S01 Episode 5: The events of September 14th, 1922

So far on this journey through the Hall-Mills story, we’ve been focusing on the background information about our main players and how they all came to be where they were in the fall of 1922 and now we have arrived at the other day that will live in infamy: September 14, 1922.

Hosted by Kaitlin Ormerod Hutson and Johnny Kavanagh.  
Chorus of voices: Ensemble of "Thou Shalt Not".
Sound design and editing from Erin Bogert and Sean Ullmer. 
Copy writing by Kaitlin Ormerod Hutson.
Copy editing by Karen Alvarado. 
Episode directed by Erin Bogert.
Produced by Karen Alvarado and Thinkery & Verse.

Want to support, work with, or give feedback to us? Email: thinkeryandverse.merchandise@gmail.com

Transcript

Podcast Episode #5 Script

Title: “September 14, 1922”

J: Hello and welcome back for another installment of That’s How The Story Goes: the Hall-Mills Murder Podcast brought to you by your favorite North Jersey theatre company, Thinkery and Verse. I’m your host Johnny Kavanagh.

K: And I’m your other host, Kaitlin Ormerod Hutson.

J: Last time we delved into the details surrounding the extramarital affair between Reverend Edward Hall and Mrs. Eleanor Mills: the timeline, the social climate, and of course the infamous love letters.

K: So far in this journey of taking you through the Hall-Mills story, we’ve been focusing a lot on background information about our main players and how they all came to be where they were in the fall of 1922 and now we have arrived at the other day that will live in infamy: September 14, 1922.

J: The last day that both Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills were last seen alive. 

K: Exactly, so from here on out we’ve actually caught up with the case itself and the rest of our episodes will focus on the aftermath of their deaths. But before we get there, let’s take a walk in Eleanor and Edward’s shoes on their last day, in so far as we know.

J: Let’s start with what we know about the whereabouts of Eleanor and the Millses. Accounts of her movements that day begin in the mid-afternoon shortly after lunch time when she calls Edward Hall’s home. Frances Hall answers the phone and tells her that the Reverend is out at the moment. Eleanor leaves a message with Frances to tell Edward that she needs help understanding something about her doctor’s bill for the operation he helped pay for. At 4:00 PM Charlotte returns home from school at which point Eleanor is at home. James Mills returns home from St. John’s around  6:15 PM and Eleanor complains that he is late for dinner. They eat and James Mills goes outside to work on some window boxes. Also after their dinner, Charlotte sees Eleanor clipping an article out of the New York World about Percy Stickney Grant and his views on the divorce question. Like we discussed last time, he was a prominent and controversial Episcopal priest who had written this article stating that he believed that the Episcopal Church should rethink their stance on not allowing divorces. Charlotte reported that Eleanor told her she was leaving to take the clipping to leave on Hall’s desk. At around 7:00 PM, Eleanor leaves the house for the first time and returns 15 minutes later. She leaves a second time, this time telling James she needs to go to a nearby candy store to return a telephone call to Edward Hall, the Millses didn’t have a telephone in their apartment, and returns home just before 7:30 PM. She doesn’t stay long, however, as James Mills says she simply grabs a hat and scarf and goes to head out the door. He asks where she is going to which she responds, “Follow me and find out.” She leaves and James Mills never sees her again. Several other people do see Eleanor, however. A motorman on the trolley that ran from Commercial Street to the end of Easton Avenue, basically across all of downtown New Brunswick, reported that Eleanor boarded his car at the corner of Carman St, where the Millses lived, and George Street a little after 8:00 PM. She gets off the trolley at the end of the line at Buccleuch Park and he sees her walking off down towards De Russey’s Lane. Another woman walking by on Easton Avenue also reported seeing Eleanor in Buccleuch Park and that there was no one following her. 

K: And that is the last known sighting of Eleanor Mills alive. 

J: Right, and as for the rest of the Millses that evening. James Mills continues working on the window boxes until 9:45 PM on the porch, annoying one of his neighbors. When he comes inside, he notices the missing page from the paper. Charlotte and Daniel, who had gone out to visit an aunt, come home at 10:30 PM. At this point, James Mills decides it would be a good time to go look for his wife who had still not returned home. After grabbing a soda water from a nearby store, James Mills goes to St. John’s to look for her around 11 PM and finds she is not there. He turns on the lights and closes the side windows. He comes home after 15 minutes and goes to sleep. He then wakes up at 2 AM and goes upstairs to check if Eleanor has returned home yet and discovers that she is still not home. He decides to go to St. John’s a second time to see if Eleanor had somehow ended up in the church and fainted. He looks for her in the pews, doesn’t find anything, returns home, and goes to bed. 

