[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, guys, it's Jill. Jen and I wanted to give you a heads up about the content on today's episode. It may be triggering for more sensitive audiences. Refer to the show notes for more specifics, and take care while you listen.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: On this episode of Common Mystics, we discuss a chilling murder and the horrific actions of an enraged mobile that sparked racial tensions in a Mississippi river town in 1909, leaving some to question whether the place is cursed.
I'm Jennifer James.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: I'm Jill Stanley.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: We're psychics. We're sisters. We are common mystics. We find extraordinary stories in ordinary places. And today's tragic story takes us to Caro, Illinois.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: I'm excited. Let's get right into it.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Okay.
Do you want to tell everybody where we were and where we were going?
[00:01:10] Speaker A: I just want to apologize first because someone is once again mowing outside. So if you hear any distortion on my feed, it is because there are zealous mowers in this area, and I apologize.
We were leaving the midwest to go to Dallas for a plastics conference.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Yay, plastics conference.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: And how to recycle it responsibly. Mm hmm.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: And we were driving through Illinois, and we were really drawn to a town called Cairo.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: Why were we drawn to Cairo?
[00:01:49] Speaker B: Well, we asked the spirits to guide us to a verifiable story previously unknown to us, and we were feeling Cairo.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: That is not true. You always wanted to go to Cairo because the intersecting of the lakes, the rivers. The rivers. The rivers, yes, that's why we were going to Cairo. Cause you wanted to go to Cairo.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: But we did do the intention, and the intention brought us to Cairo.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: We did do the intention, but we already.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: What? It's true. Both things are true. Both things are true.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Then why are you fighting with me? You wanted to go there before we set the intention, and then we set the intention, and we're on our way there. Can you please remind everyone what our intention was?
[00:02:35] Speaker B: I just did. We asked the spirits to lead us to a verifiable story, previously unknown to us, that allows us to give voice to the voiceless.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: You're welcome.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: So, Jennifer.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: Yeah?
[00:02:49] Speaker A: We're in the car. Yeah, we're going towards Caro. Yeah, we missed Caro.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: We did.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: We had to turn around.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: We did have to turn around.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: While we were in the car driving south, what were the hits we were picking up on?
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Okay. Couple weird things. You know, sometimes our regular conversations that we have in the car seem to be colored by spirit trying to tell us something true. And we were talking about celebrity deaths. But everybody we were talking about, everybody that came to mind was black. So I made note of that after. You're like, wait a minute. Why are we talking about a bunch of black deaths? Like, that was interesting, right? We were like Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson. Who else? Sam Cooke. You know what I mean?
[00:03:36] Speaker A: Christina. Bobby Brown.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay. And then you had a movie in your head. Do you remember which movie?
[00:03:44] Speaker A: It's a terrible movie.
It's called Red dawn. It's really a nonsense vehicle for young talent in the eighties. It's really stupid. Do not watch it.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: 1984. It's about teenage guerrilla fighters in this fictional world, war three setting. Dystopia. Right, right, right. And then you also had a song in your head, step by step, heart to heart.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: It's toy soldier. I do not know who sings it or what's it even about?
[00:04:15] Speaker B: Left, right, left.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: Calm down.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Stop now.
Thank you, toy soldier.
Are you done?
[00:04:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Are you done?
[00:04:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Unless you want to hear the another.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: I don't want to hear any more of that. Yeah. So we made note of soldiers, you know, and toy soldiers and Red dawn. And then we get to Cairo and we are getting. Did I say Cairo? Cairo. We get to Cairo and we are getting ghost town and war zone.
Gianna.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: I mean, honestly, looking at this town, I mean, yes, spirits, of course, but visually, I don't know how you can go through this town without thinking, oh, my God, some sort of war happened here. It felt third world. It felt war torn.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: Also, I remember walking and driving around, Carol, with you, and I remember saying, wow, something really, really bad here. Like, there is evil and tragedy on a grand scale in this place. And we left knowing that some big, terrible event happened there, but we didn't know what it was.
[00:05:45] Speaker A: If a town could be.
If a town itself could be depressed, this town was, like suicidal af. You know what I mean? Like, this town itself is just so heavy, depressed. And you're wondering not only why are we here, but why would people live here? Instead? The energy around the town was so, so heavy. And when I say heavy and depressed, I mean, like, full on hospitals that once in a day service, the public were like, half look like falling down, if not blown up. Like we're talking rubble in the streets.
[00:06:25] Speaker B: War torn, just completely ravaged is what it looked like.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: True. So, I'm sorry. We usually aren't this blunt, and we don't like to talk smack about different areas, especially from our home state, Illinois.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: Hello.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: But this is. Was really confusing to find amongst the. The cornfields in Illinois. Especially along such a specific, pivotal part of Illinois where the Ohio meets the Mississippi.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: And yet in this environment, there were little gems, do you remember, like little gems of architecture that were just so quaint and pretty around this sort of rubble that was everywhere.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: It spoke to the past, but also the future, what it was and what it could be.
All right, tell me about Caroz.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Oh, I can't wait.
Caro. Okay. I've been saying Caro. It looks like Cairo. It's c a I R o, but it's pronounced Caro is named after the egyptian city. And it started as a small town with these grand aspirations. I mean, Jill, as I talked to you about the history of Cairo, it's going to be like this roller coaster.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Don't ruin it. Don't ruin anything for me.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: I'm not ruining. It's foreshadowing. Learn it.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: Go on without spoiler alerts.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: Okay. No, no, no. So Cairo is located in Alexander county on the little bitty southern tip of the state of Illinois, right where the Ohio river and the Mississippi rivers kind of mash up right there at the little tiny tail of Illinois. It's like a chicken tail, like a little bump. It's not a long tail, like a cat or a dog.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: I would assume with all that water meshing around that it's low land, kind of swampy.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: Yup, you got it. You got it. Yes. But also, even the earliest settlers recognize that, hey, this could be a strategic location because of the Ohio and the Mississippi. Like, hey, that's good for trade and transportation. Right?
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Absolutely right.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: And so the first Europeans came over in 1702, and they were french traders, and they established a fort there and a tannery. Do you know what a tannery is?
[00:09:02] Speaker A: I do.
It's where you take hides from animals and you tan them up so they can be cloth or wearable fabrics.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: Right. Very good.
They don't have tanning beds there.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: I didn't.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: Common misconception. Okay.
[00:09:17] Speaker A: I think they would. No, no.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: Right. But this initial settlement by the french traitors met a tragic end when the Cherokee warriors massacred them.
I mean, that's fair.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: That's their shit.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: I know it's their shit.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: So, I mean, don't fuck around with their shit and you won't find out. You know what I mean?
[00:09:40] Speaker B: So it took a century for anything to happen there again by the Europeans.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: Cause they learned.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: Cherokee made their learned.
But about 100 years later, the region gained significance because of Lewis and Clark.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: We know Louis and Clark.
[00:09:59] Speaker B: So Lewis and Clark. So before they began their expedition, they camped out in Cairo, and they, like, got ready for their adventure. They were practicing their latitude and longitude, and they had their instruments out, and they were like, you know, prepping, prepping and shit and talking to the indigenous tribes. They're like, hey, what's over this way? You know what I mean? Like, that's where they learned. Okay.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: So they knew, like, hey, this location is a really good location to meet up to practice some shit and to talk to some indigenous people.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: But don't kill us like you did them french, because we cool. We cool, right?
[00:10:36] Speaker B: Exactly. Then, in 1817, there is this guy named John Comegas. Okay. And John Comegus purchased. He was from Baltimore, he was from out east, and he bought 1800 acres in southern Illinois. He's like, you know, land development and stuff. And. Cause, you know, now the native peoples, they're being kind of moved off. Right. Slowly but surely. Right.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: After 100 years. Yeah.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: Very, very sad, but that's what's happening. And white men are like hills. Yeah, I'll buy that. And so John come against bought this land, and he named it after the egyptian city on the Nile Delta. Like, we already said, he believed that.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: Cairo was going to be a great american city, one of the greatest.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. But plans to establish a thriving community would struggle to take root over the years.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: Why?
