[Wrongful Conviction] The Ten-Minute Murder: The Wrongful Conviction of Oscar Slater

It takes a lot to shock investigators, but a murder committed in the exact ten minutes it took for a maid to step out for a newspaper is what did it in this case. No break-in. No clear murder weapon. And an elderly woman beaten with a level of violence that made absolutely no sense for a simple robbery. This is the case of Marion Gilchrist — a brutal crime, a botched investigation, and one of the most shocking wrongful convictions in Scottish history.

In this episode, we delve into the chilling murder of Marion Gilchrist and the subsequent wrongful conviction of Oscar Slater. We explore the flawed investigation, the flimsy evidence, and the public outcry that eventually led to Slater's exoneration after nearly two decades in prison. We also discuss the role of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, in the fight for justice.

Join us as we unravel a story of injustice, perseverance, and a murder that remains unsolved to this day.

TRANSCRIPT:

Marion Gilchrist Melissa

Mandy: [00:00:00] It takes a lot to shock investigators, but a murder committed in the exact 10 minutes it took for a maid to step out for a newspaper is what did it in this case, there was no break-in, no clear murder weapon, and an elderly woman beaten with a level of violence that made absolutely no sense for a simple robbery.

This is the case of Marian Gilchrist, a brutal crime, a botched investigation, and one of the most shocking wrongful convictions in Scottish history. 

Marker

Mandy: Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a True Crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa.

Hi Melissa. 

Melissa: Hi Mandy. How are you 

Mandy: I'm doing well. How are you?

Melissa: Doing Great. We're both a little punchy today and I always enjoy that. 

It's 

always, 

Mandy: you get holiday, Mandy and Melly, which is

also stressed out, Mandy and Melly, and we're so close to Christmas. I can,

I can hear it. Taste it, smell it. There's so much going on right now. We've been, I've had a lot going on at my house. My kids have been wanting me to cook like [00:01:00] different things and bake things and like this is the only time of year I really ever bake things.

So 

Melissa: I did, uh, cookies so we could decorate them. And I, I put everything together. I was the one that cooked 'em. I, I made the shapes and everything because all anybody wants to do is, you know, like paint them or, you know, put icing on 'em. Got all the different colors, and as we're doing it, my husband's like,

oh, this is gonna get on the tablecloth.

Like, ugh,

this is probably, I'm like, shut up. This is the holiday spirit. We're gonna enjoy it. If I haven't said anything, you don't get to 

say 

anything, so everyone

decorate your stupid cookie 

and 

eat it. 

Mandy: it.

Yes. 

Melissa: Yeah. So it

worked and everybody had fun and I was like, maybe we shouldn't push it. Maybe that's our Christmas activity.

Everyone had fun. Let's, we're done. we're done.

Mandy: yeah,

yeah, So my kids and yours as well are officially out of school now for the next two weeks. yeah, it's so exciting. My husband also took vacation time for the next two weeks, so we're all spending the next two weeks together [00:02:00] as a family.

Melissa: My husband does have off the week of New Year's,

but I don't know. maybe I'll be gone by then. I don't know. I don't even

know where 

I'm 

Mandy: mean? Yeah. 

Melissa: but I need to start planning.

Mandy: Yeah. So we definitely have the Christmas week mania going on right now. But yeah, we're here and we have a really interesting story this week. This is one that I'm not surprised I have never heard, because it comes from Scotland, so not, uh, it's not from a, an area that I would. Easily have heard about, but it is a very interesting story.

So on the night of December 21st, 1908, Glasgow's West End was doing what it always did in the winter, which was getting dark early, being very cold and very quiet. In a three story building. At 15 Queens Terrace, 82-year-old, Marian was settling into her normal routine inside the second floor flat where she had lived for 30 years.

She followed her own habits and rituals and she even had her own [00:03:00] safety precautions, And this particular night was no different. Marian was a wealthy, unmarried, and extremely careful woman. Her home was separated from the rest of the world by the main door of the building that was downstairs, and then of course, the door to her private flat upstairs.

She kept both doors secured constantly, and she took her own safety so seriously that she even told the man who lived under her, who was named Arthur Adams, that if anything ever went wrong, she would knock three times on the floor with her walking stick. And that was gonna be the signal. Like if you hear me knock, but on the floor three times, you know something's wrong.

I need help. 

Melissa: There's a song about that, but it's the opposite. 

Not 

knock three times on the ceiling. 

This is a little bit different 

Mandy: Yeah. Yeah. But this wasn't, this was a little more than just paranoia. Marian really believed at some point that someone had been inside of her home and that fear that she felt really stuck with her, and she just wanted to know that somebody was looking out for her.[00:04:00] 

Her world really was pretty small. It was pretty much just her home where she lived, and her maid, Helen or Nelly, and her routines. And one of these routines was that every evening around 7:00 PM Nelly would go out to buy M in her daily newspaper. This was about a 10 minute round trip. Marian would stay inside with the doors locked, waiting for Nelly to return.

But on this day, and in this case, that little 10 minute window became everything at 7:00 PM on the dot, Nelly left through the downstairs door. She locked it behind her, and she walked to go get the evening paper inside the flat. Marian was alive and well, there were no signs of trouble and nothing to suggest that anything would happen in the short time that her maid had stepped out.

But while Nelly was gone, something actually did happen almost instantly. Arthur Adams, the downstairs neighbor, and his sisters heard a loud thud from the flat above, and then three sharp knocks, which was the exact [00:05:00] signal that Marian said she would be using if she needed help. and when Arthur heard those three knocks, he didn't ignore it. He went straight upstairs. When he got to the landing, he noticed something that immediately felt off. He noticed that the downstairs door was unlocked, even though Nelly always locked it behind her.

