs? And it wasn't, in fact, the sheriff that had the hangman's noose in his office. This was well before his time. And it was just sort of a dusty relic of Allen County history.

So I dove in. And the more I read about the Andrew Brantlinger case, the more I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Like, here's a guy that's confessing over and over and over to murder. Here's a guy who's telegraphing his intentions to at minimum commit fraud. Right. But when you're when you're telling anybody that will listen that your wife is sleeping with the grocer and the grocer's dog, the fact that that raised no alarm bells for anyone. And I know it was a different time.

I do understand. Different time. People mind their business, et cetera, et cetera. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. And the more I've read, the more I was like, you have got to be kidding me. So I stopped what I was working on and shifted to this story because there was so much in it. For me, there was so much in it.

First of all, it completely lays bare the lie that is this idea that, you know, people on the on farms were living such a better, more morally upright lives. No, they weren't. They were just people doing people things in a different time and place. And the fact that the sheriff Colbath, the sitting sheriff at the time, was like, I don't want to.

And then the coroner was like, I don't want to. What are you, cowards, are you lazy, are you a combination of cowardly and lazy, like what did you make of that? Well, I you know, the thing is, we don't know what he sounded like when he was saying these things. And and perhaps he seemed to be so unhinged that perhaps people went, yeah, we're not we're not believe in this.

It's an interesting thing about sanity, because on the one hand, I believe that you can be so ate up with anger towards somebody that you would be willing to hire, oh, I don't know, an undercover New Jersey state to murder your spouse. So I believe that when when you leave the idea of understanding what what the real world is and you're so ate up with the anger, it's all you can see.

It is its own kind of insanity. However, he was premeditated with this based on things that happened beforehand. And I took note of that because if you premeditate you, that means you know right from wrong and he knew right from wrong. And therefore, because he tried to kill himself afterwards, if you know right from wrong, then you cannot be deemed insane.

So the punishment probably was, you know, what suited suited the crime at that time. I'm not trying to get into a capital money. There's a little voice in my head that says, wait a second, I didn't mean that to be controversial. I just meant that, you know, it suited the crime given what the laws were at that time in Ohio.

Early, early in this episode, there's a little detail that's super easy to miss. And that is, you know, Sarah Brantlinger, the woman he murdered was his second wife. The first wife was found dead in her bed, could not find any cause of death. Because here's the here's the dirty truth. People, it was easier to get away with murder back then for men and women.

It just was we didn't have the forensics that we have now. We did not have DNA. You just didn't have the same just the structures of criminal justice in place. We don't know if the first wife died of poison, of a heart attack, of cancer. We we don't know. We just know that she was found dead in her bed and 86 out of the picture.

And then here comes the young, beautiful second wife that that has troubled me. That stayed with me. I'm going to be honest, that has really stayed with me, because when you look at Andrew Brantlinger's actions with wife number two, what do you think about wife number one? How well do you think things were going there?

Well, it's very interesting that you say that, because I just listened to a podcast about a guy who they believe had murdered his wife and they ended up he had he had other wives, two other wives that died under mysterious circumstances. And they end up because one of them was cold. They dug that cold case up and were able to convict him on that.

Not the most recent murder that first raised everybody's suspicion. So this idea of murdering spouses, both men and women, because what was it? Blanche Moore was the woman, Blanche Taylor Moore, poisoned husbands and stuff. So anyhow, that's that is a lot more common in true crime than you'd like to believe. And I think that this guy probably if he is so jealous that he's going to suspect his second wife of having affairs, he probably suspected the first one, too, and probably murdered her as well.

It's just wild to me how quickly wife number one was erased. Now, this was so at this point, Ohio was very sparsely populated and, you know, there wasn't it's not just that we didn't have the Internet, we didn't have telephones, we didn't have radio or TV. We had newspapers, but news traveled very slowly in a wide open, sparsely populated country. And it was easier to get away with murder.

I mean, you look at the way this guy was telling literally everyone who would listen, what he had done. And absolutely no one took him seriously. He announces that he awakened to find wife number one dead in her bed. You know what he got in response to that? Sympathy. That's what he got in response to that. No, no suspicion.

So there were a lot of things in Andrew Brantlinger's story that had me just sitting like, are you kidding me? You've got to be you cannot be serious here with the way this all played out, because like I said at the end of the episode, he's nobody special. He's just another angry, jealous man who can't regulate his own emotions and has to soothe himself at the cost of another person's life.

