Julien struggles to connect the dots between the Hadley murders and the dark history of the caves. His investigation takes him back to the Fowler estate, where he meets unexpected visitors and discovers a new lead.
The Miniwauk Caves is intended for mature audiences. It contains strong language and depictions of bullying, violence, and sexual assault that some may find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. Also, this is an extremely immersive experience and headphones are recommended. You're listening to The manwac Caves, a production of iHeartRadio, Blumhouse Television and Cycopia Pictures.
You can't fill out an accent report without note in the conditions, whether the location.
You collect, witness information studied, the scene.
Safety is relative, and there's always a pattern, and then if you pay attention, the pattern belies a deeper cycle. I put on a bicycle, hit, buy a car, left for dead. That's senseless and terrible. It tears down home families, and that goes into the universe that wounded howl of confusion and existential questions.
And again, the kid had no helmet.
He was crossed in Memorial and Boulevard, the most dangerous intersection in the city. And there's a robbery at a corner store, gone ry. That leads to the junkie who needed that fix. That leads to the dealer that could get it to 'em and it rolls on down the line. Safety is relative. I mean there's always a pattern, forces trajectories the momentum, and unless the pattern is disrupted, collisions are inevitable.
There's a pattern here too.
A man of walk uh, cycle of violence. It's not just those sadly boys. And unless the pattern is disrupt.
Stories about the caves go way back beyond early settler folkmore.
The ghost in the mill.
And the hounds of hell dancing in your.
What do you mean, like like ghost and witches, some kind of he'll believe food or something.
Seems turn the river glean inside tells.
These tells the.
Hi Leary family such alter during a winter blizzard and became trapped inside the cave. Only the youngest daughter, Nadine o'hery mergem the cave.
That's the end.
Adventure was most interesting, discussing it's one of these great unsold mysteries of this area.
All this call will be recorded as monitored. Please standside, Julia, you ventcher, Yeah, it's me.
I need you to come bessing man. I don't have much time lifting.
Neither you.
August ninth, five fifty five pm. Where to begin? There's only four days left now four days till James Fincher's scheduled to be executed by the State of Tennessee unless I can still do something about it. I drove to see him this morning the Riverbed Maximum Security Institution in Nashville for the first time since he was convicted fourteen years ago. I'm led into a windowless box where for death row inmates, you are a partitioned from your visitor by a sheet of thick plexiglass. Their voice only available to you through a hard wire plastic phone. The divider lends a surreal aspect to the whole ordeal, like I'm watching a live event on TV. My face reflected in the glass, so while I wait, I stare at myself as though I'm seeing myself on the other side. In the final days leading up to their execution, the death row inmate is taken to a special cell away from the other inmates. Their cells completely bear a blank canvas for a busy mind. They're not allowed any tools or silverware that they could potentially harm themselves with, and a guard is stationed by their side twenty four to seven until it's time to go to the death chamber. It's a final torture leaving them sitting there and their selves rotting away, counting the days till they're predetermined death, deprived of their inalienable human right to die by surprise. What's most fucked up about it, although, is just how fiercely a death row inmate is protected against their own non schedule death. God forbid it happen in any other way.
God forbid.
They grant the condemned a fleeting but final moment of autonomy.
Anyway.
I was about to see him for the first time since before he was arrested fourteen years ago. But as I looked at my reflection, all I could think about was how I was about to come face to face with everything I hate about myself.
Hey bene non.
I saw the cuts on him, deep lines of scar tissue rising up from his chest, some older than others, real old. Others looked fresh, still raw and faster, and tons of them all spilling out from underneath his sleeves like he had carved words and symbols into his flesh.
Didn't make any fucking sense. They go to great lengths to ensure these miserable bastards on death Row can't kill themselves no sharp objects, even if he manufactured some kind of shit. These scars would have taken time years maybe if they covered his whole body and finished didn't have these scars. The last time I saw him in the courtroom before he was taken away, So.
How the hell did he get him?
He looked good. I mean, I mean, you don't actually look much different, That's what I mean. My first time back a man to walk.
Everyone looks older, worn down, But but you don't look like you've eached today. I mean, I know, I look like shit. Haven't really slept, I don't really sleep anymore. I spent last night in my car. I was supposed to go to Tyler's.
But shit, man, I mean, I don't know what you've heard.
You know, if you've spoken to Dina, well you know I'm Tyler.
He's missing.
