The Ade Family

Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now in true crime, and then together we are going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go Hey, guys, welcome back to Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. We are going to go ahead and get started on right now in true crime. I do have a few things I want to talk about first. I do want to start by doing a little Chad day Bill trial recap. I know that's pretty much all I did in the last right now in True Crime, but on Thursday they started rebuttal witnesses and some interesting things happened with that, so I do want to talk about that. And we do not have court now until Tuesday, and I am hoping and praying that we have a trial before Crime Con because Nate Eaton has been doing the lord's work and covered this case since the very very beginning, and I want him to be able to be there for the verdict and able to give us what we want, what we need, and that is the full coverage of all of the things. And Nadie's going to Crime Con, so we need him to be able to get this verdict before crime Con. So fingers crossed for verdict before Friday fingers crossed. So interestingly, one of the rebuttal witnesses is a coworker or was a coworker of Garth day Bell, who is Tammy and Chad's son. He was the one that was at the house the night that Tammy died. And what he said on the stand versus what this friend said he told him are two completely different stories and scenarios. So Garth said he got home from work, he got home from work late, and he heard Chad snoring and then before he knew it, he was woken up with his dad saying like, I need you to help me with mom. And that's when Tammy had fallen off the bed and Earth had gone in and picked her up, and Tammy had obviously passed away at that point. But what the friend said he told him, and this was a couple of weeks after Tammy died, He said that he is the one that found her when he got home from work and he didn't know where his father was. I e. Chad Dabell. And the friend said he didn't remember if he said that she was in the bed or next to the bed, but that he remembers him saying that she was kind of pale and her lips were blue, which is a direct contradiction of what he said on the stand that Chad was there and Chad called him into help, and then he went in there and helped Chad pick her up and put her back on the bed. He says that Chad wasn't even there to this friend of his, which this friend has no reason to make that up, to fabricate it to lie. So it's going to be really interesting to see what comes out with this, what happens with this, And I am so curious to what the jury thinking at this point in time. I do feel like things don't really look the greatest for Chad, but there's never such a thing as a slam dunk, So I am really curious to see how this ends up. I can hope and pray that we get justice for a Tammy, JJ Tyley and of course Charles, but the ball is definitely going to be in the jury's court, so it's going to be really interesting to see what ends up happening. Okay, next thing I want to talk about is I do have an update on the Gillian Kelly and Veronica Butler case. They are the two Kansas moms who were murdered horrifically by a group of people. It was all stumming from a child custody dispute and unfortunately they ended up losing their lives. Five people ended up being arrested in connection with the murder. In a crime online article, they talk about how police searched a nineteen ninety one s Chevy pickup and this belonged to two of the suspects and inside they found a gun with a live round in the chamber. They also found kitty litter, which is used a lot of the times for absorption of blood on like carpet type materials. And also one of the suspect's daughters was given the job of cleaning the interior of this vehicle. I just can't imagine involving so many people in a plan like this, and getting so many people involved in your plan to murder two completely innocent women. It just boggles my mind. But I will continue to keep you guys updated on this one as more comes out. So a small development in the case of Jared Bride again. He is the father and husband who was murdered in a murder for higher plot that was executed by his ex wife, Shanna Gardner. Thankfully they denied her bond and that is the most common sensical thing that I feel like has happened this week. So that is a very very good step in the right direction. Jared's family, his current wife are doing a really good job at advocating on behalf of Jared and staying active on social media, keeping his case out there. And Shanna Gardner, I hope will go away for a long long time because that is exactly what she deserves. Okay, So I think that's just about it for right now and true crime for right now, and we are going to go ahead and get started with today's episode. Okay, guys, we are jumping in to a new episode today. Last year before Crime Con, I did an Unsolved Orlando a few episodes, and I'm going to carry on that tradition since Crime Con is in Nashville this year, I'm going to do an unsolved Nashville or nearby Nashville for the next couple of episodes. The case I'm going to tell you guys about today happened in eighteen ninety seven, which is officially the oldest cold case I have ever covered, and we're just going to be upfront about it. It's not going to be solved because it happened in eighteen ninety seven. Whoever was the perpetrator in this case is no longer with us, But I still want to tell the story because I feel like it's a really interesting and important story to tell. So we are going to be talking today about the Aid family murders. And it happened in Joelton, which is a neighborhood of Nashville in Davidson County. So we are going into the eighteen hundreds, into the eighteen nineties, and we are going to talk about the Aid family. So the Aid family consisted of mother and father, Jacob and Pauline. They lived on Paradise Ridge, which was along Clarksville Road for about twenty years at the time of their horrific murder. Together they had six children, Emma, Rosa, Anna, Henry, Lizzie and Dora. So Emma, Rosa and Anna were all grown up and they had moved out of the house and although Dora was only ten years old, she was living in Nashville with Rosa and her husband. Lizzie was twenty years old and Henry was thirteen years old. So the family was pretty well off considering the time. They had this big four hundred and ten acres a farmland that they lived on, and they were very generous. They were known to help out their neighbors lend a hand when they needed. And again we're talking about way, way, way different times. So in general, the Aides were very well liked and they didn't really have any enemies. Nobody really had any issues with them, and they had lived on this farmland for twenty years, so they were just pretty much part of the community. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the story, but I want to talk first about the victims, because the victims in this and the names of the children kind of overlap a little bit. So we have Jacob Aid, who is the husband father. He was sixty years old. We have Pauline Aid, she is the mother slash wife. She is fifty. We have Lizzie Aid who is twenty. We have Henry Aid who is thirteen. And then earlier I mentioned that they had a daughter named Rosa, but the Rosa that I'm going to speak of is named Rose Morier. She is ten, and she is a friend or neighbor of the Aid family. Regardless, she was at the home the night that the aid family was viciously attacked. So the night that everything changed for the aid family was on Tuesday, March twenty fourth of eighteen ninety seven. According to the Nashvillemi American, at around nine thirty pm, neighbors could see flames coming from the Aids family farm. So the Aids had a neighbor named Squire Simpson, and his mother is the one that initially spotted the flames and had gotten her son and said, hey, go see what's going on. Something is on fire. And Squire Simpson arrived over at the aid family farm and he saw that the house was engulfed in flames. It was literally burning down. He very much presumed that the family wasn't there and that he was going to just do whatever he could to try to save whatever part of the home that he could. And of course this acreage and this farm that's the family's livelihood. So in his mind, he didn't think the family was home, but he wanted to try to save parts of their home, and you know the parts that they use especially for their livelihood, Like that's how they ate, that's how they functioned on a day to day basis. That's that was their livelihood. So he was going to do what he could to help save what he could. So he acquired a potato fork and it had a long pole that was attached to it, and he happened to see one of the walls had collapsed in the home and he was able to see inside of the home and he sees what he thinks is like two bundles of clothes in the middle of the room, and he starts using this potato fork thing to poke at the bundles of clothes, and pretty much immediately he realizes that those weren't bundles of clothes, they were actually people, meaning the Aid family. So he was able to get four bodies out of the burning down home. And then he ended up getting another neighbor who who is named s A. Thompson, and then they went to try to find Rosa's father, who is named Henry, to tell him what had happened. Now, at that point, I'm not really sure if they knew that Rosa was in fact at the Aid family home that night and was also one of the victims. I'm not really sure if they knew that. Of course, I'm sure her father, Henry knew that she was over at the Aid home, but at this point her body had not been one of the ones that was pulled out of the wreckage of the Aid family home, so there's really no way to know if Henry knew right away that his daughter had likely been killed during the spire So, of course, initially it seems like it was a tragic accident. The house burned down, the Sheriff's department arrives, and they then find the body of Rosa. Now, the difference in Rose's body versus the other members of the Aid family was that she was recognizable. They were able to identify that this was in fact Rosa, and the reason that they couldn't tell the identity of the other bodies was because they had all been beheaded, which we all know how it works. A fire does not cause heads to fall off, So obviously the Sheriff's department realized that they had something more sinister on their hands. Somebody had gone in, attacked the Aid family, attacked Rosa, and then set the fire to try to cover it up. The Sheriff's office had a theory about what happened here. They thought that whoever the murderer was knocked on the Aid Famili's homes door, and Jacob opened the door, and they went ahead and attacked Jacob with an axe. And then at that same time, Pauline was moving towards the door or right behind Jacob, and she ended up getting attacked. And then the murderer ended up walking into a room where the other kids were, and they thought that Rosa was actually able to get out of the house kind of run behind the killer and escaped the house. He then went on to kill the other members of the Aid family and then started the fire. Once he left, Rosa was recaptured somewhere, probably on the property, because this was a humongous property, It's not like Rosa could have escaped easily. He recaptured Rosa and murdered her and then put her back inside the burning house along with the other victims. Which is just horrific to think that this poor ten year old girl who was literally just visiting this family ended up in this situation, possibly escaping and then getting recaptured and literally being thrown into her death, which is just so horrific when you think about it. Whoever did this was obviously a super super horrific human and they probably killed before they targeted the Aid family, But the question is why did they target the Aid family, Because, like I said, the Aid family was very well liked, very