Pod Insights Dark Downeast The Murder of Mary Monsell (Connecticut) About this episode More than a century ago during the winter of 1923, a quiet Christmas in East Hartford, Connecticut took a devastating turn that would echo far beyond that holiday. Mrs. Mary Monsell never arrived for the dinner she’d been warmly invited to, and within hours, her home became the center of a crime that would send police searching for a suspect who vanished into the world and never returned.
Mary’s name rarely appears in headlines now. Her story has nearly slipped beneath the weight of time. But history leaves clues if you’re willing to look, and some stories are worth digging up again.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that.
0:06 Speaker 01 Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way.
0:09 Speaker 00 We don't just alert, we help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 60% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/truecrime. SimpliSafe, ahead of crime, in real time.
0:24 Speaker 02 Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.
0:34 Kylie Low? More than a century ago, during the winter of 1923, a quiet Christmas in East Hartford, Connecticut, took a devastating turn that would echo far beyond that holiday. Mrs. Mary Mansell never arrived for the dinner she'd been warmly invited to. And within hours, her home became the center of a crime that would send police searching for a suspect who vanished into the world and never returned. Mary's name rarely appears in headlines now. Her story has merely slipped beneath the weight of time. But history leaves clues if you're willing to look. And some stories are worth digging up again.
1:18 Kylie Low? I'm Kylie Low, and this is the case of Mary Monsell, on Dark Down East.
1:34 Kylie Low? It was Christmas Eve in the Burnside section of East Hartford, Connecticut. The kind of night when winter presses up against the windows with a sparkling frost, and the whole neighborhood settles into a hush. Silver Lane and Forbes Street were quiet, the streets frozen and empty. And inside the small cottage at the corner, 72-year-old Mary Monsell was preparing for a simple, pleasant holiday. According to reporting by The Hartford Current, Mary had lived there alone for the past four years, ever since her sister Jane passed away. Mary had moved to Connecticut from Long Island to be with Jane after they were both widowed, choosing to share a home and each other's company in the later chapters of their lives.
2:19 Kylie Low? When Jane died, Mary stayed. The house held memories and the life she'd built in her golden years, and her neighbors had stepped in to fill the gaps that loneliness left behind. Among those neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. John Rao, who lived close enough to check in all the time. They liked Mary, and they worried about her. She was elderly, she lived alone, and she had no other local family. When the Rao's stopped by for a brief visit on the night before Christmas, they brought a small gift and something even more important: an invitation. They were hosting Christmas dinner the next day with turkey at 1 o'clock sharp. They told her she was welcome, expected even. Mary accepted immediately.
3:03 Kylie Low? She didn't have anywhere else to go, and she enjoyed the Rao's kindness. It must have felt good to be included on a holiday that can otherwise amplify the quiet. Mary waved her neighbors goodbye and took a book up to bed, likely content and comforted by what the next morning would bring. By the afternoon of Christmas Day, the Rao's had the table set and dinner warming. 1 o'clock came and went, but there was no Mary. At first, they waited, imagining she might simply be running late, but as the minutes stretched on, worry started to replace their patience. She'd never miss a holiday invitation, not without a word. Finally, John put on his coat and made the short walk down Forbes Street to check on her.
3:47 Kylie Low? When he first arrived at Mary's cottage, the first unsettling sign greeted him immediately. The curtains on every window were drawn tight. Not unusual for late evening, perhaps, but odd for mid-afternoon on a holiday when she was expected elsewhere. He knocked, but there was no response. Then, on the side of the house near the pantry, he saw something he knew wasn't right. The window leading into the pantry was open. It was December in Connecticut. No one left a window open in that weather, not intentionally. He circled the house, stopping at another window that looked directly into Mary's bedroom. Those curtains were drawn, too.
4:27 Kylie Low? He strained to see anything, even a shadow, but the interior stayed stubbornly dark. He tried to come up with a rational explanation. Maybe Mary had changed plans. Maybe she'd gone somewhere else for Christmas after all. But he knew better. Something was definitely wrong.
4:45 Kylie Low? John didn't want to alarm his wife by running home and announcing that their elderly neighbor might be in trouble. So instead, he walked down to a local convenience store, one with a public telephone, and called the East Hartford Police. Chief William McKee himself responded. He arrived quickly, sized up the situation, and forced open the locked back door. What he found inside shattered any hope that Mary had simply gone elsewhere for the holiday. Mary Monsell was lying in her bed. Her skull had been crushed. Even seasoned officers felt the weight of it. An elderly woman alone on Christmas Eve had been violently attacked in the safety of her own home.
5:27 Kylie Low? The scene around Mary's body told its own story. There were signs of a struggle throughout the house. Furniture was disturbed, items were scattered everywhere. It was clear that Mary had fought desperately for her life, and then someone ransacked her home. Drawers were pulled open, cabinet contents dumped across the floor. The entire kitchen looked as though it had been torn apart. It appeared the intruder had come looking for money and valuables. Chief McKee called for County Detective Edward J. Hickey, the lead investigator for the state's attorney's office, to respond to the scene, because this was no simple break-in. It was brutal, personal, and devastating.
6:08 Kylie Low? Mary had been beaten with a blunt metal object, possibly a hammer or another tool with a sharp edge. According to reporting published in the Bridgeport Telegram and the Hartford Current, the fatal blows were to her right cheekbone and left temple, causing catastrophic bleeding in her brain. A hammer was found at the scene, one that could have been consistent with her injuries, but it didn't have any blood on it. Underneath Mary's bed, investigators discovered her alarm clock. The hands were frozen at 3:15 a.m. That small detail became critical. Paired with her physical condition, it placed her death somewhere between midnight and 3:15 in the morning. It appeared the killer had removed some of Mary's clothing and used it to wipe
6:51 Kylie Low? blood from her nose and mouth, as though cleaning her face. Afterward, she was placed back in bed and covered with a mattress. It was either an attempt to stage the scene, or a disturbing gesture of concealment. Investigators moved to the pantry window, next. What John had seen from the outside was even worse up close. The window hadn't simply been left open, it had been shattered. The intruder had broken it, reached inside, unlatched it, and climbed through. Detectives believed Mary had heard the crash of breaking glass in the night, woken up, and confronted the intruder. The struggle likely began there, spilled through the house, and ended in her bedroom. Only one lamp had been left burning in the home, casting a dim, flickering light on
7:36 Kylie Low? the chaos. Investigators imagined the intruder rifling through drawers in near darkness, checking what they'd found by that single lamp glow. Police believed the intruder expected to find a lot of money, but no substantial amount of cash existed in the house. Though Mary had sizable savings at the East Hartford Trust Company, about $2,400, which had the purchasing power of over $45,000 in today's money, she hadn't made any recent withdrawals. The bank confirmed she hadn't touched her account for at least a month. As reported by The Daily Advocate, the only money accounted for in Mary's home included a small sum sent to her in a Christmas letter from her nephew and his mother on December 20th.
8:20 Kylie Low? Investigators found the letter, but not the money. For all the destruction, the killer also overlooked a stash of $95 upstairs. Instead, only about $12, two watches and a few small trinkets were missing. Hardly a fair return for such an assault. Almost nothing in the quiet Burnside neighborhood seemed unusual that Christmas Eve. The Journal reports that "John recalled hearing a dog barking around 3:00 in the morning, just a brief disturbance in an otherwise silent night." At the time, it didn't mean anything. In hindsight, it was the only hint that something was happening inside Mary's small cottage. Police did their due diligence, questioning anyone who might have been near the area overnight.
9:04 Kylie Low? A man from Windsor was brought in briefly, but it didn't take long to eliminate him from suspicion. He had nothing to do with Mary's killing. And so as Christmas Day wore on, the investigation remained painfully still. Theories would come later, suspects would emerge. But in those early hours, the only truths police had were the ones left behind in the house. A window shattered open to the winter air, rooms torn apart by a desperate struggle, and the life of a 72-year-old woman abruptly and violently ended. Mary Monsell had simply been preparing for a holiday meal with neighbors who cared about her. Instead, she became the center of a crime so brutal, it would haunt East Hartford for decades.