I went over there and he was just go.
His whole place was smashed up.
But I yeah, I don't, I don't know. I don't know what's going on. Look, I spent years thinking of what i'd say to you, apologies and please and explanations for what happened and why, But it's all bullshit. I was a stupid, scared kid, and I have hated myself for all these years, and so I'm here and I'm trying to help, but I don't know if I'm doing anything right.
Please say something.
You do.
Look like shit. I don't want no apologies.
Your study's gone.
I had a lot of time in here to work on it, to work on controlling my thoughts. Dena says you freaked out on her last night.
Ever since I got back up, it happened issues. Did Tina tell you about Tyler?
Forget about Tyler? What forget Tyler? Tyler did his part and I'm doing mine, but you still have work to do.
I know, man, I'll go back to Dana and Joe Campbell.
I'm sure they need reassurances after after I FORGEBT last night, and I want to make sure that they have my statement about the Coherce testimony. No wait, I was thinking, I'm confused.
What exactly do you think you're doing back here, Joe.
I'm doing everything I can, everything I can do. I'm really I'm grateful for your team's.
Gonna be able to make a new poop for you.
But in the meantime, I said you were writing a book about all this about me?
Maybe, but that's not why I'm here now.
Listen, I've been reaching the steps that check to Smith took when he was involved in the original homicide investigation.
I know.
What, how do you know?
I just know? Thanks you only.
Stuff you don't know, or maybe you blocked it out, or you aren't allowed to know details about you and Tie and the had leaves and the case, especially the case. Yeah, I'm practically a goddamn scholar on the subject.
I have so much to ask just the history and geography.
I know stuff that you can't find in the history books.
I know, Man Good Winner of eighteen ninety three, what the O'Leary family took shelter during the winter blizzard got snowed in Eleanor O'Leary was trapped deep in the caves, watching her daughter starve to death. Don't ask for the Lord's help, of course, Braiden prayed, Oh, Heavenly Father, please, I beg you, please deliver my poor innocent.
Child from the cool hand of death. But the Lord didn't respond. He was a no show. Maybe deep in those dark, evil caves, even God couldn't hear their small and desperate voices calling out, Okay, but I believe someone else did hear, and I imagine him appearing before h Miss Oldliarry was something resembly pity in the slits of his eyes.
Good mother, you should you should tell you that he made Miss Oliery an offer.
I can help you.
I can object to.
I can say, your poor little girl.
And only if you make the deal.
And poor Eleanor starved, delirious, freezing, and on the brink of death.
I imagine she did.
What any loving mother and a moment of defeat and weakness would do.
She made the deal.
He dies.
Nor nothing in the scaff I'll protect you. We're going to get to know each other for very long time.
I don't understand whether or not you believe that story comes Spring of eighteen ninety three, the impossible happen. The youngest daughter, Nadine, Sure shit, That little girl e murders from the cave, the only survivor of the O'Leary family. How she survived is a mystery to this day.
Finch, I'm here to tell you something. Smith knew.
He knew you didn't kill him.
I think he knew who did.
Why don't you ask him what, Detective Solomon Smith.
He's lone gone, Finch.
No one's seen him.
Since when are you going back to the house the Fowler estayed off of twenty nine, that's where Smith was living during the investigation. Right, yeah, when you're going back there?
Not cut good?
How did you know that?
Wait?
Wait, wait wait, I have so much to talk to you about, Fitch.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to speak to you. I'm not talking about just sitting here across from but literally speak words to your face.
I have spent years in this place, years.
Teaching myself to focus on the shapes of words, quiet in my mind, training the muscles in my face to wrap around the words properly.
And I can.
When I'm calling.
But when I called you, all of a sudden, I couldn't get one word out clean. It was like no time had passed it all for James fucking go there first to foul the place.
Tonight, Guard, We're done.
So who helped a little girl?
That's where the discovery of Eleanor O'Leary's journal is interesting. Miss O'Leary described the entire deal in great detail. What Fincher was most interested in this is the last few enturies of her journal. When she starts to discuss the presence inside the case with him.
The truth comes in different flavors. Sometimes it's revealed in the intersection of facts.
Aaron with the father, Seamus, he died first.
Sometimes it's hidden the lore.
As the family went to extremes to avoid starvation, Miss O'Leary's journal entries become less coherent.
More disturbed.
