Death at the Windmill 55:40

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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold, very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪

Welcome back. Hi. Hey, hey, how's it going? It's going well. It's going well. It is mid-October and we are in the Dawson household preparing for Halloween. We actually have been preparing since about July, but this is when I'm publicly willing to admit it, that we are getting ready for Halloween. So you're big into Halloween. That's what I'm gathering. We are.

I'm far big into Halloween. I have one kid, she loves writing scary stories. Like she has this story about a woman inside a house and she sees a killer in the yard through the window and the woman is very tense and then she realizes that he's not in the yard, it's a reflection and he's actually behind her. And I thought, what a brilliant nine-year-old several years ago. Yeah.

That's either great parenting or really poor parenting. I'm not really sure which one it is. So, but you're putting decorations up now. Yes, we have one of those funkins. Have you ever seen those? Do you have a Paul Hull's funkin where they carve really intricate things into a fake pumpkin? No, I haven't seen that. We have a Winkler Dawson funkin that's a haunted house scene.

and I love it. It's so much fun. So yeah, that's up and we've got lights everywhere and we've already carved two different pumpkins. So we're into it. So are your decorations, are they fun, scary, or are they scary, scary? It's both. It's an excellent mix of both. Really? Yeah. We have some body parts laying around. We also have

the reflections of ghosts in windows. And we used to have really big inflatables when the kids were young, but they would jump on them and pop them. And then the dogs started biting them. And so we don't do that. But I have been curious because your kids are older than my kids, much older, right? Do they still do Halloween? No, you know, we throw up decorations around the house. The kids have stopped trick-or-treating. They're both high schoolers at this point. It was...

so eye-opening coming out of California and moving to Colorado is that I believe two of the Halloweens, there's been snow on the ground. What? Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, it's not, are we going to have a white Christmas or not? Are we going to have a white Halloween? Oh, welcome to Colorado. And your pumpkins are frozen solid.

And the deer like to eat them. So, you know, they're like the ultimate Porsche pirate to where if you have your pumpkins out, guarantee eventually you're going to see a deer starting to gnaw on your pumpkin. And sometimes these pumpkins get taken away. I think the bear will come and grab the pumpkins as well.

Oh, your bear. I can't even believe you have bears around where you are. You told me the story. I don't know if people know the story of your bear and the dog and your wife. No, you know, that's just part of really starting to learn Colorado and recognizing, you know, there is danger around every corner. And that's where Cora was out walking with my wife and she was off leash. And then she just charged around out of sight. And when my wife caught up, a bear was on top of Cora.

And my wife immediately turns around screaming bear, bear, bear to the group she was with. And I think as she was running away from Cora, Cora just instinctively ran with my wife. So that probably saved Cora's life. But she had a huge gash torn in the side on her rib cage. The skin was just kind of hanging down. She had been bitten on the tail and had probably a claw mark.

on her forehead. So she was in surgery immediately for that attack. And we have bears in our yard. We know more frequently than we see them because they're constantly moving around. And we've had to enclose, you know, Cora's, where she goes potty is on the side of the house.

And I've had to put up an enclosure to prevent her from charging after bear if she happens to be out there going potty. She can be out there with deer and bunny rabbits and turkeys and whatever else comes through the yard. She doesn't bother them, but she goes after the bear. Side note, I love that you say potty. Ha ha ha!

Well, what am I supposed to... So she goes to her side yard to defecate and urinate. How's that? That's what I would think a forensic science guy would say. You thought that's what I was going to say. But potty, I love that. No, she knows the term potty. Come on. Come on, Cora. Let's go potty.

Well, that's a very Halloween-y story. I mean, how horrific to see. Your wife must have been terrified, but thank goodness she got out of that. You have a very sturdy yellow lab, right? Yes, but no matter how sturdy, a 90-pound dog doesn't stand a chance against a 300, 400-pound bear. Well, she has gone through a lot, and so I certainly don't recommend that you do to her what I plan to do with my dog, which is make her look like a fool and dress her up this Halloween. Okay.

Because she has such a snotty little attitude, Ruby does sometimes, that I just feel like putting her in like a Porky Pig outfit or something. All right. She can feel a little embarrassed. We're going to have to see some pictures. You got it. Okay. Embarrassed Ruby. So this parlays into a case that is not quite Halloween-y, but I know you love a good mystery. So this will be an interesting case for you. It's a good little mystery. I guess let's just get started. Let's just set the scene now.

So this case is called the Windmill Murder Case. And this is set in December of 1924. And this is in California. So this 1924 California, it's such an interesting time period because, again, you're talking about the intersection of prohibition. We're not at the Great Depression yet. We're reaching the Roaring Twenties. There's just a lot happening, a lot of growth, a lot of culture happening.

But we are talking about rural California, Hanford, California. Have you heard of Hanford? I had not. That's south of Fresno, west of Visalia. Okay. Is that farm country kind of? It must be. That whole area is nothing but a bunch of farms. Well, this story is about a rancher, kind of a farmer rancher guy. And his name is Lee Camp. And he's 34 years old.

And when he was nine years old, he was put in foster care and he ended up with foster parents named Mr. and Mrs. Brown. And they owned a ranch in Hanford. So Lee Camp was nine at the time. And as he grew older, he became closer and closer to the family. Obviously, this was his sort of adoptive family, although it doesn't sound like they ever officially adopted him.

But he was someone who was really good at working with his hands. He really enjoyed being on the ranch. But he had some family that were not part of the foster family, sort of his biological family, who when the family members died, left him a lot of money that was put in a trust. He continued to be with the Browns because, you know, he just was really committed with them. He didn't spend a lot of his money that he had. It was sort of in this trust. Okay.

And he continued to work on this ranch off and on. And there is a whole cast of characters involved in this story. But Lee Camp is really at the center of it. And then later on, we talk more about the extended family. So I don't know a lot about windmills. Do you know anything about windmills? I know more now than I did before I started this story. Yeah.

No, you know, my knowledge of windmills pretty much is limited to the fact that they use wind in order to mill grain, right? Okay. It's pretty obvious based on the name. But, you know, I used to call the, you see them all over the place, those hydroelectric turbines. You know, at one point, I think I made the mistake of calling that a windmill when I was out on a tour and I was very sharply corrected. No, they are not windmills. Okay.

So this is the old school windmill. And this was something that they used on this ranch. And what ends up happening is Lee Camp, his intention is to work on this windmill, this one particular windmill. And there are different parts to the windmill. So there is a tank house that is attached to the windmill. And this is where water is stored.

So there's, in the construction of the windmill, there's a tank house and then the well and then the actual windmill. So he has been tasked with moving this windmill from his family ranch to someone else. And so he's sort of trying to assess it and figure out what shape is it in? Can they start breaking it down to be able to move it? How are we going to move it? And this would not be out of his wheelhouse, so to speak. He would know how to do this. So Lee

asked his foster mother's uncle, who was a guy named Johnny Tipton, to help. And Johnny Tipton said, you know, I can probably help you, but not right now. Why don't you get started without me and I'll come down. But Lee Camp was really anxious to get this job done. This was a Sunday, not a lot of people were around. And Lee said, I'm going to go ahead and take care of this myself.

So, then Tipton said, okay, well, let me get some tools and then I will come and help you. I don't want you doing this on your own. So, Lee says, okay, I'm going to go down early. So, when they went to the barn, they got some rope and Tipton said, I'm going to go ahead and take these tools and put them somewhere else and I'll be right there. When he came back, and this was within, you know, an hour or so, Johnny Tipton was depositing these tools somewhere else. When he came back,

he found Lee lying on the ground. So the 34-year-old rancher was lying on the ground at the bottom of the windmill, dead with a head wound. Blood everywhere.

Okay, so once we get into this story, the fact is what Johnny Tipton said is that he shows up, Lee Camp is on the ground. He never saw him up on the windmill. He doesn't know what happened. The last thing he knows is that his nephew is just fine. And now this young man is dead at the bottom of the windmill.

Okay, so there must be some thought that he fell off this windmill, right? Yeah, that was the original assumption. So Johnny Tipton says, well, I guess he was on top of the roof and he must have slipped off and fell. So...

When they called the police, this is the same conclusion that the police come to. They said, so it was about 15 or 20 minutes from the time that Lee Camp left the barn and left his uncle till when Tipton came back and discovered him dead. And Tipton said something that was a little odd at first. He said, you know, I don't know what happened. Lee seemed like he was in good spirits.

So he's suggesting that Lee may have purposely thrown himself off the windmill? Maybe. It was a really odd statement to make.

And of course, the family comes out, the foster family. And I know it's odd for me to continue to say foster family, but it's because we need to differentiate between them, the Browns, who he grew up with since he was nine, and then his biological family. A couple of them are still in the picture. And this is where a lot of this debate comes in, because this would not be a case had it not been for Lee's biological family. And remind me, Lee's

set to receive an inheritance? He has it. Oh, he already has it. So he has a level of wealth at this point. He does. And he also has a life insurance policy. Not a new one, but a life insurance policy nonetheless. So he has some money. Okay. So there is at first blush a reason to believe that perhaps this was not an accident.

But people knew that he was going to be up on that tank house investigating the windmill. They knew that there was a danger. You know, he didn't have a history of slipping and falling, but he was a young man. He was 185 pounds. He was in really good shape. So this is not someone who didn't know how to climb up on windmills. And so that was the assumption is that he had slipped and fell. And the idea was that there was a gash in the back of his head that he had hit the cogwheel,

which I also had to Google, at the bottom of the windmill. So he slipped, he fell, he hit some things coming down that sort of broke his fall, like some wires that were attached to the windmill. And then ultimately, the object that kills him is this cog wheel, which you can imagine is a metal wheel with a lot of, what, divots? What would you even call those, cogs? I don't know.