That's all he is. He's a he's an everyday regular average killer. Ain't nothing wonderful here. If I can't control it, I'll kill it. I'll kill it. What makes his story compelling is how much of an assist he got from his community with all of this. So his brother in law agreed to buy the farm and keep it a secret from the wife.

That's kind of gross behavior, but really not shocking. Did that jump out at you? It did jump out at me. Yes. Blood thicker than water and all that, I guess. More controlling behavior. More controlling. It seems as though the whole love affair with old man Hall and his son and his dog was just a fiction. It was just a fiction, including this story that he had about how he told Israel Boucher, his friend who testified that Sarah would pretend she had diarrhea so she could go out to the outhouse to meet with her lover.

I mean. What? I know there were different times, but there were more romantic places than the outhouse and more. You know, you're a farmer, Andrew. You're out working in the fields all day. If she wanted to have a little assignation with old man Hall, they probably could have managed it while you were out on the back 40 also.

And I know that all men are different and what is true for one may not be true for many. But why am I struggling with the idea of old man Hall being able to get it up at two o'clock in the morning outside the outhouse on Bratlinger Farm? Like, please be real. There was no Viagra. Come on, Sherry. So his fascination with love potions and love powders, I've never heard of love powder before. Spanish fly, which was something in the back of a magazine.

Thank God, you know, this was the eighteen hundreds. Thank God we wouldn't fall prey to anything like this today. Male and male enhancement products. Do you remember about 15, 20 years ago, the obsession with male enhancement products? There was a NASCAR car that was like the the extends. That was the name of the product.

Yeah, everybody was everybody and all of them were looking around going, really? I did. I had no idea that I was so deficient. But apparently they sold a lot of it and now it's gone. So all of these things like Spanish fly and male enhancement and love potions and love powders, it's a lot of BS. I thought that Andrew Brantlinger, I thought he was emotionally dysregulated.

And obsessive, paranoid, but I didn't think he was insane. No, I didn't think he was insane. Yeah, that's the problem with, you know, TV and movies have led us to believe that an insanity defense is a fairly common thing and maybe an easy thing to pull off when in reality, an insanity defense is an extremely difficult thing to win on and very, very hard to prove. I mean, you can look at Andrew Brantlinger's behavior.

And I maintain that his first wife, that's a suspicious death. But you could look at Andrew Brantlinger's behavior and say, well, here's a guy that's got at least a screw loose in terms of his wild, fantastical imagination, his temper, his paranoia, his obsessive fixation. All of that is dysregulated, but it's not insane.

And you are so correct in pointing out all of the steps of premeditation, including, I think, here's a guy that doesn't know when to stop talking because all he could talk about was the Halls and his wife's infidelity, the Halls and his wife's infidelity. I think what he was doing was ceding the ground for a defense. I think that he had been planning to murder Sarah for a good while, however long that would be right. And he was making sure the way people sometimes will to have a story.

So then when it happened, it would seem plausible. Yes. I think the guy was cunning. I think he was strategic. I think he was evil and I think he was dysregulated, but I think he was sane. And the judge in the case, I think, would agree with that because as much as they tried, as much as the defense tried to float this insanity thing, even the defense witnesses were like so unhelpful.

Right. Well, he told me that he didn't kill her before he let her have a piece of the land. OK, I mean, that is not helpful to your buddy and not helpful to the defense. It was such it's such a gothic tragedy. And so mundane and yet so terrible, because, again, a man kills a partner every day, every day, multiple times a day.

But I want you to look at the circumstances here. He laid the groundwork for her guilt of being whatever, an adulteress. Right. He threw her through a window. And then he murdered her in front of his children and made the eldest, Martha, 10 years old, complicit and accessory. Then he made his boys hide the body. Listen, if children will rat you out for any kind of behavior at home when they go to school, children will rat you out if you're going to murder their mom in front of her.

I mean, this is so awful, so horrific. I went looking for these kids. I went looking for the Brentlinger kids and not easy to find because all of this predates any kind of databases and women change their names when they get married very often, especially back then. I was not able to find Lucilia. I don't think I don't think Lucilia lasted long in the orphanage in Pennsylvania.