He rang Marian's bell twice and got no answer From outside. He could see the gaslight burning in the hallway, but the flat was otherwise very quiet and didn't appear to have any movement inside.

Then he heard another strange noise, and it was something he later described as sounding like someone chopping sticks, and he said the whole thing just felt really wrong, but he didn't knock or enter, and eventually he went back downstairs to his own home and he really was just unsure what to make of everything.

Arthur's sisters weren't satisfied with any of that, so they pushed Arthur to go back again and take another look. At that exact moment, fate really synced up and [00:06:00] Arthur reached Marian's door at the same exact time that her maid Nelly returned from running this errand that only took 10 minutes to go get the newspaper.

When Arthur told Nelly what he heard, he told her about the thud, the knocks, and the weird chopping sound. Nelly kind of brushed it off as probably just the pulley in the kitchen needing grease or something. She unlocked the door herself using two of the three locks, and the third lock that was on the door was usually only secured overnight.

When she stepped inside, everything looked normal for really just one second, and then it instantly became clear that something was very wrong.

Melissa: With the door open, Nelly walked inside ahead of Arthur and turned towards the kitchen. As she moved down the hallway, a man appeared from one of the bedroom doors. He wasn't running, he wasn't panicked. He just walked towards the exit. He actually passed directly between them, brushed right past Nelly and headed downstairs outta the building. Neither one of them stopped him. They really didn't even understand what they were [00:07:00] seeing or you know what was going on. the man was later described as being youngish about five foot seven wearing a light or fa colored overcoat and a cap. Nelly said his walk was peculiar, almost like he was shuffling. Arthur thought he looked like a gentleman and something else stood out. Nelly really didn't react with shock or fear, which later led people to question whether the man was actually a stranger to her at all. The moment he disappeared out the door, Nelly turned towards the back rooms. She first checked the kitchen, then the halls, then one of the bedrooms. Finally, she walked into the dining room and everything. She dismissed seconds earlier, suddenly made sense. Miriam was lying face down on the floor in front of the fire, partially covered by a rug. When they pulled it back, the scene was horrific. Marian had been beaten with such extreme violence that her skull was shattered. She had multiple wounds to the head and face, and one of her eyes had been dislodged from [00:08:00] its socket. Doctors later said that only a fraction of the force used would've been enough to kill her nearby. The fire irons and surrounding floor were covered in blood and tissue. A wooden coal scuttle sat just outside the fireplace fender, and it appeared that Marian may have hit her head on this as she fell. Investigators

later found an auger in the house. I had to look up what this was. It's like that thing that you drill into the ground that's like a corkscrew like I I

Mandy: I actually 

Melissa: figure out. 

Mandy: it was because, well, only because,

only because my husband has like, used it before and like I've been like, what's that thing called? Um, 'cause I had seen it like, like you said, I would describe it the same way you are, 

Melissa: Yeah. It's a corkscrew thing that goes in the 

Mandy: Yeah. Um, and yeah, my husband was like, yeah, that's actually called an auger.

I was like, oh, well I learned something new that day.

Melissa: Well, there you go. Didn't bother to teach it to me though. Um, I had to Google. Just kidding. And, uh, on this auger though, there were traces of blood and gray hair, but they could never match. [00:09:00] It conclusively to the injuries. the murder weapon was never definitively identified, and there were no signs of forced entry.

No broken locks, no smash door, no pry marks on the doors. Whoever attacked Marian got in quietly and left quietly and did it all. In the 10 minutes, her maid was gone. That window of time was impossibly small and right away it told investigators one alarming thing. Either the

killer got extraordinarily lucky, or he knew exactly when Marian would be alone. 

Mandy: When police arrived at Marian's Flat, the first priority was determining what actually happened in that 10 minute window when Nelly had stepped out the scene didn't look like a typical burglary. Yes, there were papers and jewelry boxes scattered in one of the back rooms, but the safe. Which is really where any actual thief would really try to go.

First was completely untouched. There were no signs of forced entry on either door. Nothing was broken. Nothing had been pried open. Nothing was smashed, [00:10:00] and it immediately raised the question, did the killer already have a key, or did Marian willingly let them in? Detectives initially leaned hard into the robbery theory anyway, because one item was missing.

It was a crescent shaped diamond brooch, about 32 millimeters long. It had been kept in a dish on Marian's dressing table and had been seen there at the day before, but now it was gone, but almost everything else of value in the flat, including other jewelry that was hidden in odd spots like inside a cloth bag on top of the wardrobe or tucked in between dressers.

All of that was still there, and they thought if this was a robbery, then it was a very strangely selective one. More troubling was the timing. Whoever attacked Marian had been inside the flat during the tiny, predictable window when she was routinely alone, and that suggested planning or someone watching the building closely enough to learn Nelly's pattern.

Sure enough, a woman living across the street reported that for four [00:11:00] separate evenings at around 7:00 PM she actually saw a man standing on the street looking up toward Marian's windows. She thought he was keeping observation, and now the police also thought that he was keeping observation, but maybe for a nefarious reason.

By 11:00 PM police had already detained two men in the area who vaguely matched the description. They were ultimately cleared, but it showed just how quickly this case was spending really into panic territory. Newspapers were printing speculative witness sightings every few hours, and detectives were fielding tips about mysterious men in light colored coats all over the city.