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Okay, so, 1818, Carol gets this first municipal charter.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: Yay.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: So, now we have the charter. We can actually be a real town, and they have a charter for the bank of Cairo. The only thing is, settlers didn't want to live there. That shit's muddy and swampy, lots of mosquitoes and flooding. You know, people didn't want to move there, and they also didn't want to put their money in that bank.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: So what was wrong with the bank? Just because the bank wasn't secured?
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Well, why would they put their money in a place where they didn't want to live? Like, that doesn't make sense. You know, you got to drive all the way through the mud to get your money out of, like, Cairo because you don't want to live there. That's stupid.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: And so many other parts of this continent were opening up at the time. I can see, like, they would be better options. Yeah. I'd go south. I'd be going around to, like, Nanche or whatever. Why Cairo?
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Right. So, that failed in 1818. Okay. But then 20 years later, there was a business.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: Business helps drive population.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: Exactly. And the business was the Cairo City and Canal company, because, again, transportation, that brings in money. And the Cairo City and Canal Company made a renewed attempt to establish the town. And they built a levee. They're like, yeah, we know it floods. We're going to build a levee to. To keep it. To keep it dry.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: Water always wins. You guys do not fight the water.
[00:13:03] Speaker B: So they built the levee to protect it from floodwaters. And then hundreds and hundreds of men were employed to come there and like, okay, everybody build a settlement. So they built a shipyard. They built a farm, hotels, and several residences.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: But the bar, was there a bar?
[00:13:25] Speaker B: No bar. Yeah.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, I wouldn't be there. There's no reason to go there. Okay.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: Right. But the flooding continued to be a problem, and it really challenged this community. And so by 1840, the plan had failed, and 80% of the people who were there then moved out. They're like, nope, nope, nope. You still don't have this flooding situation under control. We're out.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: I'm telling you, flooding is a real problem. Even in Kalamazoo. Every year. Every single year, kalamazoo floods. How do people live like that? I don't understand. So, yeah, no, they're right. They're right.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: In 1842, the city of Cairo had a very well known visitor come and visit who you might have heard of. Charles Dickens.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: I know of him. A Christmas story, fame. A Christmas carol.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: Yes. There you go.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: Christmas Carol.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: Carol.
Also a tale of two cities, great expectations. David Copperfield. Yes, yes, that. That one. So he was in from England, and he was doing, like, a grand tour of the United States, and he stops at Cairo, and he is not impressed. And he called it a detestable morass, a breeding place of fever, ague, and death.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: I mean, rude. We can call it that because we're from Illinois. But don't you come into Illinois calling it. That's here. Uh uh.
[00:14:55] Speaker B: And not only that, but he wrote a novel, martin Chuzzlewit, and he created this town of Eden, the city of Eden, in that book. That was so bleak and depressing, and it was modeled after the city of Cairo.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: That's really rude.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Which is some bullshit. But you know what? Nobody read that one.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: I've never read that in my life, and I.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: Nobody read that. So joke's on him. Nobody read that. Anyway, so again, there was a bid to rejuvenate the town as a train station stop along the Illinois Central Railroad. So the railroad is like, this still has some potential here to make money. So, in 1856, Cairo was linked by rail to Galena, which is all the way in northwest Illinois. So essentially crossing the state from south to northwest.
[00:15:54] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:55] Speaker B: And that finally. Finally we have some prosperity coming to Cairo. And in three years it was booming. In 1859, commodities like cotton and wool and molasses and sugar, we're flowing through its port.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: Great.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Yeah, this is good.
[00:16:15] Speaker A: This is good.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: And. Mm hmm. And then the next year, guess what? Carol gets named the seat of the county.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: Oh, that's a big deal. Yay.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: That's a big deal. So finally you can just, I can just picture the town of Cairo getting a little crown on its head like, yes. You know, some recognition, some prosperity. We got a boom.
Another thing that was happening in Caro has to do with race relations in like the 1850s. During that period.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: Welcome to America.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: That's what we do because we are gearing up for a civil war, as we all know.
And Cairo is right across the river from Kentucky and Missouri. But mostly Kentucky. And those two states, they are slave states. Right. And so you have freedom seekers who are enslaved in those slave states. They are making their way across the river. Some of them are going north to cities like Chicago and others, they're settling in Cairo.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I can see that. But after getting to Cairo, I would.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Be like, you know, man, wouldn't you keep going?
[00:17:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I would be like, yeah, I hear good things about Chicago. Yeah. I'm not.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: By the end of the civil war, more than 3000 formerly enslaved people had settled in Cairo.
That's a large number.
[00:17:38] Speaker A: That is a large number.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: At the onset of the civil war. It's bad, right? So the wars are bad. However, for Cairo, it brought a boom because it had the railroad line. Right. It had a port. And General Grant is like, all right, I'm going to create a fort here. So he established Fort defiance in 1861.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: I see what he did there. I see what he did there. He was like, defiant. Yeah, I see what, right.
[00:18:07] Speaker B: And it was a naval base and a supply depot for the western army of the United States. And it brought in troops. Troops lived there. 12,000 Union troops were living there. So this is a huge boom for sure.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: But I'm weary because nothing good comes out of war. So if you're getting something good out of war, that's, that's an indicator to me, but so tell me what's up.
[00:18:34] Speaker B: Well, there was a downside and that was because the railroad transport really was all about what the army needed. All other industry was bypassed. It bypassed Cairo.
Right. Because if you're not associated with the army, you wouldn't get tied up through Cairo. Right. So all other industry was diverted around Cairo and the fort during this time.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: I see?
[00:19:03] Speaker B: Right? So it's like good news, bad news.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: Well, that's. I. For me, I would be like, that's bad news. Like, if I were, like, a community planner on the town commission, I would be like, so what happens after if none of these stops are coming here, if this is a detour. Right?
There was no foresight there, Zachary.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: I think a lot of people weren't looking that far ahead because there was a lot of talk about Carol becoming a great city during this time.
Like, was saying that, well, some people were even saying it could be the new capital of the United States.
For real?
[00:19:42] Speaker A: For real. Some people were not accurate. Like, why? I mean, I get. I mean, I get it. You're having a really good time right now. But do you remember the beginning? Do you remember, like, four years ago?
[00:19:56] Speaker B: So there is this. It was the civil war. There's this general named General Clark Carr, and he was in Cairo, and someone asked him, hey, do you think Chicago is going to emerge as the, quote, great city of Illinois?
And he answered, no way, man. Chicago is going to be ok. Chicago is going to be great. But Cairo is going to be the greatest city with its position on the water and the trade and commerce. Like, and he was just, like, going on and on, gushing about Caro and how Caro is going to be, like, the standout greatest city in the state of Illinois. Yeah.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, sir. General Carr. Yeah, no, no, no.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Didn't happen. Didn't happen. So after the war, you might have guessed those 12,000 troops, do you think they stayed?
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Like, I would not even stop here. So the fact, like some people would say, is mind boggling to me. Like, literally even spirit was, like, telling us, don't go there. You don't want to go there. So. Yeah, no, of course they didn't stay.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: They didn't. They didn't, Jill. The troops hated it. They hated it. They hated the climate. They found it unbearable. They hated the muddy, low lying terrain. They hated the flooding. And as soon as the war was over in 1865, they packed up and went home.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: You did not name mosquitoes. Think of the mosquitoes around that area.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Ugh. I know. It's just itching just thinking about it.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: I just. No.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Okay, okay.
[00:21:32] Speaker A: So everyone's leaving.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: Everyone was leaving. But despite this population exodus, Cairo still thrived post war.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: I don't believe it.
[00:21:42] Speaker B: It's true. It had become a bustling hub for breweries. There you go.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, see, that's where they should have started. If they would have started with the breweries, things would have been a lot different in Cairo.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: You're probably right. Breweries, mills, and manufacturing started to take off even though the soldiers all left. So this is good news.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: And by 1890, Carol was a key shipping and steamboat center.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
[00:22:10] Speaker B: However.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: Uh oh.
[00:22:14] Speaker B: Uh oh. Okay. So you know how after, like, the Civil War, there was, like, this time of, like, reconstruction in the south and, like, trying to acclimate all of these people who had formerly been enslaved. Right.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: Formerly have been property. Right, right. And now they're people that have, like, citizenship. What do you do?
