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The Trail Went Cold

The Trail Went Cold - Episode 435 - Pearl Kongsle

The Trail Went Cold

Robin Warder

True Crime, Tv & Film

4.53.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

September 2, 1959. Seattle, Washington. 62-year old Pearl Kongsle discovers a paper sack on the walkway outside her residence and when she bends over to pick it up, a bomb goes off and kills her. Even though a car containing three teenage boys is seen speeding away from the scene following the blast, investigators are unable to turn up any major leads or compelling suspects with a motive to harm Pearl. It turns out that months earlier, two relatives of Pearl’s late husband died after a mysterious poisoning and there was another strange incident where sticks of dynamite were discovered on the property of Pearl’s brother-in-law, but no link can be found between these events and Pearl’s murder. On this week’s episode of “The Trail Went Cold”, we explore the bizarre unsolved bombing death of Pearl Kongsle. Additional Reading: https://www.historylink.org/File/10051 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pearl-kongsle-widows-1959-bomb-death-among-seattles-coldest-cases/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/769110471/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/734331382/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/769110685/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/258848940/ "The Trail Went Cold" will be appearing at the True Crime Podcast Festival, taking place at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel Boston North Shore in Boston, Massachusetts on July 18-20, 2025. To get a 20 % discount on tickets, please use our specialized promo code, “ROBIN20”, by visiting https://www.truecrimepodcastfestival.com/.  “The Trail Went Cold” is on Patreon. Visit www.patreon.com/thetrailwentcold to become a patron and gain access to our exclusive bonus content. The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote. All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

September 2nd, 1959. Seattle, Washington.

0:05.9

62-year-old Pearl Kongsley discovers a paper sack on the walkway outside her residence,

0:11.1

and when she bends over to pick it up, a bomb goes off and kills her.

0:15.5

Even though a car containing three teenage boys is seen speeding away from the scene immediately

0:19.9

following the blast,

0:21.3

investigators are unable to turn up any major leads or compelling suspects with a motive to harm Pearl.

0:27.3

It turns out that months earlier, two relatives of Pearl's late husband died after a mysterious poisoning

0:32.6

and sticks of dynamite were discovered on the property of Pearl's brother-in-law,

0:37.1

but no link can be found between these property of Pearl's brother-in-law, but no link

0:37.7

could be found between these incidents, and Pearl's murder remains unsolved. After that, the trail

0:43.6

went cold. I'm not going to be. I'm not. I'm not.

0:55.0

I'm not.

0:56.0

And so.

0:57.0

And so. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our latest episode of The Trail Went Cold.

1:25.4

I'm your host, Robin Werder, and today, we're going to be covering a very

1:29.3

bizarre story about an elderly woman who was killed during a bombing, the 1959 murder of Pearl Kongsley.

1:36.5

This is a request I received several years ago from a listener named Ashley, and while I wasn't

1:41.5

familiar with this story before, it turned out to be a major rabbit hole.

1:46.2

This crime turned out to be the first time in the history of Seattle that a private citizen was

1:50.8

intentionally assassinated with a booby trap, as an unknown individual left a paper sack containing

1:56.3

an explosive device on the walkway outside Pearl's duplex, and when she bent over to pick it up,

2:01.9

the bomb went off and killed her instantly. The whole thing left everyone completely perplexed,

...

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