The real issue wasn't the number of suspects, it was the quality of the description that the police had. Witnesses agreed on a few things. He was definitely male of medium height. He had a fawn colored overcoat, a cap, and a slightly odd walk. But even this early, the accounts didn't line up perfectly. Some said the man they saw was clean [00:12:00] shaven.

Others said he had a mustache. Some said he was young and some said he was a little older, but still within a few days, one name floated to the surface and stuck. It was a foreign man in Glasgow known for gambling and using aliases. He was someone who was already on the local police radar and his name was Oscar Slater.

This was a German born Jewish man living under one of several names he used, including Sands and Anderson. When police learned that he recently left Glasgow and that he had pawned a diamond brooch. Keep in mind, this was not the brooch that was missing, but a brooch. That's when the investigation took a sharp turn.

From that point, the case stopped being a question of who might have done this and started becoming more, how do we make the facts fit this guy Oscar? And that shift in the investigation happened very quickly, and we're gonna talk about what happens next. After a quick break, to hear a word from this week's sponsors.

Marker

Melissa: Now back to the episode.

Marker

Melissa: So before the break, we were discussing the murder of Marian [00:13:00] Gilchrist and just the different information that's out there on who they actually think the suspect could be, and they've come up on this guy, Oscar Slater. It's important to point out that there was nothing about Oscar that actually tied him directly to Marian or her home. Police were interested in him because of other reasons. He was foreign. He used aliases. He gambled. He lived in Glasgow, but he recently left. And most importantly, he had pawned a diamond brooch, which newspapers instantly treating like it must be Marian's missing brooch. The problem which no one slowed down to even consider, was that the brooch that Oscar pawned wasn't even the same shape as Marian's. Hers was Crescent shaped. His was not. And he had actually pawned it weeks before the murder. But in the early days of this big case, facts tended to take a backseat to the momentum.

And right now, that momentum was pushing straight towards Oscar. And here's what police knew really about Oscar that he had left the country. [00:14:00] Shortly after the murder, traveling under the name Sands. So when they heard he was on Theia. heading to New York, Scotland Yard, fired off a cable to US authorities with simple instructions. Board the ship arrest, a man named O Sands look for pawn tickets. That was it. There's no mention of evidence. It's just, Hey, the sky's coming. Arrest him. When detectives boarded the ship, the conversation they had with him was almost comical. Oscar introduced himself as O Sands. He said he wasn't an American citizen, but he had taken out papers under the name Anderson, and he also mentioned he once had a dentist office in New York. This was, let's say, a creative autobiography, which does not help his credibility. He was also traveling with a woman who claimed to be his wife. She wasn't, and he had a pawn ticket on him from the brute that he said belonged to her. So this lady that's with him, nothing about this interaction of course, proved he [00:15:00] murdered an elderly woman in Glasgow. But police had committed to this path, and once they had him in custody, they really treated every detail of his life, his aliases, his background, even his posture, as if it were part of a larger conspiracy. Meanwhile, back in Glasgow, witnesses were being shown Oscar's photograph in the newspapers. Then they were being asked whether the man they'd seen in the building resembled him, And back then, in 1909, the identification procedures were basically step one, show the public the suspect. Step two, ask the public if the suspect looks familiar. Okay. Two steps. I can do two steps. I don't know how great it is for a police investigation, but by the time Oscar's extradition hearing began in New York, four key witnesses, Nellie Lambe, Arthur Adams, Mary Barrowman, and another man named Warnock had all identified him as a man leaving Marmion's Flat. But even then, the clarity really wasn't rock solid. So at some [00:16:00] point, Oscar actually happened to walk past Nelly Lambe, and she turned to a detective and said, that's the man. And she later admitted that she actually hadn't recognized him until the detective reacted first. So I guess he has a reaction, which causes her to say, oh, that's the guy. So this whole thing is really shaky from the start, but still, the narrative had already clicked into place. Elusive foreigner plus alias, plus pond brooch, plus left the country equals guilty, and that was enough for the extradition. Oscar was sent back to Scotland where he was formally charged with Marianne Gil Crest's murder, despite having no connection to her, no motive and no evidence placing him inside the flat.

And now that

Scotland had their suspect, the wheels of the justice system began turning very, very quickly and very poorly. 

Mandy: Oscar Slater's trial opened on May 3rd, 1909 at the high court in Edenberg.

From the beginning, it was clear that the [00:17:00] prosecution had a story they intended to tell, and they were gonna make every scrap of evidence fit that story that they had, whether it really made sense or not. The Crown's case leaned on three key pillars, eyewitnesses, the supposed robbery motive, and a hammer that was found in Oscar's belongings.

All those pillars had cracks running straight through them. The eyewitness testimony came first. Marian's neighbors, people in the street and a subway employee all took the stand to say that they had seen Oscar near Queen Terrace around the time of the murder. But these accounts were really shaky.

One Constable said he had seen Oscar several times near the house in the weeks before the crime. A 15-year-old girl said that Oscar had run into her on the street that night. Arthur Adams testified that the man he saw resembled Oscar, but he also admitted that he couldn't be confident because this was a murder trial and not a casual.

That guy looks familiar type of situation, which I'm glad at least somebody is like, yeah,

Melissa: Someone said 

Mandy: let's. 

Melissa: [00:18:00] far. 

Mandy: Right. Like, let's, let's remember what we're here for. You know, like we have to be, be be thorough and honest with ourselves at the same time, you know, if this is the person that you saw or not.