[00:22:37] Speaker B: Right, exactly. So there was a lot of racial tension in Cairo, and in the late 19th century, white residents of the city resisted integration with their black residents. And now, what makes Carol a little different from most quote unquote, northern towns? And I'm doing the little bunny air quotes because, sure, it's in a northern, but it's at the tippity tip, tip.
[00:23:09] Speaker A: Southern chest, literally a couple slushes away from Kentucky. Like a slush, slush, slush. I'm in Kentucky. Slush, slush, slush in.
[00:23:17] Speaker B: And so the black population and the white population were like, even.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: You see what I'm saying?
[00:23:24] Speaker A: If not, there was more of a black population than a white population.
[00:23:29] Speaker B: So the white residents, they don't want to integrate with black residents. So what do they have to do? The black residents, they were forced to create their own churches, their own schools, their own businesses. And by the way, I'm looking at my notes, the black residents made up 40% of the population.
[00:23:46] Speaker A: 40%.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: That's 40%.
[00:23:50] Speaker A: So they had to make a whole other town. Instead of being absorbed into the economics there, they had to build a whole other economic viable town. I'm exhausted. White people. Can we just get over it? Tiring. It's tiring.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: And then, of course, most of the black people living there filled the unskilled labor force because it was the white people who wouldn't integrate them into, you know, into the society that had greater economic success. Right. They were keeping the black people down. Right, right. And so, I mean, that caused tension, of course, because the black people, they formed unions, and they were striking, and they were protesting the unequal conditions, opportunities. Right.
[00:24:42] Speaker A: To make, to live, and to live prosperously. And while they weren't getting those same kind of treatments, those same kind of opportunities, they were also being shit talked to all the time. So they'll be like, oh, you lazy. I'll be like, bitch, I'll go to work. Let me work. And they'll be like, you lazy? And it's like, but I'll go to work. You know what I mean? So it's just a whole thing.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: They were also pushing for equal representation in the government, which they didn't have, and legal. And in the legal system as well. Okay, so let's keep all this in perspective.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:25:18] Speaker B: And then something catastrophic happened to put down the city of Cairo once and for all.
[00:25:28] Speaker A: Was it a flood?
[00:25:30] Speaker B: No. Nice. Nice guess, though. It's a fair guess. In 1905, a new railway bridge was built, not at Cairo, but at Thebes. Thebes. And this new railway bridge essentially created an economic downturn at Cairo, because instead of carol getting all the transportation through it, now, it was all diverted to this railway bridge at Thebes. And so all of the white business owners were pissed off and frustrated and desperate. Who do you think they directed their anger towards?
[00:26:11] Speaker A: You know what?
[00:26:13] Speaker B: They're black neighbors.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: They needed a scapegoat, because they're not going to say, oh, you know, it's this bridge. And they're like, no, we're suffering because of your. Your black business. Your black businesses.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: Yes. How they turned their anger.
[00:26:29] Speaker B: I don't know how far away Thebes is. It's a neighboring trade port on the river.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: I'm looking it up. Oh, it just keeps giving me places in Egypt.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: Egypt?
[00:26:41] Speaker A: Apparently there's a Thebes in Egypt, too.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: There is? Yeah. That's funny.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: Very confusing. Oh, here, 27 miles.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: Okay. 27 miles away.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: That's a long time. In the 19 hundreds. Like the early 19 hundreds. Yeah.
So how would you, if you were a small business owner in Cairo, how would you get your cotton to Thebes? Thieves.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:27:08] Speaker A: You would have to get it. And, like, there's not cars. Like, I think Ford came out with the model t in 1912. And I'm sure that's wrong, but just, we're talking 1905. Like, that's. That is. I mean, they literally cut off the head of Cairo.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: Exactly. Cairo. Yes, 100%. And not only that, but you're thinking about all the trade from the south going to the north in that direction. They wouldn't go to Cairo. They'd go. They'd go on this railway bridge over Thebes. Right.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: Yeah. They're not going on the rivers anymore.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: Oh, that's sad. I'm sorry.
[00:27:42] Speaker B: I know that was 1905. So this. This is kind of the situation, you know, that was happening. And now the scene is set for tragedy.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: Tell me what tragedy you speak of.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: It was 1909, Jill. On the evening of Monday, November 8, and 24 year old Anna Pelley was just getting off work at the pupkin dry goods store where she worked as a sales girl. She and her co worker, Ella Dolan, they left work together somewhere between six and 07:00 p.m. okay, and they were walking home that night, but there was a terrible, terrible rainstorm, and it was dark and chilly that November evening. Now, they trudged over to the corner together, and Ella took a streetcar home. But Anna continued alone on foot, and the streets were mostly empty because of the downpour.
And sadly, Anna Pelle was never seen again by her loved ones.
She failed to return home that evening. Now, originally, her family, they weren't worried because it was often that she would just stay at a friend's house overnight. She was 24 years old, okay? She wasn't a child. And, yeah, they had just assumed that she went to stay at her friend's house, especially because there was such bad.
[00:29:18] Speaker A: Weather that night and there's no telephones. It's not like she's picking up a phone on her way home and being like, I'm gonna stay at Ella's. She just, you know.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: Well, the family's first indication that something was wrong came when Anna's employees employer called over to the house.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: So there was phones.
[00:29:36] Speaker B: Well, I mean, called the house. I don't know if they had a telephone or if he came or he came and, like, came a calling. Exactly.
[00:29:44] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:29:44] Speaker B: That's not clear to me. They didn't make that clear in the newspapers. But what I do know is he followed up and he's like, hey, why isn't Anna at work today?
[00:29:54] Speaker A: And, like, every employer would, right?
[00:29:57] Speaker B: Like any employer would be like, hey, why did you show up? You didn't call. Are you sick? Like, what's going on? And of course, her family didn't know why, but it was soon after, like, minutes, that Anna's body was found just a few yards away from her home.
It was found in an alley by children on their way to school.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
Poor kids. Had a fine. Poor Anna. That in itself is a tragedy.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: Now, here's where, if you're a sensitive listener, you might want to fast forward a little bit. We make sure we put the trigger warning at the beginning of this one. But Anna's body was lying on a pile of rubbish in the alley, like, thrown away like garbage.
She was unclothed, and her body was, quote, mutilated.
Her face was bruised as well as her limbs.
She was bound and gagged, and her head was completely covered by a heavy cloth. Jill.
The bruises around her throat suggested that she had been strangled to death.
Now, you okay?
[00:31:27] Speaker A: That's really, really, really hard to hear.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: Notably, Anna had with her a bundle of dressmaking goods and also her purse that had her weekly wages in it. And both were undisturbed and found near her body.
[00:31:49] Speaker A: What? So how. What was the motive for her killing? Like, was she was there?
Like, what was the victimology? Was she in a rough neighborhood? Did anyone hate her? Did she, like, have enemies?
[00:32:05] Speaker B: Well, the motive wasn't robbery for sure, because she wasn't robbed, and she had her wages on her. Other than that, the investigators didn't know what the motive was.
But what they did find was evidence that Anna had been seized, like, two blocks away from where her body was found and dragged to the place where she died.
They could also tell that she fought fiercely. Every inch of those two blocks.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: That makes me happy and sad at the same time.
[00:32:46] Speaker B: There were bits of cloth that were ripped from not only from her jacket, but from the attackers clothing. She had shredded it, their clothing, to shreds. And all along the alley, there was signs that she. There was a terrible fight there. Like, shit knocked over.
[00:33:06] Speaker A: Oh, I'm, like, sure she was.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: Blood spatters.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: She was probably screaming. She was probably throwing stuff. She was probably being carried. And with the downpour, it was probably like no one heard it, because they assumed with, like, the rain and the.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: Ruckus, that it was just thunder.
[00:33:21] Speaker A: Yes. Oh, that poor, poor woman.
[00:33:23] Speaker B: They could tell that she fought with her fists.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: Fuck.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:27] Speaker A: She.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: And also, she used her umbrella, too.
[00:33:30] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: Go, girl.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:33:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
And over that two block trail, the blood of her attackers was splattered.