I think she probably died of some illness that, you know, we could vaccinate against, you know, those of us that believe in science, use vaccines. I think she may have died in a, you know, very preventable way because she disappears from the public record. Here's what I'm thinking about the other Brentlinger kids. I didn't bother looking for the two older boys.

They were almost adults when this happened and I couldn't find Martha. But the three that I was able to find, I looked at their lives and I thought so much about how so many of our families have dark, dark secrets hidden deep in the family tree and how the American ethos of rugged individualism and suck it up buttercup would have really been in full effect back then and how these two little boys who grew up to be upstanding members of their communities, husbands, fathers and grandfathers, about what these two little boys carried in terms of trauma and generational trauma and what that looked like in their own families and in their own descendants.

And it just got me to wondering how many people are living in Ohio right now who have no knowledge that this is that at the heart of their family tree is an unspeakable act of violence. Because we tend to we tend to do a better job of hiding those than he did of hiding Sarah's body. What do you think? Yeah, you know, when you think about that, you could see how as that that spreads out through a family tree, how that can be devastating for a family.

I mean, because and at that time, it wasn't like people were running to therapy. I mean, there was a therapist. I mean, there were there were. I mean, I guess trying to think if that was Chris, I was probably Freud was somewhere around that time. But I guess what I'm trying to say is people didn't understand that mental health was such an important thing.

And that if you had these kinds of trauma that you had to go and try to get some help with that to try to heal from it as best you could. Well, it's only fairly recently that we have an understanding of what happens to young children who are exposed to this kind of violence. That's a recent thing, because what we think and what we really believed back then was they're young, they'll forget they're resilient, young, they're resilient, they'll forget they're too young, they won't remember.

We have no way of knowing what these children suffered because they not only were made witnesses and accomplices to the murder of their mother, they were then removed from the only home and place they'd ever known and put in an orphanage in Pennsylvania. We have no idea if they were kept together as a sibling group or if they were separated. The things that we don't know about those little kids that stood there watching this could fill like three books.

And it's probably we don't know. Probably more likely they didn't keep them together because they weren't as concerned about that sort of thing back then. Yeah, I mean, we really didn't. We really didn't have a I mean, if you think about like, when did we really start giving a good damn about the interior lives of children?

Would it be? Oh, I don't know. Dr. Benjamin Spock and Erickson and the stages of development. I mean, we're like not quite 100 years into the future before we went, hey, you know what? These kids, I think they may be human beings. We should investigate that. I feel like these Brentlinger children were an afterthought in all of this.

And as. You know, as a survivor of domestic violence in childhood, you I cannot tell you how scarring it is, and I didn't experience what they did. So it really haunted me. There were so many things in the story that haunted me. Sarah's version of events is completely missing from the tale. And of course it is. Are you surprised? No, I mean.

No. Yeah. Now, he sent her away and she came back. So why did she come back? Well, her children were there and we have no because her voice is silent and absent in this. We don't know why she came back. Did she love the man? Did she miss? Did she like what? Who knows? You know, it's funny. We're of course, as we're recording this, this whole trial with P. Diddy is playing out and people are asking that of Cassie Ventura.

Well, you had 11 years with this man. You know what? It's never as simple as I'm good. He was bad. It's so much more complicated than that. And if you listen to any anything connected with that trial, it gives you some insight into really unhealthy, fractured relationships and just how difficult it is for somebody to get away from there.

Also, if you think at that time, women didn't have nearly the power that they have now. I mean, they just didn't have anything that they could do. And if she had love for her children, she'd say, you know, OK, fine. He's a bad guy, but I was probably not going to stab me in the farmyard in front of them. Right, right, right.

Yeah. Nobody's going to do that. Nobody. I always say nobody thinks that somebody is going to do that. But that seems to be, you know, you when you think about it, you think, oh, well, they're bad, but they wouldn't do that. You know, it'll never come to. It'll never come to that. I I don't get when when people say things like, well, why didn't you just leave?

It doesn't make me angry. I feel two things. It makes me feel tired. And I also look at them and I think, well, I envy you that you have lived a life free of relationship violence. You haven't experienced it or been a spectator or an accessory to it. That is lovely for you. And what a magical planet you inhabit. Those of us who know different understand why it's just not so simple to leave.

But I did say in the episode that that was the last and worst decision that Sarah Brentlinger would ever make. But we don't you know what, there's a million things that we don't know. And this is why it's so important that the victims of these crimes be given a voice. One of the things that modern criminal justice has done is the practice of etymology, where and you see this all the time if you're into like true crime, Dateline 2020, whatever.