9:47 Kylie Low? In the earliest days of the investigation, detectives began to wonder whether the murder of Mary Monsell was an isolated act, or whether the violence that shattered her home on Christmas morning was part of something older, darker, and still unresolved. Because five years earlier, in the fall of 1918, another life had ended on the very same patch of land.
10:13 Kylie Low? On September 9, 1918, a man named Gaspari Sprigetta, known in some reports as Jasper, vanished from his home he shared with his roommate, Michael Rania. The last night anyone saw him alive, Gaspari told Michael he was going to wash up before bed, and Michael himself turned in for the night as well. By morning, Gaspari's bed looked untouched. There was no sign he ever returned to it. There was no sign of Gaspari at all. Michael waited a few days, perhaps hoping his roommate was simply delayed or staying elsewhere. But uncertainty hardened into fear. Eventually, he reported Gaspari missing.
10:50 Kylie Low? Not long after, Gaspari's body was discovered beneath a tree on the property of Mary Monsell and her sister at the corner of Forbes Street and Silver Lane, the very same land where Mary herself would later be found murdered. At the scene, investigators found two spent shotgun shells. Gaspari had been shot at close range. The fatal blast entered his right arm and exited through his left armpit. It seemed like a highly personal crime, but it wasn't a robbery. Gaspari made his living as a tobacco farm hand. He wasn't wealthy, he wasn't known to be involved in any disputes either, and he still had about $11 in his pocket, and his watch remained securely fastened to his wrist.
11:33 Kylie Low? Whatever happened beneath that tree, money wasn't the motive. The only people to report hearing anything unusual that night Gaspari was shot were the women living in that small cottage on the corner, Mary Monsell and her sister Jane. They told police they heard two gunshots around 9 o'clock. No other witnesses ever came forward, and at the time of Mary's murder, Gaspari's case was still unresolved. Investigators now faced with Mary's homicide five years later had to ask, was there a connection? Had someone returned? Had the killer come back to silence the last voice who might remember hearing those shots? Who may have seen something else on the night Gaspari was killed outside her home?
12:18 Kylie Low? But those questions and the budding theory didn't linger long, because clues inside Mary's kitchen began to draw the investigation in a new direction entirely.
12:36 Kylie Low? Every small town has a local legend. The house no one drives past after dark, or the woods that hold secrets. Every October, I like to add something a little more spooky to my playlist, stories that blur the line between what's imagined and what might be waiting in the dark. Full Body Chills returns with more strange coincidences, unsettling confessions, and stories where danger may be closer than it seems. Listen to Full Body Chills all October long, wherever you get your podcasts.
13:14 Kylie Low? As detectives combed through the ransacked kitchen, something unusual caught their attention. Scattered across the floor were several buttons. They were distinctive, unlike the typical kind a person might lose or drop unnoticed. They stood out immediately. A friend told police that Mary kept a special box of buttons on a windowsill. She liked to collect them. It was a habit left over from her years as a seamstress. After the murder, the box itself was gone. Only the stray buttons remained behind, as though dropped or spilled during a frantic search. It's unclear where specifically, but as they processed the kitchen and Mary's bedroom for more evidence as to who might be responsible for the murder,
13:59 Kylie Low? investigators also managed to lift a fingerprint from a windowsill. Perhaps it was the same windowsill where Mary's special button box once rested. It was another breadcrumb, another thread to follow. And then there was the milkman. He told police he'd noticed a man prowling around near Mary's home around midnight on Christmas Eve. The detail was thin, but the timing mattered. Midnight sat squarely within the estimated window of her death. Buttons, a fingerprint, and a prowler. None of it yet formed a complete picture, but something was sharpening into view. Police theorized that whoever entered Mary's home wasn't a stranger who chose a house at random.
14:45 Kylie Low? The intruder seemed familiar with her habits, her routines, maybe even the layout of her rooms and where she kept her belongings. They theorized the killer was someone local, someone who might have known the vulnerabilities of that small cottage and the woman who lived there alone. When investigators began looking into neighbors with a criminal history, one name rose quickly to the surface. And he had a clear view of Mary's house from his window down the street.
15:16 Kylie Low? Thirty-five-year-old John Philip Cook lived on Silver Lane, close enough to see the home of Mary Montzel from his own. He lived there with his mother and sister. And on Christmas morning, as Mary's body was carried out of her home and detectives filled the street, John sat on his front steps, flipping through a newspaper seemingly unbothered, but unreadable. When his sister arrived home and told him what had happened to their neighbor, he barely reacted. He didn't even lift his eyes from the page. Later, when investigators knocked on the door to the Cook home, they were met by John's mother. "John wasn't there," she told them, but she insisted he had been in his bedroom all night Mary was killed.
15:59 Kylie Low? She said he'd gone to bed around 9:30 and she never saw him leave. Still, she allowed officers to search his room. In that room, inside a trunk, police found something startling: a box of buttons. Unique buttons. Buttons that closely resembled the ones found scattered across Mary's kitchen floor. Investigators built a theory quickly. They believed John may have found the small metal box, shaken it, and mistaken the sound of buttons striking tin for the jingle of coins. If he thought he'd found money, perhaps that was what drove him to take it, and perhaps what prompted the violent escalations that followed. But the buttons weren't all they found.
16:41 Kylie Low? Inside the room, investigators also recovered a set of aluminum knuckles. The weapon was consistent with the blunt trauma that crushed Mary's skull. The findings only proved more convincing when a fingerprint expert from Springfield, Massachusetts analyzed the print lifted from Mary's windowsill. It was John Cook's print, left at the scene. With those findings, investigators had probable cause to arrest Mary's neighbor. On New Year's Day 1924, police secured a warrant for the arrest of John P. Cook. But there was a problem. John hadn't been seen since December 26, the day after Christmas. Police kept his home under watch, expecting him to return, but he never came back.
17:24 Kylie Low? The New Britain Herald reports that John was believed to be driving a 1917 Buick Touring car with plate number 110-146. The investigation now had a suspect, but finding him was another story entirely.
17:40 Kylie Low? To understand the man who had become the prime suspect in Mary Monsell's murder, we have to step back nearly fifteen years to 1909, when John Philip Cook first made himself known to law enforcement. John already had a criminal record long before Christmas of 1923. On October 23rd, 1909, he was arrested for highway robbery, though at that point he was using a slightly different version of his name, John J. Cook. It wasn't a dramatic alias, not a complete reinvention, but it hinted at something investigators would notice over time: John seemed to like shifting identities, even if only by a letter. For that early offense, he was sentenced to one to three years in state prison, and he
18:23 Kylie Low? served enough of that term to be released on June 15th, 1912. But John's freedom didn't last long. Within about a month of leaving prison, John surfaced in New York and was arrested again, this time on larceny charges. He was sent to Blackwell's Island, the island facility that housed penal institutions and a workhouse. John wasn't just a petty criminal, though. His path in life took a different turn after his time in prison. Sometime after that second arrest, John crossed the border into Canada and enlisted in the Canadian Army. He served overseas, was injured and gassed in the line of duty, and returned home to praise and admiration. He was now a decorated veteran despite his troubled past.
19:08 Kylie Low? Following his discharge, John came back to East Hartford to live with his mother. He held steady jobs, first at the railroad yards and then later, as of 1923, a tobacco sorter. It was quiet, ordinary work, the kind of job that lets a man blend into a community without drawing attention. Yet his life wasn't as settled as it appeared. While deployed in England in August of 1919, John got married. But by 1921, his wife had left him. Their marriage fractured into distance and silence, but according to police theory, John never stopped wanting to get her back. Investigators believed he was single-minded, desperate to reunite with his wife, and equally desperate for the money it would take to get to her.