Would this be part of the gearing of the windmill, right? Correct. Yeah. So there'd be teeth in these gears. Correct. Teeth. That's what I was thinking about. Teeth, yes. Now, do we know how high he fell from? We do. So this was a distance of about 35 feet. Oh, wow.

So I had to look that up. That was more than three stories. That's pretty high. Yeah. So Johnny Tipton says this weird thing. He was in good spirits. We don't know if he's insinuating that Lee Camp was potentially going to take his own life, but it was a weird thing to say. Yeah. So this happened on December 14th, 1924. And then they carried out the autopsy

So an autopsy in 1924, I don't believe would have been automatic. I think that if there were any question of, you know, something being suspicious about a particular death, they would have carried on an autopsy. But I don't think that would have been normal if this truly looked like an accident to people. I mean, what do you think? Well, you know, in this day and age,

If it is an accident that caused death, then most certainly an autopsy would be performed. The coroner's office would take jurisdiction and they have to make sure that this was truly an accident versus death caused at the hands of another. Yeah. Well, what's interesting is that, so my first book is about a deadly smog of 1952 in London. And the cause of death on the death certificates was very important. The British government, in many cases, were not attributing these deaths that clearly

were a result from a deadly smog. They were attributing them to, you know, bronchitis, which is probably what technically killed people or cardiac arrest from all of the coughing. But, you know, they were refusing to mark anything else on the death certificates. So ultimately, when the information came back about how many people died from this smog, it was far lower than it should have been.

because they were not attributing the right cause of death. So I think that's interesting to think about. This case really does come down to how do you prove when someone has clearly died from, I guess, blunt force trauma, how do we prove whether it was an accident or whether it was murder? And that's what this comes down to. And that's where so much rests on proper crime scene processing and documentation as well as competent autopsy.

Yeah. So let me get your opinion on this because I know nothing about falling, thank goodness, from high heights. This is 34, 35 feet. There is obviously evidence that he had a lot of trauma to his head, a compound fracture at the back of his skull. No broken bones anywhere else. Mm-hmm.

From a height like that, would you expect any kind of a broken bone other than if he hit his head on the wheel of the windmill? Well, when somebody falls and impacts, let's say it's an uninterrupted fall. And so now the individual is impacting the ground completely.

And you have, in essence, instantaneous deceleration. So all of that velocity or that energy from the fall is now transferring into that body. And the ground, unless you're on sand or some soft surface that you land on, the ground doesn't give. So all that speed, that energy is now transferred into your body. And so you typically do see deceleration.

significant blunt force trauma. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean that you'll always see broken bones, but if it is from a sufficient height, you will see the actual impact aspect of the side of the body that is impacting the ground. That is what I'd call the primary collision, two objects that have basically collided into each other, the body and the ground. But internally,

There's secondary collisions. And so now the organs, for example, the heart is literally just kind of hanging in the center of your chest. And when you stop immediately with all that energy, your heart wants to kind of keep going, but your body is stopped. And you see this often in vehicular accidents where let's say it's a head-on accident or you run into a telephone pole. Mm-hmm.

The car stops. The seatbelt prevents your body from moving forward, but your heart being this heavy mass keeps going. And until the soft tissues that hold it in place are able to basically stop it from moving forward, but oftentimes in significant crashes, those soft tissues are torn apart.

away just because the heart keeps going. And what gets torn is the aorta. So even though you could have somebody in a crash or somebody from a fall that looks okay internally, they have almost instantaneously bled out due to this secondary collision that has occurred, these forces inside the body. So in evaluating Lee Camp's body, first it's okay,

What is the height? What's the terminal velocity? How does he land? Is that consistent with injuries that are being seen? And then what are the intervening objects? And he brought up the cogwheel. He only has injuries to his head. This cogwheel, I imagine, is towards the bottom of this windmill. So he's got a high rate of speed in which now his skull is impacting a stone surface.

Yeah. This has the potential to produce massive skull damage. I mean, to the point to where, in essence, could see the head crushed. You could see decapitation. It all just depends on the surfaces and the speed and everything else. But this is part of assessing his injuries related to what he could have impacted during this fall. I am a little bit concerned just off the top that he only has injuries to his skull.

They're not saying that there's any other injuries to the rest of his body. So let's talk about, this is now something that they have a coroner's inquest, which has always been a big mystery to me. So this happens very quickly the day after he's discovered there's a coroner's inquest

in which the coroner calls in four witnesses, including Uncle Tipton and other medical experts. So what is the point of a coroner's inquest? Well, typically, and I've testified at coroner's inquests, and typically the coroner is tasked with establishing the manner of death.

