Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - Murder At Road Hill House: The Scandal That Shook Victorian England

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

When Mrs. Kent learned of the grisly murder of her three year old son, she had only one thing to say. “Someone in the house has done it”   What would follow would be the biggest whodunit of the 19th century. The Kent family would have their dirty laundry hung out to dry as London’s top detective investigated them all for the murder of Saville Kent   Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by Kaelyn Moore. Follow the podcast on Instagram @heartstartspounding, subscribe on patreon, or support the podcast with a one time donation to Buy Me A Coffee. And if you have a heart pounding story you’d like to share on the podcast, you can visit heartstartspounding.com Shownotes: https://www.heartstartspounding.com/episodes/roadhillhouse  

It was early morning when William nut was searching the grounds at Road Hill House in Wiltshire, England. The house was a beautiful estate owned by the Kent family. He scoured the rose bushes, scraping up his forearms while desperately hunting for their missing son. And William was starting to get a bad feeling. Just a moment later, he walked up to the Servants Outhouse and peered into the small, slotted window.

He could just faintly make out something dark and glistening on the ground. His heart sank when he realized what it was, and he screamed for someone to come help him. There was blood on the outhouse floor. It's that feeling. When the energy and the room shifts, when the air gets sucked out of a moment, and everything starts to feel wrong, it's the

instinct between fight or flight. When your brain is trying to make sense of what it's seeing, it's when your heart starts pounding. Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of terrifying tales. I'm your host, Kaelin Moore. If you're joining us again, welcome back. Be sure to follow the podcast on Instagram at Heart Starts Pounding and Rate and Review wherever you listen. You can also support the podcast on Patreon, which is linked in the show description, or make a one-time donation

on Bimea Coffee, also linked. We release episodes every Thursday, though we are taking April off to premiere a new Horror fiction podcast called The Time Keeper that will be releasing weekly in April. It stars Judo Lewis, Chandler Kenny and Argin Atelier, and it's a really fun ride. We'll be back on a weekly schedule in May. On June 29th, 1860, the Kent family would be thrown into the spotlight when their family tragedy hit the tabloids. This is a lesser known case, yet it's incredibly important in the history of crime-solving. The story is about hanging out the dirty laundry of a picture-perfect family, clothes pinned around a tail of murder. Though the story has many twists and turns, it doesn't have a firm conclusion.

And now, over 160 years later, we're still left with a question. Who killed Civil Kent? Let's get into it. 4 a.m. Friday, June 29th,60. Elizabeth Goff awoke inside Road Hill House. She was the nanny to the Kent family. Road Hill House was a beautiful three-story mansion in Wiltshire England. Mr. Kent, the father, was a well-off factory inspector tasked with making sure local factories in the area were abiding by child labor laws. The nanny shared a bedroom with the two youngest Kent children, and when she awoke, before the sun even rose, she noticed that three-year-old Seville was not in his bed.

She assumed that he got up in the night and went to his mother, so Elizabeth fell back asleep, and she reawoke around three hours later. At around 715 Elizabeth was out of bed and fully dressed and she went to Mr. and Mrs. Ken's bedroom to ask for civils so she could help get him ready. He's in his bed, replied Mrs. Ken. No, you came and grabbed him in the night," replied Elizabeth. Both women assumed the other had Seville. Mrs. Kent shot out of bed as fast as she could being in her third trimester. It wasn't like Seville to not be in his bed or hers. She ran to the other children to see if they had seen Seville, but none of them had.

So she ran to the house staff who were starting to prep for the day, had any of them seen Saville? No. The cooks in the kitchen, the maids collecting laundry, and the gardeners and the yard had not seen the boy. But some of them did make an interesting observation. When they had arrived at the house that morning, they all found it strange that a window on the first floor and the front of the house was wide open. The family went into a full panic and word quickly spread into town that the kens were looking for the boy. Mr. Kent left the family to take a horse an hour away and get a police officer.

