Marker near the well where Joshua’s body was found

(Historic Ipswich)

Newspaper illustration from 1903 depicting the execution

Prosecutor Robert Treat Paine (left) and Defense Attorney Levi Lincoln Sr (right)

Karen:

America’s first high-profile murder

Episode sources:

1. “Murdered by his wife” by Deborah Navas

2. “Last Woman Hanged in This State” (The Boston Globe) 1903

3. “Law N’ History: A cold blooded murder with an asterisk” by R. Marc Kantrowitz (The Patriot Ledger) 2012

4. “New Light on the Bathsheba Spooner Execution” by Deborah Navas (Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society) 1996

5. “Bathsheba Spooner, Hanged for Murder – or for her Loyalist Father?” by Leslie Landrigan (New England Historical Society) 2018

6. “Wife as hanged in 1778” (Telegram & Gazette) 2009

7. “Bathsheba Spooner Drawings” (West Boylston Historical Society)

8. “Loyalist vs. Patriot” by Rebecca Brannon (Bill of Rights Institute)

9. “Bathsheba Spooner” (History of American Women)

10. “The Hanging of Ezra Ross and Bathsheba Spooner, July 2, 1778” (Historic Ipswich) 2026

11. “The lives, last words, and dying speech of Ezra Ross, James Buchanan, and William Brooks, who were executed at Worcester, on Thursday the 2d day of July, 1778 for the murder of Mr. Joshua Spooner, of Brookfield. Bathsheba Spooner, who was convicted of being accessary to the murder, was also executed at the same time.” (University of Michigan Library)

12. “Bathsheba” (Wikipedia)

13. “TIMOTHY RUGGLES (1711-1795) The Rise and Fall of a Massachusetts Loyalist” (Sandwich History)

14. “Bathsheba Spooner” (Wikipedia)

15. “The Most Extraordinary Murder” by Chaim M. Rosenberg (Journal of the American Revolution) 2018

16. “Aqua Fortis” (Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary)

Georgia:

The Kentucky Meat Shower

Episode sources:

1. “The Artist Trying to Explain Kentucky’s ‘Meat Shower’ of 1876” by Marina Wang (Atlas Obscura) 2020

2. “The Great Kentucky Meat Shower mystery unwound by projectile vulture vomit” by Bec Crew (The Scientific American Blog) 2014

3. “Flesh Descending in a Shower” (The New York Times) 1876

4. “The Carnal Rain” (The New York Daily Herald) 1876

5. “Spam aloft? Mystery meat shower of 1876 unsolved still” by Cheyene Miller (Lexington Herald-Leader) 2015

6. “Kentucky Meat Shower 2026” (fleshfalls.com)

7. “The Kentucky Meat Shower” by Dave Barry (Dave Barry’s Substack) 2026

Kentucky Meat Shower Illustration

(James Fosdike / The Jacky Winter Group)

Rebecca Crouch

(Bath County History Museum)

A newspaper headline about the meat showers

(New York Herald)

Nostoc

(gailhampshire / CC BY 2.0 Generic)

Kurt Gohde

(Courtesy of Kurt Gohde)

Piece of Kentucky Meat Shower Meat

(Courtesy of WDRB Kentucky)