So the pathologist who does the autopsy has the medical expertise, establishes the cause of death. Then the coroner, which in many instances is an elected official, and I would imagine back in the time of this case was likely an elected official.

The coroner then issues a death certificate indicating the manner of death. But let's say the pathologist is going, well, I don't know. I've got, in this case, a body that has blunt force trauma. I don't know. I can't differentiate whether this was from an accident or whether somebody did this to him. So the coroner will then convene an inquest.

which witnesses are called in and a jury may be seated. And then now the coroner's office puts information out in front of this jury, or sometimes it will just be a judge. And they weigh in based on the circumstances. We believe that the manner of death was accident or natural or at the hands of another. So in essence, in some ways, it's the coroner's office policy.

punting, they put it out to a judge and or jury to independently assess the information and then draw a conclusion as to what the manner of death was. Okay. Well, that's what they did. They called four witnesses, including Uncle Tipton. It was before a jury. And after listening to the evidence and listening to what the autopsy was, which was, again, the damage to the cranium, then they said that they returned an open verdict that

And it read, death from the blow of the back of the head made by some blunt instrument, presumably through a fall. Case closed. Huh. That was that. Okay. Of course, we know we're not even halfway through this episode, so it wasn't case closed. But that's...

That's what came of the coroner's inquest. But I'm assuming that can be changed at any point. Is that right? Well, if new information comes in, but then it's incumbent upon the coroner to weigh that new information and then possibly reissue a death certificate with a change in the manner of death. Okay. But this isn't a trial. This is just a determination of the cause of death. Yes. Okay.

So everything seems okay. Christmas is approaching. The Browns, the Foster family are mourning Lee Camp. And then the newspaper reporters come knocking at their door because Lee Camp's biological sister, a woman named Pearl Camp King, so I'm just going to call her Pearl King. Pearl King is going to the newspapers and saying, hmm, something's wrong here.

And what's wrong is that Lee Camp had a lot of money and he left it all to his foster mother, Mrs. Brown, and $5 to his biological sister. Of course she's saying something's wrong here, right? Right, right. So this...

is enough of a big question mark for the newspapers to start kicking up some dust and start wanting to know why was this corners inquest open and shut? Why was this buried? It sounds like there's something fishy happening. Why would he not leave his sister more money? Why would he leave this foster mother all this money? And thus started an investigation with the intent of trying to figure out if the Browns actually murdered this young man or whether or not it was truly an accident. Right. And...

Was there any information dug up as to what the relationship between Lee and Pearl King was like prior to his death? Well, it was interesting. She said it was a really nice, good relationship. It sounded like they were estranged and that they had a difficult relationship, but

still it was a little surprising that he hadn't left her anything. She, Pearl King, began to question some of the things in his relationship for Mrs. Brown. She thought that Jeannie Laura Brown, the woman he had been with since he was nine, she said, the sister said that they had an abnormal relationship, that the mother was very, very manipulative.

And that it just didn't make sense for her to be left in total control of his estate, which was pretty sizable. It was $200,000 in life insurance only. And then there was an additional $130,000. So $200,000 right now is $3.3 million. That's a significant life insurance policy. Huge amount of life insurance. And we'll talk about the life insurance in a little bit.

So Pearl Camp King, who was his biological sister, asked for his body to be exhumed. And so they did it. And this is where we have dueling experts because we see my forensic scientist again, Oscar Heinrich, who is called in to work for the district attorney who's trying to build a potential case against the Browns. Because now all of a sudden we're saying all of this money is going to this one woman and

his sister is calling into question how manipulative this woman is. And this doesn't seem like a simple slip and fall off of a windmill. No. So they exhume Lee Camp's body. Mm-hmm.

How long after the death was his body exhumed? Less than two months later. Okay. Do you know if he was embalmed? You know, what the state of his body was? So, embalming in 1925. I think embalming would not have been very common in 1925. So, it would have been pretty well degraded. But I haven't found photographs either of the autopsy, so I don't know. Yeah, and that's just part of what I'm trying to assess is what the second pathologist said.

was working with. This was a body that had already been autopsied. So there's been some disruption from that original autopsy. And then now a body that's been in the ground for roughly two months. Bodies can degrade rapidly in certain circumstances. And sometimes bodies underground inside a coffin can remain relatively fresh. So that would be one of the questions that I would have in terms of, okay, what is this pathologist working with once Lee Camp comes up out of the

ground. Well, and so embalming, because I'm reading that it would have been around. They might have embalmed him. We don't know. What would that have done? Would that have preserved a lot of these injuries that

so that they were in their original state? Well, the embalming process helps preserve the soft tissue because the embalming, in essence, by removing the blood and replacing it with formaldehyde-containing chemicals and different embalmers use different formulations, but generally there's two, three different compounds, I think, dominated by formaldehyde

which in essence prevents the microorganisms from proliferating. And microorganisms are the number one aspect of decomposition. You know, your intestines are just completely full of bacteria. And then once you die, there's nothing that keeps that bacteria in check. And so in essence, you start to rot on the inside.