As he left, he could see a few people from the local community coming towards his house to help look for Saville. He looked at each of them suspiciously. It was no secret that Mr. Kent had enemies in town, and he was already going through the laundry list in his head of who could have taken the boy. The women of the family were all inside checking every corner of the house, while the boys, as well as the gardeners, searched the bushes. Seville's mother thought that he maybe had wandered off, but the gaping window at the

front of the house felt like an omen. It was mid-morning when William Nut, a local man who came over to help search, made his initial discovery of the blood in the outhouse. Mr Kent hadn't even made it back with a police officer at that point. A small group gathered to help William, including the gardener's mother and a local priest. Afraid of what he might find, he slowly opened the door of the outhouse and crept in. Careful not to disturb the two tablespoons of blood he had calculated was on the floor. Earlier, he had mentioned he thought that they might find the boy dead,

and now he feared that he was right. It was completely dark inside the outhouse, despite the fact that the sun was almost in the middle of the sky. He opened the toilet lid and peered down, with only candlelight to help him look deep down inside the sky. He opened the toilet lid and peered down, with only candlelight to help him look deep down inside the hole. And there, wrapped in a blood-soaked blanket, was poor, little, Seville. It's hard to describe deaths, especially when they happen to children, but the way Seville died is an important clue to this story. Listener discretion is advised.

You have to remember that in 1860 they didn't have DNA, they didn't have blood typing, they didn't even have a fingerprint database. So as I'm telling you clues, start trying to piece them together in your own head. Because at some points you'll have as much information as the cops did. When Seville was pulled from the hole, William was able to get a better look at the boy's condition. The first, most obvious wound on the boy was a long, deep cut across his neck, going from right to left. But that wasn't the only wound.

Seville also had a stab wound on his ribcage that hadn't produced much blood, and on top of all that, the sides of his mouth were black, suggesting that he was strangled or smothered as well. I don't know about you, but that's a really confusing mix of wounds to have. It feels like the person who did this maybe didn't know exactly what they were doing, almost as if they were in a panic. Seville was brought out from the hole and his family was notified. Mrs. Kent was nearly inconsolable, but his father was quiet and reserved, and at some points,

he seemed more agitated than sad. Mr Kent swore that he would do whatever it took to find the person who murdered his youngest son, and he wrote a letter to get a proper detective over to his house and on the case. Part of Mr Kent's agitation may have been that he was aware his family was about to be thrust into the spotlight. Local and regional tabloids ate stories like this one up, and true crime news was entertainment for communities even back in the 19th century. People love to uncover the dark stains on family legacies that led members to commit heinous

crimes. It was reality television to them. And the kens were a house of cards. On the outside, they were a perfect and beautiful nuclear family, helped by a successful businessman who remarried after the tragic passing of his first wife, but the kents had skeletons in their closet. And Mr. Kent knew that they were at risk of spilling out. He wanted this crime to be solved as quickly and as quietly

as possible for the privacy of his family. But little did he know that that was going to be much harder to do than anyone anticipated, and at certain points in this investigation, it would be his name on the suspect list. First, let's take a look into some of the clues surrounding that night to see what the police had to work with at the time. So, according to the nanny Elizabeth Goff, when she woke up to see Seville gone, she noticed that the sheets on his bed were put back into place and smoothed out. She claims that she never heard anyone enter the room, but from this, we can assume that

someone came and got Seville out of bed rather than civile wandered downstairs and was maybe met by an intruder. The family had also not been robbed. The only crime that was committed that night at Road Hill House was the murder of civile. Why would someone just target a three-year-old boy? Found in the outhouse along with Seville's body were two pieces of evidence that would become integral in the investigation. First, there was Seville's blanket taken from his bed, which he had been wrapped in. This piece underscored the fact that he was probably removed from his bed. Investigators immediately started wondering how a toddler could have been taken from his bed without him making a sound.

Perhaps, he knew the person coming to collect him. However, I would also argue here that sometimes toddlers are so out of it when they're asleep that you can move them pretty far before they have any idea what's happening. Next, there was a piece of newspaper with some blood on it by the door to the outhouse. It was taken from the times, a paper that the kens had delivered to their house every Sunday. It had two thick streaks of blood on it as if someone had used it to wipe off the murder weapon. Because it was a paper delivered to the kens, investigators filed that under evidence that the murder may have been orchestrated from within the kent household.