These dots are all interconnected. I can feel it. Richard Roddell being from Anniwalk, Detective Smith moving into William Fowler's place after Riddell's execution, and then coming on board the Hadley murder case, only to become convinced that James Fincher's innocence, and now Deacon Hadley's necklace found in Tyler Wilson's ransacked house after Tyler's gone missing.
These devils pranks, They're.
Important more than clues or converging strings on an investigation board or breadcrumb's on the trail, a thread through the labyrinth. But what was Fincher's obsession with the story of the O'Leary family. I know it's all connected somehow.
According to miss O'Leary, here emerges from the very shadows of the caves and offers to help her.
What doll.
It would seem that miss O'Leary was lacking rational faculties, delirious, freezing, hallucinating, No doubt conjured this narrative while on the brain coach starvation. Would you agree it's a classic narrative. A surf in the garden, Fousty embargain the devil, a crossroads. Some people believe Fincher worships the devil, would you agree, doctor Tector? Well, even Satanists don't believe in the literal Satan, detective, And.
What do you call people who do believe in a literal Satan? Christians?
After I saw Finch at Riverbedd in Nashville, I drove back to the Fowler's place, detect dismiss less known home. In the wash of the flashlight, it looked decrepit hollowed out a skull deer and out at the night. Its front windows were opaque with dust. My flashlight didn't seem to want to penetrate the dark inside. The door, of course, was locked. What there's someone there?
Come on, I have a gun, It was, dear, what the hell do you want?
Three doze in a buck?
A phone?
They all stood right there at did you the wood staring at me, eyes reflecting back my beam shoe.
What the hell?
They didn't move when I shouted. It was like they were waiting for something.
Okay, where those stand there? Just don't call the cops when I and I won't send hunters out here. Freezy pickens deal.
Okay, okay, all right to take the smith.
Let's see what you knew.
I'm not gonna lie. I didn't know what I was expecting when I got inside, but it wasn't what I was looking at.
First.
Off, it was cold, I mean outside it's nearly summer. In the house, cold like twenty degree drop and damp, subterranean, without the benefit of ever being worn by the sun. The house had largely been untouched since Solomon skipped out, so the furniture's all there, and the bed sheets still must from the last night he slept in the dry goods in the pantry, a single dirty plate in the sink next to a coffee cup, mold that had grown over them, long, sin stride and dead. It was like I stepped back in time. The only thing suggesting the Solomon had ever left were the open drawers and half empty closet, the hangers on the bed and he'd left quickly, and then in the back office hum around the room, moleskin tablets the kinyrad used to jot down notes on the case perhaps were scattered about. In the corner of the office, a small aluminum waste paper basket sat beneath the scorch section of the wall. Someone had made a small fire, and from the looks of it, he'd burned pages here and there from the notebooks, one of which seemed to have been burned whole. That wasn't even the weirdest thing.
What the fuck is this?
The weirdest thing was the wall above the waste paper basket.
What are you doing?
Simon writing scrawled all over it, articles from the town photo copied and pinned with no tape, and scribbled and pencil and sharp remarker, no rahm or reason of the order?
What the fuck?
But all of it painted a grizzly, unflattering picture of Manahawaan County. Every murder, every assault, every suicide and fire and deadly car accident ever recorded, all pinned up and noted in Solomon Smith's neat handwriting. Oh shit, it's here's tapes. These tapes were dated, but there's no labeling beyond that. From the looks of it, they went all the way up to two days before Solomon Smith skipped town. Luckily, I'd come prepared with extra batteries and a sleeping bag and a bottleful of courage. I found the most recent and popped in on this platform.
What in, Hooper?
I thought we were having a beer, figured we'd go to a bar or something.
You sure you want to be seen with me, sir? And besides, I already moved on to whiskey a while ago. From the looks of it, you want what or not?
Yeah?
I go on. Then something on your mind, Hooper? Solomon.
I asked you on to this case because I know you're about a mile more qualified than anybody else around here, myself included. But this is a small town. People are upset. When those two boys turned up the way they did. It felt like it was their own children been cutted in those caves, and they want closure, They want to put it behind it, and they should want the truth and maybe they'll get it. Seems to me that James Fincher truly was the only one with any real motive to harm Deacon and Thomas. I think we need to seriously consider leaning into the possibility that James Fincher killed those boys. A man, James Fincher didn't kill nobody. What do you have to go on that says he didn't experience. Look, you have no idea what being different is. To stand out, to be ostracized, marginalized, demonized, to be discriminated against in a world full of people will think they're smarter than you, who think they deserve better than you.