working from the inside out, but also from the outside in. And the embalming process slows or completely stops that process. So now you can have soft tissue preservation and that could preserve, if you do have multiple wounds, like the wounds to Lee Camp's head, they're not being degraded or eaten away, so to speak, during this time. And so now the pathologist may see wounds that are at least representative of

So let's step away from forensics and go back to the basic narrative of what people are saying back and forth. So you have Pearl King, who is saying that there was this really odd relationship between the foster mother, Mrs. Brown, and between Lee Camp.

that she was trying to draw him away from family and she did not want him to date young women, even though he was dating a woman he wanted to become engaged to. And that becomes part of this controversy. The sister claimed that Mrs. Brown had been telling women that, the quote is that he was suffering from a noxious disease. I wonder if that is a sexually transmitted disease that she's insinuating that he had. Noxious disease, I'm not thinking it's

the flu, I think probably she was trying to say that this was not somebody you would want to date. And Pearl King really worked hard to try to discredit the Browns at every road they possibly could. So the Browns, for their part, said, we have not done anything. Yes, he had a life insurance policy. But if you read that life insurance policy closely, we and he had the option to have a double indemnity clause for an accident.

where it would have doubled. We told him, you don't need that. You're not going to get into an accident or anything like that. Don't you think if we had planned to kill this kid that we would have put in there, insisted on this double indemnity clause for an accident? Do you think that's a good argument on the side that this is an accident? We weren't planning to kill him. No. Okay.

Because 3.3 is enough. 3.3 million would be enough for someone today. Yeah, you know, here you have families that are disputing a will and they're going to be firing missiles at each other. But you still have to go to the core of the case. And the core of the case is what happened to Lee Camp and what does his body say happened to him? Okay, so let's get into the autopsy that I sent you. So we have now dueling experts.

We have one expert who looked at Lee Camp's wound and said it fits perfectly with the teeth marks on the cogwheel that we believe was the blunt object that ultimately killed him because he fell off of this roof of this tank house. Hmm.

And then the other autopsy results, tell me what your interpretation was of what I sent you, which was, I think, the prosecutor who ultimately went forward with a murder case against four members of this family. And that's why he was exhumed. They looked at this evidence. They talked to an expert. They listened to the sister who said this was for money. They killed my brother. And they charged four people, including Mrs. Brown and Uncle Tipton, with murder. Second-degree murder. Yeah, so I have to read...

out loud what this is saying because it is that significant. In all, 20 wounds have been found in the area from the base of the right ear to the corona of the skull and to about midway to the base of the left ear. The skin and soft tissue were badly mutilated.

The wounds in every case, but two, did not puncture to the skull. In two cases, one, a crescent-shaped wound four inches in length penetrated to and through the skull. This wound was situated at the highest point of the wounded area and contained within its limits a small triangular piece of bone. To the left of the wounded area and about three inches below this large crescent-shaped wound, there was one other wound about

one and one quarter inches long, which penetrated to the skull, but not through it. What does that mean? 20 wounds. Now, imagine Lee Camp's body's falling and his head impacts this cogwheel. Okay, this is a massive blow. I would expect that, of course, you're going to get tearing of the skin. You're also going to get the potential of

of the skull where the teeth or whatever are pushing in the skull into the brain based on falling from 35 feet. Here, there's 20 wounds that are found from the right ear to the corona of the skull and about midway to the base of the left ear,

20 wounds does not sound like a singular instance of an impact with the ground or the cogwheel. This is where, okay, what else did the body possibly impact on the way down? But would it all be concentrated to this area of the skull? Right. Start talking crescent-shaped wound, four inches in length, and it penetrates through the skull. So there's only two areas that go through this skull. Right.

This, based on just text without seeing photographs, sounds much more consistent with a bludgeoning, with a blunt object.

that was focused on his skull versus a massive object that his head is impacting with great energy. - Okay. - So at this point, I'm going, okay, that sounds suspicious. I'm not in line with accident based on that. They end up X-raying the rest of his body and no broken bones. - Yup.

with the exception of the skull. Now, if he is conscious, what we typically see in falls is that when somebody falls and then hits the ground, their hands are out, their legs are impacting the ground. If they're falling backwards, you know, their arms are back. You often do see forearms being snapped, lower legs being snapped.

femurs being driven up, you know, up into the upper torso. From a fall, at least there isn't the obvious indicators that he was conscious trying to brace himself for the impact. So the way that is worded, and again, without photographs, but the way that is worded, I am going, hmm, that is sounding more consistent with homicide. ♪

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Well, it's interesting because they're accusing Johnny Tipton, the uncle, since he was the one there and admitted to being there with being the killer, the person who beat him to death. And then the other three, including his adoptive mother as accessories, right? Second degree murder. What does that charge tell you about what the prosecutor thought of his case? Why would he not have thought this was premeditated?

