9 Comments

Enjoyed this Cynthia. I have a Phrenology head sitting in my office. Picked it up at a flea market many years ago. Didn’t know anything about Phrenology. Did some reading and discovered this was a widely accepted approach to understanding human behavior. Surprising and interesting.

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Oh wow, what are the chances? How cool to have an example. Thank you for reading. Next episode due out Friday.

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It’s incredible how much testimony you’ve been able to recreate and share in this story, and in these last two episodes especially. Fabulous work in weaving it all together into a coherent narrative while pointing out the contradictions and historical baggage.

And seriously, who keeps track of how many idiots they’ve met!? 🤦🏼‍♀️

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Thanks Lori! I love putting together the available information and researching the people involved in the process. And I agree...I bet the 'idiot counter' was a real joy to live/work with! His arrogance comes through pretty clearly in his testimony.

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I got a little confused at the end where in one para it said Doctor Nidelet had responded to the note and gone to court and in the next para that he couldn't attend so the Judge said they should carry on and call him later?

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It is confusing. Dr. Nidelet had been summoned in the previous 1875 murder trial of Charles Woodson (during which Charles was killed by Robert P). He did respond to the note. But he was unable to appear at the 1876 murder trial of Robert (for killing Charles) because there was no one else in the office at the time. Sorry for the confusion.

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Thanks for the clarification. I get it now!

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It's one of those cases where major people in the story have the same name (Robert), the events are very similar (murder trials), several of the witnesses are the same in both trials, and the dates are so close.

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Yes that doesn't help ... And I read a lot of other things between episodes of the story which makes it easy to lose the thread of what is going on 🙃

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