True Crime is one of the most popular genres in entertainment in fact Recent research shows that 50% of Americans enjoy the genre while TV shows like dat line Unsolved Mysteries and Forensic Files have had a strong fan base for decades newer media has ushered in a massive Marketplace for all things True Crime although the genre as entertainment is often considered a modern phenomenon the truth is that it has always been popular at least as far back as the early Renaissance stories of Sensational crimes were passed around through song the invention of the printing press made
sharing news of murders and violence far easier at least for those who had the luxury of literacy in the 1600s Savvy Englishmen looking to make money on the Public's thirst for Gruesome Tales began publishing broadsides or cheaply printed pamphlets detailing hideous crimes some broadsides sold over a million copies often to the crowds gathered at public hangings Madame T's chamber of Horrors became a mustsee attraction theaters put on shows about convicted killers and their dastardly Deeds peep shows began featuring images of bloody crimes alongside exotic animals far away places and yes pornography by the 1800s each
new murder presented a money-making opportunity for the business-minded perhaps one of the best examples of this is the case of Maria Martin and the Red Barn murder Maria Martin was born in 1801 into a humble household and pster a small suffk Parish about 80 mil 12 9 km Northeast of London Maria's father Thomas was a m catcher who earned a small salary for ridding local farms of the pesky creatures and selling the Skins to fers Maria spent part of her childhood living with a clergyman's family in nearby Lam where she learned to read and write
while caring for the family's little ones but when Maria's mother passed away the 9-year-old was forced to return to the family home to step into the RO of Homemaker while Thomas eventually remarried a woman named an Maria was never able to return to her education Maria grew into a beautiful woman who attracted her fair share of sutors despite her family's modest means at 17 she began a romantic relationship with Thomas cord the second eldest son of a middleclass family of tenant Farmers perhaps because of their unequal social standard in Thomas insisted they keep their Affair
a secret before long Maria became pregnant and gave birth to a child whom Thomas refused to acknowledge or help support financially sadly a child died when it was only a few weeks old Thomas CER may have thought the tragedy had granted him a new leas own life but it was shortlived as the man accidentally drowned in a pond shortly after Maria sought comfort in the arms of Peter Mayu a respected part of a local landowning family or an even higher social class and Corder but again Maria did not win the wedding band she so desired
and became pregnant once more this time her child a son named Thomas Henry lived the laws at the time required nothing more for the child of an illegitimate father than the maintenance fees which Peter Mayu at least had the decency to pay each quarter he paid £5 roughly £400 today to the Martin family for the upkeep of little Thomas though he refused to have any part in the child's life still this financial contribution was likely more than Maria's father earned and was undoubtedly a help the Martin family were close but their lives were not without
drama Maria's stepmother an was only 10 years older than her and they often argued like sisters Maria's actual sister was still at home too and now they all had a toddler to care for Maria wanted an escape but she knew marriage wouldn't come easily she was in her mids and had had two illegitimate children with two different men her father could not afford to finance a proposal from a suitable groom without the means to s an eligible bachelor through the usual means of public courtship Maria fell back on what she knew elicit love affairs her
next B was already familiar to her Thomas C's elder brother William William cter born in 1803 had lived a life of comparative privilege in his securely middleclass farming family as a boy he'd attended a boarding school in Hadley where he excelled academically but his early adulthood was riddled with tragedy after his father died William's mother and her six children were left to manage their Farm alone after Thomas drowned two other quarter brothers James and John both died of unknown health conditions less than 18 months later William found himself the only man standing responsible for the
care of his mother two sisters and the family's 300 AC a farm while he was handsome and scholarly he also had a reputation for Hess and dishonesty before his father died William stole several pigs from the family farm and sold them to a local farmer leading to an ugly dispute Antics like this earned him the nickname foxy not for his good looks but for his wiy deceptive nature William and Maria began seeing each other secretly around September 1826 before long Maria was pregnant again she likely feared William would abandon her too but he accepted responsibility
for the pregnancy and began visiting the Martin home Maria's stepmother an disapproved of the match but Maria seemed to genuinely love William plus as the now owner of a successful Farm William offered an appeal financial advantage by the time Maria's baby was born he had promised to marry her and Maria was confident all of her troubles would soon be over tragically their baby lived only a few weeks and the couple buried their child in the fields outside of Sudbury but the death did not seem to deter Williams affections on May the 18th 1827 William visited