19:54 Kylie Low? Some believed that desire could have turned violent, that it could have become a motive for murder. His mother, however, didn't recognize that version of her son at all. She defended him fiercely. John's mother told police that Mary was kind to their family, including John. There was no animosity she'd ever seen. And most importantly, she claimed John had been home and asleep in bed the night Mary was killed. She said she herself slept in the kitchen, and her son would have had to pass directly through that room to leave in the middle of the night, yet she never saw or heard him go. But investigators pointed out what she didn't, or tried not to see. Just steps from John's room was a window near the stairwell with a short three-foot
20:38 Kylie Low? drop to the ground on the other side. If John wanted to slip out unnoticed, he could have. There would have been no creaking floorboards in the drafty house, no footsteps across the kitchen past his mother, just one silent climb into the winter dark. And there was one more detail, one his mother couldn't un-hear or ignore. That night, she told police, she heard a dog barking around 11:30 PM. If John had climbed out that window, that could have been the moment. And if he did, it aligned with the milkman sightings of a prowler near Mary's house. It meant John wasn't home during the estimated time of the attack. If John jumped from his window that Christmas Eve night, then every step after that could
21:23 Kylie Low? have brought him closer to Mary Monsell's door.
21:28 Kylie Low? When the search for him began, John Cook was already gone. He had slipped away quietly from East Hartford and was possibly traveling in a six-year-old Buick he reportedly bought for 75 bucks. As the new year arrived, his license plate would have expired. Investigators believed outdated plates could make him easier to spot wherever he went. At the time, John's estranged wife was believed to be living in Cincinnati, so Hartford Police Chief William McKee traveled to Ohio to speak with her. The hope was that John had gone there or was planning to. When Chief McKee arrived, however, she was gone too. Even so, police uncovered letters between the couple that hinted at something more intentional.
22:11 Kylie Low? They spoke of a plan to reunite and start over. Their correspondents suggested that the meeting was supposed to happen shortly after Christmas. With Cincinnati no longer viable, investigators shifted to a second possibility. John had maintained contact with a friend from his Canadian Army service. If he needed shelter or help, that friend might have been his destination. Police placed that man under constant surveillance, but John didn't show up across the border. Then came the first real break. On December 28, 1923, authorities located John's Buick Touring car in Providence, Rhode Island. Connecticut officials coordinated with Providence Police to set a trap.
22:55 Kylie Low? An officer tracked the car to a garage and climbed into it, waiting for John to return. I guess the perk of a 1917 vehicle, no car alarm systems to keep people out. Hours passed, but John never came back. Detectives believes he may have spotted the officer and abandoned the vehicle, continuing his escape on foot. On January 7, police announced they now had reason to believe John returned to Connecticut. Leads placed him in New Haven and Waterbury, where he had siblings, but he vanished again before officers could arrive. By mid-January, the state's attorney's office expanded the search. They circulated John's photo, his fingerprints, and a list of aliases, among them John P. Cook,
23:39 Kylie Low? John J. Cook, J.J. Cook, J. Star, Joe Cook, and Joseph Stasinski. The final two seemed to be his most common identities. Stasinski may have been his original surname before the family changed it upon moving to East Hartford about 30 years earlier. Descriptions of John stated he was 35 years old, although he appeared younger. He stood about 5'4" and weighed around 140 pounds. He had blue eyes and blond hair with a medium build, and was noted to have a "noticeable cast" in one eye. Life on the run could not have been easy. Police learned that John had paid $11.45 for repairs to the Buick on the morning he left town.
24:22 Kylie Low? If he had stolen only the $12 missing from Mary's home, as police alleged he did, that would have left him with 25 cents to his name, a fugitive with a single coin in his pocket. At some point, John sent a letter to his family, asking them to send money to New York City. He provided a specific saloon, date, and time, promising to be there to receive it. Now, not wanting to miss an opportunity to finally get cuffs on John's wrists, Connecticut officers traveled to New York and showed John's photograph to bartenders at the saloon, and they recognized him as a regular at the bar. Police watched the establishment closely, waiting for him to appear. That same night, however, the New York liquor squad raided the building.