This girl fought hard.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: That makes me happy that she fought so hard.
Oh, gosh.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: The Rock Island Argus newspaper, printed on the following day, said that the fact that Miss Pelly was a country girl of large stature and unusual strength makes it almost certain that more than one Mandev was implicated in the murder.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: So I'm looking at her picture, okay? She's not unusually large in stature, and if she was, I would like her. We would be like. I would borrow her petticoat. You know what I mean?
She's cute.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: Well, people were smaller back then, so if she looks like our size, then that's unusual.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: She's cute. What was her victimology? What do we know about her? Was she. Did she have enemies? Was she in a torrid love affair? Tell me everything. What could have brought her to this incident the night that she died?
Was it anything in her past?
[00:34:47] Speaker B: Excellent. Segue. Jill. So let me tell you, Anna Pelly was, confusingly enough, from a town named Anna, Illinois. And that town is about 35 miles north of Cairo. And Anna hadn't lived in Carroll very long. She had just been living there for about a year. See, she moved to Carol after her mother's death, and she moved in with her sister and her brother in law, mister and misses Kaufman, who were living in Cairo.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:35:16] Speaker B: Yeah, we don't know much about her personality. Go ahead.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: That's what I was going to ask. Do we know the type of person she was? Was she sweet? Was she. Was she. I mean, she's adorable. If I look like her, I would be a b I t c h. But I mean, what do we know of her personality?
[00:35:31] Speaker B: We don't know too much. We do know, again, that the newspapers reported that she was, quote unquote, large and usually strong. We know that she was athletic because in high school she played on the basketball team.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: Oh, fun. You've been on the basketball team in high school.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: We also know that before she moved to Cairo, she was, she would visit her sister and brother in law pretty frequently, and they had actually taken a trip to St. Louis together. So she was kind of close to her sister.
[00:36:01] Speaker A: Aw, she had a good sister. Was there anyone in her inner circle that was unstable that might have wanted to hurt her? Did she have a mentally ill family member, friend, neighbor?
[00:36:13] Speaker B: No, her relatives were nothing like that comes up in the, in the research. And her relatives stated that Anna had no known enemies. She was getting along great at work. She had no problems with anyone. In fact, she was considered one of the most popular saleswomen at pupkin's dry goods store where she worked. And she also didn't appear to have a boyfriend either. At least it wasn't reported.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: Athletic, tall women are very intimidating for less men. I just think. That's true.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: That is true.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: That is very true. So it's not you, Anna.
Okay, so now we find a body. We have a missing girl. I'm sure investigators put two and two together.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: We have a dead girl, not a missing girl.
[00:36:59] Speaker A: I know. They don't know that yet. They have a body, and then they have Anna's missing. They put two and two together. Now we think Anna's the dead girl. Right. Now tell me, how did they. Why are you so confused? You have.
May I say it one time?
[00:37:15] Speaker B: I know that. No, no, that's okay. That makes sense. She was missing for a few minutes.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: She was missing for a few minutes, and they had a body before they had a name so quickly they put the two and two together and the investigation went where? Where? How did they go about finding who could have done this? Poor Anna.
[00:37:34] Speaker B: The mayor offered a reward of $1,000 for the arrest of any guilty persons to try to get the investigation going. And $1,000 is over 30,000 in today's money. So that's kind of a big sum.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: And I have a question.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: Yes, ma'am.
[00:37:50] Speaker A: So the mayor says, if anyone brings me the person who did it, I'll give you $30,000. It wasn't like, please find me who did this.
And the whistleblower gets $30,000.
[00:38:04] Speaker B: I think what I understand is that the entire community was in an uproar when this happened. The white community was in an uproar. And so while the police are investigating, the mayor is like, I have to do something to, to make, to like, throw fuel on this investigation. Like, let's get some people in. So he just makes this reward. He offers this reward for the arrest of the guilty persons. That's all I can tell you.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: Okay, well, that seems like it's causing more chaos. And I think the black community was probably scared too. Just saying for maybe different reasons. But I know if I, if I were a woman of color, regardless, I would feel pretty, pretty shaken by this brutal murder of a young girl, young 24 year old.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: You bring up a good point because the newspapers really don't comment on the feelings of the black community. The newspapers are written from the perspective of the white community of Cairo. Historically. When you look back, I didn't read any. I don't even know that there were any black newspapers in 1909 in Cairo. But that's an excellent point.
[00:39:14] Speaker A: Hmm. Alright, hang in there, guys. Well be right back.
[00:39:20] Speaker B: Hi, everyone. We are so excited to unveil the first book in our series entitled common Mystics Present. Ghost on the road, volume one, murders and mysterious deaths.
[00:39:30] Speaker A: Its everything you love about common mystics and more.
[00:39:34] Speaker B: Its a retelling of ten of our favorite stories from our pod with exciting extras.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: Extras like souvenirs, what we took away from the experience, and what to know if you go, if you decide to travel in our footsteps.
[00:39:46] Speaker B: Pre order the Kindle edition now, all other formats of the book will be available for
[email protected] on July 1, 2023.
[00:39:56] Speaker A: Thanks, guys. Now back to the show.
[00:39:58] Speaker B: So there's this reward, and not only that, the mayor also orders bloodhounds. They're going to get the bloodhounds on this case because of course, I told you Anna had, like, the sack over her neck like this. I don't know if it's a towel or sack, but her head was wrapped up, and they had. They had blood spatters and bits of clothing that she had torn from her attacker's clothing. So he didn't just order bloodhounds from one district, he ordered bloodhounds from several surrounding districts. So he got dogs from Harrisburg, Illinois, Charleston, Missouri, and Wycliffe, Kentucky. And all the dogs from these different districts were sent to Carol, and they were all given the cloth that had been used to gag Anna, as well as strips of towel that had been wrapped around her neck.
On several different trials, the bloodhounds from the different police districts led investigators to a crude cottage in a, quote, shanty town that was the home of a black woman named Miss Green.
Miss Greene was arrested, as well as three black men who frequently stayed with her. They were will Thomas, Arthur Alexander, and William James.
[00:41:27] Speaker A: First of all, shantytown. That sounds fun. What is a shantytown? Is it, like, a shigded town? What are we doing here?
[00:41:33] Speaker B: Oh, Jill. No. A shantytown would describe an area of the town where there are, like, shacks for homes. It would have been a very poor part of the town then assumed. Go ahead.
[00:41:50] Speaker A: Then they really need to change the name to something less fun.
Just saying. Okay, that's number one. Number two, I own a hound. I myself own a hound, and I don't care about the training of a hound, but if anyone in the said shantytown was making bacon, then that's where my hound would go. So I think that these are circumstances and context that we should have had included, like, bacon being fried anywhere. Anywhere. Then that's a mistrial. We should. We should try the dogs again.
[00:42:21] Speaker B: I do think that the mayor did due diligence by getting three different groups of dogs. Like, I'm glad he did that. Like, he was really trying to make sure. Do you know what I mean? Like, and having different. Different dogs trained in different ways to see if they all reached the same conclusion. But, yeah, they all ended up at Miss Greene's place.
[00:42:39] Speaker A: It is frightening, though, to have four people arrested just by the dogs.
[00:42:45] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:42:46] Speaker A: You know what I'm saying? That's a frightening perspective on my. Like, I would be like, someone left. You know what I mean? Like. Like someone was just walking past the shack that Miss Green lived in and, like, dropped off a piece, an article that was involved in the. In the murder.
[00:43:02] Speaker B: Right? Exactly. No, 100%. They are probably arrested at this point for questioning.
[00:43:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:43:08] Speaker B: Okay. Like, nobody said nobody. There's no sentencing. Like, you know what I'm saying?
[00:43:12] Speaker A: I'm just saying, like, it just like, laws back in the 19 hundreds were, like, quick and fast. Like, they're arrested for until they figured out some shit. Like, usually, like, you go, you get questioned, you get released. Is that what happened to these people while they were investigating these four, the wills, Arthur and Miss Greene?
[00:43:33] Speaker B: Well, what happened was all four were locked up in jail, and then the hounds were tested again. All right, so now they're like, okay, so now we have these four people, they're in jail, and we're like, okay, houndy hounds. Like, they give them another smell of the towel and the smell of the gag. And guess what?