well known in the community, very helpful to others. There's no reason that anybody would want to harm them. And to think about harming two adults is hard enough, but when you think about harming three children, I cannot even imagine, like what it takes in someone to actually physically harm a child. They also went back to the fact that all of the other family members had their heads missing, so someone obviously went through the trouble of removing their heads. The heads were never found, which is insanity to me, Like I don't understand what you would do with one human head, much less four. But it also kind of goes along with the fact that Rosa's head was still intact, so they four were probably killed while Rosa was trying to get off of the property, and then she was recaptured and killed quickly and thrown back in the home. This is a there's a huge possibility in my opinion, that this was more than one person, but it's just so insane to me, like thinking this happened in the eighteen nineties and that someone was this deranged and volatile back then. It is absolutely mind blowing to me. So Sheriff's office is definitely trying to figure out what is the motive here, And at first they kind of thought maybe it was theft, but they did find a can of money in the Aid home, and then they were kind of thinking, well, maybe it was this other neighbor that had some beef with the Aid family. He had previously been arrested for stealing one of the Aid's pigs. But that also did it really make a whole lot of sense to law enforcement. They didn't really think that this neighbor was the person that did this. So the only like true witness to this crime was the Aid family dog, which was an older dog, a German Shepherd. It had very poor eyesight, it did not have great hearing. But I tell you, if dogs could talk, they could tell us everything. I think about that a lot with the Chris and Shenan Watts whole situation, because that dog Deeter, like Deeter knows, Deeter knows what happened. And man if I could get inside the mind of these animals that witness these horrific things, I swear it would be like absolutely mind blowing. So if only we could get inside the mind of this deaf and blind German shepherd that was outside when the fire ended up starting. This was the Aids family dog. And back in the eighteen nineties, of course, law enforcement didn't have a whole lot to go off of. So the Sheriff's department actually used this dog as a secret witness. And I say that in the biggest air quotes ever because a dog technically can't be a secret witness because the dog can't speak. But back in the eighteen nineties, that's the way things were, so nothing really ever came of this. They weren't ever able to nail down any possible leads. The dog was never able to help them in any way, shape or form. I don't know exactly how they used the dog, but they used the dog allegedly as a secret witness. So there was a lot of rumors that floated around about who potentially could have been responsible. There were some guys from Ashland City who were arrested, and these guys, during their confession, said that the whole reason that the murder took place was to rob them, and law enforcement didn't see any evidence that robbery was an actual motive, so they ended up being let go, and then they again talked about this neighbor potentially, but there was never any evidence against him, and of course there's not a lot of information on these murders out there, but there's no evidence of the neighbor who is called Anderson, ever going to prison or anything like that for anything in connection to the Eight Family murders. And then there was another potential suspect, which interestingly enough, is Henry, who is Rose's father. Oh, there is a theory being floated around that Henry and a friend of his went to the eight family farm to kill the family and ended up seeing Rosa there, and Rosa obviously recognize them because they are like family members her dad and then another family slash friend, and ended up having to kill her because of it. I don't feel like that's the case, because why would Henry, Why would Henry's ten year old daughter be at the eight family farm and Henry decides tonight's the night that I'm going to go kill this family while my daughter is there. Unless Henry is just a horrific human, I just don't see this being the case, and I don't see him being taken by surprise that she was there because she was ten, so I'm sure he knew that his daughter was over at the eight family farm. Maybe not. It was the eighteen nineties. Things are certainly different back then, but it just doesn't really jie for me that Henry is the one that did this. And of course others in the community were not pleased with this because they saw how distraught and upset Henry was after Rosa was killed, and he was literally running around town trying to get someone to confess and be held responsible for killing Rosa and the family, So they didn't feel like he could have acted and pretended to be a grieving father if he was really a guilty party, and I don't think so either. Henry, in my opinion, is a perfect example of somebody who, because he was close with one of the victims, easily framed for his involvement when he had absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever, Which is bad that back in eighteen ninety this was going on and it's still going on today in twenty twenty four. Of course, I understand that they want to look at the closest people to the victims first, but in this case, Henry was a true grieving father who was trying to get justice for the Aid family and for his daughter. So there was two other men that were arrested and ended up being tried for the murders, and there wasn't a ton of evidence against them. They had some bad things in their past. I don't really know what, but in the article I read for my research for this episode, they were just labeled bad men. So one of them allegedly was walking on the road to Clarksville, which was near the Aid family