25:06 Kylie Low? This was the era of prohibition, after all. Witnesses later stated that John was among the people forced outside during the raid, yet Connecticut officers never crossed paths with him. He slipped away once again.
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27:08 Kylie Low? The pattern only repeated. There were several moments in which investigators felt like they were only a few steps behind John Cook, always at his heels. They kept the details of the search private, worried that information could leak back to John. But even still, he always managed to stay ahead of them. John may have even grown bolder. While still a fugitive, he reportedly wrote a letter to the editor of a New York tabloid supporting the abolition of the death penalty. The newspaper worked with Connecticut police to trace the return address. It led to his wife, but not to John himself. Leads continued to surface. Late in January, someone reported seeing John on the Berlin Turnpike in Connecticut.
27:51 Kylie Low? Officers followed up, but there was no sign of him. Investigators also explored another possible escape to Canada. He'd apparently been granted a tract of land there for his military service, but he never appeared on that property. In March of 1924, newspapers announced, with much fanfare, that John had finally been captured in Silver City, New Mexico. A man named John F. Smith, who was carrying a telegram from Hartford, had been taken into custody. His physical appearance matched John Cook's description well enough to raise immediate hope. Chief McKee was eager to see a photo of the man in custody, which was slow to arrive. After the chief reviewed the photograph of John Smith,
28:35 Kylie Low? he agreed, the men looked a heck of a lot alike. But ultimately, fingerprints told the truth. The man in custody was not John Cook. After that, the trail went quiet. John Cook was gone, and so was momentum. The search for the man suspected of killing Mary Monsell began to fade. Months passed, and then years. But the investigation never truly found its footing. John Cook had effectively made himself disappear. There were no sightings, no confirmed trail, not even a whisper of where he might have ended up. His absence became its own kind of presence,
29:16 Kylie Low? a reminder that Mary's killer had never been brought into a courtroom or questioned under oath. The case was still fresh in the minds of investigators when a different crime drew their attention north. And for a brief moment, it seemed possible that John Philip Cook might still be out there and capable of more violence. According to reporting by Dean Shalhoub for the New Hampshire Union Leader, in July of 1925, two sisters, Georgiana and Helen Gillis, were murdered in their home in Hudson, New Hampshire. They were both in their 70s, just as Mary had been, and they too were beaten to death. The similarities were difficult to overlook. There was no sign of robbery,
29:59 Kylie Low? though, and no great financial incentive, only brutality without a clear purpose. Whispers began to form. If Mary's killer was still free, could he have struck again? A few weeks later, a 21-year-old man confessed to killing Helen Gillis. He denied murdering Georgiana, but he was ultimately convicted, which effectively removed John Cook as a suspect in the double homicide. The fear eased, at least officially, but the momentary connection had reminded the public that Mary's killer had never been caught. His absence lingered. Almost six years after Mary's death in 1929, John's name surfaced once more. This time,
30:41 Kylie Low? the story placed him far from Connecticut. Reports suggested he had been seen in Havana, Cuba. One article from the Daily Advocate in Stanford even claimed that John had been arrested and taken to Havana for questioning. Soon after, the narrative unraveled, though, something in the reporting or communication had been misinterpreted. John was not in custody, and Cuban authorities dropped their search within days. For years, almost every time East Hartford and the surrounding communities faced another tragedy, the talk of the town inevitably drifted back to Mary Monsell's unsolved case. On March 11, 1930, 50-year-old Mrs. Frances Sylvester was found beaten to death on Governor
31:23 Kylie Low? Street in East Hartford. She'd disappeared the night before, and after hours of searching, one of her 12 children found her about 80 feet off the side of the road in a pile of brush. Though at least one suspect was identified shortly after her murder was discovered, Mrs. Sylvester's death appears to have gone unsolved too. And while the crime mirrored many elements of Mary's, no solid connection was ever established.