One of the first things that detectives and law enforcement do in the case of a murder, they try to find out everything that can be learned about the victim because it's the victim's life that will often lead us to the perpetrator. But that's a relatively new perspective. That's a relatively new technique. And you can see it so clearly.

Really, everything you know about Sarah Brentlinger is hearsay from Andrew Brentlinger's acquaintances and attorneys. Right. She just doesn't have a voice in this. And the kids were so, so very young. There were other children, older children from Brentlinger's marriage to his first wife, including a daughter who was married and lived not too far away from the farm, from murder farm. But, you know, she was married, husband, her own farm, her own life.

And these younger children that were the product of her father's second marriage, you know, they were it's not that they were nothing to her. But you know what I'm saying? Right. No, no, no. I understand. You know that she had her own hard life. Farming is hard. Farming is brutal. Incredibly difficult way to make a living.

And back then, you know, you didn't have weather forecasts or John Deere tractors or high quality fertilizer, genetically modified seeds, whatever it is, you know, that might make it a little bit easier to scratch a living out of the soil. They didn't have any of it. And so you really were landlocked on your own farm.

That's why you had children. Yeah. So they could work on the farm, which was the idea behind child labor. Yeah. And that's why you wanted a big family, because childhood mortality rates were so high. You knew you're going to lose some of them. You know, that's right. And, you know, it's kind of amazing to me how you'll encounter people today that are nostalgic for that way of life.

And I'm like, really, have you ever been to a farm? Have you do you have any idea how hard life was then? They're nostalgic for an idea of something that, you know, that's that's not the reality. Farming, that's that's that's seven days a week, 365. I mean, that is brutal. It's not like you can say, I'm sorry, I'm not up to it today.

You know, you have to go out no matter what. And you could lose everything in a single weather event. Right, right, right. You I mean, it's that's true even today. Yeah, yeah. And we and we have ways of forecasting and predicting and at least trying to get out in front of it. So it's a hard life. And because we know so little about Sarah, I mean, even what Andrew Brantlinger told Israel Bauscher and Bauscher testified to this on the stand that before his marriage to Sarah, her own mother was pimping her out to the Mr. Hall at the grocery store to get a discount on dry goods.

Come on. I'm not saying that didn't happen or couldn't happen. I am very suspicious of that in this story. This sounds like something that he conjured in his mind. Yeah, this sounds make believe. And not that it couldn't happen. Not that it didn't happen. It was very I mean, we've had other episodes. The the lady stagecoach robber, her own father turned her out in a brothel at age 10.

Right. To earn a few bucks for the family. The the America of the olden days is not the golden faith and values, conservative dream that you've been fed. It was a brutal, hard, scrabble fight for existence against unbelievably difficult forces of nature and economy and conflict. Like, you got to be kidding me. If you think you want to go back to no vaccines and churn in your own butter, girl, you just you don't know.

And we're all too soft for it. We're just way too soft for it. I'm telling you, I know I am. I know I am. So, yeah, you can see why this story sort of caught me and hung on. I was like, but I know that. But I think you're right. The whole so he would go around on the horse doing that. Does that mean because he was a madman?

And the answer is no, I think you're right. That was all calculated. I hadn't when you were doing that, I hadn't really thought about that part of it. But, yeah, that's that's exactly what was going on. He was setting up he was setting up an alibi and a justification and a defense for a trial. And and, you know, when when they found him guilty, he was pretty he was pretty stoic throughout the trial.

And he was after the sentence of death was pronounced, he was pretty stoic. He apparently didn't have many regrets. And when I think about the world works in in ways like the fate, you know, the wheels of destiny, the way those gears lock and interlock. He had made it clear that he thought the youngest of his children were not his biological children.

And had he not killed Sarah, I wonder if that if they would have become the target for that violence that was building up in him. That's very interesting. Yes. And so I guess what I'm saying is, if you zoom all the way back out, maybe you could look at it and go, well, those two little boys who grew up to be fathers and grandfathers only had that shot at a life because their mother was murdered.

It was going to be her or them. Andrew was not Andrew was not there was no way that volcano was going to be deescalating. Like he was building himself toward an act of extreme violence. Yeah. If he had gotten off on that, if he had gotten if he had not been convicted. Yeah, I think you're right. He he would have taken that out on them.