farm, and wouldn't tell the neighbors where he was going for the murders. I don't know if he was spotted and someone said, hey, what are you doing and he wouldn't say that could be why they ended up bringing this person in and charging him trying him for the murders. And there was also the other one that was a private detective, which I guess in the eighteen nineties probably wasn't as mainstream as it is now. But back in the eighteen nineties, if you were a private detective, you were a sketchy human and you were likely involved in a horrendous murder of five people. So anyways, they ended up trying the two bad men, and they ended up quitting them because they had no evidence that they had anything to do with the horrific murders of the Aid family. So could this potentially have been a serial killer that kind of had the mo of killing a family with an axe and then setting a fire to try to cover it up. There were several other axe murders in different areas that kind of had similar characteristics, but there were never anything that they were able to one hundred percent say that all of these different cases were connected. So interestingly enough, two of the remaining a daughters, Rosa and Anna, ended up bringing a suit against a gentleman named WS Whiteman and his wife. They were neighbors and friends of the Aid family. So this white man guy essentially had spoken with the remaining Aid family children, who were all grown adults at this point in time, and because their parents had passed away, they had rights to this four hundred and ten acres of this farmland that their father had owned, and he ended up advising them that it really wasn't worth their time or effort or money to divide up this acreage and that he would help them and take their shares of the land and exchange it for some other smaller little things. Now, think about it. Back in the eighteen nineties, like, this was a lot of property. It's a lot of property now. I mean it is, And it was worth a lot of money back in the day. Between four thousand and six thousand dollars back in the eighteen nineties, that was a craft ton of money. So they ended up bringing the suit against him because they said that he misled them into thinking that it wasn't worth it and that they needed to go with this other route, and he of course denies that he misled them. They ended up ultimately like giving him the land because he misled them and said that I'm going to give you this and it's going to be worth more money, and he was just being a shady human. Even though he says he didn't intentionally mislead them, he did end up paying them an additional two hundred and fifty dollars apiece. But he got two hundred and five acres of that land property and he got it for six hundred dollars, which was a heck of a deal. It was a heck of a deal back then and a heck of a deal now. And it's interesting to kind of think about this because could he have potentially been somebody who orchestrated this whole thing in order to get that land. I don't know. I don't want to say that he is the person that did this whole thing, but he definitely had not the greatest of intentions, in my opinion, with trying to mislead the rest of the Aid family daughters with this whole land situation. The Aid family farm is now partially a farmland, and then there's also part of it that is now a subdivision that is built on it, and that subdivision is called Jacob's Valley. But it's very interesting that this happened and they really didn't get anywhere with figuring out who potentially could have done this. And this is a case that literally died the day that whoever perpetrated this horrific crime died, they took their secrets to the grave and will never know what happened to the Aid family. But I wanted to tell the story because I think it's important and I think that it really drives home the fact that no matter how cold or old cases, if the people who perpetrated a horrific crime or no information about someone who perpetrated a horrific crime, or have a idea or maybe know something that they didn't realize they know about a cold case. Speaking up is so important so cases like this don't exist in the future. The reason I do this podcast because I know people love a good resolved case. But the reason I do the podcast the way I do it is because I want to bring attention to these cases that don't get attention so they don't become the Aid Family. I don't want crimes that happened in the last twenty years to become the Aid Family where the people that perpetrated it just die off and no one knows anything. So that is the whole reason behind this podcast is to draw attention and get these stories out there and basically just spread awareness. That's what it's all about at the end of the day. So I hope you guys enjoyed this Unsolved Nashville episode. I certainly enjoyed getting to learn a little bit more about the Aid Family massacre and what exactly happened, what was behind it. I do want to give credit to Nashville Scene dot com. There isn't a lot out there on the Aid family and their murder. But this article was posted in twenty eighteen by a woman named Betsy Phillips, and she had a lot of really good information, which is where I got all of my information for this case, because there isn't hardly anything out there, so have to give credit where it's due, and I will be sure to link that in the show notes as well. But that is the story of the Aid family. And I will be coming your way next Monday with another Unsolved Nashville episode and I can't wait to share with you guys all the fun stuff that happens at crime Con, all of the meet and greets and all of the sessions. I will be sure to do a crime Con recap episode because it's going to be in none other than Nashville, and I cannot wait. I am so so excited. So I will see you guys on Friday for a brand new Dan Markel Summer series episode and the following Monday for another Unsolved Nashville episode. And I hope you guys have a great week ahead and I will see you on Friday. Byett