 Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Reports of a crashed alien craft in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico left many of the general public feeling that the long-awaited proof of extraterrestrial intelligence had come. But hopes were soon dashed as an earlier statement about a crashed saucer was changed to nothing more than a crashed weather balloon. This proved unbelievable to the public, leaving many suspicious of a government cover-up as there were too many witnesses who claimed to have seen the crashed UFO and alien bodies. Years later, 1954, it is rumored by some that President Dwight D. Eisenhower met with alien beings in person, being whisked away in a hastily arranged trip to see an alien craft and its wreckage. The location for this alleged clandestine meeting was Edwards Air Force Base. Of course, no actual proof exists of this meeting. And then, just a year later, the aliens invaded again, this time on a small farm in Kentucky, where a family was traumatized by their arrival and went to battle against them in order to survive. I'm Darren Marlar, and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar, and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved, and unexplained. If you're new here, welcome to the podcast, and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. If you're already a Weirdo, please share the podcast with others. Doing so helps make it possible for me to keep creating episodes as often as I do. Coming up in this episode. A vampire stalks a New England family in the 1800s, and now science has identified the name of this monster. A room covered in gold, jewels, and other precious items was created as a gift for Czar Peter the Great. But what is also great is the mystery about what happened to the room. Weirdo family member Rita Gomez sees a ghostly child in her home. Visitors to a Pakistan flea market are horrified by a creature with eyes like a torch. What could this terror be? Montgomery Gibbs was a wealthy attorney and real estate man, and his murder baffled police even after they had someone confess to shooting him. But first, in 1955, the family of Billy Ray Taylor fought for their lives against alien invaders from another world. We begin with that story. While listening, be sure to check out the Weird Darkness website. At WeirdDarkness.com, you can sign up for the newsletter to win monthly prizes, find paranormal and horror audiobooks I've narrated, watch old horror movies for free. Plus, you can visit the Hope in the Darkness page if you're struggling with depression or dark thoughts. You can find all of that and more at WeirdDarkness.com. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me into the Weird Darkness. Only a year after the bizarre case of a UFO disappearing into thin air, another case that stretches the imagination would occur in the rural setting of Kelly Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The events in Kentucky would begin on the night of August 21st, 1955, and are still being discussed and debated today. A family would have a battle with a group of small alien creatures. Billy Ray Taylor and his wife were visiting the Sutton farm on this particular night. Billy exited the house to go fetch some water from the Sutton family well. While drawing water, he witnessed an immense, shining object landing about a quarter of a mile from the house. Excited and frightened, he ran back to the house with the news, but no one took him very seriously. Soon, strange things began to occur. The family dogs began to bark outside. The man of the house, Lucky along with Billy Ray, went outside to see what the problem was. They were both stunned when they saw a three to four foot tall creature making its way toward them with its hands up. The two men described the creature as like nothing they had ever seen before. It had large eyes, long, thin mouth, thin short legs, large ears, and its hand ended with claws. Billy Ray fired his .22 caliber rifle and Lucky fired his shotgun. The barrage of bullets had no effect on the being. Lucky and Billy both knew that they had hit their target at that close a range, but the small creature did a backflip and then scurried into the woods. The two men went back into the house, but soon another creature was seen looking at them through a window. The two men again blasted away and ran outside to see if they had killed it, but found nothing. A large hole was later seen through the screen where the shots had been fired. This cat and mouse game continued into the night as the creatures would appear and disappear. Realizing that they were up against something out of the ordinary, the family decided to run from the house and ask for assistance from the police station in the little city of Hopkinsville. It took two vehicles to hold everyone, but off they went. After hearing their bizarre story, Sheriff Russell Greenwell thought they were joking. Finally, the family convinced him