[00:43:49] Speaker A: What?
[00:43:50] Speaker B: All four went to the cell of William James, one of the three men that was at Miss Green's. So now they let the other three go because they got a man who is tied. Okay? So I don't know if he had bacon in his pocket. I don't know, Jill. I didn't ask. But that does not look good for William James.
[00:44:15] Speaker A: It does not know.
[00:44:17] Speaker B: Does that answer your question, Jill?
[00:44:19] Speaker A: It's still like, to me, William James could have been wearing Henry shirt that Henry had. You know what I mean? Like it?
[00:44:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: It's so circumstantial, it's upsetting, but go totally circumstantial. What else did these. These columbos find?
[00:44:34] Speaker B: Well, not much, because unfortunately, the investigation was cut short and the legal system bypassed entirely due to mob activity in Cairo that started almost as soon as Anna Pelley's body was found.
[00:44:54] Speaker A: Okay, that sounds like some vigilante type sh nes.
What are you saying? Tell me everything this moment.
[00:45:04] Speaker B: Okay, so the papers on the morning that Anna Pelley's body is found report, quote, unquote, excitement among the white population of Cairo reaching to a fever heat over the murder. And the newspapers were reporting that the atmosphere of racial strife would result in a lynching.
So newspapers are predicting a lynching.
[00:45:35] Speaker A: Okay, so. Excuse me. That's terrifying. 100% I agree with you. Terrifying.
[00:45:45] Speaker B: I agree. It sounds a whole lot like the newspapers are calling for a lynching.
[00:45:49] Speaker A: Like that sounds to me like everyone's this upset. And the last time I've seen everyone this upset. And this. These are many white people upset about somebody that may be black. There was someone that died like that, that it's. It's almost like lynchings happen so much that this is the right weather for a lynching.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: The day after Anna's remains were found, it was reported in the paper that, quote, the best citizens of Cairo. The best citizens of Cairo had formed two different mobs, both intending on lynching William James, the suspect identified by the hounds. Again, again, like, calling people to do a lynching. Like, can we just be clear here? The newspapers are saying there's going to be a lynching not because they can predict the future, but because they're saying, hey, white people, take. Take this into your own hands.
[00:46:46] Speaker A: Not only that, but the best white people we know, which is. It was a little even more sick to me.
[00:46:52] Speaker B: I know. I know. Yeah.
[00:46:54] Speaker A: Like, because if it was just any white person, they may get in trouble.
[00:46:58] Speaker B: But the best white people, if the best people, they're condoning it. They're saying the best, most upstanding people are going to murder this man.
[00:47:07] Speaker A: Not only that, if it was a banker. If it was the banker and the doctor, they would get away with it, but if it was just Paul and Henry, they wouldn't. Do you see what I'm saying? So he's calling on the best white people, the ones with the most influence in the county seat, to come forward and lynch somebody. Yes, because that's what the. That is what the weather's like in Cairo right now. Oh, my God.
[00:47:32] Speaker B: Okay, so the chief of police, chief of police Egan and Detective Casey, they see a group of 250 people on the street. Okay?
[00:47:42] Speaker A: There's two men. Do we got two men? We got.
[00:47:45] Speaker B: We got. We got the chief of police and his detective, and a group of 250 people are on the street, and they're all headed. Headed towards the jail. And they're led by some coward in a mask. There is a masked stranger I can.
[00:47:58] Speaker A: Just picture in my head, Danny glover on lethal weapon going, I'm too old for this shit.
As, like, the crowd is approaching.
[00:48:07] Speaker B: So Chief Egan snatches the mask off the leader's face. He's like, hey. Snatches off his face. And he addresses the crowd, and he's like, hey, nobody has been convicted, okay? This is all circumstantial. I'm not even sure will James did it, okay? That's what he said. He's like, all of you need to calm down. This is the beginning stages of the investigation. Go home. This is circumstantial. We don't know if this is our guy. Let us do our job. Okay? So he. He convinces them. They turn around, they leave. They get to the jail, and there's another mob. Another mob is forming at the jail. And so again, the chieftain says, hey, you guys, again, circumstantial yada, yada, yada. We don't know if this is our guy. And he gets. He gets that mob to disperse as well, then chief Egan has a few moments with Will James. Okay?
[00:49:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:49:05] Speaker B: And here's what we do know about that conversation, okay? He talks to Will James, who is in custody, okay? And chief Egan is like, hey, will, we don't know if you did this or not, but we know you're lying about some things, okay? And this is what we know. Will insisted that he was innocent, but the gag that was used to silence Anna was a handkerchief that belonged to Will James. It was his handkerchief again. Does that mean he did it? No, it doesn't. But it was his handkerchief.
[00:49:40] Speaker A: It explains the dogs.
[00:49:41] Speaker B: Right, right, right. I. But these are. But they're lies. He was lying about stuff. Okay, okay.
[00:49:48] Speaker A: He may have lied about stuff, but if there was already two different mobs, independent of each other, outside wanting to kill me, I would say whatever I had to say to save my life, whether it made sense or not, but go on.
[00:50:04] Speaker B: Okay, so I already told you that the handkerchief that gagged Anna belonged to him.
[00:50:08] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[00:50:10] Speaker B: Also, he couldn't account for his whereabouts between 06:00 p.m. and 08:00 p.m. the night of Anna's murder. So he had no good alibi.
[00:50:20] Speaker A: Was he a drinker? If he was a drinker, that makes sense to me.
[00:50:23] Speaker B: Also, William James, he was acquainted with Anna Pelley and the family because he was a delivery man, and he had repeatedly delivered coal to the house on different occasions. And so he kind of knew, like, the time that Anna would be walking home because he would regularly deliver coal to the house again. Does that make. Does that mean he's guilty? No, but it just means that he had knowledge about when she would routinely be walking on the street alone.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: And we already established that for the times, Anna was unusually large, so she would have been noticed. Do you know what I mean? He may have just known her from the Kohl house or from the store. He may not have been like, besties. Like, hey, William, how are you? It probably wasn't like that. It was probably just the big girl down the street. And I've been that girl, and it's not fair. I am that girl, and it's not fair.
[00:51:20] Speaker B: That's what the cops had on Will James.
[00:51:24] Speaker A: Okay? So now he's questioning him. He's questioning, like, dude, whatever you want me to say. Sure. I knew her. I didn't know her. Yeah, that's my handkerchief. But there is still a tight wire outside that's just getting tighter and tighter and tighter.
[00:51:41] Speaker B: More mobs, more mobs. More mobs are gathering.
[00:51:45] Speaker A: This is a small community. How many mobs can we get out of this community? Jennifer?
[00:51:50] Speaker B: Mobs are gathering and storming the jail, determined to seize Will James.
So law enforcement, they are getting more and more nervous because now they're not able to talk.
[00:52:06] Speaker A: Casey is the deputy. The sheriff's name is Egan.
[00:52:10] Speaker B: Egan.
[00:52:10] Speaker A: Thank you. So it's just those two?
[00:52:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:14] Speaker A: I'd get scared too. Like, what do you do?
[00:52:17] Speaker B: So they're like, we have to keep this prisoner safe. So they decide they're gonna sneak him out of the jail and get him out of town before he can be seized and murdered because they. They know that, like, we. We don't have enough.
[00:52:35] Speaker A: I mean, they're men of law, right? They want the due process. They want the process.
Let the law work.
[00:52:41] Speaker B: And honestly, they are not sure that will is their guy. Okay.
[00:52:46] Speaker A: No, they have only circumstance.
[00:52:48] Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly.
715 pm on Wednesday, November 10 now it's the sheriff, Sheriff Davis. He's in charge. He rushes will James onto the Illinois Central train headed to Chicago. The only thing is, this train is going to go past Anna, Illinois, Anna Pelley's hometown.
[00:53:08] Speaker A: So it was the chief, Egan. And now we have Sheriff Davis, which is a third law enforcement officer that's come to the scene. Okay, perfect. Now he rushes Will James into a train. A train headed to Chicago. Headed to Chicago, Chi town.
[00:53:28] Speaker B: But it's gonna go through Anna, Illinois, which is where Anna. Anna Palley. That's her hometown.
[00:53:36] Speaker A: It's her hometown.
[00:53:38] Speaker B: So he learns that there is a mobile waiting for will at Anna, Illinois. At that stop, there's a mob gonna rush onto the train and take will James. So what does he do? Sheriff Davis gets off the train with the deputy about 10 miles southeast of Anna. Cause he knows a mob is waiting there. So they duck off the train. Sheriff Davis, the deputy, and Will.
[00:54:04] Speaker A: And I was gonna say, they just left. Will on the train was like, come, walk. Bye.
[00:54:09] Speaker B: The plan was to, like, rent a horse and carriage and do the next leg of the journey around where the mob had gathered and then pick up the train again.
The only thing was, all of the local people knew what was happening because of word of mouth, and nobody would help.
[00:54:27] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:54:29] Speaker B: Instead of helping, they're like. They're like, sending the mob information about where he was last seen.
[00:54:35] Speaker A: Or they were like, you can't get my horse right.
[00:54:39] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:54:39] Speaker A: Remember doctor Mudd after Abraham Lincoln was shot. He helped Booth. And everyone's like, your name is Mud. This guy isn't a fool. He is not trying to help out a criminal and try to get due process there. He's like, nope, no horses for me. Nope, you can't go here. Nope. Sorry. You're late. You know, whatever. So, yeah, that makes sense.
[00:54:58] Speaker B: So Sheriff Davis and the deputy with Will James, the prisoner, they hide in the woods. They literally are hiding in the woods. So, worst case, there was a mob that gathered at Anna, Illinois, to accept the prisoner. And they were pissed. They were pissed when the train went through and he wasn't on the train. Guess what?
[00:55:22] Speaker A: They lost their shit.
[00:55:23] Speaker B: They lost their shit, and now they're searching the woods. And I. People from other communities are joining. People from different Illinois towns and from across the Ohio river from Kentucky are, like, getting in their row boats and coming over because there's going to be a lynching. You know what I'm saying?
[00:55:41] Speaker A: Not only that, they were. They've been made a fool of. Right?
[00:55:44] Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly.
[00:55:46] Speaker A: So now it's even worse. They were pissed before, but now it's personal.
[00:55:50] Speaker B: So then back at Cairo, 300 people seized a freight train and headed northeast to Karnak, Illinois, where they, like, got word that will was hiding out with the sheriff and the deputy.
[00:56:04] Speaker A: I just want you to say that sentence again, because my mind didn't understand what you just said.
[00:56:09] Speaker B: A mob of 300 people got that, hijacked a freight train and drove it. Hijacked a freight train and drove it to the town of Karnak. Cause that's where they heard Will James was hiding in the woods. And one of the newspapers reported that on the top of that train, standing unaided, was a gray haired old woman waving her hands to the people in the towns as the train passed through, cheering the crowd on to avenge the murder of Anna Pelly. In all, there were a thousand people scouring the forest in search of Will James. They covered an area of 16 sq. Mi. And they found him the next day, Thursday, November 11, they found Will, the sheriff and his deputy in the woods just north of Karnak. Will was handcuffed, lying in hiding on the ground between the two officers in the bank of a creek. They had been running all Wednesday night and all day Thursday. They were weak from hunger and exposure to the elements.
[00:57:22] Speaker A: Poor Sheriff Davis. I mean, this man really needs a medal. Are you serious?
[00:57:27] Speaker B: Sheriff Davis pleaded for Will's life. He tried. He pleaded with the mob, but they wouldn't listen.
[00:57:35] Speaker A: There's no pleading with a mob.
[00:57:37] Speaker B: They seized Will. Now, here's for me. Where this makes me feel just a little sick inside.
Because this mob, they finally find him, right? This impassioned mob.
And so what do they do?
They deliberate. Now we got them. What are we gonna do with them? Are you. I am not kidding. And so the leaders of the mob decide we're gonna. We're not gonna kill him here. We're gonna take them back to Cairo.
Do you see why this makes me feel a little sick inside?
[00:58:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Because it's not all Rashida. It is thoughtful.
They're not out of their minds crazy with grief and anger. They are being contemplated.
They are cool, collective. How can we make this the best situation for this lynching that is haunting?
[00:58:36] Speaker B: They are taking him back to make a spectacle, to make an event of this murder.
And so this crowd of a thousand, this mob of a thousand returns to Cairo with Will James. And there is already a mob of 5000. So you have 6000 people in the streets of Cairo.
[00:59:03] Speaker A: That town will never had that many people in it before. Trust me on that.
[00:59:07] Speaker B: And Will James is dragged to the intersection of 8th and commercial streets and he is hoisted onto a large arch that spanned that junction.
And women and children and elderly women and church. Churchgoers gathered there from town and from the outskirts of town to witness the event. And it was reported that this. This whole lynching event was led by the women and the wives of Cairo's most influential residents. So the women took control here.
[01:00:00] Speaker A: It's. I'm just.
[01:00:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll keep going.
They put a rope around Will James's neck and he pled for his life. But his words were drowned out by the shouts and the screams of the mob.
And before the rope was pulled, it was reported by those present that will James confessed to his crimes.
And he also implicated another black man who had done it with him. The man, Arthur Alexander.
He was his accomplice.
Arthur, if you recall, was one of the men who was also arrested at Misses Green's house.
[01:00:49] Speaker A: Um. What do you feel about that?
[01:00:52] Speaker B: Let's get to that a little bit later.
[01:00:54] Speaker A: No, I mean about the confession.
The rope around the neck confession.
[01:01:01] Speaker B: I don't think we can trust anything reported from this chaos. That's my feeling. I agree.
[01:01:08] Speaker A: Continue.
[01:01:09] Speaker B: Okay. So there's a rope around Will James's neck. It's pulled by the female relatives of Anna Pelle. They give the rope to her sister. I know this is so.
[01:01:21] Speaker A: I think what really is disturbing me about this is. This is horrible. But it's ceremonial.
That's what's bothering me. Yes. Yes. It's the fact. They're like, well, wait, we're gonna bring it back.
[01:01:34] Speaker B: Where's her sister?
[01:01:35] Speaker A: Yes, that's what's bothering me. This isn't about justice. This is ceremony. They got a reason to kill a black man.
[01:01:46] Speaker B: I'm just gonna take a minute to tell our gentle listeners that what comes next is nothing short of barbaric. So again, if they are more sensitive, they might want to fast for the next few seconds.
Ultimately, Jill, the rope around Will James's neck was pulled taut, held by Anna Pelley's sister and about a dozen more women.
And Will James was raised into the air, and witnesses there reported that the women in the crowd laughed and screamed with delight.
The men remained passive observers until the rope snapped and will fell, tumbling to the ground. Miraculously, he was still alive at this moment. But it was then that the men sprang into action, drawing their revolvers and shooting James. He was shot approximately 500 times.
Then the mob went to his body and cut off his head and stuck it on a pole, and other parts of his body were cut off to be kept as souvenirs.
What was left of the remains of Will James was dragged through the streets of the city to the very site where Anna Pelly's assault and murder occurred. And there, there was a bonfire, and into the fire they threw the remains of William James.
And the papers reported that a thousand people cheered and danced at the scene.
You okay? How you doing that, Smitty?
[01:04:00] Speaker A: Oh, I mean, the only thing that I can say which makes me grateful is that he didn't have to succumb to the agony of choking. And it was a quick death. Even though they did repulsive things to his body afterwards, to me, there was a blessing, like everything else that they did was, like, vicious and. But it wasn't like he was in pain at that time. They were doing it for themselves. The fact that he fell to the ground and didn't have to get strangled, he didn't suffer.
[01:04:31] Speaker B: Right. He didn't suffer that as much as.
[01:04:33] Speaker A: They wanted him to.
[01:04:34] Speaker B: Right.
[01:04:35] Speaker A: And I probably think that's why the cutting of his head and because he didn't suffer as much as they wanted.
[01:04:41] Speaker B: Him to, so they had to desecrate his remains.
[01:04:44] Speaker A: Exactly.