How could he not? If he's going to be so consumed with anger over the fact that he thought that she was having an affair, he's going to turn that to the children. You're absolutely right about that. I just I mean, I just felt I felt sick in the way that, you know, I guess this was a little bit triggering is not the right word, but it was a little uncomfortably close, you know, to my own childhood experiences with a violent, jealous, paranoid, emotionally dysregulated father who, by the grace, my mother lives and breathes like I'm not even I can't even believe what because it wasn't like he didn't take out his weapon and fired at her. And he was a sharpshooter.

So he missed on purpose. I just that the way that he terrorized her, the way that he terrorized us. Had we not been pulled out of that situation to go to my grandmother, I'm not sure what would have happened had my mother not bolted. What would have happened? So this one. Yeah, this probably was personal for me, but not as the any of the wives, but as those little kids standing there.

And and if you're wondering, well, why didn't they run for help? That tells me that you are blessed and lucky to have not been a child in that situation. You just have no idea you're under control. It's yeah. Yeah. How scared you are as a kid. You're absolutely under the power of the parent. You see that frequently. That's another situation where they go, why didn't they?

And you say, unless you've been in that situation, you don't know. Well, and I will remind you, why didn't those kids run for help when Martha, 10 year old Martha, walked all those miles to her grandparents house and they didn't believe her? Tell me again why those kids didn't run for help. They are living in the middle of a vast, unpopulated countryside.

The little ones were what toddler is running for help, OK? And then poor Martha, who was made an accomplice, not being believed. Like what was in the drinking water, Buckeye State, that absolutely no one in this story, including the murderer, was believed. It really, man, it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

And and I also don't know how I feel about the hangman's noose as office decor. You know, I'm I'm saying that I would avoid that. Do you? So that's interesting about nobody being believed. And to talk about that for a second. Do you think it's because they thought everybody was crazy? Or do you think that if it's happening in somebody else's family that you don't you don't want to know and it's easier to just turn your head and say, yeah, yeah, I do.

I agree with that, because in a weird way, a lot of families were more like a little fiefdom where the laws don't apply to us, you know. And you can see how that would happen. That at the time that this that Sarah Brentlinger was murdered, it was such an interesting time in criminal justice in America, but we'll stick with Ohio.

So, so interesting. So it's by the time he's sentenced to death, it's 1871. And, you know, we're we're we're moving into the 20th century. The the nation is growing and growing up. And the Ohio state legislature decides we can't just be willy nilly executing folks. We've got to have a cool and off period between the verdict and the hanging.

We just do just in case, you know, we don't want to make a mistake. Right. That was interesting. And that's one of the first places, Max, where we've seen that in the law is right there in Ohio. Well, that cooling off period, because we sure as hell didn't see it in New Jersey in the Pine Barrens. Well, it's kind of like the story, the Oxbow incident where the men, you know, I mean, they used to very and they would if they suspected that you did it, you were getting hung, you know?

Yeah, it was just done. Yeah. And so so that was really the timing on that was pretty powerful. I always love when we're cruising through a story and we bump into a major historical figure before that person became a major historical figure, Thomas Dewey in the Lucky Luciano episode. Right. Before before the Dewey defeats Sherman headline.

Rutherford B. Hayes in this episode, six years before he becomes the president of the United States. It feels like America was such a small town back then. You know, you just bump it into all these notable figures and characters. I thought that was a fun little detail. But yeah, this was one of those cases where they were beginning to examine English common law, which was what these laws were based on when America first became a country. We were still using English common law, which has been around for centuries. And in English common law, you just couldn't be killing your wife.

Like in some ways, it was it's easier to get away with killing your wife today from a legal standpoint than it was back then and easier back then from a forensic standpoint than it is today. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. They were they didn't have a lot of patience with a wife killer back then. They were like, boy, I mean, did you let me go back to that section where it was like, oh, your wife cheated on you and you murdered her.

Did you catch her in the act? Because if you didn't, that's not justifiable. Did that not jump out at you? Yeah, that did. That did, because they have no way, because all of the affairs that he was that were alleged with her that he had were all hearsay. I mean, apparently they were all hearsay. So I guess that when you're looking at it from a legal standpoint, you say, well, unless we have proof, well, we didn't have DNA.