that they were not making up their story, and Greenwell decided to go to the Sutton farmhouse. When the police arrived at the farmhouse and searched the area around the house, no evidence of any creatures was found. However, they did find numerous bullet holes through the windows and walls of the house. Over 20 policemen were involved in the search. The police admitted that the Sutton's were not drunk and genuinely frightened by something or someone. Nearby neighbors did confirm strange lights in the sky and hearing of bullets being fired. The police left at 2.15 am. After the police were gone, the aliens returned and the earlier battle was repeated. The gunfire had no effect on the creatures. All together, 11 people were present at the Sutton family farmhouse. Not all of the 11 witnessed the strange events of the night. June Taylor was too frightened to look, and Lonnie Langford and his brother and sister were hidden during the encounter, which still left seven witnesses to the encounter. The police department requested the Air Force to investigate the happenings at the Sutton house. They also did a search of the house and the surrounding area, but without any solid evidence being found. The morning of the Air Force search, Lucky and Billy Ray had gone to Evansville, Indiana on family business. The five remaining witnesses to the events of the night before were interviewed by Air Force personnel, giving their full account of the night of terror. The story of the small aliens spread quickly and the Kentucky New Era newspaper published a story of the family's encounter on August 22, 1955. In the beginning, most of the public believed the Sutton's were perpetrating a hoax, but if this was the case, what would be their reason? They made no money from the story, only accruing debt by damaging their house. Could all of their troubles have been to get their name in a local newspaper? All of the witnesses to the strange events of the night of August 21st, 1955 made sketches of what the creatures looked like. The drawings were practically identical. Almost a year later, the case was investigated by Isabel Davis. She believed that the Sutton's were telling the truth. Famed UFO investigator Dr. J. Allen Heineck also believed the account of the Kelly aliens and discussed the case with Davis. The case is still being investigated even today, and there have been many books and television specials made relating to the Kentucky events of 1955. Up next, a vampire stalks a New England family in the 1800s, and now science has identified the name of this monster. Plus, a room covered in gold, jewels and other precious items was created as a gift for Tsar Peter the Great, but what is also great is the mystery about what happened to that room. These stories and more when Weird Darkness returns. Warm, while waiting for me to arrive. And a warm toddy is not the best thing to drink if you plan on staying alert and flying around the world. Plus, the Mrs. seems to think I might have a lactose problem. Due to the severe boberigmas I came home with last year, that would be the painful and loud rumbling in the belly. That flatulence that hasn't flatulated yet? Well, so this year I'm asking that you instead leave me a plate of cookies and a nice hot thermos or mug of weird dark roast coffee. I just discovered weird dark roast coffee when Darren Marlar sent me a sample. It actually tastes like Christmas. It has a hint of cocoa and caramel, and I've been drinking a lot of it recently to wake me up early in the morning to work on toys and take care of the reindeer. And it comes in handy when having to stay up late at night working on my satellite maps to work out the best routes to take this year so I can get to your house quickly and safely. So, this year instead of milk, leave Santa a mug or thermos of weird dark roast coffee. Tell your parents they can find it right now at WeirdDarkness.com coffee. That's WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. And be sure to tune in to Weird Darkness every night from December 14th through December 24th, Christmas Eve, because Spooky Santa, that's me, will be here telling some spooky Christmas stories for you and your parents. That begins December 14th. Don't miss it. You can learn more at SpookySanta.com and then get your Weird Dark Roast Coffee at WeirdDarkness.com slash coffee. I can't wait for Christmas. He'd been in his grave so long that when his family dug him up to burn his heart, the organ had decomposed and was not there. Desperate to stop him from stalking them, they took his head and limbs and rearranged them on top of his ribs in the design of a skull and crossbones. He was a vampire after all. And in rural New England in the early 1800s, this was how you dealt with them. When they were finished, they reburied him in his stone-lined grave and replaced the wooden coffin lid on which someone had used brass tacks to form the inscription J.B.55 for his initials and his age. Now, 