But of course there was also Nelly Lambie who identified Oscar in court as the man that she saw walking out of Marian's bedroom. Every single one of these witnesses though, had already seen Oscar's photo in the press. Some had seen multiple photos of him, some had seen sketches, and several had spoken with each other before testifying.

In modern terms, the jury wasn't really listening to clean, untouched, firsthand memory. They were listening to memories that had just kind of been like preloaded with newspaper images and courtroom whispers. Now we have rules, you know, and they have protocols to keep just certain information out of jurors ears.

Melissa: Now I know like in the US they don't allow the witnesses to be in the courtroom a lot of the times, so they're not hearing other testimony that could change their testimony. And like you're saying about the jury, like they don't wanna attain a [00:19:00] jury,

so the less they know about this case, the better.

But it sounds like everyone knew enough about this and especially like, Hey Oscar, that's our guy. 

Mandy: But in 1909, nobody was talking about witness contamination. And the moment someone said, yes, he looks like the man that was treated as gospel, and he was treated as not just a suspect but the suspect.

Melissa: Right? Then the prosecution went heavy on this physical evidence, which was a hammer. Police found one in Oscar's luggage when he was arrested. It was a regular household hammer and they tried to present it as a likely murder weapon. A detective even testified that the handle looked recently scraped as though Oscar had cleaned blood off of it. It sounded dramatic, but it wasn't actually supported by science. Medical experts could not match the hammer to Marian's injuries. One said that a hammer could have caused the wounds, but couldn't confirm that this hammer had another expert testified that the hammer [00:20:00] had no blood, no tissue, no hair, and no connection to the crime at all. The handle might have been scraped simply because it was an old tool. Still, the jury heard the words murder weapon enough times that it really started to stick. The crown also waved around this jacket they found in Oscar's belongings that had a faint stain on it. Police insisted these stains were blood. How embarrassing would that be to be like, no, I just hadn't done my laundry yet and I'm carrying this with me. I'll, I'll clean it when I get there, and they're like, definitely, this is blood. You're going down buddy. A forensic expert said they absolutely couldn't determine if this stain was even blood. Another expert said some of the spots were just flaws in the rubberized fabric. But again, the jury hears the word blood stains. The stain could have been jam ink, or

any inconvenient raindrop, but the implication had already done its job. I'm so embarrassed to say this, but can I tell you really quick something that happened to me today when I went to Publix, 

I had eaten a sausage biscuit, [00:21:00] of course, before I got a free one from McDonald's.

'cause I have so many points and I put my jelly on it, which controversial opinion, but that's my jam. Literally grape jelly on sausage. And I think we've talked about this. Before I go into Publix, I just have to buy a few things. I check out, I grab a Reese's, my son can't eat them, so I don't get it when I'm around him.

But every once in a while I want it. And the cashier says to me. A little mid-morning snack and I was like, you know it, I get to my car, look at myself. I have this much listeners, I'm showing about an inch of grape jelly on my chin. And I was like, what was this poor, first of all, I was ticked that nobody had said anything to me.

I did not

feel it. And just the idea that she's like, okay, now you're going to eat a Reese's. And I'm like, absolutely. You know, you know it, girlfriend.

Mandy: One of those days, 

Melissa: It was so, and then at that point, I needed the chocolate because how am I gonna [00:22:00] survive this? So 

Mandy: oh my gosh, 

you have to find a new Publix. You can never go to that Publix again. 

Melissa: they already know me there. Somebody found me on Facebook. Somehow I, I've gotta go to a different one. You're right. But back to the episode. So then we get to the evidence of the brooch.

and the crown leans into the idea that Oscar had pawned, Marian's missing Crescent Diamond Brooch say that three times fast, except there were really some major issues. For starters, the brooch, the Oscar pond was not crescent shaped. It had also been pawned weeks before Miriam was killed.

So why is this even a question? I don't know. And this pawn ticket that police found reflected the date that he had sold the other brute. So everyone should know right there, this dude didn't do this By the time the defense presented their witnesses who testified that Oscar had spoken openly about going to New York long before the murder, and that he showed no signs of panic or concealment afterward, it really already felt like they were [00:23:00] swimming against a riptide. And so at the end of the trial, Oscar addressed the jury himself.

He said simply that he wanted a fair trial, that he didn't know Marian Gilchrist, and that he had nothing to do with her death. Well, the jury did not believe that, and they deliberated for just 70 minutes, and their verdict wasn't even unanimous, which this really bothered me. Nine vote guilty, five voted not proven, and one voted not guilty. But because only a majority was required, the verdict stood and Oscar was sentenced to death. And if there's one thing I've learned about all these older

cases is the.

The line to get people on the death penalty to get them killed is incredibly, incredibly fast. 

Mandy: Justice moves quickly in 1908 and 

Melissa: Oh my gosh. It just, it could not be faster. So I, Oscar is hearing this. He is stunned. He managed to say, quote, I know nothing of the affair.

Absolutely nothing. [00:24:00] Then he just couldn't go on and the judge passed the sentence. Anyway, it was an incredibly thin case held together

by really assumptions misidentification and pure coincidence. But in 1909, it was enough to send a man to his death. 

Mandy: After the verdict, Scotland expected the Oscar case to fade quietly into history, but that's not quite what happened.

Within days of his conviction, public skepticism started coming to the surface. People weren't convinced that the police had the right man, and the speed of the trial, the shaky eyewitnesses and the lack of real, physical evidence made lawyers, journalists, and everyday people really uneasy.

Oscar was scheduled to be executed as, as we were just saying, just 20 days later on May 27th, 1909, and the fact that that was such a short timeline is what really jolted the public into action. Almost immediately. There were petitions calling for a reprieve, and these weren't [00:25:00] just like some niche campaigns by fringe groups.

They were broad, mainstream, and they were really gaining quick support. By May 22nd, just five days before the scheduled hanging, more than 20,000 people had signed a petition asking for his sentence to be halted. And that kind of public pressure was extremely unusual for the time. Honestly, that's quite impressive.

20,000 people signing a petition on short notice. When you don't have social media, you don't really even have like quick mail service, like how you don't have a lot of quick ways to get the word out about this thing that you're doing or trying to do. And so to get 20,000 people to sign this like that really speaks to like what the public's

thoughts were really on this whole case.

And they really, it was clear that a lot of people really did not believe that he was guilty of this. 

Melissa: There's not change.org like

you're saying, but also Marian would

get her newspaper at 7:00 PM at night. So this is literally, the day before is news. News travels so slow.

So 

the fact that they could do this

is 

Mandy: Yeah, right. [00:26:00] So while the public was campaigning, Oscar's attorneys filed legal requests for clemency.

Their argument was that the case was just simply too weak, too circumstantial, and too inconsistent to justify taking a man's life. And that argument really landed just enough. On May 25th, two days before his scheduled hanging, the Scottish secretary announced that Oscar's death sentence would be commuted to life in prison with hard labor.

It was a victory, but still a pretty grim one. Instead of the gallows, Oscar was headed to decades of crushing conditions in a Victorian prison system. Once the execution was off the table, more people began speaking out. Newspapers in Scotland and England ran editorials openly questioning the strength of the crown's case.

Legal scholars began raising alarms about the identification procedures and even some police officers quietly and off the record, admitted that the evidence had some major gaps.

Melissa: [00:27:00] And then Oscar himself wrote a letter from prison. It was a long emotional appeal to his rabbi. In it, he described how alone he felt, how he still believed a put up job had been billed against him, and how the police had manipulated the coat identification during the investigation. The letter was truly heartbreaking, but it was also the first time he publicly explained why he believed he had been targeted, not because he fit the crime, but He fit the stereotype of an outsider. Meanwhile, public interest in the case didn't die down. It only grew in 1910. Just a year after the conviction, the case caught the attention of someone who would change everything. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, we all know that name, except I did not, but he, he's the creator of Sherlock Holmes. When I saw that, I was like, what? I did not know that guy's name. So Doyle believed deeply in the concept of wrongful convictions, and even more deeply in dismantling weak investigations. When he reviewed [00:28:00] Oscar's case, he saw red flags everywhere like that. There was no forced entry or the window of opportunity to actually kill.

Marian was extremely short. There were also eyewitness accounts that had been shaped by newspapers, the brooch that just doesn't match a hammer with zero forensic connection and worst of all, a police force that seemed to decide on Oscar first and look for evidence. Second, Doyle actually eventually Wrote a full book arguing Oscar's Innocence, which reignited public scrutiny and pushed the case back into the national spotlight. This wasn't a simple matter of maybe the wrong man was convicted. It was a growing movement asking how did this conviction happen at all? And with that mounting pressure came a new development, and that was one that opened old wounds and created brand new ones. Five years after the murder, the pressure around the Oscar Slater case finally reached a point where the, a Scottish authorities could no longer ignore it between the public doubt, the press coverage, and [00:29:00] Arthur Conan Doyle loudly pointing out that the prosecution's case looked like Swiss cheese. An official inquiry was opened in 1914. This wasn't an appeal or a retrial. It was essentially a formal check

to see whether the investigation had been botched. And spoiler alert it had, but that is not what the inquiry concluded. 

Mandy: Oscar's lawyer David Cook came in with five main questions the inquiry needed to address,

and these were big questions. Questions that if they were answered, honestly, would've forced the crown to admit that they had focused on the wrong man. They included things like, did witnesses originally identify someone other than Oscar?

Did the police know that? Did Oscar actually flee from justice? Was the crown withholding information and did a key witness give the wrong date? Each of these questions had the same general theme, and that was, was the foundation of the whole case, very unstable right from the start. One question in particular is centered on a 15-year-old [00:30:00] witness named Mary.

She testified at trial that a man who she later said was Oscar had run into her on West Princess Street around the time of the murder. But evidence suggested that the evening she remembered wasn't even the same night that Marian was killed. Her timeline didn't match, and her initial statement had been softer and more hesitant.

Suddenly she became a key. I saw him that night. Witness and journalists were starting to realize that her testimony had actually been shaped by the prosecution. She also reportedly received a cash reward, which was a life changing amount of money in 1909.

It was a hundred pounds, which

I hate when we talk about how inflation and money has value has changed. I wish I was from 1909.

Melissa: In that case, I'd be doing quite well. 

Mandy: Right, exactly. but none of that information ended up making it into the original trial. By the mid 1920s, Oscar Slater had been sitting in prison for more than 15 years. The 1914 inquiry had essentially rubber stamped the [00:31:00] original investigation, but the public still didn't buy it. Reporters still wrote about the case.

Arthur Conan Doyle was still loudly insisting that something about it was just rotten. And then almost two decades after Marian's murder, two people stepped forward. And these were two people whose voices mattered quite a lot, and their statements changed everything. The first was Nelly Lambie, that was Marian's maid and also the woman who had seen the intruder face to face.

Melissa: For years, Nellie had identified Oscar As the man she had encountered in the hallway. But in the 1920s, she finally admitted publicly that the man she saw that night did not strike her as a stranger at all. In fact, she said she believed. She recognized him and told the police the name of the man who she thought it was all the way back then, But the reaction from the police was nonsense. She said they dismissed her so forcefully that she actually doubted herself and allowed them to redirect her entire interpretation [00:32:00] of what she'd seen. Even more striking, she now said that if she was asked today whether Oscar was the man she saw, she would be forced to say no.

She was just convinced it was not him. This alone, of course, would've rocked the case, but there was still more on the night of the murder. When Nelly ran to Marian's niece's home for help, she didn't say she'd seen a strange man. She said she thought the man was someone identified only as a B. This was a man that was known to the family and someone who visited Marian, and someone who absolutely would've not raised an alarm if they were seen inside the flat. A police detective named Lieutenant John Trench later learned this and felt deeply uneasy. He believed the investigation had

intentionally buried this lead, which I never understand. Like, don't you want to solve this 

with the right person? Like that's where it doesn't make any 

sense. Why wouldn't you follow up on that?

Like you don't need to make something up. There's really something here. So he passes this information to Oscar's [00:33:00] lawyer, and he was actually fired for this. He ended up dying in 1910, never cleared of wrongdoing, even though later evidence showed, yeah, he should have spoken up. There's no reason for him to have been fired for this many, actually still call him the third victim in this case. Then came the second major blow to the original prosecution. Mary Barrowman, who was the teenage girl that had testified that Oscar had bumped into her

on the night of the murder in the 1920s. She revealed that she had met with the prosecutor 15 times before the trial, which is wild. Yeah. And during those meetings, she said he essentially rehearsed her into strengthening her identification. So according to Mary, she originally wanted to say that the man was very like Oscar, but not definitively him. The prosecutor pushed her to say the man instead of very likely the man. And she's 15 years old and she's met with these people 15 times And she doesn't understand the [00:34:00] legal difference between these two phrases, but of course, the court does.

So her new statement, talking about the prosecutor, was really devastating. She said, quote, he was the party who laid down what was to be said. So by 1927, the combined weight of all these revelations, along with two decades of public pressure, media scrutiny, and Arthur Conan Doyle's, relentless advocacy finally broke through. Oscar was released from prison on November 14th, 1927, pending an appeal for the first time in 18 years. He walked outside as a free man. He told a journalist quote, even now I can hardly realize that I am free. Perhaps my mind is clear because I knew I was wrongly convicted. His first meal out was fish.

Something he said he hadn't tasted in 15 years After being released, Oscar remarried. He worked repairing antiques. and he lived away from the spotlight as much as possible. But of course, he never forgot what happened to him, and he never stopped [00:35:00] believing that the real killer had been protected by the police's focus on him. Oscar still wasn't legally exonerated. He still needed the courts to acknowledge the truth that this original trial had failed him, and that's where Scotland's brand new court of appeals came in and where this

case finally, finally turned. And we still have more to get into after one last break to hear word from this week's sponsors.

Marker

Melissa: now back to the episode 

Marker

Mandy: Before the break, we were talking about the murder of Marian Gilchrist And Oscar Slater, who's the man who was convicted of her murder and spent significant amount of time in prison before he was finally released, though not legally exonerated.

So even after Oscar walked out of prison in November of 1927, he still had many legal battles ahead of him. He was not a free man in the legal sense just yet. His release was temporary and granted only because his case was about to go before Scotland's brand new court of criminal appeal. This alone was historic and appeals court didn't [00:36:00] even exist when Oscar was first convicted in 1909.

So Scotland literally had created the mechanism that would allow a wrongful conviction like his to even be overturned. This was really like, yeah, this was a turning point in history. At this point, it's now nearly 20 years after Marian's murder, and the legal system was finally prepared to take a look at what had gone wrong in this case.

In June of 1928, the appeal hearing opened and immediately it became clear that the judges were not going to just kind of do that seal of approval. On the original verdict the way the 1914 inquiry did. Oscar's legal team presented three major grounds of appeal. The prosecution had misstated facts at trial, including making highly prejudicial claims that were not supported by any evidence.

The Crown had also withheld evidence that would've helped the defense, especially details about witness coaching and the alternative suspect known as ab. Additionally, the trial judge had misdirected the jury both in law and in [00:37:00] how he framed Oscar's character and the evidence or lack thereof taken together.

These issues didn't just suggest errors. They suggested the entire structure of the original conviction was completely unstable. The judges didn't take long to reach their conclusion. They ruled that the trial judge had failed to give Oscar the benefit of ordinary presumption of innocence. In other words, that means the trial was fundamentally unfair.

Not just imperfect, but unfair, and it was a clear misdirection in law, and in their opinion, it was a verdict that could not be allowed to stand. After almost two decades behind bars, the court finally acknowledged what thousands of people had been saying for years, which was that Oscar Slater should have never been convicted of Marian's murder.

His conviction was overturned, and he was at last, fully cleared. Oscar was awarded 6,000 pounds, which is about $8,000 in US money at that time, uh, in compensation. And like we said before, this is a significant sum [00:38:00] for a sum of money for that time period. Uh, but he still, of course had to pay legal fees and all that.

You know, they always get you 

with the legal fees. 

They're gonna get you somehow. but still, even though this was like a decent amount of money, it wasn't nearly enough for being imprison for 18 years. He was in isolation. He was subject to hard labor, and really his entire reputation was completely destroyed.

Some said that the award that he was given was actually an insult, and others said it was just a quiet way for the government to acknowledge wrongdoing without truly admitting just how catastrophic that wrongdoing was. Oscar himself was grateful, but he was also bitter, especially towards Arthur Conan Doyle, Who was the man who had fought so hard for him, but the relationship had fractured When Oscar suggested that Arthur should have secured more compensation, and Arthur disagreed. He died in 1948 at the age of 76, and with Oscar officially exonerated Scotland now had to face an uncomfortable truth. Of course. That is. If he did not [00:39:00] murder Marian Gilchrist, then the real murderer was still out there and had gotten away with it.

So that would mean going back to the very beginning, back to ground zero, you know, starting over and trying to figure out who actually murdered Marian Gilchrist.

Melissa: Which only makes things so much more difficult. Now you're going 20 plus years back to now. Check with people's memories. 

You know that that's not good. When people went back to the beginning of this case, they noticed something alarming. Once police locked onto Oscar, almost everyone else was quietly pushed aside. The alternative suspects never got the attention they should have, and some of them were far more plausible than a man with literally zero connection to Marian at all. One of the most significant names was Marian's nephew. This was a guy named George Gilchrist.

Burrell. He was known to have money problems and had reportedly been refused. Financial help by Marian, literally the person that has the most motive 

that we've known [00:40:00] about this entire time. A friend later told police that George had once said of Marian, if I get a chance, I will smash her to a pulp. how did that

not put alarm bells in anyone else's head? Of course, it's very chilling and It's not ambiguous, it's not playful. It's openly 

violent. 

Mandy: that's, that's definitely an alarming thing to say that that's beyond just like, oh, I'm just saying a little ha ha, funny thing. Like 

Melissa: Yeah, no,

that's 

Mandy: and, and, uh, yeah. 

Melissa: Especially considering the way she was 

killed. And yet once Oscar was arrested, this entire angle was essentially dropped. George was never meaningfully investigated. His alibi wasn't thoroughly tested, and the police narrative had already shifted. He simply fell out of focus. Then there was this mysterious ab, and that was again, that man that Nelly initially believed.

She saw leaving the flat. He wasn't a stranger. He was someone who visited Marian regularly. He was someone who could have knocked on the door and been let in without [00:41:00] hesitation, and that was someone who would not need to break in because Marian trusted him. It still blows my mind that this is only 10 minutes time, though, and the fact that Nelly identified him that night spontaneously and before even speaking to police is really enormous.

So what does it say that the investigators dismissed that identification, instantly told her it was impossible, and persuaded her to reinterpret her own memory? That detail alone casts a long shadow over the entire investigation. There were also still lingering questions about the motive. the supposed robbery made little sense from day one. Marian's most valuable jewelry was untouched. Only one brooch was missing. And even then, no one could be sure when it had disappeared or whether it had been taken for reasons unrelated to the murder. Years later, some historians argued that the bruch angle may have been a red herring, a distraction that made the crime look like a burglary when the violence suggested something else entirely. The lack of forced [00:42:00] injury was also another major red flag. There's no smash locks, no pride doors, no disturbed frames.

And Miriam was someone again who kept her doors locked obsessively. And so that leaves only a few options that she opened the door willingly the killer, somehow had a key or someone else inside the building let them in. All three of these scenarios though, point to someone that

Marian knew, or someone who knew her routine extremely well.

Mandy: As for the murder weapon, none was ever conclusively identified. The auger found in the house that we mentioned earlier had blood and gray hairs, but medical experts said it didn't match the skull fractures. The hammer the police tried to pin on Oscar had nothing connecting it to the crime that left the murder weapon as something unknown, possibly something the killer brought and then took with him. Or even a heavy household object that was never recognized for what it actually was. As for Marian, Her murder remains unsolved more than a century later.

The case today is remembered for two things, [00:43:00] a brutal killing, and one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Scottish history. Some believe the killer was someone close to Marian, possibly a b, possibly someone with a financial dispute. Others believed that Marian had interrupted someone who was in her home searching for documents or valuables, And some point out, you know, again, this quick, tight, 10 minute window, there was no forced entry and there were signs that the intruder knew Marian's movements perfectly.

One thing that is clear is that the police had locked onto the wrong man almost immediately, and that really prevented a true investigation from happening And this story really does serve as kind of a, a reminder, you know, of how easy it is to get justice wrong and how I feel like important it is that we don't execute people 20 days after they're found guilty.

Melissa: I mean, if nothing else, can we all agree to 

that? 

That is absolutely wild. It really

is so crazy to me that there

was just this very small window that this is somebody in [00:44:00] 1909 who would lock their doors. We still have people today who 

don't 

really lock their doors, which again, please lock your 

doors. But this somebody

was somebody that was so obsessive about it and had this routine and so there really was this small amount of time

to brutally kill someone.

It just,

it had to be someone that she knew, this random guy stealing this brooch that he didn't even 

Mandy: Right. 

Melissa: It makes no sense. 

Mandy: I definitely think the nephew was a great suspect and it's really unfortunate that they didn't look, look into that more at the time.

Melissa: I wanna know after she

died, who inherited 

any of 

her property, her stuff. Because if it's that guy, 

then

Mandy: for 

Melissa: I shouldn't say we shouldn't even go to trial 

because I'm basically doing what they were doing. But, um, but then that

sounds

like a 

very obvious Yeah. obvious 

person. 

Mandy: Yeah, for sure. 

Marker

Melissa: Mandy, 

it's Christmas week. 

Mandy: Oh boy.

Melissa: Yes. And while we should be probably wrapping presents or, I don't know, [00:45:00] making our family hot chocolate. 

None of which I'm doing tonight. Yes. I I wanted to ask you a few fun holiday questions. 

These are, let's see, these are multiple choice and maybe a couple pop culture ones.

We'll see. Mandy on Christmas Eve in 2014, a Florida woman called 9 1 1 because, and you tell me why her husband ate all the leftovers. She

couldn't find her Christmas tree star. Her roommate wouldn't stop playing. Jingle Bell Rock or her neighbor's light show was too bright and too Disney. 

Mandy: I'm going with that one.

Yeah. 

Too bright and too Disney. Sounds like something that, yeah, I 

Melissa: I, 

Mandy: upset 

Melissa: I could too but this one's actually, her husband ate the leftovers

and think about 

Mandy: What leftovers do you even have on Christmas Eve?

Melissa: I,

didn't ask 

her. 

Mandy: I know,

but why? I want, I wanna ask her why is she crashing out over, like food she made, probably made on December 23rd. Like, can't you just wait until 

Melissa: Good point. Good point. Let's just [00:46:00] pretend somebody did the 

other 

one. All right, Mandy, which of these is a real Florida holiday parade? Santa Paddles a paddleboard

parade. Santa Surfs a skim board parade. Santa Rides a jet ski parade or all of the above because Florida 

Mandy: I'm gonna say, I mean, I was definitely gonna go with the paddleboard

parade, but it, it really could be all of them.

Melissa: it is all of 

them. 

Those are all parades in the area. Not surprised. what was found inside a Florida Mall Santa's bag in a 2015 arrest, 40 pounds of candy. Two ferrets named Buddy

and Sparkles Fake beer

glue and three stolen iPhones, or just cash from the mall. 

Mandy: like cash that he stole from the 

mall, 

Melissa: Yeah.

Mandy: it's gotta be that 

or 

Melissa: I mean, you'd think it's the iPhone beard glue thing. 

That's, 

Mandy: boy. I 

was, I mean, it had to be something stolen. I couldn't, I 

mean, yeah. Wow.

[00:47:00] He 

was a Stealing Santa 

Melissa: I don't like it. Klepto. Santa.

Why does Florida have the most Christmas light related HOA arguments per capita, 

which I freaking hate it in HOA because a people leave them up

until June and a Medtronic flamingos, a 12 foot inflatable Santa wrestling a gator or all the above.

Why? What are some of the reasons 

why 

Mandy: All of the above. Those HOA people, those HOA people. Don't let you have any fun. Just let people live, 

Melissa: I know there's a, a clip that I saw recently that's like, of a homeowners association

meeting, and they're like all supposed

to have this one color. They're like, this is the color you did, but we need eggshell.

There is no discernible difference, Mandy, but

they're 

like literally pissed off, yelling like, you did this, you have to do this.

I'm like, I would

never, 

Mandy: See, that's what I, right. And like, that's where you get me. 'cause of course, you know, people who live where there's an HOA or like having an HOA, they say, they talk about the benefits of it, you know, like, and there are benefits. Like, [00:48:00] yes, your neighborhood looks very manicured and because everyone ha literally has to, or the entire rest of the neighborhoods coming to you knocking on 

your door, like literally with pitchforks.

But, um, yeah, you lose me because I do feel like I'm okay with like certain. Things, but I guess like I am someone who wants there 

to be a line drawn. I don't like to follow other people's rules. Right. And I do feel like sometimes bending the rules is okay. So like a story that I have, um, actually you knew this person too.

We were, uh, we knew them in a playgroup, but they lived in a very nice neighborhood and had, uh, one Christmas cotton, their kids, like a really nice play set that they put up in their backyard. And the neighbors complained because they could see the top of the play set over the privacy fence. And they made them take it down.

This was in their backyard for their children to play on. And they literally made them take it down because the neighbors said they could see the top of the play set over the fence. And I was like, you've gotta be kidding me. That's where you lose me. That's where I'm like, Nope, I would never would wanna live where there's an hoa [00:49:00] because it's stuff like that.

I'm like, really? Like you're just being petty.

Melissa: Oh, very

petty. I cannot imagine my

mouth was a gasp the entire time You were saying that because I thought as soon as you said backyard, I was like, surely not,

but don't call me 

Shirley. And it absolutely is. 

Mandy: me Shirley.

Melissa: But I, I, yeah, I mean, I've got people parking their cars in the street. I would 

love 

Mandy: Right, 

Melissa: to, not to happen, but I,

don't have an

HOA 

Mandy: right. 

Melissa: for that I am thankful. 

Mandy: But that's where I'm like, terrible. Right. 'cause I'm like, I don't mind you like having certain rules so that some things stay looking nice, you know? Like I don't want people to have like junk cars all over, out, you know, outside in their driveway. And Yes, and I've lived next to a 

house that kind of did a similar thing and I was like, it would actually be kind of nice if someone would enforce, like getting 

these outta here, but then at this, but then I don't want someone to tell me what I can and can't have in 

Melissa: Mm-hmm. 

Mandy: I don't know. Is there a happy medium? Probably not.

Melissa: Mm. Probably not. 

Mandy: All right, Melissa. Thank you. That was so fun. I always love doing a little

palette cleanser after the, uh, after we talk about a story, and [00:50:00] I'm excited for Christmas. I hope that you are too. I.

Melissa: Yes. I am. It'll be, 

Mandy: I think we're just trying to get there still right now, but we're almost there. Everybody hang in there. It's almost Christmas. We hope you all enjoy the time that you have with your families and friends, and we will see you back next week. Same time, same place. New story. 

Melissa: have a great 

week 

Mandy: Bye, and holiday.