So you'd have to catch him in the act in order to be able to say, OK, this is justifiable homicide. Well, back in the day and this is we're talking 1870 when the murder committed back then, it was expected that a man would be able to exercise restraint over his animal impulses and that you simply could not go around killing your woman.

So under the common law, if you wanted to claim a heat of passion defense, you had to either one, have been assaulted. OK, two, there had to have been a fight between you and this other person. Mutual physical combat. Three, you were illegally arrested for a close relative was injured or abused or five. The spouse was unfaithful and you couldn't just suspect it like Andrew Brentlinger did. You have to catch the spouse in the act.

So none of that applied to Andrew Brentlinger under the common their understanding of what was OK to be killing folks. None of that applied to him. None of it. He certainly didn't catch Sarah in the act. He was not assaulted by the Halls or their dog. Sarah was not injured or abused. Neither were his children. So they didn't have private investigators because, you know, if they wanted to take pictures, then, hey, you two are coming out of the motel.

Can you hold for a second? Because we're going to take this picture. It's a daguerreotype. Hold, hold, hold. OK, good. Thank you. Wait till he sees this. Yeah. I mean, if you if you listen, Andrew Brentlinger claims that Sarah was getting it on with old man Hall in the office at the grocery store and out behind the outhouse on the farm.

And I'm not saying, you know, that people don't get it on in the outhouse or at the office of the grocery store, people are filthy and they'll do it anywhere. However, I think in this case, no, I just think that he was just he was so controlling and insecure and rageful that he concocted all of this. I was were you not, you know, I don't want to say like I'm delighted to see a man hang and his hanging was messy.

Hangings were messy. You know, they all kinds of horrifying things happen during hangs. People's heads would come off. Oh, during messy, messy. And then you had situations. I I'm not sure about this, but it seemed to me that there was a time that if you survived the hanging. That was like double indemnity, right? Right. You couldn't you couldn't they couldn't do it do it again.

I believe I know I know what I heard that somewhere along the line of a good hanging, a clean hanging from what we know that I mean, death might not be instantaneous, but death would not take as long. I'm getting to that section so I can we can talk about how long. Death took too long in the case of Andrew Brantlinger.

And don't get me wrong, like he was a real bastard and he did terrible things and he brutalized his children psychologically, mentally, emotionally. And I'm sort of fine with him suffering. So let's let's take a look at here we go. So there's always a doctor at these hangings as there is with lethal injection today. So the doctor, they hang Andrew, they do the drop and in five minutes he still has a pulse in eight minutes.

He still has a heartbeat. It takes nine minutes for his heart to stop. That's an eternity. That's a bad hanging, is it not? I would say, yes. I mean, if you look at in our Jill the Ripper episode, they she died almost it was like crack and she was gone, she was gone. Yeah, good, good, clean hanging. Boy, you don't wake up some days going, you know, it's going to be probably at some point today, Max and I will debate what makes what constitutes a good clean hanging.

This is not a statement about capital punishment, but there is it's always been kind of messy. It's always electric chairs hanging. It's always been kind of weird and messy, you know, the hanging thing is especially like for my money. If you want a quick, swift, clean execution, you can't beat the guillotine. That is that's all this fast.

We have we've come across a handful of guillotine executions and boy, that's over before it begins. Real and, you know, the thing about a hanging is so many there are so many factors, the height and weight of the condemned person, because if you remember in the Jill the Ripper episode, they were nervous because she lost so much weight in prison.

Oh, that's right. She did. Yeah, that's right. The hangman that they had, they were they were doing math on a napkin trying to calculate what they call the length of the drop. You know, it it's it's complicated, which is surprising with all that starchy food. Really, they did a terrible job with Brentlinger's hanging.

And I hate to say it. I'm sort of OK with it. And I did because he was terrible. And what he did to those kids, I was terrible. It was just a dreadful human being. Sometimes I'm so soft, I'm just I'm the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. I'm so soft and my husband will say to me, I'll say something to him like, and it was awful and blah, blah, blah.

And my husband will go, that was an asshole. That was a terrible human being. They deserved it. It's hard for me to get there because, you know, such a social worker. I'm like, oh, if we're going to execute people, we need to keep it clean. Did you not love the fact that Lima, Ohio, which was the nearest big town in the county where the sheriff's office was located and, you know, the execution, they built the gallows in the jail. So the execution took place.