200 years or so after the death of what's now the country's best-studied vampire, DNA sleuths have tracked down his probable name, John Barber. He was probably a hard-working farmer. Missing his top-front teeth, he was no neckbiter. He had a broken collarbone that hadn't healed right, an arthritic knee that probably made him limp, and he had died an awful death, probably from tuberculosis, which was so bad it had scarred his ribs. The latest findings in a case that started in 1990 when his coffin was discovered in a gravel quarry in Griswold, Connecticut are contained in a new report by, among others, experts at the Armed Forces Medical Examiner Systems DNA Laboratory in Dover, Delaware. The report was summarized in a presentation on July 23 at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, which aided the study and where the remains are held. The case is unusual because Barber may be the country's only supposed vampire whose bones have been studied by scientists. This case has been a mystery since the 1990s, Sharla Marshall said in an email. Marshall is a forensic scientist with SNA International in Alexandria, Virginia, who worked on the project. Now that we have expanded technological capabilities, we wanted to revisit JB55 to see whether we could solve the mystery of who he was. It is the latest chapter in a project that has cast light on the eerie vampire scare in New England, Connecticut and Rhode Island especially, in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and its connection to the spread of tuberculosis, or consumption, as it was called at the time. The highly contagious disease was so wasting and terrifying that those who died of it were believed to leave their graves, infecting relatives and draining away blood and life, scholars have said. These attacks were more mysterious and less graphic than those of the blood-sucking vampires of Gothic fiction. This was not bats flying through the night, said Nicholas F. Bellantoni, the retired Connecticut state archaeologist who worked on the case from the start and is one of the report's authors. This is not Bella Legosi, he said. But the terror they brought was real. Consumption often caused a bloody cough and left victims pale and gaunt with blood in the corners of their mouths, author and folklorist Michael E. Bell wrote. The emaciated figure strikes one with terror, recounted an 18th-century doctor quoted by Bell in a 2013 essay in the journal Criticos. The forehead covered with drops of sweat, the cheeks a livid crimson, the eyes sunk, the breath offensive, quick and laborious. The vampire's true menace seemed to come after death, and he had to be killed again during what Bell called therapeutic exhumation. Often the suspected vampire was a family member who had died of the disease and was thought to be infecting sons, daughters or a spouse. Family members were frequently the ones conducting the exhumation. Bell had documented 80 such cases, mostly in remote areas of New England. This was being done out of fear and out of love, Bellatoni said. People were dying in their families and they had no way of stopping it, and just maybe this was what could stop the deaths. They didn't want to do this but they wanted to protect those that were still living. People were desperate, he said. The best method of killing the suspected vampire was to check the exhumed corpse to see if any liquid blood remained in the heart. If so, the deceased was probably a vampire, according to belief. The heart was then removed and burned with family members sometimes inhaling the smoke to prevent further disease. Similar incidents have long turned up in Europe where there are many accounts of corpses being dug up, burned, rearranged, decapitated, or having stakes driven through them. In Barber's case, there was probably no heart to burn Bellatoni and Paul S. Sledzik wrote in 1994. So the bones of the chest were disrupted and the skull and thigh bones were placed in a skull and crossbones position, they wrote. After Barber's grave was discovered, his remains were sent to the museum for study and a sample from a thigh bone was sent to the DNA lab for analysis. But the technology a 30 years ago yielded scant results. The paper's authors wrote identification was impossible. But when modern tools were used, Y-chromosomal DNA profiling and surname prediction via genealogy data available on the internet, the experts said they came up with a match for the last name, Barber. They then checked old cemetery and newspaper records to see whether any people with the last name of Barber ever lived in Griswold. They discovered a newspaper notice mentioning the death there in 1826 of a 12-year-old boy named Nathan Barber, whose father was John Barber. Researchers had found a grave near JB's containing a coffin with the notation NB13, similarly tacked on the lid. The project began in November 1990 when an abandoned cemetery was encountered during mining at a sand and gravel