S6 Ep13: Wesley Elkins: The 11-Year-Old Killer
Crimes of the Centuries
Amber Hunt and Audioboom
4.7 • 4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2026
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On a hot July morning in 1889, two adults were found murdered in their beds on a small Iowa farm, shot and bludgeoned to death while they slept. The only witness was an 11-year-old boy who said a stranger had done it. What followed was a legal and moral reckoning that divided the country and forced a question the American justice system wasn't remotely prepared to answer: What do you do with a child who kills?
Crimes of the Centuries is a podcast from Grab Bag Collab exploring forgotten crimes from times past that made a mark and helped change history. You can get early and ad-free episodes and more over at www.grabbagcollab.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking that they change laws, change society, or even |
| 0:13.0 | earn the label, Crime of the Century. |
| 0:16.0 | But the stories that made headlines in decades past aren't necessarily remembered today. |
| 0:22.3 | I'm Amber Hunt, a journalist, an author, and in each episode of this show, |
| 0:27.0 | I'll examine a case that's maybe lesser known today, but was huge when it happened. |
| 0:33.8 | This is Crimes of the Centuries. |
| 0:46.3 | Thank you. This is Crimes of the Centuries. There are two versions of Wesley Elkins' early childhood. |
| 0:51.7 | And the first, he was whisked away from a small El Cater, Iowa farm when his adulterous |
| 0:57.4 | mother, Matilda, decided she was leaving Wesley's father even before he was born. |
| 1:03.4 | Matilda left town with her lover, landing about 75 miles away in Waterloo, where she gave birth |
| 1:09.2 | to Wesley, either in 1878 or 79, depending on which |
| 1:13.8 | source you believe, we're going with 78. Back in Matilda's old stomping grounds, the El Cater |
| 1:20.6 | gossip held that she had always been an erratic piece of work, a flusy and a mean one at that. |
| 1:30.6 | At first version, the one that held the attention of all of Clayton County, also had at that before she had flown the coop. Matilda had |
| 1:36.8 | tried to kill her husband, but either failed or decided simply leaving him would suffice. In any |
| 1:43.6 | event, she divorced him. It was scandalous. |
| 1:47.6 | In this version, Wesley supposedly lived the first six years of his life with his mother and her |
| 1:53.1 | next husband, William Dowden, but was shipped back to Clayton County after Matilda died in 1884. |
| 2:00.2 | The second version has it that Matilda, supposedly still a mean flusie, left Clayton County |
| 2:06.5 | after giving birth to Wesley, leaving him in the care of his father, or maybe more likely |
| 2:12.0 | in the care of his father's older half-sister. |
| 2:15.6 | Matilda had, by then, taken Dowden as her second husband, who already |
... |
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