So the police had the kitchen checked, and no knives were found to be missing, and none of them had any blood on them. Then and probably strangest of all, there was a piece of clothing found inside the outhouse hole with Seville. When William nut pulled the boy from the hole, he noticed something that looked like a sock down at the bottom. As he fished it out, he realized it was a cushion insert for a woman's corset, kind of like a bra.

It had been unstitched from a corset and for some reason, dropped down into the hole with Seville. And this is where we introduce Jack Witcher, the detective that was assigned to this case. He had a penchant for closing cases quickly and had been assigned to some of the highest profile cases in all of London. He made an interesting observation once he arrived to Road Hill House. He thought that the only evidence that the killer had come from outside the residence was the window that was propped open, but this detail struck detective Witcher as strange right away. That window only opened from the inside. It was

also on the complete opposite side of the house from the outhouse, so it wasn't likely that someone had snatched Seville and then went out the front. On top of all that was the fact that it opened into a room that had a door that was locked from the other side. So the intruder could have come in through the window if it was already opened, but then they would be locked inside the parlor. Upon hearing the news of what was found near Seville's body, Mrs Kent only had one thing to say. Someone in the house has done it, and at that point, Detective Witcher believed her. So, Detective Witcher launched an official investigation into the Kent estate residence to figure out who, of everyone there, the murderer was.

Let's dive into some of the suspects. For Detective Witcher, the first order of business and figuring out who the prime suspect was going to be was figuring out who fit in the corset insert. When this insert was pulled from the outhouse, it was covered in excrement and blood. So first it was washed thoroughly. Today, this crucial piece of evidence would have been sent in for DNA and blood splatter analysis, but at the time, they were solving this like Cinderella's missing shoe.

But instead of a shoe, it was a bra. And the thing about bras is that some sizes fit a lot of people, and a lot of us own bras that don't even really fit correctly. So a murder investigation, hinging upon the perfect fit of a bra, felt like a losing battle. However, there was one person inside the kind of residence who fit the bra perfectly. Elizabeth Goff, civilians nanny. That's ridiculous she exclaimed. The bra would fit half the county, but Detective Witcher wasn't looking for anyone else in the county. He was looking for someone in the house, and Elizabeth fit the profile, at least the only profile he had.

Detective Witcher also felt like there were a few parts of Elizabeth's story that didn't really add up. Like, how did Elizabeth not hear the intruder come into the room? And why did she assume that Mrs Kent came and got the boy when Mrs Kent was seven months pregnant and couldn't even carry Seville. Here's a little fun fact about detectives at the time. Detectives were actually made up in books before it was a real job.

Charles Dickens had written about Sevant police officers that were specialized in solving homicides, and police thought it was such a good idea that they started implementing it within their own precincts. But detectives and books were these fictional superheroes that real cops just didn't live up to, so they would try to solve cases in reverse and build investigations around theories like they had read in the books. Detectives would then look for evidence that fit their theory instead of holistically putting together the pieces of an investigation. And that's what Detective Witcher started doing with Elizabeth. This is the theory that Detective Witcher had for the murder.

So Elizabeth and a secret lover were having a trist in the night when Seville woke and caught them. Seville had a reputation for being a bit of a tattletail, and it was believed that when he would wake early in the morning, he would go to his mother's room and gossip with her about everything everyone in the house was doing. It was no mystery to any of the other children that Seville was actually Mrs. Kent's favorite child. So, to stop him from tattling to his mother, Elizabeth and her lover smothered the boy, accidentally or purposefully strangling him. And to confuse investigators, they stabbed him and slit his throat.