He's charging Tipton with second degree. All four of them with second degree murder. So Tipton and a ranch hand, it's like a conspiracy. The adoptive mother, the uncle, her son, her natural son, and then a ranch hand, all four of them conspired to kill this kid. Okay. Well, you know, what it tells me is that the prosecutor is evaluating the case and isn't able to establish the...

And this is California, and first-degree murder does require malice aforethought, that premeditation. And then there's other circumstances, you know, during the commission of a robbery, sexual assault, that also is added, which could lead to special circumstances, but that premeditation is what's critical.

And so during the investigation, the prosecutor was not confident that he'd be able to convince a jury that there was sufficient premeditation to be proven for first degree. So he lowered the bar.

in order to be able to secure a murder charge. That is what my guess is. Well, I'll tell you, Oscar Heinrich, my forensic scientist from American Sherlock, is on the case. And he was initially, this happened to him sometimes, he was initially hired by the prosecutor, and then he switched over to the defense's side when he started gathering evidence. So this is, we'll see what you evaluate of Heinrich's evidence. Okay. So he climbed up on the roof and...

and he looked and he saw scuff marks as if somebody had been standing on the section of the roof precisely above or around the appropriate area where if somebody had been up there and he slipped and fell, that he would have landed where Lee Camp was found. So Oscar is saying, seriously?

Somebody was in the precise spot that he needed to be in order to be found on the ground where Lee Camp was found. And there was dirt and dust and everything else you could think of on the roof, except for this one spot where there were scuff marks from a shoe. So he's putting that in the accident column. What do you think about that, just as a piece of circumstantial evidence? It most certainly is noteworthy.

You know, in terms of a disturbance to the roof that appears to be recent and is consistent with where Lee Camp would have been, of course, would want to know, is this something that could have been staged? Or like fingerprints. I mean, it could have been, who knows when those happened? That's part of, okay, what exactly are these scuff marks? What are they made out of? What's the location? You know, how rapidly would they degrade within the environmental conditions? Is it something that is...

distinctive enough to be able to match up with anything like Lee's shoes? Is this something where Tempted, who's conveniently put himself away from the scene at the time Lee Camp reportedly falls, allegedly falls, you know, is this something that Tipton could have created just to help put two and two together, you know, where somebody looks at the roof and goes, oh, hey, look,

You know, there's a disturbance to the roof and there's Lee's body. This is where I have to rely on Heinrich and his observations. I question this as to whether it's legitimate evidence with the information provided. Yeah, I agree. That alone, I think, was sort of very circumstantial light evidence. But it was an interesting thing to note that he went up there and he saw that there seemed to be evidence that somebody at some point had been on that roof. So if we're trying to paint this picture...

Heimrich found that the wires connecting between the tank house and the windmill, right where the cogwheel was, there were metal wires running along that side, that they were significantly loosened.

So, his theory was that they were loosened because Lee Camp's body fell and they sort of broke the fall, but it wasn't significant. These wires weren't significant. They didn't cut his skin where you could actually see the evidence of these wires, but that they had braced his fall to a certain extent. And maybe they were responsible for some of the abrasions that were on his head.

No, that I don't buy at all. Okay. So, you know, so I'm going to call these like guide wires that are helping, you know, support aspects of the structure of this windmill. These are going to have some tensile strength to them. And if somebody's falling, I mean, you rapidly gain speed in free fall. And even if you're going, let's say, across fishing wire, you

you're likely going to see some level of abrasion of that wire on somebody's skin, let alone a guide wire that is probably made out of metal. And if Lee Camp's body is impacting these enough to where they're being loosened, then I would think there would be some linear abrasions as he's falling and hitting these wires along his entire body at various points, whatever part of his body contacts these wires.

it's not all just going to be concentrated in the back of his head. I don't like that scenario to account for his injuries to his scalp and skull and the lack of injuries on the rest of his body. If he's falling and hitting and tumbling as he's going from guidewire to guidewire, that impacts the ground and the cogwheel. I think there's going to be greater distribution of injuries as well as more significant injuries than what the autopsy is saying. Well, let me tell you,

sort of shorthand what happens, and then there's more evidence, right? Of course there is. Because that's how we roll here on Very Bones. We always have more evidence. So the jury hears this in the second-degree murder trial of all four people, and they convict them. So all four people are convicted of second-degree murder.