facility in Griswold, according to a study by Sledzik, Bellatoni and colleague David A. Poyer. Human skeletons and crumbling coffin parts emerged from the earth, and two human skulls tumbled down an embankment when three boys playing there dislodged them. Investigators eventually removed the remains of 27 people, five men, eight women and 14 children from 28 graves in what scholars discovered was an old burying ground called the Walton Family Cemetery. One grave contained evidence of a coffin but no human remains. But it was grave number four that drew the most attention. Everyone was in good anatomical position except this one individual, JB55. Under his coffin lid, Bellatoni and his colleagues found the strange skull and crossbones arrangement. His thigh bones were uprooted from the anatomical position and crossed over the chest, he said. The chest had been broken into and the skull was decapitated and moved away, he said. I was totally befuddled. I had no clue what I was looking at. Research soon suggested a link to the New England vampire folk belief, he said. So JB turned out to have tuberculosis. Evident because of the lesions on his ribs, he said. We do believe that he was rearranged in the grave because he was believed to be an undead. Bellatoni said JB had probably been deceased four or five years when he was exhumed, which, based on his recovered coffin hardware, probably happened in the early 1800s. Here in New England we had large farming families, he said. Because they didn't understand the transmission of the disease, you had family members who were suffering from tuberculosis sitting at the dinner table with the whole family coughing and you had tuberculosis victims sleeping in one room with five or six brothers and sisters coughing. It was epidemic, he said. So what now of poor John Barber, the alleged vampire? Listen, Bellatoni said, he was a hardworking farmer, probably lower middle class, you could see it in his bones, you could see it in his arthritic condition of his vertebra. Hard, hardworking. Good Christian man, I'm sure. A stunning work of art made of panels of glowing amber, jewels and gold, the amber room was initially built as a chamber for Queen Sophie Charlotte at her palace in Berlin, Prussia. A meandering history of the amber room took it from Berlin to Russia and then its ultimate fate became a mystery that has never been solved. What makes this treasure so unique and valuable is its primary component, amber, which is the ancient fossilized resin from plants. Samples can range in age from about 15 to 300 million years old. When light shines on amber, the resin has a brilliant translucency that makes it highly valued by artists and collectors. Thus, amber commands a stunning price tag. Perhaps its best known and inspired use was the creation of the amber room. The history of the amber room goes back to Liedzenberg in Prussia. Liedzenberg was initially the personal summer palace of Sophie Charlotte, who became Queen in Prussia in 1701. That same year, she requested that construction should begin on her chamber in her palace. The designer of the room was Andreas Schluter and the builder was Gottfried Wolfram, an amber craftsman. After Sophie died just four years later in 1705, her husband, King Frederick, who loved Sophie very much, named her summer palace Charlottenburg Palace in her honor. Even after her death, the king carried out Sophie's vision to build her special chamber. It took more than 10 years to complete, but once King Frederick displayed it, everyone thought it to be a stunning masterpiece. The Wikipedia article Amber Room describes the magnificent construction, saying, The amber room is a priceless piece of art with extraordinary architectural features such as gilding, carvings, 450 kg or 990 lb amber panels, gold leaf, gemstones and mirrors, all highlighted with candlelight. Additional architectural and design features include statues of angels and children. However, the room built for Queen Sophie was not destined to remain in Prussia. Her son had political ambitions that outweighed his sentimentality for the amber chamber. During a visit to Prussia in 1712, Tsar Peter the Great of Russia confided in King Frederick William I, Queen Sophie's son, on how much he adored this stunning room. In order to cement an alliance with Russia against Sweden, King William I presented the amber masterpiece as a gift to Tsar Peter the Great. William shipped the gift over water to St. Petersburg, Russia in 18 large boxes in 1716. Once in St. Petersburg, Tsar began renovations and added on to the room even more. It measured 55 meters with over 6 tons of amber in its final form in 1763. It was so majestic that people thought of it as the 8th wonder of the world. The room sat in the Catherine Palace of St. Petersburg, but it was not put on display as it had been at Charlottenburg Palace, and viewing was reserved for very few people. The amber chamber remained in St. Petersburg until 1941. In that year, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbosa. The Nazi acquisition of all art and treasure was a high priority, and they plundered everything they could get their hands on. Naturally, the amber chamber was a paramount target, and the Nazis aimed to take it back to German soil. When Leningrad, formerly St. Petersburg until 1914, was about to fall to the German forces during the invasion, the Russians tried to move the chamber to a safe location. However, because the dried and fragile amber crumbled, they instead designed to disguise it by placing wallpaper over the panels to make it look like an ordinary room. The Germans, however, were not fooled. They knew exactly where the room was, and they were prepared to transport it. Within 36 hours, the Nazis dismantled the room and placed it inside 27 crates on 18 trucks. Then they transported it to Konitzburg Castle in Eastern Prussia. Subsequently, they reassembled it and placed it on exhibition in March 1942. The war did not stay in Germany's favor for long. In August of 1944, Royal Air Force bombers heavily damaged Konitzburg and much of the castle. On April 9, 1945, the Germans surrendered to the Soviets who took siege of Konitzburg and forced the Germans out. They renamed the city Kaliningrad, and today it still belongs to Russia. Although there are numerous theories about the history of the amber room, these are a few of the most popular. Nazis disassembled the room again and placed it on crates at a railway station. Then they put it aboard the Wilhelm Gustav German military ship, which left port on January 30, 1945. The Wilhelm Gustav sunk, shortly thereafter, by a Soviet submarine, taking the amber room with it. Nazis hid it in a basement bunker in Konitzburg. They then sealed it off, and it has been inaccessible ever since. Soldiers buried the room in the oar mountains. The fire at the Konitzburg Castle destroyed the room during the bombing, and Stalin hid the original room and built a replica that the bamboozled Germans stole. According to a Smithsonian article, a brief history of the amber room, the director of the Konitzburg Castle Museum, Alfred Rode, had studied the room while it was there. In late 1943, with the end of the war in sight, Rode was advised to dismantle the amber room and crated away. Where the Nazis hid it after that is the great mystery. Possibly a witness at the time, Leonid Arnstein, a lieutenant in the Red Army that took siege of Konitzburg in 1945, said that he went to Konitzburg Castle and saw pieces of amber relics. When he asked the museum custodian about them, Arnstein was told that the rest of the panels were boxed up in the basement. Because Arnstein did not understand the significance of the items at the time, he didn't pursue it. Days later, when he attempted to get back to the castle, it had already been engulfed in flames, as reported by NBC News and the article Mystery of the Amber Room Resurfaces. In that same NBC article, Avonir Avzionov, an official on the search and protection of missing art with Kaliningrad's regional government, stated that some portions of the room did burn in the Konitzburg Castle. However, he felt that it is likely the Nazis took away most of it before the Soviets had time to secure the city. Today, he and his team are still searching underneath the ruins of the war for clues to the whereabouts of the amber panels. Pieces of the original room have been found since 1945. The most recent finding was in 1997, when one of the four stone mosaics that went into the decoration of the room was recovered in West Germany. It was in the possession of the son of one of the soldiers who packed it up, but the son claimed that he did not know where it had come from. Recently in June of 2016, The New York Times published an article regarding possible clues to the location of the amber panels. According to the article, some Polish villagers who were alive in 1945 told the director of the Polish Mammerke Museum, Barlamiecz Plebenchik, that they saw Germans unload large crates from a convoy of vehicles. They said the Germans put the crates into a secret chamber in a stark, moss-covered Nazi bunker near the Russian border in early 1945. Plebenchik and his team used ground-penetrating radar to scan underneath the bunker, and they found what appeared to be a chamber. The team planned to dig under the bunker, however they have not yet published any findings. The Soviet Union commenced on the reconstruction of the room, using mostly black-and-white photographs in 1979. In 2003, the replica was nearly in completion. On the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerard Schroeder unveiled their new amber chamber. Today, the public is able to tour Catherine Palace and view the replica. Queen Sophie Charlotte's vision of her amber chamber manifested into one of the most splendid and coveted treasures of all time. Its mystery is still ablaze with the burning desires of