But who was Elizabeth's lover? A gardener? A local man? He couldn't remain anonymous because this could be integral to the investigation. Well, some of the staff had an opinion on who it was. Someone pulled butchered aside and confessed they knew who Elizabeth's lover was. Mr. Kent. So what led them to believe that Mr. Kent and the Nanny were engaged in a secret romance

you might ask. Well, the Kents had a nanny before Elizabeth, and after Mr. Kent's first wife died, he married her. Oh yeah, Seville's mother, the current Mrs. Kent, she was the nanny. Detective Witcher learned that the first Mrs. Kent had passed away from an illness eight years prior to Seville's murder, and the young and spry nanny, who was 12 years her junior, was helping out around the house. Less than a year after her passing, the nanny and Mr. Kent were wed. Mr. Kent would claim that it had to do with how the nanny already knew and

loved his children. However, a former aide said that she saw Mr Kent sneak into the nanny's room while the first Mrs. Kent was still alive. None of his children were fans of the marriage, and after they wed, he and the new Mrs. Kent had three more children, Saville being one of them. Constance was the third daughter of Mr. Kent and the first Mrs. Kent, and she was devastated by this marriage. She actually ran away with her brother William after the wedding. The two children had been incredibly close with their mother, and Constance felt like she didn't have time to mourn before another woman was telling her what to do. So, Mr. Kent becomes a suspect because he was maybe having another affair with the

nanny that he didn't want discovered. And his track record backed that up. But there was also other suspicious behavior from Mr Kent that the police were aware of. Mr Kent was an incredibly private person, but he was taking that to an extreme during this investigation. The night after Seville's death, two police officers arrived to Roadhill House to monitor the estate and make sure that if the murderer was an intruder, they didn't come back. Upon their arrival, Mr. Kent ushered them into the kitchen where he promptly locked the doors

from the outside. The police remained locked in the kitchen the entire night, unable to search the premise at all. Some believed that this would have been a perfect opportunity for Mr. Kent to discard of any other evidence that it was he or his mistress that murdered Seville. Mr. Kent also hindered the investigation by not providing the police with necessary documents. He wouldn't hand over any of the children's birth certificates and when asked to provide a blueprint for the house, he just scoffed.

Detective Witcher also learned that Mr. Kent had traveled in an hour away to notify police, but Witcher knew that there were other police officers much closer to Road Hill House, was he using that opportunity to destroy evidence, perhaps discard of the murder weapon. And the more Witcher poked around, the more he learned of Mr. Kent's enemies. This is a point that's never really fully explored in the investigation, but I think that this is important. Let me just start by saying that Mr. Kent was kind of a nimby, not in my backyard type. When he purchased Road Hill House, he privatized the river that was on the property, which was a river that many people in the community used to fish and as a food source.

The neighbors were incredibly upset by this, and it wasn't uncommon to find people in the community, sneaking onto the Kent residents after hours to fish while the Kents were asleep. Then there was Mr. Kent's job, which was to liberate children from factories that violated child labor laws. By today's standards, he was doing amazing work, but at the time, many people viewed their children as a source of income, and to lose that meant that their family may be thrown into poverty. Did someone see, taking one of his children as a retribution for what he was doing to

their children. Witcher thanked the staff for all of this information. But the staff had more to say. They claimed that Mr. Kent was not kind to them, unless, of course, he was sleeping with them. Mr. Kent actually admitted to something during the investigation that again was not fully explored but is very important. He told Detective Witcher that there was a servant who left the house swearing to enact revenge on the family just earlier that year.

And apparently, the servant had said something specific about Seville because she believed that Seville had told his parents something about her that led to her firing. And Seville's dad was known for firing staff many times over nothing. He once even had his chef imprisoned over a payment dispute. Was Mr Kent bringing up this story to divert attention away from him and his secret affair? Or was there really a disgruntled staff member

that could have enacted her revenge? But Detective Witcher had already built his theory and he was more dead set on proving himself right than exploring other avenues. So he had hyper-focused on Elizabeth Goff, pretty much just because she fit into that bra. Elizabeth was hysterical while being questioned, even fainting at one point because she was crying so hard. She very dramatically proclaimed that she would never love another child again because of how much she loved Seville. Her delicate heart couldn't handle another loss like that. It was common at the time to really dial in on women's emotions and use

that as evidence. These days, we know that shock and grief look very different on every person, but back then, it was believed that a woman's emotional state could tell as much as a confession. Elizabeth's hysteria wasn't shocking to investigators. It was common for women to dramatically faint while crying or even throw up. Sometimes it was the only tool a woman had to signal her seriousness in a matter. And for Elizabeth, it worked. Detective Witcher decided that Elizabeth was way too distraught to have killed the child. But there was a girl in the house who did not seem overly devastated that Seville had been murdered, and her collected, cool concern was reading more like cold-blooded

and callous. After the Nanny's exoneration, Detective Witcher latched onto his next suspect, Constance, the 16-year-old daughter of Mr. Kent's first wife. And I can say here that yes, Constance was kind of being an Amanda Knox type about the whole situation. It doesn't mean that she did it, but she did seem a little undisturbed in the matter, like it was more of a hindrance to her other plans that Saville had died. There was this prevailing thought at the time, though, that most girls, ages 14 to 20, wanted to commit murder.

