SALT AND SHADOW

In the dead of winter, 1862, Jean Baptiste wasn’t just digging graves; he was harvesting them. To the families of Salt Lake City, the cemetery was sacred ground. To Baptiste, it was a supply closet. He cracked open coffins like walnut shells, stripping the stiffening bodies of the innocent...men, women, and children...treating them as nothing more than mannequins. But the horror wasn't just in the ground. It was in his home. When police finally kicked down his door, they didn't just find stolen suits or wedding dresses. They walked into a nightmare: a house heated by the splintered wood of coffins, the air thick with the smell of death, and a corner stacked high with the most terrifying trophies of all-sixty pairs of children’s shoes. This is the true story of a monster who lived among us, wearing the clothes of our dead. A man who was branded and exiled to a desolate island in a dead sea, only to vanish into the night. Did he drown in the salt? Or did the boogeyman walk back ashore? Written and Read by the Author, James Cawley.    Dust and Echoes Podcast.