Did you not freaking love? How true weird stuff is it that there was a famous traveling carnival in town? It's perfect. That's what it is. It's absolutely perfect. The streets were choked with people that wanted to see the living skeleton who, spoiler alert, was just a real skinny guy with a rapid metabolism. But the streets were choked.

People had come from miles and miles and miles because a carnival or a circus, you know, that was like maybe a once a year treat, a break from the drudgery of nonstop sun up to sundown labor. It was a big deal. It was a big deal. And there they the carnival comes to town just in time for Andrew Brantlinger's execution because the hanging was conducted inside the jail, the actual hanging itself was not what was public.

There were people outside the jail cheering and doing countdowns and listening to the Reverend Bartholomew sing. But when the body was pronounced, that's when they put it in a coffin and took it outside and put it on display right there with all the oddities in that traveling carnival. I know it's America. It's very bad.

Oh, you just took the words out of my mouth. I was going to say that's so American. It really is. Yeah. So this is I mean, we can't you know, we can't remember every story and we shouldn't make these people famous. We should let them. We should let Andrew Brantlinger. We should let his name and everything he was disappear into the slipstreams of time.

But unfortunately, when you do that, his victims go with him and his children were also his victims. They were. So if you happen to be listening to this and you're in a cold sweat right now because two levels back, you've got a Brantlinger in your family tree. I mean, maybe, you know, if they if if even the children, the men kept their name because it's possible that they may have tried to change that because his father, their father was so infamous.

They were. Yeah, they were not. Those kids were not easy to find. And, you know, I feel about like living family members, living survivors like, you know, I don't want to know those gentlemen. They've been dead since the 30s. They've been dead a long time. So what would their would it be their great grandchildren walking around the Buckeye State? Yeah, great.

Probably their great grandchildren. Yeah. So I guess, you know, the big takeaway for me is compassion for each other, because not only do we not know each other's stories. Very often, we don't even know our own stories. We don't know why our families are the way they are. Listen, I don't know why we're the way we are.

When when I started getting some family, we had a listener who did some family tree stuff and my mother was not happy about it. She was uncomfortable about it. She's like in her 90s at this point. And I'm thinking, what is it that I think my mother thought that and she told me this. She she felt like her father was born out of wedlock.

And that the woman that was not a scandal and the woman that was purported to be her aunt was actually her grandmother. But that I mean, and so she so everybody has their secrets everywhere. What's interesting about it is she somehow thinks that that diminishes her in some way, if it were known. And it doesn't. I mean, I remember the first time my mom told me the deep, dark family secret.

And I will tell you, well, at least one of them, I will tell you, I was disappointed that it wasn't deeper and darker. What are we? Why are we keeping? Why are we holding on to this shame that that isn't a shame at all? Like, what are we doing here? It's nobody benefits from that. And, you know, people make mistakes, sometimes terrible.

People do terrible, terrible things. But you, their descendant. Are not stained with that blood like you, you don't have to walk around feeling ashamed of that. I mean, I can imagine most of the people. That are out there would not be proud to have, you know, a mass murder in their family tree or a serial killer like Bill Guinness, for example, you might not be proud to have that in your family tree, but you don't need to be ashamed.

There's some space between pride and shame, is there not? And it doesn't mean that you're a killer. You know, I think that's the other part of it. People, I think there's a lot of people that are concerned that people look at them and go, well, if the genetics created the killer, those same genetics are with you. So who's to say you're not going to be the killer?

And that's the other thing, too, like we don't know. We don't know what role genetics play in any of this. You know, Andrew Brentlinger just seems like a man who worked himself up into a frenzy. Full stop. Oh, yeah, there is no question about that. He conjured this all in his mind and rolled it around and it became this thing.

It just and I have no doubt of that. I do not think that she was fooling around on him. I don't know where. And here's the other thing. And maybe maybe this is just a woman's perspective. She's a farm wife with a pastel of little youngsters. And she got the time and and all kinds of chores like beating clothes on a rock, you know, and and repairing fences like she's doing farm work in addition to housework and childcare. I did not.

I am not on a farm. And we have like a flush toilet in this house. And if you think I'm getting up in the middle of the night to go get it on with old man Hall, think again. Like when I look at the circumstances of Sarah Brentlinger's life, I'm like, Andrew, you asshole. She doesn't want it with any of you. But sure. Woman's exhaust.

Here's what we don't know. Old man Hall might have been old, but. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, the affair may be hearsay, but maybe hearsay about him. You hear about old man Hall? We Max and I can fill the corridor. The the building we used to work in a very long time ago was owned by a company that had there was a cafeteria in the basement of this building.

And they paid people, paid an old married couple. Yeah, they paid an old married couple to run this cafeteria. It was called the Pine Terrace. And can I tell you, it was open for breakfast and lunch. When I look back on that, like it wasn't around for much of our tenure, Max. We kind of got there in the very last days.

But when I look back on how like you could just nip downstairs and get you some scrambled eggs and bacon and toast at eight o'clock in the morning and lunch and it was good stuff. Like I loved their tuna fish anyway. So this old couple and I mean old, they were old then. They had to be in their 70s then late, maybe even.

And he might have been in his 80s. Yeah. And he all the like all the female employees, we all used to flirt with him because he was he would blush and he would be such a sweet, charming man. And I'm down in the Pine Terrace. That's what it was called. Standing in line to get lunch or whatever. And somebody is giving him a hard time about, you know, his age and, you know, how his wife and everything.

And his wife comes around the corner and says. He might be too old to cut the mustard, but he ain't too old to lick the jar. Oh, sorry, I can't believe you just told that. A lot of us went into the company offered free therapy through the employee assistance program, and a lot of us went into that. She was rather salty, though.

So it's not terribly surprising that she would say that. They were great people and everybody laughed. And it's one of the it's one of all of our favorite stories. But, yeah, to your point, hey, Mr. Old Man Hall, too old to cut the mustard, but he wasn't too old to lick the jar. Now, who wants to do that in an outhouse on a frigid Ohio night?

I don't know. But like I said, I'm soft. Yep. So we now we send Andrew Brentlinger back into the anonymity he deserves, and we just take a moment to remember his wife who did nothing and those children who were so traumatized and victimized, who somehow grew up and for the most part, grew up and went on and their descendants who walk around in the world today, probably with no idea of this darkness that's at the heart of their family story.

So, yeah, and today, of course, you know, he might still not be believed, but he would have gotten caught real fast because hopefully when you go to the sheriff's office in Ohio today and say a bloody man just confessed murder, the sheriff doesn't go. Well, now, you know, people cherry. Did we not do a true weird stuff episode where this this happened once before where the guy walked into the sheriff's office and said he killed his wife and they didn't believe him and he had problems convincing him.

It's a thing. Yeah. Oh, I don't remember which episode, but I remember at the time I went, wow, that's crazy. So when this showed up here, I was like, well, maybe not the good old days. Just if you if you retain nothing else about the good old days, I want you to think of Andrew Brentlinger's lie about Sarah. And I want you to imagine it's, you know, November and you've got diarrhea and you've got to leave your bed and go outside to the outhouse.

And if that doesn't make you thankful for indoor plumbing, I don't know what to say. That's all. Now, everybody, old man's hole is out here. I ain't too old to lick the jar. So next week on True Weird Stuff, this is really fun. So once upon a time, people believed that the human retina worked kind of like the human. I worked like a camera in the human retina, worked like a piece of film and that the very last thing that you saw in the moment of your death would be preserved on your retina. And this seemed like a really good and interesting way to pursue catching a murderer, including Jack the Ripper.

And and so a number of German scientists experimented with this and had some really interesting results using rabbits, which, whew, buddy, you didn't want to be a bunny in those laboratories, let me just tell you. But they did have some interesting results. And so they thought, well, surely this will apply to humans. It got out of control really, really fast and was debunked very early as nonsense, except there was a murder, a mass murder.

Oh. And this is how they solved it. Oh, I can't wait to hear that is killer eyes on the next True Weird Stuff. And if you listen to us on Apple podcast, hit the plus button in the top right corner. And now it helps an independent podcast like ours to get discovered. And we really appreciate it. If you subscribe, rate and review True Weird Stuff, hit our website, True Weird Stuff dot com for show notes and photos and videos when we have it.

And bonus content. Everything True Weird is waiting for you at True Weird Stuff dot com. And follow True Weird Stuff on Instagram. True Weird Stuff is a Now! Media production. Our executive producer is Anthony Garcia. The show is written and hosted by me, Sheri Lynch, along with my deeply weird director, Max Our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser.

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