There is an appeal and a conviction gets thrown out on a technicality having to do with whether Heinrich was able to testify or not able to testify. And there is a retrial, second-degree murder, all four people. And in this retrial, there are more things that are coming up. There is another doctor who looked at, and I had mentioned this earlier, who looked at the wounds and said, everybody's wrong. This fits perfectly with the cogwheel. It's all kind of in one line. It makes sense. And what

Heinrich is saying, he says, I agree. And he said, number one, Lee Camp was very fit. Johnny Tipton was not. And if Lee Camp had been hit on the back of the head as many times as they claim, there would have been other things, defensive wounds. Johnny Tipton would have not gotten out of this unscathed because he was quite a bit older and Lee Camp was very fit and very young. And all of the blood that

seemed to be concentrated right at that cogwheel underneath his head. And I think the argument for the defense in this case was when you are beating someone, they are moving around all over the place. And it is highly unlikely that we would have had this blood come out in just one section. They would have been cast off in different places. And we would have seen sort of a

bigger scene. So that was, for Heinrich, a checkmark in the accident column. Now, I'm going to preface this by saying that this was a man, I've said this before, I've read 2,000 of his letters. He never apologizes for any case. He never second guesses himself. That's a pretty big problem, I think, for a forensic scientist to not be willing to say, I've probably made a mistake. Mm-hmm.

I've written a book about him. I love Oscar Heinrich as someone I researched. I don't think he was always right. Sure. I think he made mistakes. Of course, we're human. So when I present you with an Oscar Heinrich case, and you're going to hear several of them because I have a lot that didn't end up in my book, this is one of them. I certainly don't want you to side with him unless you think that he's right because I think he was wrong for a certain number

of cases, of course he was wrong. You can't work on 2,000 to 3,000 cases in your lifetime and not have made some pretty significant mistakes. So he lands with this is an accident for sure. Well, I think the blood patterns or lack of blood patterns is noteworthy. Under the theory with 20 wounds that are found concentrated in this area, once a bleeding injury occurs, and again, the distribution of the wounds is important,

But when you have an object that is delivering a blow to now a pooled blood source, it does produce spatter. Now, the amount of spatter it can produce is dependent upon the weapon and the amount of blood and how much hair is present or intervening clothing. So that's all part of the assessment. But as an example, a hammer produces very different spatter patterns than a baseball bat.

Way different levels of energy. And I've got a case where I had likely a bat used and spatter is everywhere and there's cast off. But also a smaller tool can deliver multiple blows concentrated to the head. Again, have to consider the hair mass and everything else.

And the amount of spatter is not necessarily going to be what you see with a massive weapon like a bat. This is where I'm questioning the conclusion because, yes, always take into account the physical aspects of the offender and the victim. And that's something that needs to be looked at. But you also have the possibility of a singular blow that causes a crushing wound to the base of Lee Camp's skull.

It doesn't matter what his physical capability is at that point. If he goes down, then multiple blows can be delivered because he's been incapacitated very early on when the violence started. This is now, I want to see photos. I want to see, of course, the crime scene photos, where the blood pool is, the cogwheel, the documentation of the wound.

So I can start to assess, can I sequence aspects of this case? Can I account for a lack of spatter if I believe I've got multiple blows being inflicted in an area in which bleeding is going to occur pretty early on once the scalp is lacerated?

This, though, the blood pattern observations by Heinrich are noteworthy, but I am still concerned about the 20 wounds focused on just one area of the body that allegedly fell 35 feet onto the ground.

And I think what's difficult about this case is, you know, we do talk about dueling experts and how they can confuse a jury when you've got people who say they have the same credentials and they're saying opposite things. And as somebody who was on a jury and in 1925, when this went to trial, you know, you're talking about people who might not have gone all the way through high school and you have these experts in white coats talking about some pretty extensive cases.

And I think it could be difficult to interpret who's right and who is wrong. And I think that's one of the problems that we have in this case is you've got people on both sides saying, I'm right. And as a juror, how do you decide who is right? This is just fairly standard in our adversarial justice process. I have been on one side of dueling experts in the course of my career many times. I've testified for both prosecution and defense.

and the other side is bringing somebody else in that is refuting my conclusions. This now comes down to being able to substantiate my opinions based on the facts of the case. It's not just, this is my expertise,

trust what I'm saying, and you wink at the jury. I have to explain to the jury, and I typically, in a case like this, I'm using imagery and I'm pointing out, this is why I am able to conclude what I am concluding. I need to be able to articulate those facts. And oftentimes, you see experts that aren't able to fundamentally articulate their opinion. It's like,

I'm the expert, believe me. That's a problem. Yeah, and I think that in this case, we have multiple juries that just didn't know how to choose, essentially. Ultimately, in the second trial, because the first one, the verdict was thrown out, in the second trial, they listened to all this evidence. And I think that Pearl King, his sister, was framed as someone who was vengeful because she didn't get any money. Mm-hmm.