governments, scholars and treasure hunters to find it. If the room still exists, the fragility of the amber may have turned it into something that scarcely resembles its original opulence that once was the crown jewel of Charlottenburg Palace. Judith Reipma has produced two collections of poems about the amber treasure. This excerpt from Twists and Turns sums it up perfectly. Finding Atlantis has proved much easier, inspired fewer theories, though not as many debates about who should receive the spoils of war. When Weird Darkness returns, weirdo family member Rita Gomez sees a ghostly child in her home. Visitors to a Pakistan flea market are horrified by a creature with eyes like a torch. What could this terror be? Plus, Montgomery Gibbs was a wealthy attorney and real estate man, and his murder baffled police even after they had someone confess to shooting him. These stories are up next. We've come back around to the time of year where you have to go looking for a new calendar for 2021. What'll it be this time? Cute cats? Again? A word of the day? How cliche. How about a 2021 cryptid calendar? 12 months of creepy yet beautifully painted scenes from master artist and fellow weirdo Timothy Wayne Williams. Once you've soaked in the gorgeous imagery, you can take it to the next level because every scene also contains a hidden hominid. And you know Bigfoot is the hide-and-seek champion. I've seen many of the original paintings used in this calendar and I've only found Bigfoot about half the time, but he is there somewhere. And with the 2021 cryptid calendar, you'll have a whole month at a time to look for him. And if you give up looking, you can even email the artist personally and he'll point out our hairy friend for you. Get it now before orders get overwhelming. The 2021 cryptid calendar, you'll find a link to it at WeirdDarkness.com. Want to receive the commercial free version of Weird Darkness every day? For just $5 per month, you can become a patron at WeirdDarkness.com. As a patron, you get commercial free episodes of Weird Darkness every day, bonus audio, you get a free membership at Roasters Marketplace, the home of Weird Dark Roast Coffee, and you also receive chapters of audiobooks as I narrate them, even before the authors and publishers do. But more than that, as a patron, you're also helping to reach people who are desperately hurting with depression and anxiety. You get the benefits of being a patron and you also benefit others who are hurting at the same time. Become a patron at WeirdDarkness.com. It started when I was home alone one day. I was sitting in the TV room exercising to a cable show when I saw a small child peeking from around a bedroom door. Even though I knew no one was home, I got up and looked into the room. This bedroom had two doors, so I went to one door then the other. But no one was there. It kind of bothered me for a while, so the following week, I visited my mother and I told her about the incident. My mother told me that my niece, who was a child, was killed by a family member by accident in our driveway, would do that all the time. My mom said she believed it was her playing peek-a-boo with me. So the following week, I actually had a dream of her. The family cemetery where she is buried was different in my dream, but I was there to visit her. There were other family members there, but I was a child. I heard a squeaky pinwheel that was making a sound that sounded like a child's cries. I was so concerned, so I called my sister and told her that she had to visit my niece Julie at her grave because she thought that she was being forgotten. I visited the graveyard and cleaned up her area and never experienced anything else from her again. Now I visit the cemetery more often because now my mom and dad are buried there. The Shershaw Flee Market in Pakistan, which is touted by some as the biggest market for scrapped goods in South Asia, has now become a haunted site for some. The sighting of a mysterious out-of-the-world creature at the market has sparked fear in many traders working there. The traders, as a result, have started closing their shops earlier than before. It all started more than a week ago when a watchman, Gulzar, was performing his duties outside a warehouse. He heard dogs barking nearby and got up from his chair to see what was going on. Gulzar said that he felt a strange sensation as he was walking towards the area where the noise was coming from. He then spotted a strange creature and ran away. The creature was black and its eyes were as bright as a torchlight, he said. Gulzar has been working as a watchman for the last 25 years. He said, I've never seen anything like that before. Gulzar shared his encounter with other watchmen, but no one believed him. The next day, another watchman, Abdul Qayyam, was taking a round of the area when he spotted the same creature. The two watchmen claimed that the creature had even killed 11 goats at the warehouse. Soon, rumors