K: And that is what we know about the timeline for the Mills family on September 14th into the early hours of September 15th. As far as Reverend Hall and the rest of the Halls are concerned, their day starts a bit earlier a little before 10 in the morning that Thursday when Edward, Frances, Willie, and Edward’s 10-year-old  niece Frances Voorhees who was visiting, had gone for a drive and returned home for lunch. After lunch, Edward goes to a PTA meeting and Frances stays home making preserves in the kitchen when she is visited for a little while by Minnie Clark, another choir member and fellow Sunday School teacher at St. John’s. After his PTA meeting, Edward returns home to pick up the younger Frances Voorhees to take her with him to go donate some flowers to a local hospital. After he leaves on this outing is when Frances Hall receives the first call from Eleanor about the hospital bill and leaves that message for him we talked about earlier. Edward gets home for dinner at 6:30 PM at which point he gets the message about the missed call. After the Halls finish dinner the phone rings twice. The first time, no one answers the phone. The second time, Edward, Frances, and their maid, Louise Geist, all answer different telephones. Louise recognizes the voice on the phone is that of Eleanor asking for Edward. Before Louise can get him, Frances also picks up a phone and Louise tells her it’s for Edward at which point he comes out of the bathroom and answers the phone upstairs. Frances puts the phone down and returns to the patio outside. Louise overhears part of their conversation as Edward says, “I was going down to the church a little later. Can’t we make arrangements for later, say, about a quarter after eight?” After he hangs up the phone, Edward goes downstairs to tell both Franceses that he is going out to talk to Mrs. Mills about the question she has about her hospital bill. Now it is some time between 7 and 7:30 PM according to Frances Hall. This is the last time any of the Hall family sees Edward alive again.

J: However, they weren’t the last people to see him. The same woman we spoke about earlier who had seen Eleanor walking down Easton Avenue also reported seeing Reverend Hall going in that same direction just a little while later. She said he was walking at a brisk pace and kept glancing at his watch and a nearby clock and also reported no one was following him either. So it seems that this lady is the last person that saw both of them alive besides their killer.

K: Exactly! So spooky just this random lady walking down the street happens to see them both. But anyway, on to what the Halls were up to for the rest of the evening. After Edward leaves, both Franceses play cards for awhile. Frances Voorhees, the niece, goes to bed at 9 PM, at which point Frances Hall switches to playing solitaire. At 11 PM Edward has still not returned home so Frances leaves a light on for him and goes to bed but she can’t sleep. She goes downstairs about 2:30 AM to see if he had come in and she hadn’t heard him, but Edward is still nowhere to be found. At this point she wakes Willie up and they walk to St. John’s to see if anyone is there. The lights are off and there’s no one at the church. They then walk by the Mills’ house since Edward had said he was going to meet with Eleanor, but the lights are off at the Mills apartment so they don’t knock on the door. They walk back home and arrive around 3 AM and go back to sleep. 

J: And so this is where things start to get a little squirrelly, and we’ll get into more of the conflicting accounts of the late night of the 14th in future episodes when we talk about the investigation, but let’s just say this for now. We know that both Eleanor and Edward are last seen headed in the direction of De Russey’s Lane some time after 8 PM on the 14th. The next accounts from that area that night go something like this. A woman who owns a near by farm thinks she hears someone on her property. She’s been burgled before and thinks they might be thieves. She gets on her mule and rides toward the voices. She comes across two women and three men shouting at each other. She then hears a gunshot, a man goes down, she hears the woman scream, then hears three more gunshots. She says all this is around 10 PM

K: Other witnesses in the area are Catherine Rastall and Ralph Gorsline, a married vestryman at St. John’s. They had parked on the Lover’s Lane as well around 10 PM.  They heard voices followed by a shot, a woman’s scream, and three more shots. One other neighbor also reported hearing four gunshots around 10 PM.