0:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Standing alone in a small remote central Indiana cemetery is a weird feeling, you're alone, but you're not alone. 0:12 [SPEAKER_00]: These empty corn fields would feel insignificant, if it weren't for these hundreds of forgotten stones. 0:19 [SPEAKER_00]: As remote as it is, you're standing in the final resting place for hundreds of lives, and all of them matter, even almedas. 0:28 [SPEAKER_00]: But as I stand here, there 0:33 [SPEAKER_00]: that knew who this 18-year-old was. 0:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And as I speak these words, I am also reminded of the immense power that I have as a podcaster. 0:43 [SPEAKER_00]: My words are heard by 1.5 million people each month. 0:48 [SPEAKER_00]: So, as suddenly as a meet-as-life was taken in forgotten, she is now remembered, again. 0:54 [SPEAKER_00]: I all 1.5 million of you. 0:58 [SPEAKER_00]: I have no doubt that the man who murdered Mita knew her situation and might fully assumed she was a throwaway. 1:05 [SPEAKER_00]: If that term is new to you, I recommend that you listen to my soon to be released series on the foul play podcast. 1:14 [SPEAKER_00]: The season is called throwaways and explores the vulnerabilities of those on the margins of society and some of the ways that predators exploit them. 1:24 [SPEAKER_00]: I do believe that MEDA was murdered by the man using the alias Edwards and later arts. 1:31 [SPEAKER_00]: And I also believe that this man was very likely A.J. 1:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Choms. 1:35 [SPEAKER_00]: And I have to give credit where credit is due. 1:38 [SPEAKER_00]: He was right. 1:39 [SPEAKER_00]: Amida was deemed a throwaway by society in the 1880s and he got away with her mother. 1:47 [SPEAKER_00]: But in 2021, I may podcast or on a mission to change the way that society sees throwaways. 1:54 [SPEAKER_00]: After all, I was born too. 1:57 [SPEAKER_00]: So what do you say? 1:58 [SPEAKER_00]: How about we work together to remind the world of who Mita was? 2:02 [SPEAKER_00]: The world knows Darnwell, who H.H. 2:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Holmes was. 2:06 [SPEAKER_00]: So let's take some time to learn more about Mita. 2:09 [SPEAKER_00]: I will caution you, her story is one of pain and an unusual dose of sadness. 2:15 [SPEAKER_00]: And well, you already know how it ends. 2:20 [SPEAKER_00]: A Mita Eleanor Hewitt was born in 1870 near Dayton, Ohio. 2:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Her father, in Reheat, was a very abusive man. 2:30 [SPEAKER_00]: He would often beat his wife and was known in his community as an alcoholic. 2:35 [SPEAKER_00]: When little A Mita arrived, she too fell victim to his abuse. 2:41 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, he would beat her so horribly as a young child that for the rest of her life 2:50 [SPEAKER_00]: When Mita was eight years old, her mother finally found her way out, and she took Mita with her. 2:57 [SPEAKER_00]: Only a short six months later, Mita's mother was helping a neighbor drive up cattle, when her father slipped into the house, and abducted her. 3:06 [SPEAKER_00]: Media resisted as much as an eight-year-old could. 3:10 [SPEAKER_00]: She was taken to the office of the Miami-Sport Bulletin, and he kept her there as a prisoner until midnight. 3:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Then, under the darkness of night, he forced her to go with him on a train west to Wabash County in Ziana. 3:25 [SPEAKER_00]: She cried, begged, impleted with him, to be allowed to go back to her mom. 3:31 [SPEAKER_00]: However, that only made him beat her harder. 3:35 [SPEAKER_00]: When they arrived in North Manchester, Indiana, they lived at her grandmother's home. 3:40 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a hard life. 3:42 [SPEAKER_00]: She wasn't allowed to leave the property at all. 3:45 [SPEAKER_00]: And she was explicitly told that she was not allowed to learn to read. 3:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Her father threatened her, but if she told anyone, she was abducted, that he would kill her. 3:56 [SPEAKER_00]: Her abuse worsened over time, and her beatings evolved from the hand to a belt and to sticks. 4:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Mito was 10 years old, in 1880, when a wealthy childless family in Rowan learned of her situation. 4:11 [SPEAKER_00]: After a lot of back and forth, a written agreement was struck. 4:15 [SPEAKER_00]: Mito would be allowed to live with the wealthy family, and would be educated, and in return they paid her father a lump sum of money. 4:24 [SPEAKER_00]: Four years later, Mieta's father tells her that her mother died years ago, and he gave her an ultimatum. 4:31 [SPEAKER_00]: He would lie her go back to her comfortable life, and will leave her alone. 4:36 [SPEAKER_00]: But she had to do one thing for him. 4:39 [SPEAKER_00]: So out of fear of being killed, she swears in front of a clergyman, that her mother was dead, and then she attended her funeral. 4:47 [SPEAKER_00]: You see her dad wanted to remarry, and they would not allow it unless there was a witness to her mom's death. 4:55 [SPEAKER_00]: Meet his father remarry's, and she gets back to her education and soon starts working as a secretary. 5:03 [SPEAKER_00]: Her father comes to her often, threatening her for money. 5:07 [SPEAKER_00]: The times when she could not pay up would be the times she would go home with bruises. 5:13 [SPEAKER_00]: When her mother, who is alive and well in Dayton, Ohio, tries to get a divorce so she can remarry. 5:19 [SPEAKER_00]: The great lie is discovered. 5:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Meet his father is suddenly in a lot of trouble, and is facing jail time for breaking the law. 5:29 [SPEAKER_00]: As you can imagine, meet his life with suddenly in danger. 5:33 [SPEAKER_00]: In an effort to get away from her father, 5:35 [SPEAKER_00]: Mita moves to Chicago in 1884, at 14 years old. 5:40 [SPEAKER_00]: She lives with a wealthy woman named Ms. Turo at 99J Street. 5:46 [SPEAKER_00]: Ms. Turo was friends with the childless family, meet a lived with and ruin. 5:51 [SPEAKER_00]: In one day, when Ms. Turo took the train into ruin, she learned of the situation and invited Mita to stay with her. 6:01 [SPEAKER_00]: For two years, Mida lives in Mrs. Toro's home in Chicago. 6:06 [SPEAKER_00]: In 1886, she meets this mysterious man that I mentioned earlier, Edwards, Arts, and possibly Homes. 6:14 [SPEAKER_00]: They seemingly have a relationship, and Mita is well aware that he is using a fake name. 6:21 [SPEAKER_00]: I know this because of the letters she writes to her best friend in Rowan. 6:26 [SPEAKER_00]: It's important to also note that this is the same year that we know that Holmes moved to Chicago. 6:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Mita tells her friend in a letter that the man is married, however his wife did not move to Chicago with him, and this also lines up exactly with Holmes. 6:44 [SPEAKER_00]: Suddenly, at the end of 1886, Mita leaves Chicago and returns to Rowan. 6:50 [SPEAKER_00]: I believe Ms. Tara learned of the relationship between Mita and this mysterious man. 6:56 [SPEAKER_00]: At the time, it was socially unacceptable for a young lady to be with an older man, especially one who was already married. 7:04 [SPEAKER_00]: It was socially unacceptable that it was better for her to go back to a town where her life would be endangered by her father's 7:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Soon after returning to Rowan, Mita starts exchanging letters, four times a week, address to H and Edwards, care of E.L. Drenning, a Chicago interior, Chicago, Illinois. 7:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Mita tells her best friend that he uses a fake name, owns a drugstore in Chicago and St. Louis, and that he promised to marry her if she returns. 7:37 [SPEAKER_00]: She describes him as a fine scholar, who spoke German in French, and that he looks older than he really was. 7:45 [SPEAKER_00]: By the end of 1888, Mita moves back to Chicago at 168 East Superior Street. 7:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Her mystery man gets her a job at a pictorial publishing company. 7:57 [SPEAKER_00]: On state, near 15th Street, within a month her body would be found floating in the lake, near Lincoln Park, her body was described as having long brown hair. 8:09 [SPEAKER_00]: She was short with large blue eyes. 8:12 [SPEAKER_00]: She was wearing a brown dress, but they large-checkered new market cloak. 8:17 [SPEAKER_00]: She had on a small gold branch, gold ring, and a gold locket. 8:22 [SPEAKER_00]: A couple days after her body was found, the mysterious man, going then by O.W. 8:28 [SPEAKER_00]: Arts, called the morgue and identified her body, as I'll meet a hewit, from Rowan and Diana. 8:35 [SPEAKER_00]: He stated that he was only a friend, and that made it confided in him that she was severely depressed and wanted to die. 8:42 [SPEAKER_00]: He spends a story about how she fell in love with a married man and Rowan, and that she killed herself because the man did not want to be with her anymore. 8:51 [SPEAKER_00]: At a time when the Chicago police was really overwhelmed, the run of the male story about a young girl who committed suicide because she was 18, and her married lover no longer one of her, was seemingly a welcome to close to the case. 9:07 [SPEAKER_00]: There are no existing records of Amida's death certificate, please report, or autopsy. 9:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Officials from Cook County suggested if a well-respected professional, such as a drugist, said she committed suicide. 9:22 [SPEAKER_00]: They likely just shipped her body back to Rowan without much documentation or investigation. 9:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And that seems to be what happened. 9:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Her body arrived by train back to Rowan, where her friends got together to give her a small funeral. 9:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Her burial plot was donated, and they were able to raise money to pay for a gravestone. 9:46 [SPEAKER_00]: While working out all of these details, I drove up to Rowan for the day to find where all of these events took place. 9:54 [SPEAKER_00]: There is currently no train station in Rowan. 9:57 [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the train doesn't run through that area any longer. 10:02 [SPEAKER_00]: After some digging, I did locate where the train station was back in the 1880s. 10:08 [SPEAKER_00]: If you find yourself in Roeanne, it's near the intersection where a long train caboose now sits just outside of the business district, which sounds a big grinder and it actually is. 10:21 [SPEAKER_00]: The town of Roeanne today is known for its cover bridge. 10:24 [SPEAKER_00]: The very bridge they would have taken meters body on to get to the cemetery. 10:30 [SPEAKER_00]: Our stone sits quietly in the old cemetery, between the cornfields of rural 10:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Her last name is misspelled on her stone, likely as a result of no family members participating in the funeral. 10:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Her friends probably just had it spelled as it sounded, HEWIT, when it's really HEWIT. 10:56 [SPEAKER_00]: So now you know the mysterious and tragic life of our Medihulate, of Roan and Deanna. 11:02 [SPEAKER_00]: One last time, I'll remind you of the poem her friends so carryingly had placed at the base of her gravestone. 11:10 [SPEAKER_01]: Here lies a rose, a budding rose, blasted before her bloom. 11:17 [SPEAKER_01]: Who's in a sense, did sweet disclose, beyond that flower's perfume?
Show full transcript (109 segments)
