A newspaper column from 10 years after Viola’s went missing talks of a memorial held in her memory. A number of things struck us as odd here. Firstly, I hate to say it as she is Julia’s grandmother, but Evelyn is an incredibly false woman. Which I guess made her a good actress but after reading about how jealous she was of Viola and how much she disliked her, her words 10 years later were obviously only because Vi was no longer around. However 2 others things to note here – 1. she says that she feels like she ended up with the life Viola was meant to have, and it does seem that way from the evidence we’ve seen already and 2. she says that she feels Viola ‘looking down on her’. Is this a bit too on the nose, considering Viola’s corpse was above her all those years?

This brings us to another set of notes with coded sections. Reading through this the notes can only belong to George as he talks about owning money to the Betucias. I hadn’t realised till now that George borrowed money off the mafia. It appears that he addressed the note to a lover, it is on Cadence headed paper and I can’t help but think these are to Viola. Was she having an affair with George after all?

The next document was an interesting look into a concierges life and also confirms Ira’s phone call. There are two entries for A.R.Lairde (Ira Adler!) on stating that he called them and was on the phone on November 6th at 4.54-6.15pm and ordered a special drink for his date. It also confirmed he and his date were there at 7pm and she chocked at dinner. So at least we have a alibi for Ira.

The next 2 documents were by far the most interesting ones so far – 2 medical reports from the private practice of Dr Walters, with Viola as the patient. The first one is dated May 11th 1934 and was a prenatal appointment. The location was in Canaan in Connecticut. It appears this the country residence of Viola of Hector. Viola evidently was pushing herself too hard while pregnant and had retired to the country house in order to take it easy in the last few months with the baby due on the 15th August it seems she conceived in December or January. Before she ended her engagement with Hector and her relationship/affair with Ira. From the prenatal report it is worth noting that Hector was fully aware of the pregnancy and as my partner in crime solving, Jay, noted, was called ‘friend’ and not ‘baby daddy’ at any point.

The 2nd medical report was dated August 12th 1934 and details the babies delivery. After 9 hours of labour Viola gave birth to a healthy baby at 9.19am. It also seems that Hector was not there for the birth and stayed at his show to avoid suspicion. Once again Viola had to go through a big life event alone, but for the carer Miss Eastmont who was hired to look after her during the pregnancy in Canaan.

The next document is from Croft-Myer Investigations. Addressed to ‘Sir and Madam’ and dated 19th October 1934. It appears the PI was hired to follow Viola but failed to find anything interesting. The closest he came was following her to New Canaan on October 26th. At the end he notes that he is closing the case due to lack of payment, this was dated the week of 12th November, over a week after Viola had gone missing. 

My assumptions with goes back to an entry in the accounts ledger we went through some time ago that notes the cost of PI fees and question covering Olga

Original entry

Transcription

Does this mean it was Olga and George that hired the PI? It’s obvious the PI didn’t find anything, but just days before she went missing he was able to give whoever hired him the address of where she was going. Could Olga have gone there herself? Is this the family business she attacked Viola over on that fateful day?

Next we have a property agreement. Nothing particularly surprising here as we know that Ira and Evelyn ended up with the Cadence. The only things to stand out here are that they bought it together from the start and that Hector was their guarantor. The sale was finalised on January 4th 1935, 2 months to day from Viola’s murder.

Also slightly unsurprising is the next document, the divorce proceedings of Ruth and George Erickson. We already know that they were later divorced though again the interesting thing here was how soon. It appears Ruth filed for separation on November 20th 1934, with the divorce being finalised the following July. It does however state that George had been unfaithful and the main cause for the divorce was adultery. It does seem it was reoccurring though. An interesting note that adds weight to the idea that Viola was one of these is that the PI, from Croft-Myer, gave testimony:

“On December 4th, 1934, the Plaintiff and council hired private detective Brian Michaelson, of Croft-Myers Investigations, who discovered evidence of the Defendant’s adultery.”

Though not stated as to who, the timing does suggest Vi but is very odd that the PI that we believe George hired would use those details against a former client. Maybe he really didn’t appreciate not being paid! 

And so we find ourselves at the last piece of evidence, a letter from Hector to Ira. the letter is telling Ira that Hector was going out of town, to Connecticut, for a few days in order to take some more time to relax and rejuvenate. The letter is dated August 13th 1934 – the day after the babies birth. There is more code at the bottom, we once again unravelled this and found it to say:

Dr. called. Baby born do you want to visit? Have you told E?

So Ira did know, but presumably Evelyn didn’t?

As we closed the file on this batch of evidence we talked through the revelations from the various documents and letters. Coupled with what we already know we have a working theory:

Ira can be ruled out from actually murdering Evelyn as we now have a pretty water tight alibi. Evelyn however has no such alibi so what is she killed Viola? She may well have known at this point that Ira wanted to go back to Viola (and now we know why), maybe in a fit of rage she killed Viola and then had to get Ira to move the body? Or maybe George? Did Ira tell her about Viola’s baby and this was the reason she chocked while at dinner that night?