31:50 Kylie Low? Despite the fading leads, interest in Mary Monsell's murder never fully disappeared. Newspapers continued to publish anniversary pieces, five, 10, even 12 and 25 years after the crime. Each article reminded readers that somewhere, a wanted man remained unaccounted for. Investigators followed the same rhythm. They issued renewed bulletins to departments across the country, hoping that one day a patrolman might stop someone who looked a little too much like John Cook. By 1942, one particular hope stood out. Investigators believed that if the United States entered another major war effort, John Cook might try to enlist. Military paperwork required fingerprints.
32:33 Kylie Low? If John walked into a recruiting station, he might finally be found. The oldest official incentive to catch him never changed. According to a piece by the East Hartford Gazette, a reward of $500 was offered in the earliest days of the case, equivalent to $9,500 today, but no one ever claimed it. John Philip Cook simply vanished, as though he stepped out of Connecticut and never turned back. And still, the shadow of Mary Monsell's death followed him, even in absence. A century has passed since Christmas Eve of 1923. The world looks different now. Doors have deadbolts, police have national databases, fingerprints and forensic evidence
33:17 Kylie Low? move across the country in seconds instead of decades. Today, a man like John P. Cook might not be able to so easily disappear by crossing a state line or trading one name for another. He wouldn't be able to vanish behind a Buick or a train ticket or a border. But Mary Monsell lived in a time when safety, justice, and communication looked very different, to put it lightly. Small-town policing relied on neighbors' memories. A fingerprint could be lifted, but not easily matched. A suspect who fled with a change of clothes and a common surname could erase himself simply by stepping into the crowd. That is the reality Mary Monsell faced.
33:58 Kylie Low? And yet, more than 100 years later, we are still telling her story. And while we're telling Mary's story, there's another piece I haven't shared with you yet. This feels like the right time to tell you that Mary's husband, Edward Monsell, he died under suspicious circumstances more than two decades before Mary was murdered.
34:23 Kylie Low? Twenty-three years before the murder of Mary Monsell, on December 16, 1900, two men were spearing eels in the Patchogue River in Patchogue, New York, when they noticed something out of place. A man's hat was resting on top of the thin ice. At first, they ignored it, thinking maybe the wind had carried it there. But when one of the men, Charles Zimmerman, lowered his spear and felt it strike something soft beneath the surface, curiosity turned to alarm. Charles and his companion, Leonard Tappan, reached into the icy water and pulled up the nearly frozen body of a man. When the body was brought ashore and examined more closely,
35:05 Kylie Low? the victim was identified as the well-respected and well-known Edward Monsell. He and his wife Mary lived only about 20 rods away on River Avenue, just over 100 yards from the river where Edward's body was found. The Brooklyn Daily Times reported that the legs of Edward's trousers had been tied up, which investigators at the time assumed was simply a precaution against snow filling his pant legs. Based on that assumption, police believed Edward had been walking during the previous night's snowfall, slipped and stumbled into a rope barrier, and had fallen into the water where he drowned. But the drowning explanation never sat comfortably.
35:47 Kylie Low? Edward was known to be a “regular water dog.” He had once served as captain of the lifesaving station and even at 60 years old, was described as “active, healthy, and vigorous.” The river where he was found wasn’t particularly deep, only 6 to 8 feet, and when his body was pulled from the water, his feet were stuck in the mud at the bottom. The scenario raised an unsettling question: Why would a man with Edward’s skill and experience in the water make no attempt to swim to safety? The coroner’s findings only deepened that doubt. Edward’s autopsy showed no water in his lungs, suggesting he was already dead before he ever entered the river.
