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True Crime Historian

The Escapes And Execution Of Elroy Kent

True Crime Historian

Richard O Jones

True Crime, Performing Arts, Documentary, Arts, Society & Culture

4.5720 Ratings

🗓️ 12 September 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Vermont Desperado

Ad-Free Safe House Edition

Episode 386 tells the epic story of one of New England’s most persistent scoundrels. It’s the kind of story I delight in finding, that in another context would make a great Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen novel, this one about a slippery but dim-witted thief, that would almost be comic if there wasn’t a tragic loss of life in Act II, and even when he gets his come-uppance in Act III, there’s still a couple of strange twists in the tale. No spoilers, but let’s just say #botchedexecution.

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Transcript

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Brattleboro, Vermont, February 8, 1902. Elroy Kent, who stole $12 from the pocket of his cousin William Kent,

0:49.3

and who was traced to Manchester and brought back from that place to Brattleboro,

0:55.0

was taken to Newfane jail to await trial at the March term of county court.

1:01.0

He pleaded guilty to the charge of stealing at a preliminary hearing

1:05.1

and was held in the sum of $300, which he was unable to furnish.

1:14.2

He conversed freely, but somewhat disconnectedly,

1:22.2

with a reporter concerning his decidedly disreputable career. Yet, degenerate and depraved, as he undoubtedly is, he is still capable of unselfish thought, as when hesitating before a question as to his past,

1:31.3

he suddenly murmured, It may do somebody some good, and straight away unfolded fully and freely,

1:38.3

with neither shame nor boasting, but as a matter of fact the unhappy story of his life.

1:45.0

It may do somebody some good.

1:48.0

There are so many boys who do not like to go to school to know that Elroy Kent,

1:54.0

who at 25 years of age, is in jail for stealing $12,

1:59.0

hated school when he was a boy and ran away every time he had a chance.

2:05.3

He ran away from home, too, several times, but if he did not get in trouble and go back of his own

2:11.0

accord, he was always caught and carried back. Once, when a boy, he set fire to a plow in a man's barn, and of course,

2:22.4

the barn would have burned too if the man had not caught him early in the affair. He thinks his first

2:29.2

theft was committed when he was seven years old, when, with the help of a chum, he stole a cooking stove

2:36.6

for a hut, which was their chief rendezvous. Later, he stole a horse of a Mr. Franklin of Brookline,

...

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