The theory was that girls had sexual desires and romantic interests that didn't begin until age 20, and until then there was a kind of vacuum inside of these young girls. A heartlessness that prevailed until romantic interests set in. During this time, young girls are far more dangerous than young boys and must be handled with caution. A local paper claimed that Constance did only what girls her age wish they could do. But what would Constance's motive have been? For one, she had run away after her father's marriage to the nanny. She clearly was not a fan of the woman, and would have reason to want to inflict harm on her.

Consists had complained to her schoolmate that the new Mrs. Kent favored her biological children over her stepchildren, and she had even suggested that Seville was a tattletail. But other than that, there really wasn't much of a motive. Detective Witcher wanted to dig further into Constance's psyche, so he sleuthed around to learn a little bit more about her mother's death. He knew that she had died from an undisclosed illness, but was there any more to it. Upon his investigation, he learned something quite interesting. Consisting's mother had died of madness, something that was believed to be inherited by children.

Now there's a few theories as to the origin of the first Mrs. Kent's madness. For one, it did manifest after the birth of her first son, Edward. After he was born, she would get lost while walking, and she would sometimes sit in the parlor in a catatonic state and rip pages out of Mr. Kent's books. Then she had two more daughters and then five miscarriages in a row before Constance was born. And after Constance was born, she started sleeping with a knife under her pillow. The first suggestion was that she had a particularly bad case of postpartum, aggravated by stress and the miscarriages. But detective Witcher had seen these symptoms before.

Women going mad was not uncommon at the time, but he knew that it was sometimes the byproduct of something else, something that would often hint at a husband's infidelity. The prevailing theory now is that Mr Kent may have given his wife Cifilis. In advanced stages, Cifilis can cause memory problems, mood changes, and even stillbirths. Babies can be born with Cifilis, though the symptoms often manifest as something else. So Detective Witcher was incorrect in assuming the madness had been inherited by Constance. Detective Witcher also learned that Mr Kent didn't want the community to know what was happening to his wife, so he hid her away during the last years of her life and began the

affair with the children's nanny. His theory now was that Constance's inherited madness, along with her murderous age of 16, and General distaste for Seville and his mother, caused her to murder the boy. He believed that he had evidence to prove it, and would you believe it was another piece of women's clothing? So what was the physical evidence that Detective Witcher had that Constance committed this murder? Well, she was missing a nightgown.

The Kent staff kept detailed notes of the laundry that they did, and two days after Seville's murder, one of Constance's nightgowns went missing in the wash. Constance had three nightgowns and according to laundry records, after the murder, two went into the wash and one stayed with Constance. However, only one made it out of the wash. Witcher theorized that Constance had committed the crime in a nightgown and got it soaked with the boy's blood. So she must have thrown it away, and then put her two remaining nightgowns into the wash,

pretending that she still had one. This was to make sure that a maid would make a note that both of the nightgowns were in the wash. Then when the maid wasn't looking, Constance must have stolen one of the nightgowns out of the wash and blamed its disappearance on the maid. And I know what you're thinking, and I agree. I hope that the detective didn't hurt his back with that stretch. A judge and jury believed that it was a stretch as well.

Witcher had Constance sent a trial based on this outrageous theory, but the case fell apart right in front of him. Constance's school friends said she actually didn't remember Constance complaining about her stepmother at school, and the judge found the night-gown theory to just be offensive and a waste of everyone's time. And so, Constance was acquitted. Sure, there were other suspects.

