Hey, true weirdos. We just wanted to take a minute and thank you so much for your support.

True Weird Stuff has won the best history podcast in the Women in Podcasting Awards,

and we've also won a Signal Award in the paranormal category, plus a communicator award for

excellence, for writing, for audio and voice. And that's only happened because of you our fellow strange people.

Thanks.

Stick around if you want after the episode for a little bonus content and conversation.

For well over half a century, visitors to the sheriff's office in Allen County, Ohio were confronted with an unusual piece of decor,

a hangman's noose. That rope hung the last and only man to die on the scaffold in this county.

Brittlinger was his name, hanged more than 50 years ago for the murder of his wife.

Gestering to the noose, Sheriff Crosson said.

I don't know much about that case except that Andrew Brintlinger killed his wife.

Cut up her body, buried it in the orchard on his farm, then turned an unused wagon over the grave.

That's all I ever heard about it.

For decades, the murder of Sarah Brantlinger

was one of the most brutal in the history of the state of Ohio.

In some ways, it's a too familiar and tired tale of betrayal and violence,

except in this case, the betrayal was imagined,

but the violence was real. In this case, the perpetrator mounted a horse and galloped around the countryside, telling anyone who'd listened exactly what he'd done. I stuck her with an eye four or five times.

She was onry.

Trouble was, no one really believed him.

Which is weird, since he'd spent more than a year loudly ranting about his marital misery.

The farmer took a wife, the farmer took a wife.

...