Bizarre Mysteries That Make No Sense

[00:00:00]The intruder stayed. And that's the detail that has bothered investigators in Northern Kentucky for a decade and a half. Whoever entered a small condo on Ridge Edge Court in the early hours of May 29th, 2011, [music] didn't run when the violence was over. They lingered, possibly for hours, moving through the home and rearranging what they found.

[00:00:24]And at some point, [music] at least 2 hours after the crime, they returned to a body and did one more thing to the remains before they walked out into a quiet Sunday morning.

[00:00:36]Bill Stevenson and his wife Peggy were both 74 years old in the spring of 2011.

[00:00:42]They'd been sweethearts since their school days, and after marrying on August 25th, 1956, they worked a dairy farm together in southern Boone County.

[00:00:54]When they died, they were less than three months away from their 55th wedding anniversary. [music] They raised two sons and a daughter, and by 2011, they had seven grandchildren and a great grandchild.

[00:01:07]Their lives revolved around church, and Bill was a deacon who ran a ministry known as the Trucker's Chapel out of the Travel America truck stop in Florence.

[00:01:18]There he preached to long haul drivers passing through on the interstate.

[00:01:22]Peggy had played the organ at Union Baptist Church for more than four decades. Bill was semi-retired from an insurance investment company, went on regular fishing trips, and organized donations for struggling communities in Eastern Kentucky. To give some context as to how beloved they were in the community, more than500 people showed up to the funeral.

[00:01:46]But here's the thing about Bill and Peggy.

[00:01:49]For all their generosity, they weren't naive.

[00:01:54]Friends and family have described a couple that was notably careful about their own home, and visitors at the front entrance had to be buzzed in through an audio intercom.

[00:02:04]Many people who knew the couple for years didn't even have their address.

[00:02:08]Whoever got inside on May 29th [music] either found a way around all of that or was someone the Stevensons trusted.

[00:02:15][music] Their condo sat near the back of Ridge Edge Court, a culde-sac in the Oakbrook subdivision of Florence, a suburb about 15 minutes south of Cincinnati. [music] The complex had a single street in and out, and the Stevensons had neighbors on both sides of their unit, and another directly above it. On paper, it was one of the worst possible places in Boone County to attempt a double homicide and get away clean without any witnesses.

[00:02:45]Nothing about Saturday, May 28th stood out afterwards to investigators.

[00:02:51]It was Memorial Day weekend, [music] and the couple was expected at church the next morning, like every Sunday of their lives. But they never showed up because, according to the autopsy findings, both Bill and Peggy were attacked sometime between 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. on Sunday the 29th.

[00:03:09]No neighbor reported seeing or hearing anything unusual that night. And when deputies later examined the doors and windows, they found no sign of forced entry anywhere in the home.

[00:03:22]Sunday morning came and went without the Stevensons in their usual locations.

[00:03:27]Peggy's organ bench sat empty at Union Baptist, and Bill never appeared at the Trucker's Chapel. For most families, a missed church service might not mean much, but for this one, this was a massive red flag.

[00:03:43]Peggy did sometimes miss church since she dealt with a chronic illness, but neither of them ever simply failed to show without calling someone.

[00:03:52]Their youngest daughter, Beth, grew worried when her phone calls went unanswered.

[00:03:58]Her husband drove to the condo to check on them, [music] and he found what was inside.

[00:04:04]The call to 911 came in at 12:57 p.m. on May 29th.

[00:04:10]Bill and Peggy had been murdered, their bodies in two separate rooms of the home. What investigators found when they started documenting the scene turned a tragedy into something much stranger.

[00:04:23]Detective Cody Cox of the Boone County Sheriff's Office has worked the case from the beginning, following it into the county's cold case unit. He has called it the most unique crime scene he's ever encountered, and the details that have trickled out over the years back him up.

[00:04:39]The bodies had been posed, each in a different room in a manner the sheriff's office has never publicly described.

[00:04:48]Items throughout the condo had been moved, turned over, altered, and in some cases written on. Cox has said in interviews that objects were taken from end tables and shelves and repositioned, and that things with no obvious meaning were placed in different rooms.

[00:05:08]Then there were the photographs, and the couple's family pictures had been arranged in a way that seemed to signal that the killer liked certain people in them and disliked others.

