Way back when King James II was attempting to bring his bride to England, her voyage hit some bad weather. So he blamed witches. Angie shares the North Berwick Witch Trials and how the king later regrets them.
Theresa takes things down a dark path as she wades into some true crime, telling the story of the Lady of Crescent Lake. Come for the terrible relationship where the wife goes missing. Stay for the part where the lake relinquishes her body years later, after it had turned to soap.
This episode pairs well with:
The last witch burned in Ireland
The Haunted Queen Mary
Transcript
Theresa: Hi, and welcome to the Unhanished History Podcast. The podcast were two compulsive net jobs. Joint forces became friends and started word vomiting history stories upon the other one. And the other one stands there and takes it. And then we switch spaces and allow the other one to vomit upon ourselves.
Angie: God, we’re glad in for punishment.
Theresa: Look, I’ll deal with what I have to deal with just to be able to get this story out.
Angie: I mean, honestly, yes, sir, if I’ve got to listen to Terere again, I suppose.
Theresa: I mean, it is spooky season and I did find something.
Angie: You’re welcome to be at the plasm and I’m sorry in advance. No, not ectoplasm.
Theresa: But we shouldn’t really worry about what my story is because you go first. And you want to tell people our names. Oh, I’m Teresa and that. I’m Angie. Welcome. Nearly 150 episodes and we’ve gotten this in. We figured this part out.
Angie: We know how to say our names most of the time without interrupting the other. Right. We’ve done it. We’ve peaked y’all. Well, OK, you know, there’s no way to start my story off. So I’m just going to I’m just going to go if you’re ready.
Theresa: I mean, that’s that’s why I was like, you should go first and we should quit talking about what substance my story may or may not have because. Oh, yeah, OK, it’s going to be 30 minutes till we get there. So this will be a great callback, but we have to abandon ship to get there.
Angie: Let’s go. My sources are three 60 on history. It’s an article by Sayima Bayes, March 5th of 2025. Agnes Samson, the first victim of the witch trials. This is not actually a source that I used, but a source that I found really interesting.
So I thought other people might be interested in as well. The National Archives of Scotland has a witches confession that is beautiful. Like the writing is beautiful. The words are not news from Scotland.
Bell, the N.E .W.E .S. is the earliest tract on Scottish witchcraft. It’s written around 1591 and is provided by the University of Glasgow. It’s pretty sick and cool to see, but also again, words are pretty. The font is pretty.
The words are not. There is a mental floss article by Bridget Katz from October of 22 called Agnes Samson, the quote, witch who confessed the plotting against King James VI. Historic Royal Palaces, which is one of my favorite sources, has a write up on James in Anne of Denmark. There is a BDC bite size called Case Study, James VI in the North Burwick Witch Hunt. And a historic UK.com North Burwick Witch Trial. So if you can tell, I’m talking about American history here.
Theresa: Yeah, sure. I brought it. OK.
Angie: So there’s a little backstory here. Last week, I finished a book called The First Witch of Boston by Andrea Catalino, I believe is how you pronounce her name. And this looks about a woman called Margaret Jones. She was the first woman executed for witchcraft in Boston, or rather, this is the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1648. So I was originally thinking that I was going to do my story on her.
But then I realized I would actually be really sad if you beat me to my current topic. So I decided I might do her later. But in the meantime, I really want to do the story.
Theresa: So what you just did was mention her name and said dibs and then went through the other story. Yeah, pretty much. Oh, OK. I’m just I’m just calling out your bullshit.
Angie: But here’s the thing. Even if I tried to do her story, there’s not a ton of evidence about it. So it would be like a five minute story. So there’s that. So then I remembered this other topic like I was like, oh, yeah, I completely forgot that that’s that’s an option. So I decided to do a little research when it hit me that James the sixth or the first, depending on which country you’re standing in, has this really interesting story.
So I started to poke around and was reminded of the North Burwick Witch Trials of 1590 and 91. So that’s something I’m going to give you. And you will recognize some names, I promise. So. King James, I swear he’s relevant to this story.
Theresa: I’d say I recognize that name. So so far, we’re off to a start.
Angie: We’re doing great. OK. So he is the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, right? But he basically becomes King in 1567 when she’s forced to abdicate and he’s just over a year old. We’re going to fast forward a little bit. It’s 1589 and he needs to marry like a woman, you know, I like how you clarify.
Theresa: Like obviously it’s not a chicken.
Angie: Yeah, well, because he had a soft spot for the fancy boys. So but like legacy, you need to continue the line and all that. So we’ve got a married woman. So enter in of Denmark, Denmark. James and Anne get married by proxy in August of 1589. Anne sets sail for Scotland in September. Not once, not twice, but at least three times. And she is stopped by bad weather each time. So she finally gets going and then her entourage, like her fleet of ships, endures the biggest storm in known memory.
So she’s basically sort of marooned in Norway for a little bit. Like these ships aren’t going anywhere because of how blasting this storm is. Now, James, on the other hand, he is staying at this gorgeous private castle called Seaton Palace and it has these beautiful, clear views of the Leith Harbor. Now, this is the harbor that Anne is supposed to disembark from her, from her fleet. But these storms, they’ve, they’ve obviously caused major problems, right? And it is her getting there is taking substantially longer than the original plan voyage. And what I can only describe as an absolutely romantic gesture, James and 300 of his besties set sail to retrieve her himself. Because if she can’t make it to us, maybe the storms won’t stop us.
Theresa: It’s like, you know, when you’re traveling on the highway, obviously northbound’s a little rocky, but maybe if.
Angie: Right? Yeah, I think that’s got to be what he’s thinking. So they also experience like the worst storm ever. And their fleet is battered the hell and back. Oh, shocker. So, I know, right? So they, they eventually, like they eventually get together, like they’re finally in the same place at the same time. And in the midst of, of what’s going on, um, James and Anna, they, they have what you would consider their honeymoon. They travel a bit of Norway.
Um, they make it back to Scotland. And in the meantime, Denmark is dealing with this legacy of witches who can command the weather, like the weather itself is beholden to these women. Like apparently this has been a long standing belief amongst Danish people that there are witches that can control the storm. So there’s a Danish minister of finance. He is a man called Christopher Valkendorf.
At the same time as like these, these thoughts are swirling about Danish, which is he’s accused of under-equipping the ships for the storm. So he’s got that. And that’s not looking great. He’s accused of under-equipping these ships and like very unprepared for the storm. And so he’s a little bit shaky on things. And then sort of points the finger a little bit at the Danish admiral, a man called Peter Monk, which I’m going to be honest, is like a terrible name for an admiral. In my opinion.
Theresa: And so wait a minute, you would look at him and be like, you can’t be admiral. Your name sucks. You need a better name.
Angie: Doesn’t sound like you don’t sound like an admiral at all. That’s just, that’s just me. That’s just me.
Theresa: But it is a funny dude with two first names. I mean, I did marry.
Angie: I have three first names when you think about it.
Theresa: And you gave your kids multiple first names as well. Yeah. What was I supposed to do? First one is Campbell. Second one is Anderson.
Angie: Okay, you’re right. I blew it. I’m sorry. Anyway, but also my husband’s not trying to be a Danish admiral here. So we got that going for me. Now these two guys are both sort of, um, oh, I should state, I should, I should back up a little bit and say the Danish admiral, Mr. Monk, he’s accused of not actually really knowing how to do his job, like in the simplest terms. And so the two of them are sort of looking at each other when it hits them. Oh, we could just blame the witches. Um, so they do.
I mean, I like the good old days. Right. They collectively blame this group of women in Copenhagen of casting spells to raise the bad weather because why not?
Right. Now, according to historian, Gareth Russell, who has this amazing book coming out in the US called Queen James. There is also this belief that witches can like fast travel. So the storm basically follows them home to Scotland. Cause of course it does.
What I find to be really funny about this belief is that if witchcraft in the way that they’re saying is possible is real and these women are in fact witches and they can fast travel. Why are they being captured?
Theresa: Because they didn’t know that this was cut. They didn’t know they were getting, they were getting caught.
Angie: Clearly. So there’s an investigation and it’s called form Denmark and people are tortured and they’re, they’re kept under these awful conditions and a woman called Anna Coldings named five other women as witches. And they all admit that they had seen the devil himself climb up the keel of princess Anna ship, princess and ship and, and like begin to create cause problems on the ship. And now this mind you is the ship that is supposed to carry her to Scotland. So long story short here, Coldings as well as 12 other women are then burned at the stake in 1590, which is unfortunate to say the least. Right. Um, it is really interesting to point out Anna Coldings was the wife of a nobleman who had previously had a bit of a row with the Admiral. Surprise, surprise.
Right. Now the thing that I find really interesting about this is she is a noble, like she, she’s not just some backwater healer that we often find in which trial stories, right? Like this is a woman who had good standing within her community.
Theresa: This means she’s going to have her lands up for being seized. There’s a money aspect. This is just like now. If somebody’s right, if somebody’s ended, it’s like, what’s the motive? Is it love? Was it money? What we, we tail it all this time. We’re going to off people for the same reasons today. We did 500 years ago. Right.
Angie: So just like just keep that in the back end, the back end noodle, I guess, cause I thought it was really, really interesting. Now I do have to take a quick sidebar and like give you a little snapshot about James at this time. Um, he hears all of this, of course, right? Like this news travels to him. Um, but he also hears that there’s a plot on his life. So he’s pissed because now there’s a threat to his new wife, but he is also dealing with the paranoia of a possible assassination, assassination attempt on him.
Now, what we need to understand about James is that while he is wonderfully educated and considered this great intellectual as time, he is also dealing with some very real mental games. Like there have been attempts on his life since before he was born. So when he finds out that this is happening, that there has been this supposed call for his assassination. Um, I think any normal train of thought he would have had goes right out the window for him and it’s obviously witches. So he basically, for lack of a better way of describing this, decides to host his own witch trials at home.
But now this is done, right? Now this is done because at the same time as him going out to get his wife and, and returning, there is this little town called Trannin and it’s in, it’s in East Lothian. Coincidentally, this is also East where? East Lothian. So Lothian L O T H I A N. It’s a part of Scotland. Okay.
Theresa: I say spelling it didn’t really help me located.
Angie: It’s a, it’s, I don’t want to say the county. I’m not exactly sure how they named the province, but that’s the area that it’s in. This is the seat in the home of Seaton Palace. The palace King James was staying at while he waited for his bride, bride to wife, just a little while sooner, right? Now David Seaton, the guy who like runs the joint is super boiled to the King, but he has started to become pretty suspicious about one of his servants. So like James comes to visit. He’s waiting for his wife, James leaves to go collect his wife. And in the meantime, all of this stuff starts like becoming obvious to David Seaton. This young woman is called Gaila Stunckin.
Theresa: Oh, here we go with another Claire Frazier bit. Yes.
Angie: I was like, if she does not get this, I’m going to be so upset. So locally, she is known as a healer. However, according to Seaton, she frequently disappears at night and he can’t figure it out, but it’s likely because she is assisting in like midwife’s duties, like she’s learning the trade. She is probably a young woman, like a late teen, early 20s, like, so she’s young. Um, and she’s learning the art of midwifery and he can’t really figure out where she’s going. So obviously she’s a problem. She gets arrested and tortured with a device with the really fun name of Pilly Winks.
Theresa: That sounds like kids were going to play Pilly Winks. No, you didn’t need all your vegetables. We’re not playing Pilly Winks.
Angie: It sure does, but I can assure you it’s not cute. And more closely akin to some screws.
Theresa: Oh, oh, yeah. Kids don’t play with those nowadays.
Angie: Not typically. We also don’t have tiny guillotines on our dinner table anymore either. I mean, really, we have all the fun toys gone. Bro, if you’re listening, we’ve got ideas. We would love to have our tiny guillotines back.
Thank you so much. So the other thing that Duncan is probably being subjected to is sleep deprivation. One of the, um, like go to forms of torture, um, investigative methods that which fighters and, um, which trial participants would do is subject these women to like days of sleep deprivation. So you’re in pain and you also haven’t slept and they’re forcing that upon you.
Like they’re making it impossible for you to go to sleep. Um, additionally, once she’s inspected, it’s discovered that she bears the devil’s mark on her throat. Now in news from Scotland, like I mentioned earlier, this is a pamphlet that’s like going around at the time and sort of telling everybody what’s going on, which makes it a really cool first person source. The pamphlet says, quote, Gaila Stunken was tortured with the pilliwings on her fingers and by binding or winching her head with a cord or rope, she did not confess until her tortures declared they had found her devil’s mark. It being believed at the time by due examination of which, which craft and which is in Scotland, it had lately been found that I believe the word they’re saying is devil, but it is spelled D I U E L L. And I’m unclear.
I’m assuming that is a Scottish term for devil. Thus generally mark them with a privy mark. So at this point, Gaila Stunken of course confesses and then proceeds to name other witches from both Edinburgh and the East Lothian area. She says these witches are behind the attempt to sink the kingship. She’s convicted and executed by being strangled and then burned because double tattoos can’t kill them once you got to kill them twice.
Theresa: I mean, I respect the thoroughness if nothing else, literally nothing else. Literally.
Angie: Now, some of the others that are accused are Agnes Sanson, Agnes Thompson, Dr. Fien, which is goes by the alias John Cunningham. I’m unclear why Barbara Napier and Effie McCallaghan to name just a few of them. In total, there’s around 70 people that are implicated in this case. And you can imagine that most of these are tortures in a process. Now, up to this point in time, most witch trials are sort of handled like locally with like the local magistrate or however your form of government works.
It’s not handled on a greater level than that, but James is not having any of that. And so he orders the accused to be brought to him in Edinburgh so he can be personally involved in their interrogation, which is like completely unheard of. And the first time a royal is involved.
Theresa: So good news. Now, he gets to meet the king. He’s he’s super excited to see you. That is, you’re going to love this quote. It’s both positive and negative. And we typically refer to the positive connotations. I’d say he’s more super biased. Yeah.
Angie: Now, Agnes Thompson gives this super detailed story saying, quote, a coven with as many as 200 other witches that had met the devil in the Kirk of North Burwick had come and how he had it, excuse me, and how he had instructed them to use spells and throw a dead cat into the sea to create a great storm, which was intended to waylay King James ships as he traveled back from Devin Mark with his fiance. Apparently the devil had told the witches that the king that the king is the greatest enemy he has had in the world. Okay. So King James hears this and he is like, well, obviously I’m I’m God’s chosen. Clearly.
Yeah. I’m I’m the favorite. Like you’re not wrong, Miss Thompson. Now Dr. James, he’s the local schoolmaster. He has his legs put in boots, which basically this is a brand new form of torture to me.
When I was reading this, I had no idea that this was a method, but this basically means that his legs are put into these like super tight clamps and then wedges are of wood are hammered into them. Oh, yeah. Right. Eventually this crushes his legs. And once that’s done, the king and counsel decide he would be made an example of so they burn him at Castle Hill in Edinburgh in late January at 1591.
Just as a way of like, I don’t know, behave, I guess. Now then there’s Agnes Sampson and she is really interesting in my opinion. She is this healer who initially had denied the charges brought against her. That was until she is completely shaved down head to down her head with rope, which caused a pain quote, most grievous and then inspected for the devil’s mark. So she is. She is victimized in the worst sort of way. Eventually they discover the devil’s mark in what they find as quote upon her privates.
Theresa: So they, they investigated thoroughly, thoroughly.
Angie: And so you can imagine with this sort of humiliation that she is experiencing, she confesses to whatever they say. Like, sure, I’ll tell you whatever you want to hear. Right. I’ll create a great story for you. The mental floss article gives a really good description of her story saying quote on Howley Knight, she claimed 200 witches sailed to a church in North Borwick, North Borwick, a seaside town in the county of East Lothian near Edinburgh. There they danced and sang until the devil appeared and the guys of the man. He proceeded to bend his bear bottom over the church pulpit and demand that the assembled witches kiss his buttocks in sign of duty to him, which they did. It goes on to say that Sampson also confessed to a nefarious plot to murder James with black magic. She said that after the King sailed aboard in 1589 to Mary Anna Denmark, the North Borwick witches baptized the cat, bound it with a dead man’s bones and tossed the animal into the sea, creating a hex that caused severe storms to plague James’s journey.
The said witch declared that his majesty would have never come home safely from the sea. Now. For his part, James appears to be pretty skeptical about most of this until supposedly and whispers to him the private things that him and his wife talked about on their wedding night.
Theresa: No, see that part’s great. I’m glad that he was skeptical about baptizing a cat, which is a fate I wish on most people. Oh, you pissed me off. May you baptize cats today. Like what?
Angie: Uh, unfortunately for her, that seals her fate and she is strangled and burned. Several more of the accused would lose their life in similar ways. Now, this happened over the course of roughly six months. It’s believed that those who were not executed died of their injuries related to the torture that was inflicted upon them. The North Borwick trials were the first in a series of witch trials and panics that swept through Scotland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These events convinced King James that witches were real and they were a threat.
And that’s when he started his work on the book, humanology, that would first be published in 1597. And I have a very charming piece of art. If you would like to see it.
Um, I always, always. This one is quite a doozy. I’m not sure if it’s, I’m going to have to scroll up and down. I need to give it a second. Oh, okay.
Theresa: So this is a full, full image. Scroll back up. Okay. So she’s showing me an image. It’s a high up in a canopy because scroll up. Don’t scroll down. Oh, I see.
I’m sorry. There you go. There.
That’s the time. I think I did say scroll down, but I use the word don’t in front. Whatever. So you see like up high in the tree tops, you know, so there is a naked woman writing a goat backwards. She’s got a pitchfork that has some sort of cauldron in it that is roasting something there’s like like sticking out or that smoke. Yeah.
It’s very intense thing. Everybody looks like they have not like. There’s there’s a bunch of just nudity. You can scroll down now. I’m nudity everywhere. Yeah. Lots of naked naked women. and very long nipples.
Theresa: The long end of nipples.
Theresa: Well, that was clearly her devil’s mark. Or the fact maybe she’s breastfeeding.
Angie: She looks to be elderly.
Theresa: But if you’ve got digits sticking out of your mammaries.
Angie: I knew the seizure was just going to mess with your brain for the next forever. And I’m not sorry. No. Terrary.
Theresa: You’re right. This image is haunting.
Angie: Yeah. It’s gnarly. But this is supposed to be, my understanding is this is a description of the debauchery that occurred to make the storms that caused James and Anne’s ships to be waylaid. Now, not that it matters because he allowed this to happen in the first place. But later in life, he sort of recanted on his stance on witchcraft and was like, well, maybe they weren’t actually doing the things they said. But like, you know, this is years later by that point. And you already condemned them to death. So there’s that. Yeah.
Theresa: You can’t go free them from their grave and be like, all right, you’ve served your time.
Angie: Where’s that cat in the dead man’s bones? Maybe we can get them back. Yeah. So that is just a brief overview of the North Berwick witch trials. There’s so much more history that’s surrounded and surround the time. But I thought it would be just a fun little way to torture people.
Theresa: Sorry. I appreciate that. You’re not sorry. Let’s don’t lie. We’ve been together for 144 episodes. We don’t lie to not become us.
Angie: Yeah. Now is not the time.
Theresa: I am going to tell you about the lady of Crescent Lake.
Angie: Of Crescent Lake? Correct.
Theresa: No, you said? Yeah. Crescent Lake. My sources, historylink.org, true crime, the lady of the lake by Mavis Amundsen, Olympic National Park, the lady of Crescent Lake, nation’s vacation, spooky national park experiences, this Halloween, Seattle Terrors Olympic National Park.
So you have no idea. We are sticking to the Pacific Northwest for this one. We are headed to our national parks and I did not include the National Park Service. My God, are you okay? You know, I don’t even mention syphilis. Damn. Sorry, Alessandro. We’re falling down. I bet you James had syphilis. One can only hope.
Angie: I don’t know, but maybe.
Theresa: Okay, so Crescent Lake and Olympic National Park for those playing at home, it’s apparently no stranger to bloody stories. There’s a legend of two local tribes that a bloody battle beneath Mount Storm King happened, that the mountain became angry, it broke off a hunk of rock at its peak and the mountain threw into a valley over the battlefield and the rock killed warriors, it dammed up the river and that’s how the Crescent Lake was formed. Okay, that’s the hell of a story already. Okay. And then generations of indigenous people would go near the lake because of the legend. Smart. They also had this belief that Crescent Lake never gave up its dead. Ooh, okay.
Angie: That was a lake like that in Michigan.
Theresa: Okay. Now, the lake held on to its dead until the lady of the lake surfaced in 1940.
Theresa: Okay, you ready?
Angie: Does she have a knife and is she handing out government? Handing out government?
Theresa: Yeah. Oh, sorry. You’re thinking of the Ethereum legend. A watery thing passing up.
Angie: So, while it’s the heath of Mawney, Python and the Holy Grail, but I guess it all goes back to the Arthinian legend, yeah. Okay.
Theresa: So, Hailey Latham Illingworth, she’d arrived to the Annipa Pulissa, she’d arrived to the Olympic Peninsula about three years earlier and she’d gone through two failed marriages. Okay. Again. That is unfortunate. This is the late 30s.
So, not the best of times to have a couple notches on your belt. Yeah. She’s a little lady.
Yep. January 8th, she’s born 1901. She’s born to a farm couple in Greensville, Kentucky. And she’s a young adult when she kept repeatedly moving west and she’s searching for a better life. And somehow she finds herself west of west at the Crescent Lake Tavern.
It’s now called Lake Crescent Lodge. So, if you’re there. Okay. Okay. And it’s here that she met a dude named Monty Illingworth and he becomes her third husband June 16th, 1936. Okay.
Let’s do it. Now, they apparently did not have the best of marriages. The word used to describe it as volatile.
Okay. And she had the habit of choosing the wrong man as indicated by two failed marriages. Now, Monty, he has this habit of not hiding the fact that he’s a white beater.
Angie: Oh, good for him. At least he’s doing it out in the open. He’s living his authentic life. Truly.
Theresa: And so she comes to work with bruises and black eyes. Oh. And she confides to a coworker that Monty had choked her and broken one of her teeth. Oh. Super chill. Okay. Now, five months into their marriage.
So, the honeymoon phase came and went pretty quickly. Clearly, yes. They get into a pre-dawn fight so fierce the police are called to break it up. Okay. Pre-dawn, which either means you fought all night long or you woke up with a passion. Yeah. Okay. And Halle shows up for work at a Port Angeles restaurant with bruises on her face and arms. And then the holidays approach in 1937 and she disappears.
Angie: I was hoping she was going to leave them.
Theresa: Yeah. We don’t get to stories like Lady of the Lake with this kind of opening and you thinking that she’s going to make it out alive. Yeah.
Angie: I guess that’s true. Thanks.
Theresa: You’re welcome. I’m just here for the realism. And it’s the night and morning of December 21st, 22nd that she just turns up missing. Those are the, it’s some time in that timeframe, right? Monti, he starts telling friends that his wife had run off with a sailor from Alaska.
Angie: Okay. Is that common? Do we get a lot of sailors from Alaska in this area?
Theresa: You know, I can’t say that I’ve been to Olympic National Park and asked around, but okay. I’m not that close to the northern part of Washington. Yeah.
Angie: I’m just thinking it, okay, because this is going to sound dumb, but in the book I just read, multiple women run off with Spanish sailors because they dock in Boston. Okay. You know what? Yeah. So I was thinking, oh, I wonder if this is like a commonality during the time.
Speaker 4: Maybe. I don’t know.
Theresa: Run off with the ship and sailor. Yeah. Okay. But either way, months go by. Her close knit family, they haven’t heard a damn thing from her. I hate this. Yep. And there’s a bunch of suspicion, but Monti is granted a divorce in 1938. And it’s here that he moves to California with the roommate of Halle’s sister.
So Halle’s sister’s roommate. Yes. I hate that. Okay.
All right. You said that and I had to like go back through and draw his diagram. Like what am I talking about? Yeah. What’s the family tree here? Now apparently it was rumored that he’d been seeing her romantically, biblically before Halle’s disappearance.
Angie: So, so he’s a philanthropist in Philander.
Theresa: Philander. Philander. Not a philanthropist.
Theresa: He’s not giving money to charities.
Angie: He’s giving other things. I was going to say, or he’s giving money to charity. That could be her name.
Theresa: That could be her name. Anyway, carry on. Okay. But it’s then on July 6, 1940, almost three years after she disappears, that two fishermen spotted the body of a woman, the lady at the lake floating on the surface of Lake Crescent. Now, the body’s taken to Port Angeles and that’s where a young medical student, Harlan McNutt, examined it. He noted the upper part of her face, her upper lip and her nose are gone. And that’s because her hands, like, oh, so little bits are exposed, fingertips are exposed as well. And so it seems that there’s a little bit of predation and that, but she’s remarkably well preserved.
So, okay. Her, there’s a little bit of an issue because there’s an unusual state to this corpse. The dead woman’s flesh had turned into something like ivory soap, McNutt described.
Like, okay. Like it had gone through this condition known as sapification. Oh, that’s a word. All right. Yeah. So, just in case you’re wondering, under the right conditions, you too can become soap.
Angie: I’m good. I’m so good. I don’t want to be soap. Yeah. Like, like fight club, but meets true crime.
Theresa: Great. Yeah. And okay. So Crescent Lake’s depth isn’t known with any certainty, but there’s parts that are likely deeper than a thousand feet. And so the body had been submerged in the deep waters of the lake and the cold had prevented decomposition. And then there’s salts and calcium in the water that slowly converted the tissue into a mineral-like soap called adipocere.
I probably said that wrong. And it’s just like soap. And the body, when converted in this matter, floats.
And so even though it eventually down, there’s ropes that have been connecting to the weights and eventually those ropes decayed and not cause the body to just go right up. Right. Okay.
That makes sense. So because, you know, there’s a couple of issues on the face. There was no ability for facial recognition or fingerprints.
They were able to make a positive ID on the body as Haley Lillingworth or Illingworth had, because of her physical max, she had hair color, they had dental record, they had dental records, dental records.
Angie: That’s amazing. Okay. And see like side story.
Theresa: When I had to have a little bit of oral surgery, they gave me laughing gas. And as they’re waiting for it to kick in, I probably scared the bejesus out of the poor tech in the room with me because I said, hey, do you have any questions?
I was like, I do. Is there a database for all of our dental records to go in that maybe corresponds with missing persons so that you guys could like match dental records like on a national level. Like I’m thinking like DNA, like fingerprint, like, yeah, I thought there was. There’s not.
Angie: Oh, and, and so you call every dentist in town.
Theresa: You have to know, hey, my wife, Teresa is missing. Great. Can I get a hold? What? Who is her dentist name? Can I get those records signed over and then can we upload it and then manually test? Not like, we’ve got a Jane Doe. We’re going to run her teeth against the record.
Angie: Okay. That’s insane. I thought it was a national database. It should be agreed.
Theresa: Okay, but there’s not. But anyhow, they’re able to match our girl Haley. Okay. Because of dental records. That’s amazing. Yeah. Okay. So there’s a visual inspection of the body and that, and then they also have a subsequent autopsy. This kind of gives more detail. They’re able, despite the fact this body is nearly three years old and has, you know, just been lost, they’re able to see that she met this super violent death. Her neck is bruised.
It’s discolored. Her chest shows evidence of extensive, extensive hemorrhaging. Oh, it shows that she’d been beaten and strangled. And though that there was little with which to make an identification, the body had a distinctive upper dental plate.
And that’s the clue that they were able to use to hunt down who she was and then subsequently back to her killer. Wow. Okay. So they’re able to get a hold of a South Dakota dentist who identified the dental plate as one that he’d made for her several years before. Okay.
So again, that’s like having to be like, okay, and who is her dentist? Oh, I have to like go from Washington. Six states away. Okay. Yeah. To use some code on town to find this.
Okay. Now, they also have another clue. The police had the rope that was used to tie it onto the weights. The rope was peculiar to Sears and Roebuck. And you see they were able to track it down to the tavern owner who had bought it to tie it boats. And the tavern owner, he remembers that a beer salesman had borrowed about 100 feet of rope to pull his truck out of the mud, but he never returned the rope.
Angie: That is wild. Like so much rope is probably bought and sold through Sears at the time that you would be able to match that back that way. And do you know who the beer salesman was?
Theresa: Her husband. Monty. Yeah. Because it always is. It’s always the husband.
Angie: I’m devastated. Like I really wanted it to not be this time.
Theresa: You know, yeah. When it’s not, it makes news, but it’s the husband. So the investigators, they close in on Monty, who’s living in Long Beach, California. And on October 26, 1941, he’s arrested and taken into custody by L.A. Sheriff’s deputies. It’s not long after he’s charged with murder, brought back to Port Angeles and put on trial for Haley’s murder in Callum County Superior Court. The trial begins February 24, 1942.
And was so sensational that it compete with news from the front lines of World War II. Wow. I mean, yeah. I mean, you find this nearly perfectly preserved body that’s turned to soap.
Angie: Yeah. It’s got like what? I think it would have been smart of him to join the military. He would have been able to like, I don’t know. But I’m assuming.
Theresa: He’s probably a little bit too old. Oh, yeah. You gotta wait for the war to get going a little bit where we’re really needing troops. Yeah. At this point, you know, it’s like, how are your knees? You look like your knees hurt. Your knees hurt. Yeah, we don’t need you. You can stay home a little longer.
Yeah. So the trial developments are splashed across the front pages of local newspapers daily, daily. Like this was the OJ Simpson trial of the time. Spectators are arriving early. We’ve got homemakers, teenagers, and just your standard true crime lovers that are in the courtroom for this nine day trial.
Okay. And Monty’s defense is at the dead one, not Haley. He swears. She’s a lot. Last time I saw her, she was alive. Where did you see her last time then, Bob? As I tied the weights to her and dropped her into the lake. Oh, I’m sorry. I strikes that from record. I didn’t mean to say that.
Angie: Oh, those were my inside thoughts.
Theresa: The dentist from South Dakota, he’s a credible witness and he insisted that the dental plate is Halley’s. There’s no way, no ANZIF or BUDS. That’s hers. I made it. That’s hers. Moreover, her friends identify the clothes worn by the dead woman belong to Halley. And the key evidence of that rope? Yep. Monty had borrowed 50 feet of rope from the storekeeper at the lake and the store still had remnants of the rope and the fibers matched.
Angie: Wow. Monty really did himself in, didn’t he? Yep.
Theresa: So it took the jurors four hours to reach a verdict and on March 5, 1942, the jury found Illingsworth guilty of psychotry murder and he was sentenced to life imprisonment at Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. And he served nine years prison. He’s paroled 1951 and he died November 5, 1974 in Los Alamitos, California. I don’t like that he had several years out. But I mean, okay. Yeah, I agree with that. Like, what’d you get out on parole for? I mean, and he was only in nine years. Your crimes were violent, Bub.
Angie: You’re not rehabilitated from that. Yep. Now, especially not in the 40s and 50s. You would think.
Theresa: Yeah. But either way, it’s just, we really need a lot of reform here, but these are things. There’s a contemporary of Haley’s that later observed that her murder was probably not premeditated. They probably got into their standard fight in their apartment in December of that, you know, that 1937 night. And it probably took a violent turn as per usual and then escalated and he probably strangled her to death. Hollis Fultz, a criminologist at Washington State Attorney General’s Office who’d helped investigate the murder, he maintained that Monty tried to conceal the crime by placing his wife’s lifeless body in the trunk of his car and driving the lake crescent. Monty then stopped in the vicinity of the present day, logged Cabin Resort and wiped his, wrapped his wife’s body in blankets and tied the bundle with a rope.
He then put the body in a rowboat, attached weights to the bundle, rode into deep water and then dropped the bundle into dark waters. And then the rumors started circling during the murder investigation that Monty didn’t act alone, but no one other than Monty was ever charged with the crime.
Angie: Oh, so he has an accomplice.
Theresa: Maybe, but I, you know, like, I think probably not. I’m going to assume there is no accomplice, that that was just a rumor.
Angie: Like we didn’t check out the tavern guy wasn’t involved?
Theresa: I mean, I’m sure we probably checked out we couldn’t find anything, but we’re like, this was so heinous, we have to have more people involved.
Angie: Yeah, we’ve learned that that’s not in fact the case. Right.
Theresa: Now, it’s rumored that her ghost lingers near Devil’s Punch Bowl, which is a popular swimming spot. Oh, I’m familiar.
Angie: I’m familiar with Devil’s Punch Bowl. There you go.
Theresa: This is a long one. If I was going to haunt something. I mean, at least some were pretty, right? Yeah. And this is kind of the area where her body found that was wrapped in blankets tied with rope. And then visitors to the area have reported seeing a spectral figure gliding across the water or simply standing on the shoreline at dusk. Oh, sometimes people hear faint cries or muffled screams at night. Now, I’m going to call hogwash there because we’ve got cougars.
Angie: I was just thinking that exact same thing.
Theresa: And boy, like there was one time, Hubs and I got into a discussion about what a cougar sounds like. And I said that it’s terrifying. It sounds like woman screaming. It’s like, if you hear it, no, you didn’t.
Yeah, don’t go on check. And he’s like, what do you mean? And I pull up YouTube videos with the sounds and he goes, oh, yeah, no, no, no, I’m good. I’m good. So there’s that. We’ve got that going for us. There’s also reports of sudden cold spots on summer days. Okay.
I don’t know how I feel about cold spots, but I’d be like, hey, look, an air conditioned spot on a 100 degree day. I’m going to maintain here. You guys carry on.
Angie: I think I’ll sit with this ghost. Thank you so much.
Theresa: Yeah. We’re having a nice chill. I’m getting my water bottle out literally.
Angie: I’m going to have my granola bar. You go ahead. Don’t sit too close to me. I’m fine.
Theresa: Now visitors to the area. Oh, I already said that. At the infamous Lake Crescent Lodge where Hallie wants to work, guests and staff have reported eerie conditions. They’ve experienced flickering lights, unexplained footprints or footsteps, and doors locking and unlocking on their own.
Okay. And then Hallie isn’t the only one that was found in the waters in Lake Crescent. In 2002, a Chevy was pulled from the water revealing the bodies of a couple who went missing in 1929.
Angie: So the Chevy and the couple were recovered? Yep. That is insane. Were they also soap?
Theresa: Unclear. It’s not said. So maybe it doesn’t say that they weren’t soap. Okay. But that really kind of makes me interested because it’s not like I could find all of these reports of like, hey, these strange things happened. And then I found out that there was a ghost. It seemed like we’d all heard this story. And then we went there and we saw the ghost.
Angie: So we sort of made ourselves believe that the ghost is there. That’s kind of what I’m feeling. Yeah.
Theresa: Because nobody was claiming to see the ghost before she turned up. Yeah, that checks. That checks.
Angie: But that’s how urban legends start though, right?
Theresa: That’s the truth. I mean, we hear this horrible thing happened and then we go out and we like, oh my gosh, I see the pattern. I see the thing. I feel the breeze. This is a cold spot. Ergo ghost. Always. Yeah. But the fact that it turned into soap, that was like one of the craziest things that I.
Angie: Yes, that’s not an end I want to meet.
Theresa: So when you grab a bar of soap that had been sitting submerged in the water too long and it’s a bit spongy. Thank you. You’re welcome.
Angie: Cool. Yeah, I’m here. You want to hear about torturing with boots again?
Theresa: You know, I don’t know if either of us had the ability to really get into the water. We were really in the story and so I’m grateful we both took a swing and failed two times.
Angie: Consider it a win. We did it. I’m not going to apologize to our listeners this time.
Theresa: No, you know what? It’s spooky season. Tune in next month. Be spooky.
Theresa: And on that note, goodbye. Bye. Bye.
Unhinged History 
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