36:30 Kylie Low? His official cause of death was listed as apoplexy, a term once used to describe sudden internal events like a hemorrhage, stroke, heart attack, or any abrupt loss of consciousness. In other words, something happened before he hit the water, and no one could say what. Still unsatisfied, Edward’s family and his fellow Freemasons pushed for an inquest. During that investigation, one of the men who claimed to have found the body, Leonard Tappin, was questioned aggressively about his potential involvement, because his story kept changing. Edward had been out for drinks the night before his death. The district attorney asked Leonard directly whether he’d been with Edward that night, and whether he might have mixed a drink to incapacitate him.
37:15 Kylie Low? Leonard denied it. Under pressure, Leonard admitted something else instead. He told officials he hadn’t actually been the one to find Edward’s body at all. He only claimed the discovery because he wanted the credit, hoping it would improve his reputation in town. That confession and discrepancies in his other statements opened the door to suspicion and a discussion of possible motives. Edward had reportedly received a $50 payment shortly before his death, but when his body was recovered, that money was missing and unaccounted for elsewhere. A small fortune at the time, it raised the possibility of robbery. The coroner also suggested a more “personal motive,” hinting that Leonard and Edward
38:00 Kylie Low? may have been seeing the same woman or vying for her attention. Leonard denied both possibilities, saying he had taken no money from Edward and that no jealousy existed between them.
38:12 Kylie Low? Despite rumors and suspicion, no arrests were ever made. The death of Edward Monsell was never explained in full. A trained rescue swimmer died in shallow water without signs of struggle, without water in his lungs, and with questions left behind that no inquest ever answered. And with that, another piece of the Monsell story slipped into obscurity.
38:37 Kylie Low? Historic cases like Mary's and Edward's remind us how far we've come, but they also remind us how much has been lost along the way. How many victims had no voice? How many families never received answers? How many suspects slipped through the cracks of a world before modern record-keeping and forensic science? These stories ask us to think about who we remember and why. They remind us that a life does not become less valuable simply because it existed long ago. But remembering cases like this also teaches us something urgent about the cases that are aging right now. When a murder enters its second decade, then its third, then its fourth, solvability drops. Witnesses disappear.
39:21 Kylie Low? People forget what they saw. Evidence is boxed up and moved, sometimes again and again. Records are destroyed by time and predetermined retention schedules, sometimes by fire and flood where they're stored if an arbitrary deadline doesn't come first. I've heard it all. Attention is often the last form of momentum a cold case can get. If we only resurrect stories like Mary's once a century, how many modern Marys risk slipping through the same cracks? Mary Monsell wasn't wealthy. She wasn't powerful. In my search for photos of Mary, the Historical Society of East Hartford told me that unless she was famous in some way or a socialite,
40:04 Kylie Low? it's likely I'd never get to see her face. Mary was neither of those things, and yet she mattered. She was a 72-year-old woman living alone at Christmas time, invited to dinner by kind neighbors who cared about her. She had family in New York who mourned her loss. She was loved, she was missed. And she deserved a long life, not a violent end. We tell stories like hers not to senselessly resurrect old tragedy, but to resist forgetting. We pull these cases forward as an act of memory, a way to honor the people beneath the headlines. Even unsolved, even unfinished, Mary's story is weight. It still asks something of us, to recognize her humanity and to sit with the injustice.
40:49 Kylie Low? And perhaps most importantly, to see her not as a case file, but as a woman who brewed tea in her kitchen as she sorted her unique buttons, who was grateful for a Christmas invitation, who probably tied her curtains against the cold without knowing it would be the last time. When history fades, memory is a choice. Now we choose to remember Mary Monsell.
41:20 Kylie Low? Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram, at Dark Down East. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Low, and this is Dark Down East.
41:51 Kylie Low? Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audio Check. I think Chuck would approve.
42:04 Speaker 04 If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body, but soon they'll find it. He acted friendly. He talked friendly. He sounded friendly.
42:17 Speaker 05 They all knew that I did the scary boogie stuff, and they said, maybe she'll find out where this girl is. I saw him violent. Backhand there, pow!
42:30 Speaker 06 Listen to The Devil's Quarry, Season Two, in the Bone Valley feed, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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