William not even became a suspect because his father was prosecuted by Mr. Kent for stealing just a few apples from his property. William had also said that strange thing about feeling like he was going to find Seville dead, which in hindsight everyone did think was weird, but he was never investigated any further. And Mr. Kent wasn't investigated any further either, even after it was discovered that he was way behind on his bills. At the time of the murder, he was in quite a bit of financial distress,

and the bills were really starting to catch up to him. Local gossip surmised that Mr. Kent figured one less child would save him quite a bit of money, which are how to real affinity towards Mr. Kent though. He felt like they were cut from the same cloth, two hardworking men who built their lives from nothing. Throughout the investigation, he would assure Mr. Kent that he would never be put on trial. This was the core issue with the way

that the detective was building this case. He kept coming up with theories and then trying to prove them right rather than looking at the evidence that was right in front of him. So at this point, there was not really anywhere left to go with this case. Which are thought for sure it was constants, and he felt like the prosecutor didn't really understand the night-gown theory well and totally botched the trial. The case was starting to go cold. But over the next

few years, a few investigators would pick it up to see if they could find anything that was missed. Thomas Saunders was one of those men. He was a barrister and magistrate that wanted to keep the case alive. And one day, he rang Witcher. He said he had some shocking news. Saunders had discovered that there was more evidence collected at Road Hill House than anyone had been made aware of. This was evidence that was destroyed before the detective had made it to the house, but was noticed by one of the first police officers

on the scene. So on June 29th, the day of the murder at 5 p.m., a police officer found a woman's shift, wrapped in newspaper, and covered in blood, tucked away in a kitchen boiler hole. A boiler hole was where a fire was built in a kitchen for cooking purposes. And a shift was a linen dress a woman wore during the day under her regular dress. It usually fell to the knee, unlike nightgowns which fell to the floor. However, Saunders asked the officer if the garment was a shift or a nightgown because a lot of

men would confuse the two. The officer insisted that it was a shift, but noted that it was very bloody so he took the garment over to another officer on the scene who was so embarrassed by the garment he insisted that it be hidden. It turns out that officer assumed the garment was covered in menstrual blood and hidden in shame, and therefore he wanted nothing to do with it. He didn't even tell the kents that it had been found. The officer threw the garment back into the boiler hole and went to go check on something outside. When he returned,

it was gone. Witcher was shocked. Could his night-gown theory be true? But the case couldn't be reopened, and nothing came of the shift. Constance was sent to a boarding school, but was bullied so horribly that she left and went to a covenant. News of the case was spreading so far and so wide that even Charles Dickens wrote in his thoughts on the case. He believed the theory of the trist between Mr. Kent and the nanny. Most of the talk of the case was amongst households.

Regular citizens who had been so caught up in the tabloid version of the case that they couldn't stop theorizing about what had happened. Other than that, the case that they couldn't stop theorizing about what had happened. Other than that, the case was cold. Detective Witcher's career was nearly ruined. This should have been a solvable case, and he really believed that he had the murderer pinned down with constants. His reputation was so tarnished that it was hard for him to find work again after this. He thought that he might never have another job.

But then, five years later, there was a huge breakthrough in the case. On Tuesday, April 25, 1865, when Constance was now 21 years old. She walked into the Bow Street Magistrate's Court dressed in all black and wearing the same calm and collected veneer she had throughout the entire initial investigation. She said that she had one thing to say, that she was guilty of Seville's murder. I'm now going to read you how the crime happened, according to the account of the murder that Constance gave. Constance was very close with her mother, and while her mother was alive, she could feel her father's affection towards her cooling. Constance was young, but she could tell her father was in love with her nanny.

It seemed like he was waiting for, if not orchestrating, her mother's death so that he could be with his mistress. It was then that Constance decided she wanted to inflict as much pain as she could upon her father's lover. Sure, she could kill her, but was there something she could do that would cause life long suffering? When Seville was born, she had found her answer. long suffering. When Seville was born, she had found her answer. The night of the murder, Constance lay awake upstairs in her room until she felt the whole house had fallen asleep. Then, she got out of bed, crept down to Seville's room, snuck in and pulled him from his cot, still wrapped in his blanket. She said the boy was asleep

the entire time. Next, Constance walked downstairs where she opened the drawing room window as a diversion. She took Seville out to the outhouse, lit a candle, and slit the sleeping boys throat. Before the murder, she had stolen a razor from her father, and that's what she used to kill Seville. According to Constance, when she slid his throat, he didn't start bleeding, and that caused her to also stab him in the chest. Feeling she had done enough, she dropped Seville down into the hole and threw the bra insert down with him. The bra was from a garment she had found in the trash that she had repurposed as a face cloth.