the Martin houseold hold and laid out a plan to Maria and her stepmother Anne he said that he'd heard the parish constables were considering arresting Maria for having illegitimate children while this may seem Unthinkable now having children outside of wedlock was still a punishable offense in 19th century England because Maria's child was supported by Peter mayew it is unlikely that the parish was concerned but in cases where a mother had mother multiple illegitimate children that had to be supported by the local Parish it was not uncommon for them and their children to face punishment such
as being sent to a workhouse the threat of such a fate was enough to frighten Maria and Anne to agree to what William suggested next William told Maria to dress as a man to evade capture by the local Constable who had obtained a warrant for her address she was to meet him at a barn on the cord Farm where she could change back into her clothes and they would travel together to ipsd where they would be married effectively saving Maria from prosecution while perhaps not the white wedding she may have envisioned it was undeniably romantic
in its own way disguises elopment and a man risking all to protect her so Maria hastily packed a bag for her bow to carry to the Red Barn for her and after he departed she dressed in men's clothing said goodbye to Anne and followed her parur to the clandestine meeting place it was the last time that anyone saw Maria alive for weeks Maria's family wondered what happened to the young couple then William reappeared and puled claiming all had gone as planned he said Maria could not yet return for fear of upsetting his relations but she
was happy and healthy eventually William's visit to his hometown stopped entirely and he communicated with the Martin family only by letter now he claimed he and Maria were living on the aisle of white conveniently located in the English Channel nearly 200 miles or 320 km away each time Maria's family questioned why she did not write herself William offered an excuse her hand was in inured she was feeling unwell the letter had been lost and so on Maria's family grew increasingly suspicious and William eventually stopped communicating with them the entire purpose of Maria's Hasty secret marriage
was so that she could live and puled safely why would she Alo with William only to move further away leaving her family and her young son behind the Martin family did not have the resources to check to see if their missing member was indeed living on the aisle of white so they suffered along hoping Against All Odds that she was alive and well but as the months passed Anne told Thomas she'd began to have dreams about Maria she said that in these nightly Visions she saw Maria dead and buried inside the red B unable to
Bear it any longer and convinced Thomas to follow her hunch on April 19th 1828 he went to the Red Bar armed with a mole Spike and began quite literally poking around after a short while Thomas Martin discovered the body of his daughter badly decomposed and buried in a sack despite the horrific state of the body there was no question of its identity the corpse had remnants of Maria's Hair along with unique character istics that matched Maria such as missing teeth and a facial cyst around her neck was a green handkerchief the Martin family had often
seen with William cord determining the ultimate cause of death was not possible as it appeared Maria had sustained multiple injuries she had been shot in the head with a pistol and had been stabbed and strangled regardless of how Maria was killed there was little question of who had killed her and finding the foxy William coder proved surprisingly simple while he had not followed through on his promise to marry Maria he sought a wife placing an advertisement in a classified sections of several newspapers Williams request for a female of respectability willing to confide her future happiness
and one every way qualified to render the marriage state desirable received nearly 100 responses now he and his selected bride were running a girl school in brenford near London William was arrested at his breakfast table in front of his astonished wife though he claimed to have no knowledge of Maria Martin a hasty search of the house Unearthed a pair of pistols Letters From A psted Friend warning about the discovery of Maria's body and a passport from the French Ambassador likely obtained in case he needed to flee the country country Cod was brought to bur St
Edmonds where the banial courts of a size were held for saach by the time C's trial began the story of Maria's death and's psychic dreams and Williams subsequent New Life had spread like wildfire across the county thousands flocked to beron Edmonds after reading the accounts printed by journalists that had sensationalized the murder further in these account cord was not a middle class tenant farmer but a filthy rich Squire likewise his record of swine theft morphed into a description of his character as unfeeling and wretched the times claimed that cord had also attempted to murder Marius
toddler by feeding him a poisoned fig broadsides devoted all pages to elaborate Engravings depicting the victim the accused and the murder peep shows at a local traveling circus showed scenes of the murder and ANS prophetic Nightmares dramatizations of the crime now known widely as the Red Barn murder were hastily scripted in May 1828 less than a month after the discovery of Maria's body the Cherry fair and Stoke by naand featured a theatrical show called The Late murder of maram Martin as the date for cord's trial grew closer attempt to capitalize on the crime continued Stafford