She was accusing the family of trying to poison her with mercury and slipping needles in her food and, you know, all kinds of stuff, which, I mean, you and I both work in crime. None of that surprises me. Of course that could happen. It could absolutely happen. But all of this really started because she came forward and said, this doesn't seem right. I should have been given more money. Most of the people close to Lee Camp said he didn't have a very good relationship with his sister. Nobody was surprised by that.

But overall, the jury listened to the evidence. They listened to Heinrich. They had conflicting experts telling them different things about the medical evidence. And in my opinion, they did the right thing, which is they voted not guilty because there just was not enough certainty. And my father used to tell me he was a law professor at the University of Texas. And

And he used to say, listen, when you feel like somebody is guilty, you have to be able to prove it. And if you can't prove it, that's the way our justice system works. And it's better to have people go free who are guilty, as horrible as that sounds, than one innocent person in prison. And we know that there are many innocent people in prison. So ultimately, do I think they killed this guy, this 34-year-old?

I don't know, maybe. I think there's a great chance people kill for far less than $3.3 million.

But was there enough evidence? I don't think so. I mean, what do you think? Well, that's where it's critical to evaluate, well, what testimony was provided? Right. Because it's one thing to say, yes, the injuries are more consistent with homicide. So, okay, we have a cause of death of homicide, manner of death as homicide. And then it's, well, there's motive because of the financial aspect.

But you still have to make a case that somebody committed the crime. And so that's where it's like, okay, what case did they make? Yeah. Because they charged four individuals with second-degree murder. There must be other circumstantial aspects or witnesses or other things that would have been presented in front of this jury if they didn't.

have that kind of case to put forward, then they jumped the gun. It was too early to take these people. Yeah, it was too early. So sometimes that does happen. And now if you get an acquittal, you're done.

Right? And that's where prosecutors have a tendency to be conservative. If they have an investigator present a case to them and they're going, well, I think you're on the right track. I think you got the right person, but I'm not willing to move forward with charging because I don't think I can convince 12 people that you're right. So you need to do more work.

That's part of the frustration and the tug of war that happens between investigating agencies and the DA's office is investigating agency is like, we got the guy. We want him off the street. And the prosecutors are going, nope, you don't have enough for us to be able to take this to trial. And then sometimes they're able to get more evidence

or information to convince the prosecutor, sometimes you're not. And then that person stays out and is free. And in some ways, it is part of the checks and balances of the justice process. I mean, my concern is that they had a coroner's inquest.

The first go-round, when the body was fresh, when the wounds were there, they had experts. They testified, including the Uncle Johnny Tipton. The jury said, yeah, he died from a blunt object, but it's likely from a fall. I don't know what changed there.

between that month, aside from Pearl King saying, I should have gotten more money, that family's crazy, something's wrong, dig up his body. And now you've got all of these experts to confuse people. I think that there was a lot of public pressure that they thought this ranching family was trying to steal this money and they killed this young man. And Pearl King started all these rumors. And I think that you have a prosecutor who just went, whoa, this is a great motive

And I don't know. I don't know. There absolutely is that. Pearl King is inserting motive into why Tipton and the Browns need to be looked at. I just, I go back to this. It's a second autopsy, but I go back to it. And the way that it reads, that's where I'm going. I have concerns of how these injuries could have occurred

based on the circumstances of the fall. And I want to know more, but right now, if I were working with this information early on in the case, I'm pursuing this as a homicide investigation until it's proven otherwise. It will just never happen that I'm going to bring you some cut and dry.

You'll hang up on me if I bring you a cut and dry case, I think. Was a professor plum in the green room or something like that with the candlestick. I like a mystery. Otherwise, we'd have an eight minute long episode. I like a good mystery. And this was a mystery. And this is the kind of case...

where you have a young man who seemed to have all the good intentions in life, and then he died. And no matter how it was, it was tragic at 34. But I think that the fighting over money is just, this is one of those things I told you, Paul, that when I study crime from the 1700s, I'm looking at a 1760 case now,

and actually bringing you one from the 1600s in a month or two. When you look at these cases, the themes don't go away and they don't change significantly. And this is money. It's a theme here that we have. It's greed. And I don't know greed from who, whether it's Pearl King or whether it's the Browns,

But that money motivated something, either somebody to lie or somebody to kill. And we don't know. Right. And it's one of the most common motives for crime is greed. And we'll come back to it at some point, I promise. I'm sure. Probably over and over again, right?

I think you need to go get a pumpkin and do the deer in your neighborhood a favor, carve yourself up something nice, and tell me how many days it takes for someone to steal that pumpkin off your porch. It won't be someone. It'll be an animal. Bambi. Or hopefully not a bear. Right. Okay, so I'll see you very, very soon. Sounds great. Thanks, Kate. ♪

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbones sources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashen and Kate Winkler-Dawson. Our mixing engineer is Ryo Baum. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel. Our artwork is by

work is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Danielle Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at Buried Bones Pod. Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind, is available for pre-order now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.