Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with IHeartRadio.

Edward Hall, a minister, and Eleanor Mills, a member of his choir, were found together dead near an abandoned farm in New Brunswick, New Jersey on September 16th, 1922.

Edward had been a popular minister at St. John's Episcopal Church and was the husband of Francis

Stevens Hall, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. Francis was seven years his senior and

worth nearly $2 million. There had been whispers that Hall was a gold digger.

Eleanor was a working class homemaker married to Jim Mills, the parish Sexton, and she sang

soprano in the choir at St. John's. Hall and Mills had been having an affair for a few years,

and it had been a very poorly kept secret. But the best kept

secret is, who killed them? Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria Tremarky.

And I'm Holly Fry. The scene where Edward and Eleanor were discovered didn't look like a

murder scene, at least not at first glance. The pair was

found by another couple on a small dirt road that locals used as a kind of improvised lover's lane.

Hall, age 41, was found wearing a dark suit with a white tie, and his Panama hat was placed in a way

that covered his face,

as if he was shading himself from the sun. He had been shot in the head. Mills, age 34, was

found wearing a polka dot blue dress and black stockings. She too had been shot in the head,

but she had also gotten a gash that almost completely

severed her neck. Both bodies were found on their backs beneath a crabapple tree. But the scene

had been carefully staged. The two lovers were arranged in such a manner to suggest intimacy.

Eleanor's head rested on Edward's outstretched right arm, and her left hand rested on his knee.

Love letters exchanged by the victims had been placed between their bodies,

and propped against the soul of Hall's left shoe was his calling card.

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