[00:05:20]If that analysis is accurate, it points somewhere uncomfortable because it means the perp recognized the faces in those frames. To make matters even more disturbing, somewhere in the home, the killer also left a message. Its contents have never been made public, and investigators have been deliberately vague about its form, but have suggested that it was the product of an extremely disturbed mind. As for the weapons used by the perpetrator, investigators have said they know exactly what was used, but nothing was recovered at the scene, and portions of the scene had been cleaned. A spokesman for the sheriff's office later summed it up by saying that somebody had spent a couple of hours inside doing bizarre things to the scene and left it at that.

[00:06:07]One forensic detail stands out above the rest, and it's one of those things I mentioned in the beginning of this segment since it's absolutely sinister.

[00:06:17]One of the victims bore an injury inflicted at least 2 hours after death, and whatever it was suggested something ritualistic.

[00:06:25]Detective Cox believes much of the staging was built to suggest motives that weren't real. In essence, bizarre misdirection to cover up the real reason for the crime. Some elements pointed toward robbery, except that valuable, easily carried items sat untouched in plain view, strongly suggesting robbery wasn't actually the motive. Other elements had what looked like a ritual flavor, enough that investigators reportedly obtained a list of self-described occultists in the region and checked them out. An expert who reviewed the scene concluded that nothing in it resembled a genuine ritual. [music] This left investigators wondering whether the occult touches were the result of some disorganized thought pattern [music] or one more layer of deliberate misdirection.

[00:07:14]The sheer violence of the attack, meanwhile, read as overkill, the signature of something deeply personal.

[00:07:22]Now, frustratingly, a lot of what I've said has been vague thus far, and that's because the investigators themselves have only released limited information.

[00:07:32]That said, Detective Cox has drawn a few conclusions he's been willing to share with the public over the years. He believes that both Bill and Peggy were the targets of the attack. If someone had only wanted Bill, they could have ambushed him at the truck stop or anywhere along his active public routine. If someone had only wanted Peggy, she was home alone often enough to be reached without ever dealing with her husband. Instead, the intruder chose the one scenario that guaranteed facing both of them at once, and to Cox, that choice was the point. He has also noted how easily the offender seemed to move through the home, [music] handling its contents room by room with apparent familiarity.

[00:08:17]He also noted that the attack came just hours before a Sunday service the couple never missed, which effectively guaranteed the scene would be discovered that same day. Most criminals want to delay discovery, but this one, in the detective's analysis, may have wanted an audience.

[00:08:35]Perhaps his strangest public comment came in an interview years later [music] when he suggested the person responsible may have felt justified in what they did. Like with so many things in this case, though, this is an enigma since we have no further indication as to what that actually means.

[00:08:55]Every theory of this case eventually collides with the same problem, and that's the door.

[00:09:01]>> [music] >> There was no forced entry, and this wasn't a household that left things unlocked or opened up for strangers.

[00:09:09]Getting buzzed in through the intercom in the middle of the night [music] would have meant waking the couple and talking them into letting the perp into the unit. While they had a long list of social contacts, investigators have revealed that there were relatively few people the Stevensons would have let in their condo in this manner.

[00:09:29]Investigators have also acknowledged they can't rule out more than one person being involved, which opens the possibility that one party carried out the attack and another did the staging.

[00:09:41]Investigators have also indicated that the staging itself may even have been arranged to obscure how the killer got in, though, as you may have guessed, they haven't elaborated.

[00:09:52]The case has had its share of promising suspects, and each one has dissolved upon further investigation.

[00:10:00]The most obvious suspects were members of the Stevenson family given the late night unforced entry.

[00:10:07]In March 2012, a nephew of the couple killed someone in Aurora, Indiana, beating her with a frying pan and a pepper grinder [music] before taking $1,000 in cash. He owed money all over, which was the motive. [music] And when he was arrested, plenty of people assumed the Stevenson case had just solved itself.

[00:10:30]In the end, though, none of the forensic evidence, including the genetic evidence, tied him to the Stevenson crime.

[00:10:38]Then there's the darker, stranger possibility involving Samuel Little. He confessed to taking 93 lives and is considered perhaps the most prolific serial killer in American history.

[00:10:52]He was arrested in Columbus, Ohio in April 2011 and released within days and he surfaced next in Louisville in June.

[00:11:02]He traveled by hitchhiking and the natural route between those two cities, Interstate 71, runs directly past Florence. [music] It's an eerie coincidence, and investigators looked at it seriously, but nothing about the case fits Little's pattern. [music] He was never known to enter homes, attack couples, or spend hours staging anything.

