37 min listen
280: The Murder of Sally Cochran w/ Leslie Lambert Rounds - A True Crime History Podcast
280: The Murder of Sally Cochran w/ Leslie Lambert Rounds - A True Crime History Podcast
ratings:
Length:
65 minutes
Released:
Jan 31, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
On a cold winter night in January of 1833, a teenage farmhand named Abraham Prescott crept into the bedroom of his employers, Chauncey and Sally Cochran, and smashed their heads with an ax. Their neighbors in the town of Pembroke, New Hampshire was astonished when the boy explained that he had been sleepwalking and hadn't purposely attacked them. They were even more shocked when the Cochrans, who had both miraculously recovered, allowed him to continue to work for them. A few months later however, that decision would come back to haunt the family. After inviting Sally Cochran out to pick strawberries with him in a secluded area behind their farm, Prescott murdered her with a fence post. Again, he told Chauncey that only done it after he'd fallen asleep. Soon he would face trial and his attorneys would attempt to defend him both with a sleepwalking claim and an insanity plea.My guest is Leslie Lambert Rounds, executive director of the Dyer Library and the Saco Museum in Saco, Maine and author of "I Have Struck Mrs. Cochran with a Stake: Sleepwalking, Insanity, and the Trial of Abraham Prescott". She not only walks us through the story of the murder and its aftermath, but also explains the difficulties authorities in 1830s New Hampshire faced when dealing with criminals who suffered from mental illness.More about the author at Kent State University Press. If you'd like to reach out to her directly, you can do so here: lrounds@dyer.lib.me.us
Released:
Jan 31, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
1: Gangsters in 1930s Minnesota with Paul Maccabee - A True Crime History Podcast Hosted by Erik Rivenes: In the 1930s, Saint Paul Minnesota was considered a vacation home for some of the most notorious bank-robbing gangsters of the Depression-era, including John Dillinger and the Barker-Karpis Gang. My guest, Paul Maccabee, wrote the definitive book on... by Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast