Sep 30, 2026 · 46 min · 12 segments
Today, we're joined by Vanity Fair journalist Joe Pompeo to talk about the unsolved 1922 murders of Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills. In his book, Blood & Ink, Joe tells the riveting story of how this…
Joe PompeoGuest
Gavin WhiteheadHost
The discovery of the bodies leads to a wave of what you might call murder tourism.
What did the crime scene and its environs look like in the days and weeks after the homicides?
like I said, people somehow, you know, found their gossip kind of flew around town, small town gossip, you know, word got out that there was something going on at this Phillips farm, passersby on the road, you know, saw some, saw police.
They started coming to the scene or like I said, reporters, started coming to the crime scene.
So there was a lot of people very quickly on this farm, even before actual detectives showed up and made any attempt to actually do what detectives are supposed to do when there's a murder scene like this, which is collect evidence and secure the crime scene and that sort of thing.
So from the very start, there was kind of a circus-like atmosphere, like mobs of people descending on this abandoned farm.
The bodies had been found near this crabapple tree and people would come and, you know, pick apart bark and twigs and leaves from the tree because they wanted like souvenirs.
So the more that the papers in New York and the news wires, not just local media, were covering this, the more people learned about it, And the more it drew people, you know, from out of state, you know, in the weeks that followed, the newspapers would report on the license plates they saw.
And there would be, you know, cars from Pennsylvania or from Massachusetts or even farther than that.
There were reports that, you know, local vendors would come with signs advertising their businesses or that there was, you know, popcorn and balloons being sold to young children.
You know, really, it was kind of, you know, this kind of... macabre country jamboree in some ways, you know, for weeks, even after the bodies were no longer there.
But I think that some of the most eerie pictures are the pictures of eventually this crabapple tree that I mentioned.
You know, there's photos, you know, it's basically like just been hacked away to like to nothing.
It is eerie because it adds another kind of layer of violence to the whole thing, doesn't it? Hacking away the bark of the tree.
You know, if you read some of the newspaper reports, it'd be like, you know, an image of a father, you know, like maybe before the tree was completely hacked away.
But there was one description of like a father, like lifting his young kid up to a higher branch so he can get it.
And, you know, this kind of fits with the general, and this is kind of early in the 1920s, but this is a decade that became known for, just kind of like you know excess and frivolity and spectacle uh and also crime it was a very violent um criminal sort of decade so i think that this scene of you know the these people you know coming en masse to visit this this murder scene on an abandoned farm kind of fits with the times in a way
Well, you mentioned that this was a media spectacle pretty much from day one.
The discovery of the bodies leads to a wave of what you might call murder tourism.
What did the crime scene and its environs look like in the days and weeks after the homicides?
like I said, people somehow, you know, found their gossip kind of flew around town, small town gossip, you know, word got out that there was something going on at this Phillips farm, passersby on the road, you know, saw some, saw police.
They started coming to the scene or like I said, reporters, started coming to the crime scene.
So there was a lot of people very quickly on this farm, even before actual detectives showed up and made any attempt to actually do what detectives are supposed to do when there's a murder scene like this, which is collect evidence and secure the crime scene and that sort of thing.
So from the very start, there was kind of a circus-like atmosphere, like mobs of people descending on this abandoned farm.
The bodies had been found near this crabapple tree and people would come and, you know, pick apart bark and twigs and leaves from the tree because they wanted like souvenirs.
So the more that the papers in New York and the news wires, not just local media, were covering this, the more people learned about it, And the more it drew people, you know, from out of state, you know, in the weeks that followed, the newspapers would report on the license plates they saw.
And there would be, you know, cars from Pennsylvania or from Massachusetts or even farther than that.
There were reports that, you know, local vendors would come with signs advertising their businesses or that there was, you know, popcorn and balloons being sold to young children.
You know, really, it was kind of, you know, this kind of... macabre country jamboree in some ways, you know, for weeks, even after the bodies were no longer there.
But I think that some of the most eerie pictures are the pictures of eventually this crabapple tree that I mentioned.
You know, there's photos, you know, it's basically like just been hacked away to like to nothing.
It is eerie because it adds another kind of layer of violence to the whole thing, doesn't it? Hacking away the bark of the tree.
You know, if you read some of the newspaper reports, it'd be like, you know, an image of a father, you know, like maybe before the tree was completely hacked away.
But there was one description of like a father, like lifting his young kid up to a higher branch so he can get it.
And, you know, this kind of fits with the general, and this is kind of early in the 1920s, but this is a decade that became known for, just kind of like you know excess and frivolity and spectacle uh and also crime it was a very violent um criminal sort of decade so i think that this scene of you know the these people you know coming en masse to visit this this murder scene on an abandoned farm kind of fits with the times in a way
Well, you mentioned that this was a media spectacle pretty much from day one.
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