[00:11:27]Little passed away in prison in December 2020 without ever being tied to the Stevenson crime.

[00:11:34]In 2012, the forensic work finally produced what should have been an ending to this chilling cold case. Analysts at the Kentucky State Police Crime Lab in Frankfurt identified DNA from a single unknown individual recovered from multiple locations inside the condo. The sheriff's office announced it publicly and called it the best evidence they could ever hope for. At the press conference announcing the discovery, investigators sounded like men who expected to make an arrest before too long. At least according to reporters at the time. Detectives said at the time that it was no longer a question of knowing who did it [music] and being unable to prove it, implying with that genetic profile they could prove who committed the crime.

[00:12:23]They said that all they needed was the name, [music] but as of now, that name associated with that genetic profile never arrived.

[00:12:32]The profile has been run against the FBI's national DNA database, which holds samples from millions of offenders, and it has never returned a match.

[00:12:44]Whoever left it has apparently never been arrested for a qualifying offense anywhere in the country. While this evidence appears to rule out the suspects I discussed previously, at the end of the day, we don't know how the cops are so certain this genetic profile is from the intruder.

[00:13:03]15 years on, the Stevenson case sits in a strange place for a cold case to be because there are so many puzzle pieces yet still no answer to the mystery. It's a double homicide with a recovered genetic profile likely from the murderer, a known [music] weapon, and a scene so distinctive that its details function as a fingerprint.

[00:13:26]By every technical measure, it should be solvable.

[00:13:30]But from where we stand right now, it hasn't been solved.

[00:13:34]Personally, I think this is a case that needs to be cracked by genetic genealogy as soon as possible. If the DNA evidence is actually from the intruder, then there's a good chance this can fairly quickly close out this case.

[00:13:52]Sometime during the night of June 23rd, 2016 in Cutler Bay, Florida, a woman climbed the stairs to her apartment and asked the woman she lived with for a cell phone. She looked disheveled and badly shaken, nothing like the person who'd gone to work that morning. She said that if she didn't get that phone, the people she was dealing with were going to take her life. Then she took the phone and no one ever saw her again.

[00:14:20]At least no one who was willing to talk.

[00:14:24]Her name was Laura Cooney and she was 54 years old and she managed the public storage facility on Marlin Road. By early the next morning, she'd been found inside a closet in her own office. 10 years have passed since that night, and police still haven't arrested anyone or even settled on a motive.

[00:14:45]By every account, Laura Cooney was about the last person you'd expect to find at the center of a homicide case. Relatives later described the life she'd built as joyful, almost zen-like, which makes what happened all the harder to square since she had no known enemies. Her niece, Vivien Sanchez, who was also her goddaughter, later described her as the family's refuge, [music] the person she'd run to whenever things at home got tense. Laura's father, Juvenile Cooney, was 90 years old in 2016, [music] and she called him every single day without fail. Another niece, Diana Delgado, described that daily phone call as something close to a lifeline for her grandfather.

[00:15:30]Professionally, Laura had spent years working for public storage, and by 2016, she was the manager of the company's facility on Marlin Road in Cutler Bay, a suburb of Miami.

[00:15:44]The job came with an unusual arrangement [music] since she also received an apartment directly above the office.

[00:15:50]Laura shared that space with a woman the coverage over the years, described first as a friend staying with her and later as her longtime partner.

[00:16:00]Given the subsequent coverage and all other information on this case, though it's limited, I believe it's fairly safe to assume that this was a romantic relationship.

[00:16:11]If this is correct, [music] this would make what happened next even more odd since the other woman living in the apartment presumably loved Laura.

[00:16:22]Thursday, June 23rd, 2016 seems to have started as an ordinary day.

[00:16:28]Laura worked her shift in the office below her apartment and that shift ended at 6:00 in the evening. According to what her family later shared, her father called her around 11 that night. She didn't answer, which was out of character for a woman who never missed their daily conversation, but he told himself she must be out somewhere and tried not to worry. Upstairs at the facility, the woman staying with Laura was starting to worry too. Someone who worked downstairs, slept upstairs, and rarely strayed far from either had gone quiet for hours, and nobody could say where she was.

[00:17:07]A storage facility after closing time, deep in the night, [music] is a strange kind of empty. Something that feels like it's out of the back rooms. Long rows of locked doors with nobody around. And somewhere in that emptiness, it turned out, was Laura.

[00:17:24]But here's the thing.

[00:17:26]Laura hadn't gone anywhere and at some point during that night she came to the apartment door in person. The account comes from the woman Laura was living with who described the encounter to Miami Dade police detectives. Laura appeared at the apartment looking disheveled and frightened. She asked for the woman's cell phone and she warned that without it the people who had her under their control [music] were going to kill her.

[00:17:52]Then she took the phone and was gone again. And the woman Laura was living with didn't immediately notify police.

[00:18:00]It's a bizarre fact because whoever had captured her allowed her to walk up to her own apartment and collect a phone all on her own. It implies they were either confident enough to let her out of their sight or close enough behind her that she didn't dare say more than she did.

[00:18:18]Laura's partner later told police she believed four people were involved that night, though again, [music] for whatever reason, she didn't notify the cops. And unfortunately, publicly, we have no indication as to why Laura's partner indicated the potential involvement of four intruders.

[00:18:37]Early on the morning of Friday, June 24th, 2016, reportedly at around half 6, Laura Cooney was found inside the office of the public storage facility, her body in a closet. Laura's partner, the woman she had resided with, frantically called police that morning after realizing Laura had never come home at all, which is bizarre given that the threat had very clearly materialized the night before, but more on that in a moment.

[00:19:06][music] The scene apparently told investigators very little at first, but not for the reason you may think. There was so much blood that investigators couldn't immediately determine what had actually ended her life.

[00:19:20]The picture that eventually emerged was worse than anything the family had braced for. Laura had been held hostage, bound, and beaten inside the office where she'd worked for years, with the autopsy unable to determine what actually killed her. A detective later publicly stated that Laura had been held hostage in an effort to extract whatever information these people believe she had. What that information might have been, nobody has ever said, and the police have never floated their own theories publicly.

[00:19:53]The obvious theory arrived first that the entire thing had been a robbery, [music] and it collapsed almost immediately.

[00:20:01]Laura managed a storage facility, [music] the sort of business where people assume there's potential valuables behind every rollup door. But police have said clearly that this wasn't a robbery. and there appears to have been no attempt to access any of the storage units. That leaves the far harder question of what her attackers actually wanted. And on that point, the case has never produced a public answer.

[00:20:26]Investigators came to believe the people responsible knew Laura's routine and had followed her. This, of course, points away from a random crime of opportunity and toward something planned and targeted, even if the motive stayed invisible.

[00:20:42]And yet Laura had no known enemies and no one in her life who wished to harm her. And she wasn't a woman of wealth or great means.

[00:20:51]Detectives have said that the absence of motive is precisely what makes this case so hard to close.

[00:20:58]Homicide investigations tend to move outward from the question of who benefits from the person being gone. And here, as far as anyone has said on the record, nobody did. No feud or grudge against Laura has ever surfaced publicly. [music] And whatever the reason was, the people who held her in that office carried it out the door with them. [music] And then there's the matter of the security footage, which I alluded to earlier. And here we know frustratingly little about what it contains.

[00:21:29]Detectives pulled the camera footage from the facility in the days after the attack and combed through it for anything useful. Whatever those tapes showed, if anything at all, investigators have never described it publicly.

[00:21:43]I find it fairly unusual that no descriptions whatsoever have been released of the asalants, which suggests the possibility that there may have been an issue with the technology.

[00:21:54]I suppose it's also possible that the security camera system was disabled by the intruders.

[00:22:01]Anyway, I have a lot of problems with this cold case and the narrative we've been given on it. So, give me a minute or two or maybe a bit more to vent.

[00:22:11]One of the things that bothered me most about this case is the sequence of events described by Laura's partner.

[00:22:17]According to that account, Laura didn't simply disappear without warning. She allegedly returned to the apartment looking terrified, disheveled, and under obvious duress. She specifically said that the people controlling her would kill her if she didn't get a cell phone.

[00:22:35]If that account is accurate, it's difficult to understand why police weren't called immediately.

[00:22:42]Even if Laura insisted on leaving, hearing someone you care about say they're being threatened by multiple people should trigger an emergency response.

[00:22:52]Even hearing something like this about someone you don't particularly care about should trigger that response.

[00:22:58]Waiting until the following morning after Laura failed to return feels like one of the most puzzling aspects of the entire investigation.

[00:23:07]To put it mildly, it's also important to remember that the apartment they shared was connected to the office of the storage facility.

[00:23:16]This suggests that the partner simply went to bed that night while Laura was being slowly killed on the premises.

[00:23:24]To me, that just doesn't make a lot of sense, and it strikes me as deeply suspicious.

[00:23:29]Now, it's possible there's an innocent explanation for this unusual sequence of events, especially since this isn't a widely known or reported on case.

[00:23:40]It may be that the account that hit local media through the cops isn't accurate, [music] but if it is, again, deeply unusual, doesn't even begin to describe it.

[00:23:51]The circumstances themselves are also difficult to reconcile, [music] which is to say, nothing about this narrative really makes sense. If Laura was being held hostage, why would her capttors allow her to walk up to her own apartment unattended?

[00:24:07]Were they watching from nearby, or did they trust that fear alone would keep her compliant?

[00:24:12]The logistics simply don't make much sense since she could have obviously informed her partner of the attack and urged her to call the cops.

[00:24:21]The moment the cops were called, the hostage takers would have had to hight tail it out of there or risk being caught.

[00:24:28]I'm also struck by how little investigators have revealed after so many years. Police have ruled out robbery, yet they've never publicly identified what they believe the attackers were trying to obtain.

[00:24:42]A detective reportedly said Laura was being pressured for information. But what information could a storage facility manager possess that justified what was done? Without even a broad theory, it's difficult to understand what investigators believe happened.

[00:24:58][music] Then there's the apparent lack of suspect descriptions. In many unsolved cases, police eventually release sketches, [music] vehicle descriptions, clothing, or even vague physical characteristics.

[00:25:14]Here, almost nothing has been made public despite the existence of security cameras. [music] That makes me wonder whether the cameras failed, were disabled, or simply captured nothing useful.

[00:25:27]Finally, the brutality itself seems completely disproportionate to everything known about Laura. [music] By all accounts, she was well-liked, lived a quiet life, had no known enemies, [music] and wasn't connected to organized crime or significant wealth.

[00:25:45]The violence suggests planning and determination. [music] Yet, the motive remains completely enigmatic.

[00:25:52]That's perhaps the strangest part of all. After a decade, we're still left wondering not just who killed Laura Cooney, but why anyone would have wanted to. [music] Hey everyone, it's Jimmy with my usual quick reminder to ring the notification bell and turn on all notifications.

[00:26:14]Also, don't forget to check out the Patreon or the membership if you want to take your support for my channel to the next level.

[00:26:22]Imagine the sensory overload of the old market square in Ruan on a late May morning in 1431.

[00:26:31]The air would have been thick with the smell of sulfur and the murmur of a restless crowd held back by 800 English soldiers.

[00:26:40]In the center of this grim theater stood a scaffold built unusually high, a deliberate architectural choice. [music] At the top of this p stood a 19-year-old girl, her head shaved, wearing a paper hat that screamed her crimes to the world. This young woman was Joan of Ark, and her destruction was the single most important political objective of the English occupation of France.

[00:27:05]To understand why a teenage peasant was subjected to the most expensive and elaborate legal proceeding of the Middle Ages, we must understand the machinery that placed her there.

[00:27:17]The trial of Jon of Arc was never truly about theology. It was about the survival of the English claim to the French throne. The Hundred Years War was a dynastic struggle where political legitimacy was inextricably linked to divine favor.

[00:27:32]The English argument was that God supported the Treaty of Troy which disinherited the French Doofan Charles II and acknowledged Henry V 6th of England as the true king of France.

[00:27:44][music] When Joan emerged from the Lraine borders and successfully led Charles to his coronation at Rance, she shattered the English propaganda that God was on their side.

[00:27:57]If Joan was truly a divinely ordained messenger from heaven, then the English were fighting against God himself.

[00:28:05]Therefore, for the English occupation to endure, Joan couldn't simply be slain as a soldier.

[00:28:12]She had to be discredited as a witch and a heretic.

[00:28:17]It was imperative to prove that her victories were the work of demons, thereby revealing Charles II as a king who owed his crown to the forces of hell.

[00:28:28]This political necessity drove the English to purchase this peasant for a sum typically reserved for capturing a king. [music] Notably, the French king, despite being placed on the throne with the help of Joan, didn't join the bidding. A decision that has raised questions for over 600 years. [music] The road to the stake began with a moment of chaos outside the walls of Compenya in May 1430.

[00:28:56]Joan had rushed to the town to assist in its defense against the Burgundians, the French allies of the English. During a skirmish, she and her company were cut off from the safety of the town. As they retreated toward the bridge, the governor of the city ordered the gates closed and the drawbridge raised.

[00:29:16]Whether this was a cold military calculation to save the city or a calculated betrayal remains a subject of historical debate. Whatever the case, the result was that Joan was left trapped on the wrong side of the moat.

[00:29:29][music] She was pulled from her horse by an archer who grabbed the lavish cloth of gold coat she wore over her armor.

[00:29:36]She wasn't taken by the English initially, but by the Burgundians who held her for months while the negotiations took place.

[00:29:45]Once transferred to English custody in Ruan, Joan faced a legal proceeding that was rigged from its inception. The trial was orchestrated by Pierre Koson, the bishop of Bove, a brilliant but ambitious cleric who had tied his career to the English cause.

[00:30:04]The venue itself was a violation of ecclesiastical law. As a woman accused of heresy, Joan should have been held in a church prison, guarded by nuns who could protect her virtue. Instead, she was thrown into a dark cell in the tower of the castle of Ruan, shackled in irons and guarded day and night by five English soldiers of the lowest rank.

[00:30:29]These men subjected her to constant mockery and the terrifying threat of the most disturbing forms of violence.

[00:30:37]This environment was designed to break her spirit before she even entered the courtroom. Furthermore, the trial lacked a defense attorney, and Joan stood alone against dozens of the most learned theologians and lawyers in Europe. To ensure they had enough material to condemn her, Koson employed insidious tactics, including the use of a spy named Nicola Luazer.

[00:31:02]He posed as a fellow prisoner and a sympathetic countryman from Joan's home region. Sometimes even disguising himself as a shoemaker to gain her confidence. He would hear her confession in her cell while English notaries listened from a hidden location, scribbling down her private thoughts to be used against her in the public sessions. This entrapment underscores the desperation of the judges to find a theological error in the words of an illiterate girl who had effectively checkmated their initial investigations.

[00:31:37]The public interrogations were a spectacle of theological combat. The judges tried repeatedly to trap Joan into admitting something that would contradict church doctrine. They asked her about the nature of her voices, trying to prove they were demonic.

[00:31:53]They asked if St. Michael was unclothed when he appeared, to which she sharply retorted by asking if they thought God couldn't afford robes for his angels.

[00:32:04]They interrogated her about the specific dialect her voices spoke, and she replied that they spoke better French than the judges did, a biting insult to their pro-English leanings.

[00:32:15]But the most dangerous moment came when they asked her if she knew herself to be in the grace of God. This was a master stroke of a trap.

[00:32:26]If she answered yes, she would be committing the sin of presumption as no human can know for absolute certain they're saved. If she answered no, she would be confessing to being in a state of sin, which would instantly discredit her claims of divine guidance. [music] Joan's answer to this impossible question is one of the most famous responses in legal history. She replied that if she wasn't in God's grace, she prayed he would put her there. And if she was, she prayed he would keep her there. The transcript shows that the judges were stunned into silence. She had navigated a theological minefield with a simplicity that baffled the doctors of the Sorbon.

[00:33:13]They couldn't understand how an uneducated peasant girl from a rural backwater could have such an advanced understanding of theology.

[00:33:21]Frustrated by her surprising agility on spiritual matters, the court turned to physical evidence, specifically her insistence on wearing male clothing.

[00:33:31]They built a case that her dress was an abomination against scripture, ignoring her practical explanations that these were a defense against the male soldiers guarding her.

[00:33:43]Realizing that the initial 70 articles of accusation were too broad and difficult to prove, the prosecution distilled the charges down to 12 essential points. These articles were a distortion of her testimony, stripping away the context of her answers to present her as a stubborn heretic who refused to submit to the authority of the church. They focused heavily on her refusal to deny her voices and her wearing of male attire.

[00:34:10]These 12 articles were sent to the University of Paris, the theological authority of the realm, which promptly returned a verdict of guilty. The academic elite of Christrysendom had colluded to condemn a peasant who could not read her own indictment. The stage was set for the final act of the tragedy.

[00:34:31]On May 24th, 1431, Joan was taken to the cemetery of the Abbey of Santis for a public sermon.

[00:34:40]The executioner was present with his cart [music] and the py was waiting. The pressure on her was immense. A preacher railed against her and her king, calling Charles IIth a heretic who was attempting to establish his own church.

[00:34:55][music] In a moment of fiery loyalty, Joan interrupted the sermon to defend the king who had abandoned her, declaring him the noblelest of all Christians.

[00:35:06]But as the sentence was read, Joan's resolve faltered. Facing the immediate terror of the fire, she agreed to submit to the church.

[00:35:16]This moment is in controversy.

[00:35:19]Witnesses later testified that the document read to her was a short note in which she promised not to bear arms or wear male clothes.

[00:35:31]However, the official record contains a long, detailed confession of crimes, [music] something that the illiterate peasant couldn't have possibly had explained to her in that time. It was a classic bait and switch operation where she signed one thing but was held accountable for another. She signed with a circle or a cross, which some historians interpret as a sign of derision or a signal that the signature was made under duress.

[00:35:59]Pierre Koson accepted her recantation and she was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment.

[00:36:05]The English were furious, believing the bishop had let her slip through their fingers, but he reportedly reassured them that they would catch her eventually.

[00:36:16]The reprieve lasted only a few days.

[00:36:19]Joan was returned to the same English prison to the same guards, and crucially, she was forced to wear a dress. On the morning of May 27th, [music] she was found wearing male clothing again. The official story from the judges was that she had obstinately returned to her sin.

[00:36:38]The reality testified to by court officials years later was far more sinister.

[00:36:45]Some accounts suggest that her guards had physically stripped her of her dress and thrown the male clothing into her cell, leaving her no choice but to put them on.

[00:36:56]When the bishop arrived to question her, [music] he found her not only in male dress, but also spiritually defiant.

[00:37:04]She retracted her confession, stating that she had betrayed her truth out of fear of the fire. She declared that her voices had returned and rebuked her for her weakness. This was exactly what the bishop needed. By retracting her confession and resuming the forbidden clothing, she became a relapsed heretic.

[00:37:27]Under the rules of the Inquisition, [music] a heretic who relapsed couldn't be saved from the fires. The trap had sprung shut. [music] The execution on May 30th was designed to be the ultimate spectacle of annihilation.

[00:37:44]Joan was allowed to receive communion, a strange irregularity for a condemned heretic that suggests even her judges were highly uneasy about the sentence.

[00:37:54]This makes sense as everyone who interacted with this teenage peasant girl [music] was in awe of her spiritual authority. The crowd was immense and the mood was heavy with a mix of blood lust and pity. As she was chained to the stake, she asked for a cross. An English soldier, moved by a sudden impulse of compassion, broke a stick in two and lashed it together to form a crude cross, which she kissed and placed against her body. She also begged a frier to hold a church crucifix high before her face so that she could see it through the flames.

[00:38:32]When the fire was lit, the agony was horrific. [music] Yet, the records indicate she didn't scream curses or pleas for mercy.

[00:38:40]Instead, she shouted the name of Jesus repeatedly until the end.

[00:38:46]The impact on the witnesses was profound.

[00:38:49]Onlookers who had previously been there for the quote unquote entertainment of this public spectacle started to impulsively cry. Even representatives of the English crown were seen weeping, with one lamenting that they were all lost because they had burned a true saint.

[00:39:07]Her remains were then burned to ash and thrown into the Sen River to ensure that no relic would be left for the faithful to venerate.

[00:39:18]The trial of Jon of Arc stands as a chilling testament to the way law can be weaponized by power. The English and their Burgundian allies believed that by burning the body they could eliminate her ideas and her spirit. They were wrong. The flames at Ruan didn't purify the English cause at all. Rather, in this act, they turned her into the ultimate martyr for the French cause.

[00:39:43]Historians have speculated that Charles II and his advisers may have desired this outcome, believing that Joan the Martyr would turn their cause into a holy conflict.

[00:39:55]25 years later, after the French had reclaimed Ruan, a rehabilitation trial was held. It exposed the corruption, the intimidation, and the procedural illegalities of the original verdict.

[00:40:11]The 1431 judgment was declared null and void, ripped out of the archives, and symbolically destroyed.

[00:40:19]In the end, the trial designed to destroy Jon of Arc became the very vehicle that preserved her words and her spirit for eternity. [music]