When she got back to her room, she said that there were two spots of blood on her night gown. She washed it in the bays in that night, but when she examined it to her room, she said that there were two spots of blood on her nightgown. She washed it in the bays in that night, but when she examined it the next day, she decided that it wasn't clean enough and she burned it in her room. Constance admitted she did steal a nightgown from the wash to make it look like the maid had lost her gown, but that the bloody garment and the boiler hole was not related to her crime. The next day, she cleaned the razor

and put it back in her father's possession. Constance said that it was her time at the monastery that convinced her to confess. She said she felt as though she had been under the influence of sea and when she committed this crime. And now, it was time to confess. When Detective Witcher read this confession in the paper,

he felt vindicated. His outlandish theory had been proven true. After this, cases started being assigned to him again and his reputation as a top detective was reinstated. Constance was sentenced to death after a 20-minute trial, but the general public was so unconvinced that her story was true that they begged for her mercy, her sentence was commuted to just jail time. Yes, the general public, who had closely followed this case like it was season 1 of serial,

didn't believe Constance's confession. Maybe it was because they all had five years to develop their own bulletproof theories, but you have to admit that her confession raises some questions. How could she have done all that she said she did while holding a nearly four-year-old boy? Even Detective Witcher could have tested the fact that the drawing-room window took a significant amount of strength to open. One arm of even the strongest groundsman just wouldn't cut it. Mr. Kent's razor was also missing for 24 hours, and no one, not even the police, took

note. The house was turned almost completely upside down looking for the murder weapon, and no one thought to check the razors. And how did she stab Seville in the chest with a razor? That seemed impossible, and it was actually ruled in court by a doctor that the stab wound was almost certainly caused by a knife. And most importantly, how did Seville not bleed from having his throat cut that deeply? It was like Constance was taking the parts of the case that she knew about, and piecing

them together in a way that she thought made sense, but didn't really add up. To detective Witcher, the police, and the court system who had spent five years searching for the boy's murderer while being shamed by the public, they were just excited to have someone to put in jail. She was such a recognizable figure by the time she was sentenced, there was a wax figure made of her for Madame Tussaud's wax museum. She was actually placed next to another high-profile murderer from the year of her trial. John Wilkes Booth. Detective Witcher died in 1881. Just a few years before the officers in his

unit would be assigned to the high-profile case of Jack the Ripper. Witcher died believing that he tied a perfect bow on this messy case, But today, historians are less sure than ever that his hunch was right. The kents were a disastrous bunch with secrets to hide and enemies lurking on the edge of their property. Maybe a 16 year old girl really was the reason for Seville's death. But there were so many stones left unturned by Detective Witcher. And maybe. Just maybe. Constance was covering for someone. When Mr. Kent retired from his job, he told his employer that he could no longer work

because he needed to take care of his ailing wife, who had been in invalids since Seville's murder. He asked for a pension of $500 a year. And when his job responded, they pension of $500 a year, and when his job responded, they offered him $250 a year, a salary that his expensive lifestyle could not be maintained on. He replied that he no longer wished to retire, he'd rather work and make his full salary. But his job felt that he needed to take care of his sick wife, as he had mentioned in his letter. Miraculously, after Mr. Kent received that letter, his wife died, and he no longer needed to take care of her.

He was able to work again. And to help raise his children and lieu of a wife, he hired a young Australian governess. This has been Heart Starts Pounding, written and produced by me, Kaelin Moore, music by ArtList. Make sure to follow the podcast on Instagram and support the podcast if you're feeling generous. A lot of research goes into these episodes. Have a heart pounding story you'd like to share on the podcast? Email heart starts pounding at gmail.com. Until next time, ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo you