Hey guys and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a true crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi, Mandy. How are you? I am doing well. I thought there was going to be more to that thought, but there isn't. No. Question. Cicadas. Are they crazy at your house? They are. They are. I actually, it was funny. I noticed this morning it was early when I was taking my walk. It was like 6.30 and they were screaming so loud. I said I made a comment. I was like, wow, the bugs are awake.

I can't even believe it. I was going to try to record in the other room today, but I was like, nope, if I'm even close to a window, they are so flipping loud at my house right now. Okay, so here's what I don't understand about cicadas.

Okay.

Here's what I don't understand.

So, you know, when, like, every now and then they'll say, like, oh, it's going to be, like, the crazy cicada emergence thing.

Right.

But, like, aren't they? Okay. I'm confused because cicadas are always here. Right. No, no. I think they go underground. I think that's their whole thing. Because remember there was a whole thing like two years ago where cicadas were like mating underground or something and then they come up and it's like a hundred

years they've never had this many because remember they were like covering Nashville and stuff. Yeah. I never see them. I only hear them. Right. I guess I was just confused because I don't know. Because why did that? Why does that happen? I never want it to happen again. Let's be clear about that. I know, but it is weird because I always thought it was crickets.

And then my father-in-law was like, no, that's cicadas, which call me crazy, but I call that Mandela effect. I had never heard of that before I met here. I'm pretty sure that when we went to Nashville for CrimeCon, it was either during or right after the cicada thing. And like we got there

and there wasn't bad cicadas. It was like two days after. Yes, they were like, you just

missed them. And we're like, wow. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. Yeah. All right. So we'll get right

into the story we have for you this Thursday. This is a really interesting one, and I'm excited to get into it.

So the story began on a Thursday evening, September 14th, 1922, in kind of a stately Victorian home in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

At 7.30 p.m., the phone rang, and Louise Geist, who is a 20-year-old maid, answered and recognized the voice on the other end. It was a woman asking for Reverend Edward Hall. So as Louise called upstairs, she overheard just enough of the reverend side of the conversation to kind of raise an eyebrow. She overheard him say, yes, that's too bad.

Couldn't we make arrangements for about 8.15? Goodbye. So this sounds like an innocent enough

conversation, but just two days later, that phone call became a chilling premonition.

Because on September 16th, Reverend Hall's body was found posed under a crabapple tree

next to his lover, Eleanor Mills, and their love letters were scattered around them like confetti at a

doomed wedding. The Hall's Mill murder case was really everything anyone could have wanted in a jazz

age scandal. It was a forbidden love affair, a wealthy and

powerful family, as well as a media frenzy that turned a small New Jersey town into the

epicenter of the nation's attention. The victims were a respected Episcopal minister and a

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