[01:04:45] Speaker B: You'd think that the mob would be satisfied.
[01:04:48] Speaker A: They're not.
[01:04:49] Speaker B: They are not.
[01:04:50] Speaker A: They're not exhausted. They're not calling it a day.
[01:04:53] Speaker B: No. No. Because remember, according to the people there close to Will James, he implicated Arthur Alexander, so the mob turned their attention to jail. Again, to the jail to go over, literally, and see the energy.
[01:05:10] Speaker A: Arthur Alexander, the energy. Think about this. Think how much energy. They just, like. Like, the adrenaline. Like, wouldn't they be exhausted? Like, I would be wiped out. And they're like, nope, got one more.
[01:05:24] Speaker B: So they go to the jail looking for Arthur Alexander. But luckily, Arthur had already been moved out of jail. He had been disguised as an officer and hidden away by police. So they saw what was coming. They got him and got him out of town.
There was, however, when they show up at the jail, there was no Arthur Alexander home. But guess who was home?
[01:05:46] Speaker A: Who?
[01:05:46] Speaker B: Another guy. A white guy named Harry Selzner who was locked up in jail, accused of murdering his wife with an axe the previous July.
When the mob couldn't find Arthur, they seized Harry instead. They battered down the door of his cell with a sledgehammer, strung him up to a telephone pole at 21st in Washington streets, and riddled his body with bullets.
Yeah, so they didn't care.
They just wanted anybody at that point. They wanted. They wanted to murder someone.
[01:06:21] Speaker A: My God.
[01:06:24] Speaker B: Right now, during this chaos, the mayor and the chief of police.
Not the sheriff. Remember Sheriff Davis, who was out in the woods?
[01:06:34] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[01:06:34] Speaker B: No. The mayor and chief of police, Egan. They both barricaded themselves in their homes.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Davis was sending emergency pleas to the governor. He's like, we need troops. Sent in the national guard. And then soldiers began arriving by 03:00 p.m. the next day. In all, nine companies of militia occupied the city of Cairo. By Friday night, all the saloons in Carol were also closed until further noticed.
[01:07:04] Speaker A: Finally, after that, you totally would need a drink.
Bullshit.
[01:07:10] Speaker B: If anyone ever needed a drink, this was the time.
[01:07:12] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[01:07:14] Speaker B: That did the trick. Finally, peace was reestablished in Cairo again.
[01:07:19] Speaker A: They must have been exhausted.
[01:07:21] Speaker B: I'm exhausted.
[01:07:22] Speaker A: It's really. I can't believe, like, I don't know anything about Henry, but, dude, Harry.
[01:07:30] Speaker B: Harry Salsner.
[01:07:32] Speaker A: I don't know anything about Harry Salzner, but I do. I mean, what? That's an unlucky dude.
[01:07:39] Speaker B: Yeah. So you might ask, what was the aftermath of this tragic event?
[01:07:45] Speaker A: Hold on. I still need to process this.
That's a lot, Jen.
[01:07:50] Speaker B: I know.
[01:07:51] Speaker A: How did Caro move forward after this event? How can they look each other in the eyes?
[01:07:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:08:01] Speaker A: So how did they. Was there any effort made to arrest and prosecute the members of the mob? The old lady on the train, the women that were pulling the rope?
[01:08:11] Speaker B: Well, there was a coroner's jury that was called to, like, take a look, and investigate the deaths of William James and Harry Salzner, the white guy who was in jail for murdering his wife.
And the jury found that they were murdered by, quote, parties unknown to us. So in other words, they either couldn't or wouldn't implicate anybody for.
[01:08:39] Speaker A: Or they themselves were involved and were like, I don't know. I didn't see it.
[01:08:43] Speaker B: Good point.
And by the way, the jury was made up of white businessmen, so they could have been themselves in the mob that day.
Also, will James confession to the mob before his illegal murder was never confirmed by authorities.
[01:09:00] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[01:09:01] Speaker B: So even the people involved were like, yeah, I don't think we can take that.
[01:09:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:09:07] Speaker B: You know, it's face value.
[01:09:08] Speaker A: It's so weird, the different characters and the. The pendulum of consciousness, you know what I mean? Like, we have, like, chief Egan being like, we can't do this. We need to wait. And then we have the mob, and then we have, like, Sheriff Davis, who is like, full on, we need help. We need help to this. To being like, yeah, I don't know if we can actually confirm that confession. You know what I mean? It's just like, this weird barometer of, like, of morals in this situation.
[01:09:39] Speaker B: Yeah. That pendulum swinging of energy, it kind of is the same. It's parallel to the whole establishment of Cairo, do you know what I mean? With, like, starts and stops and starts and stops. That's kind of just the energy of the place. It kind of swings like that.
Yeah. So some people question to this day if Will James was responsible for the assault and murder of Anna Pelley. And if you look into different rabbit holes online, there are a lot of people, a lot of sources who say he wasn't a. And he wasn't involved at all. I mean, obviously, we'll never know, but let's discuss that more at the end.
[01:10:16] Speaker A: So what happened to Arthur?
[01:10:19] Speaker B: Arthur Alexander?
[01:10:20] Speaker A: Yeah, the man that was with, or they. That will James, apparently, but really didn't implicate before he was dead, before he.
[01:10:28] Speaker B: Was murdered by the mob.
[01:10:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:10:30] Speaker B: Well, Arthur Alexander was locked up in the county jail and guarded by 800 soldiers.
[01:10:37] Speaker A: They're not wrong. They're probably wanting a little light on soldiers.
[01:10:41] Speaker B: Arthur purportedly confessed to his role in the assault and murder of Anna Pelley. And the news outlets reported that Arthur admitted to being part of a club of black men that had the goal to ruin white girls. This is what they reported in the newspaper, Morgan.
[01:11:01] Speaker A: Okay. I will have to tell you that all of that is a real racist dog whistle. 100% right.
[01:11:11] Speaker B: And sheriff Davis, like, went into the papers, was, like, interviewed, and he's like, yeah, no, he did not say that. Like, Sheriff Davis was like, that is not accurate.
[01:11:20] Speaker A: I love sheriff.
[01:11:21] Speaker B: That is not what he said. I know. I know. Sheriff Davis for President Arthur remained behind bars until 1910. About a year later, when he was released because of a lack of evidence against him, still lost just a year of his life.
[01:11:38] Speaker A: But sometimes you can be in jail for years and years and years. So.
[01:11:41] Speaker B: Zachary. That is true. Morgan.
[01:11:42] Speaker A: I'm very happy for Arthur.
So what happened to Sheriff Davis that they celebrate his bravery? Did he get a purple heart?
[01:11:51] Speaker B: Sheriff Davis, our hero, was fired.
He was fired because he failed to uphold the state's anti lynching law.
O m g. His bosses were like, you should have known. You should have anticipated the final.
[01:12:13] Speaker A: I told you all I've been trying to get help. Like, oh, my God. Poor Sheriff Davis. What happened to him? I want to do detours and see where he went after this.
[01:12:22] Speaker B: I will let you dig into that because I have no idea. All I know is that that man was chased by a mob through the woods for 36 hours with Will James trying to keep him safe, and he was fired. And that is not okay.
[01:12:35] Speaker A: That is not okay. I'm so sorry.
[01:12:38] Speaker B: Right? And that was three people that were.
[01:12:41] Speaker A: On staff at this, like, police department. Are you kidding me?
[01:12:46] Speaker B: I know.
[01:12:48] Speaker A: So what happened to the town? How did they ever get over this? Like, literally, if I. If I was a part of that, I would never be able, like, you would have this guilty secret that when you looked at your neighbors when you went to church.
[01:13:03] Speaker B: Jill, they never did get over it. Those riots of 1909 were only the beginning of the racial violence that was to come.
Uh huh.
[01:13:14] Speaker A: That wasn't the grand finale.
[01:13:15] Speaker B: No. No. Cairo developed a reputation for having a high crime rate, and by the late 1930s, it had the highest murder rate in Illinois.
[01:13:25] Speaker A: It beat out Capone. Chicago.
[01:13:28] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. It beat out Chicago during the gangster period for having the highest murder rate. Yeah.