started making the rounds, leading to fear and panic. Some have claimed that the mysterious figure is five feet tall, others claim it can jump up to 20 feet. Not everyone believes the story, though. A person who works at the E. Flea Market said that he thinks somebody is probably pulling a prank and there is no truth to the sightings. Some traders even approached the Jehanabad police asking for them to investigate the matter. A policeman, Muzammul Shah, said they received many reports about sightings of such a figure, adding that they are still investigating the matter. Peace was disturbed in a fashionable Buffalo, New York neighborhood on April 18, 1894 by three gunshots fired at 10 p.m. on Delaware Avenue near Bryant Street. Neighbors hurried outside and found a man lying in a carriage driveway between two houses, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the temple and another to the shoulder. He was rushed to General Hospital, where he died three minutes after being admitted. The dead man was later identified as 33-year-old Montgomery Gibbs, a successful attorney and real estate developer. He lived with his brother Clinton on Main Street within walking distance of the murder scene, but no one could explain what he was doing there. Montgomery Gibbs had many acquaintances and belonged to several fraternal organizations, but no one could say that they knew him well. He was a private man, even his brother Clinton knew nothing of his romantic life or the details of his business dealings. Suicide was ruled out. The wounds, positioned as they were, could not have been self-inflicted and no pistol was found at the scene. Robbery was considered. Burglars and footpads had been operating in the area, but they were not known to commit murder and nothing had been stolen. It appeared that Gibbs had been intentionally killed. With no visible clues, the police kept the details of their investigation secret and the newspapers began investigating on their own. The Buffalo Evening News believed that Gibbs was lured into a trap. They put together a timeline of his movements that night and he was seen by several people walking leisurely up Delaware as if to keep a 10 o'clock appointment. The news concluded that Gibbs was killed by a woman. The angle of the wound to his temple indicated that it was fired by someone shorter than he was and a woman's footprint was found in the hedges near the body. The police also believed that the killer was a woman but would not elaborate. What was not revealed to the public was that shortly after the murder, the Buffalo Evening News received an anonymous letter purporting to be from the killer. The writer said she was a 17-year-old girl who Gibbs had seduced eight months previous under the promise of marriage. He refused to keep his promise. Pregnant and desperate, she lured him to the spot on Delaware Avenue and shot him. She expressed no remorse and was glad that he would never ruin another innocent girl. The police and the paper were unable to track down the anonymous writer. At the coroner's inquest, the police were forced to admit they had no clue as to who killed Montgomery Gibbs. The jury ruled that he was shot by a person or persons unknown. That was how matter stood until the following October when a young woman in Cleveland, Ohio confessed to killing Gibbs. The Cleveland police had received a tip that Clarence Robinson, currently in their custody for burglary, had murdered Montgomery Gibbs in Buffalo the previous April and that his wife, Sadie, was also involved. 19-year-old Sadie Robinson told the police that Clarence was innocent of the killing and that she fired the shots that killed Gibbs. The Buffalo police quickly charged Sarah Sadie Robinson as a fugitive from justice and brought her to Buffalo. Once in custody in Buffalo, Sadie said that her confession in Cleveland had been a lie and refused to say anything more. Meanwhile in Cleveland, Clarence Robinson confessed to trying to rob Gibbs at gunpoint on April 28. He said that he fired two shots but the shot that killed Gibbs was fired by his wife, Sadie. He seemed relieved to finally confess the crime. In Buffalo, both Robinsons were indicted for a first-degree murder and Clarence Robinson was extradited from Cleveland to Buffalo. They now separately confessed, telling virtually identical stories except that Clarence said that Sadie fired the murder shot. Sadie said Clarence fired all the shots. Clarence Robinson, aged 23, had spent most of his adult life in prison. After his last prison term, he married Sadie and purchased a minstrel troupe. They traveled with the show, losing money at every stop until they found themselves penniless in Buffalo. Clarence decided to return to robbery and Sadie joined him, dressed as a man wearing his trousers and a slouch hat. On Delaware Avenue, they planned to stop a wealthy-looking man and rob him at gunpoint. Clarence thought Montgomery Gibbs was a prime candidate but Sadie thought he was too big. When Clarence drew his revolver, Gibbs, who was tall and athletically built, grabbed his arm. In the struggle that followed, Clarence's revolver went off twice. Then, according to Clarence, Sadie, who was also armed, fired the third shot. According to Sadie, she stood frozen with fear and watched as Clarence fired the shot that killed Gibbs. Clarence also confessed to writing the anonymous letter to the Buffalo Evening News to try to lead the investigation in the wrong direction. Clarence and Sadie Robinson were tried together in March 1895. They both pled not guilty, recanting their confessions, claiming that they were made under duress with false representations made by the police. The prosecution relied on expert witnesses who asserted the cartridges found at the scene were from a revolver owned by Clarence Robinson and that the handwriting of the anonymous letter matched that of a letter Clarence had sent to Sadie. The defense called Sadie Robinson as a rebuttal witness after chief of detectives Cusack testified to the circumstances of her confession. She claimed the police had induced her to implicate Clarence, implying that she could get the reward offered. Aside from Sadie's testimony, the defense offered no evidence, asserting that the prosecution had not proven their case or even proven that the Robinsons had been in Buffalo that night. It was assumed that the jury would find the Robinsons either guilty or not guilty of first-degree murder. But they surprised everyone, including the defense attorney, when they found Clarence Robinson guilty of second-degree murder and Sadie Robinson guilty of manslaughter. They had saved the Robinsons from the electric chair, but Clarence was sentenced to life in prison and Sadie to 20 years. Tell Someone Else About The Podcast Recommend Weird Darkness to your friends, family and co-workers who love the paranormal, horror stories or true crime like you do. Every time you share the podcast with someone new, it helps spread the word about the show and a growing audience makes it possible for me to keep creating episodes as often as I do. Plus, telling others about Weird Darkness also helps get the word out about resources that are available for those who suffer from depression, so please, share the podcast with someone today. Weird Darkness made it to the number 5 spot this month on Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and thank you to everybody who has been voting. And please, go back and vote every day. Let's see if we can make Weird Darkness reach number 1 next month. To vote, visit WeirdDarkness.com slash vote or click the link in the show notes. Do you have a dark tale to tell of your own? Fact or fiction, click on Tell Your Story on the website and I might use it in a future episode. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. The disappearance of the Amber Room was written by Jim H. for Historic Mysteries. Aliens Invade Kelly, Kentucky is by Billy Booth for Live About. A Vampire's DNA Test is by Michael E. Ruane for Science Alert. The Child in My Bedroom Doorway is by Weirdo family member Rita Gomez. Creature with Globing Eyes terrorizes shoppers is by Auma Raymond for SMAW TV. And The Delaware Avenue Slaying is from Robert Wilhelm for Murder by Gaslight. Weird Darkness Theme by Alibi Music. Weird Darkness is a registered trademark. Copyright Weird Darkness 2020. If you like a transcript of this episode, you can find a link in the show notes. And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. John 1126a. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die. And a final thought, happiness is found when you stop comparing yourself to other people. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Whether you live paycheck to paycheck or live the life of royalty, whether you work as a cog in a machine or you're a celebrity, we all have one thing in common. We are all of us human. And I have yet to meet a single person who hasn't had times in their lives when they were struggling to keep it together, be it financially or because of a shattered relationship or due to mental illness or any number of things. The important thing is that you never give up hope. That's why Weird Darkness has the Hope in the Darkness page. There you can find help if you or someone you know is struggling with depression or anxiety or even extreme loneliness. There's free help through my friends at 7 cups. If you're having thoughts of suicide or know someone who is, you can call or chat with someone right now, again, for free through the suicide prevention lifeline. And my friends at IFRED are still doing what they can to research the causes of depression and to educate people on what they can do to reverse those dark thoughts, even creating a free curriculum anyone can download to teach kids how to bring hope to themselves and those around them. Find these resources and others on the Hope in the Darkness page at WeirdDarkness.com