Potters sculptured models of the red barn and figurines of Maria and William the Red Barn itself became a tourist attraction with sightseers traveling miles to see the sight of the murder accommodations in buris and Edmunds were booked solid and a ticket system was arranged to limit the number of observers inside the courtroom when the trial began on August the 7th 182 28 the judge and Court officials had to push their way through a massive crowd gathered outside before proceedings could even begin cter faced 10 counts of murder one for each of the possible ways in
which the forensic investigation determined Maria may have died including being buried alive the accused pleaded not guilty and made the Bold decision to take the stand in his own defense William claimed that Maria had met him at the Red Barn as planned but had flown into a passionate fit and shot herself afraid he'd be accused of murdering her William said he'd panicked and buried the body instead of reporting the suicide this defense did nothing to endear the jury to Corder suicide was at the time a capital offense and offenders were condemned to burials in unhallowed
ground to claim a woman discovered with numerous injuries had killed herself was offensive and crude the evidence against William cter was substantial Maria was last seen in his company and his green handkerchief was discovered on her body police found a handbag belonging to Maria in cord's study along with pistols and a sword which he'd had sharpened right before the death he'd also lied to the Martins for months about living on the aisle of white with Maria while in reality he had married another woman unsurprisingly cter was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death however
the end of the trial did not mean the end of the public spectacle at the hanging at beron Edmund's jail on August the 11th around 10,000 eager Spectators gathered to see cord's final moments these moments turned out to be long and agonizing The Condemned survived the initial fall from the scaffold and the Executioner was forced to use his own weight to speed up the death still cter twitched and kicked for nearly 10 minutes before finally dying the execution sold sections of the Rope used in the hanging to the eager crowd for a guinea an inch
but even after all that excitement the festivities were far from over cord's body was transported to the sh Hall where a surgeon stood waiting to perform a public dissection of the corpse the surgeon removed the skin from the Torso allowing thousands of Spectators to view the inside of a murderous body at their Leisure over the next day then cord's remains were transferred to the county hospital where so-called specialists wired the corpse to a battery and administered shocks in an attempt to reanimate the dead man in a procedure called galvanic therapy cord's skull was given to
phrenologists who claimed the areas associated with secretiveness acquisitiveness and destructiveness were larger than average while the area where benevolence was thought to reside was underdeveloped at some point William cord's skeleton was passed along for use as an anatomical Aid at a surgical School the bones were used by medical students for over 100 years before being rehoused in the Royal College of surgan Museum and finally cremated in 2004 the skin from cord's body was tanned and used to bind a surgeon copy of Jay Curtis's book about the murder trial this grizzly artifact and others related to
the trial are on display at Moises Hall Museum in bent Edmunds even after Koda was dead and his pieces thoroughly scattered across England the story of his crime remained popular versions of it appeared on stage for most of the 1800s featuring increasingly lifelike special effect including the ghostly apparition of maram Martin visiting him in his jail cell on the eve of his execution in 1908 folk singer Joseph Taylor performed a ballad about Maria that was recorded on a wax cylinder and is available to listen to at the British Library sound archives today in the 20th
century at least five film versions of the Red Bar murder were produced along with radio dramas plays books and songs the red barn and the Martin's Cottage became popular sites for True Crime enthusiasts the barn was stripped for souvenirs down to bits of wood being sold as toothpicks its remains eventually burned down in 1842 Maria's gravestone located in St Mary's churchard and pulad was chipped Away by tourists until only a few scattered Stones remained the only marker left is a wooden plaque on a nearby wall that denotes Maria's final resting place even today the crime
remains popular with locals and Global audiences alike and theories about the case abound some claimed that Maria's stepmother Anne was also having an affair with William cord and conspired with him to kill Maria after discovering William had married another woman and supposedly invented the dreams about Maria's murder to force the discovery of her body and implicate William alone in her death as revenge for him loving another others believed cord had connections to suspected serial killer Thomas Griffith's Wright while another theory places the blame former's death on a local Romany woman but most agree that William
cord was undoubtedly guilty of the murder and worked alone believing his intellect and Status would protect him from prosecution it's unlike ly that as Cordo waited at the Red Bar to kill Maria he ever imagined that he may be tried hanged and then parcel off for the Public's entertainment Maria's tragic death in the Red Bar gripped the nation leaving behind a legacy of fear Intrigue and the commercialization of True Crime while Justice was ultimately served the haunting story of Maria Martin continues to resonate a dark chapter in annals of crime that we still reflect on
today though much has changed since 1827 our fascination with The Morbid and macabra remains as strong as ever thank you for watching right then take care and I'll see you next time with another story to make you say well I never for