[01:13:35] Speaker A: Well, I mean, it's good to be.
[01:13:38] Speaker B: Notable, but maybe that's what that general Carr was predicting back during the civil war, Carol, will be the greatest murder rate.
[01:13:46] Speaker A: Right.
[01:13:48] Speaker B: And then in the 1960s, white residents of Cairo resisted desegregation and other civil rights laws. And then in 1967, there was the suspicious death of a 19 year old black soldier, and it resulted in firebombings and shootouts between protesters and white vigilante groups in the streets. And again, the National Guard was called in.
[01:14:14] Speaker A: It looks like it. It has not changed. Since the sixties then. Because you can see the war torn, bombed streets in that city.
[01:14:23] Speaker B: Yes. Nobody cleaned up after that shit in 1969, Jill. It was a literal war zone. And sniper fire was ringing out in the streets of Cairo for 170 days.
[01:14:37] Speaker A: I mean, literally, like, if you go.
[01:14:40] Speaker B: There, that, like, that makes sense. You're like, okay, now I get it. Now I know what happened here, Morgan.
[01:14:44] Speaker A: It's not even like, you know how sometimes we walk around? It's like spirit showed us, like a transparency. Like, no, we were walking around there be like, there was a war here. There were snipers. Shit was bombed. It was like you can see it with your very clear eyes.
[01:14:59] Speaker B: Right? And so today, most people have moved away and there are few businesses left in Cairo. And if you go there now, you will see rubble and decay lining the streets. And it is frequently referred to as a ghost town. Although about 1700 people still call Cairo their home. Now, many also believe that the town is cursed and that the origin of the curse was the terrible bloodlust that can be traced back to the murder of Anna Pelley and the 1909 riots. What do you think?
[01:15:35] Speaker A: I think, okay. I personally think this town was cursed way before that. I think the town was cursed when the French liked it and they started meddling in that area. I think that's when batshit went down. But, and I'm not saying the natives cursed. I'm saying just that energy, that wickedness of taking, like, this is mine now. Like, created a response that lasted for decades, if not generations. But I also feel like I am mad at this town.
[01:16:14] Speaker B: I'm mad at this.
[01:16:15] Speaker A: I am mad at this. The whole town, most of the town.
[01:16:19] Speaker B: Wow. Why?
[01:16:21] Speaker A: I'm mad for Anna.
[01:16:23] Speaker B: Do you think Anna Pelle is our voiceless?
[01:16:25] Speaker A: They used Anna's death to act a fool, and they literally never found out who killed her. The reason why, and we will never know because it wasn't about her death. It was about how pissed off they were.
And that, to me, is sick. And I'm sick for Anna for that.
[01:16:48] Speaker B: That is the irony of this situation. Because they wanted blood, and what they didn't want was justice. They didn't care.
[01:16:57] Speaker A: They had no fucked to give about.
[01:16:59] Speaker B: Right? No, they didn't care. They just wanted to kill.
[01:17:03] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[01:17:04] Speaker B: You know, if they had waited, maybe we would have more information, but they couldn't even investigate. We couldn't even find out who was responsible for this because of the mob actions. So it really is an injustice.
Do you think Anna Pelley is our voiceless?
[01:17:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I do.
[01:17:22] Speaker B: Let me tell you something, though. Anna Washington commemorated back in the day a monument was erected to her in Anna, Illinois, and it was unveiled on November 8, 1908, before a crowd of 3500.
[01:17:37] Speaker A: It is meaningless. What that statue says that's erected to her memory is just a way to make them feel better about the crimes that they committed. If it was really about Anna, if it was really about Anna, that they wouldn't have lost their shit at all. Like, they would have. Like, they would have been like, it's important to find out who killed this young girl. They didn't care. That is a way to make their crimes make sense to them.
[01:18:03] Speaker B: Do you think William James deserves a voice?
[01:18:09] Speaker A: Do I feel like William James?
[01:18:11] Speaker B: Do you think he was guilty in any way?
[01:18:15] Speaker A: You know what? I feel like he deserves a voice. Not because his guilt or innocence is because that process was taken away from him.
[01:18:22] Speaker B: That is very true. I do believe he did have something to do with Anna Pelley's death. I do. But I think that there was more. There was more there that we will never know. It wasn't as simple as that. But I do think he was. He was involved. What about Arthur Alexander? Do you think he was involved?
[01:18:39] Speaker A: Not at all.
[01:18:40] Speaker B: Really?
[01:18:41] Speaker A: Not at all.
[01:18:42] Speaker B: If anybody. I mean, I'm not going to say if anybody deserves a boy, a voice, but Sheriff Davis. Hello?
[01:18:50] Speaker A: Sheriff Davis is a hero.
[01:18:52] Speaker B: Yes, he is.
[01:18:53] Speaker A: The lengths he went to to keep this, this town and this man say.
[01:18:59] Speaker B: And to correct misinformation that the racist newspapers are printing. And he's like, that is not what he said. Everybody calm down. That is not true.
[01:19:07] Speaker A: He was a man of real, like, integrity. Moral integrity.
[01:19:12] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:19:12] Speaker A: Where the rest of, like the, like, that's what I mean with the town and why I'm so mad. The integrity is like, they're acting self righteous or righteous indignation, but they are doing the same crimes that was done to Anna. And that's what makes me so infuriated. And then they're going to make a statue of her to be like, oh, our crimes aren't so bad because of poor Anna died. And you're like, uh. You're the same type of people that killed Anna.
You know, like at the end of west side Story, when Maria takes a gun from Chino and she's like, you all killed him.
[01:19:47] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what.
[01:19:48] Speaker A: That's how I feel right now.
[01:19:50] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:19:51] Speaker A: You all kill Dana.
[01:19:53] Speaker B: So when we were talking about black people dying, that checks out. Red dawn, like guerrilla fighters, world War three, setting people, taking the law into their own hands. It's lit.
[01:20:05] Speaker A: It literally happened at Cairo 100%. I mean, all our hits. I mean, I'm almost insulting our listeners just going through them. Let's just real quick, Zachary, what do.
[01:20:14] Speaker B: You think was the significance of us missing Cairo and having to turn around in Missouri and go back and find it?
[01:20:20] Speaker A: Spirit was like, do you guys really want to go here?
Just saying.
[01:20:26] Speaker B: Well, I think it also has to do with commerce bypassing caro and transportation. Bypassing Caro. You know, like with the brick at Thebes. You know, it's like, it's easy to miss. Ghost town. I don't know if it's a ghost town of 1700 people live there.
[01:20:40] Speaker A: When we were there, did it scream 1700 people?
[01:20:43] Speaker B: It did not. There are a few people in the streets and we drove around those people and didn't have any conversations with them.
[01:20:49] Speaker A: Very few people in the streets.
[01:20:51] Speaker B: Very few people in the streets.
[01:20:52] Speaker A: It's a small town to have 1700 people. Everyone's hiding.
[01:20:56] Speaker B: If you go there, be careful. There is. Yeah, there is an overwhelming sense of tragedy. Yeah, it's.
[01:21:05] Speaker A: And if you go there, when we say be careful, we mean protect yourself energetically. We're not saying, like, the people that live there will hurt you. I don't know these people, but I'm.
[01:21:15] Speaker B: Just saying, I mean, people can hurt you anywhere. You should always be careful whenever you're traveling.
[01:21:20] Speaker A: Right. But it is a smack in the face, the way you feel. It's like a gut punched and.
[01:21:25] Speaker B: Right.
All right, well, hey, how you doing?
[01:21:29] Speaker A: Let's check in for more uplifting content.
Please check out our website, commonmystics.net dot follow us on our socials at common mystics pod. Email
[email protected] please, guys, please download, subscribe and like and share. We have, we. We see you. We're getting more downloads and that is great. Please keep doing it.
[01:21:56] Speaker B: Yay. We'll be on Patreon next week talking about our detours for this episode. Check us out there and check out the other tiers at Patreon as well. And hey, just so you know, common mystics.net is currently under construction. Want, want. We will let you know when our new website is unveiled. Thank you so much. We love you.
[01:22:16] Speaker A: Thank you. Love you.
[01:22:17] Speaker B: Bye.