I hear you.
That's exactly why there's motive. I'm not arguing that the system is perfect, It's goddamn far from it. But right now we need to look at the impartial fact. Oh shit, James Fischer didn't want to cause trouble.
He just wanted to get by.
Killing those boys would be a death sentence for a kid like him in this town, and he damn well is smart enough to know it. James Fincher has been bullied since he moved here, and I'm not gonna let him be bullied into a jail cell.
All right.
Look, I know you're a little bit heated and more than a little drunk, but we gotta look at this from the rest of the town's point of view too. And how's that smart enough to know it isn't facts. The fact is that multiple people have come forward pointing a finger directly at James Fincher. We have interviews, we have people willing to testify.
And Reverend Perkins has been particularly vocal. Excuse me, Reverend Perkins has been putting pressure on you, all right, Sam, of course he has. Why the hell wouldn't he You get the backing of the first Baptist Church. You can have whatever you want in this town, a raise, a re election. Come on, two boys are dead, you son of a bitch. These are good people.
They just want justice, and I would think that you, of all people, would be able to relate to that. Solomon Sheriff, I know what killed my boy. Maybe this was a mistake. I think we've got more than a little bit of a conflict of interest here. You understand what I'm saying. Oh, you're taking me off the case. I don't have much choice. It's my fault, it's not yours. I should have put it together before bringing you on.
You need me on this thing, James Fincher don't stand a chance.
I'm not so sure James Fincher deserves a chance.
Detective Smith up and left his life in Atlanta, but his own personal demons followed him the Milwaukee. His son committed suicide a few years before the move. See. By all accounts, he was a smart kid, but he had a minor physical deformity born missing two fingers off his right hand. That's it. But he was bullied for it his entire life heart and one day something finally pushed him over the edge. He was eighteen years old when he died. James Fincher was eighteen at the time of the investigation. Maybe just another devil's prank is Jennifer Fowler called them.
Listen, you can hear them off in the woods. I know they're there every fucking night this goddamn week, right outside my window, tapping and laughing.
Fast forwarded around on that first tape, his last one. He'd recorded, come on and.
You piece this shit, Come on, show your goddamn faces.
Finally, come on, come on, come on.
Oh oh you motherfuckers.
God damn dear.
The tape from the perceiving that was much different. So I skipped back a week or two and had another drink.
After reading letters, James Fincher wrote to doctor Tratner. I went down to the Pottsville Library and pulled every book Fincher checked out. He'd also had the library and printed a few articles he'd found on their microfiche, and from around Halloween he's run in the Pottsville Press. As I don't know, I guess you'd call it what passes for a human interest story around here. Amongst these tales of terror and woe is this strange case of Nadine O'Leary of the O'Leary family, Scotch settlers who had landed in Norfolk and decided to try their.
Luck heading west.
Davis Wentworth of the newly founded Pottsville walked out onto her back porch to find a small creature hunched over, eating raw eggs whole from her chicken coop. At first, she believed it to be a mangy bear, it was so stooped and filthy. It turned out to be young Nadine O'Leary, dressed in rags, missing fingers in parts of her face from frostbite. She was nearly feral. For decades. Nadine would give only a cursory account. However, on her deathbed she told a different story.
What the fuck.
Hello, Hello, Well damn, a tree has landed on the roof of the house, flush up against the chimney. Jesus, Come on, detective, what else you got here?
Fas cases of Tom Trevor. He's thirty four, father of two young children. Report it dead June thirtieth, nineteen ninety after being spotted on a hike with it. Laura Solace?
Also what uh? Laura Solace?
Is that.
Wife of Paul Solace, mother of Julian Solace? Small world?
No, no fucking way.
What were you doing hiking with old Tom, Miss Solace?
No, he too fell, if her testimony was to be believed. No, cracked his skull wide open, brains spilled out all.
Over the world.
No, but why were you with him? Looks like you will with your husband at the dealership.
You'll probably travel to the same tiny circles in this hellhole, probably tracked the same shitty beers and the same shitty bars.
Your kids maybe even played together.
Oh my god, we're.
Just passing the time talking about your happy marriages, your beloved children.
Did you talk about Julian? But were you going up there for something else?
What?
Hello? Is anyone out there?
Oh my god?
You get a little squirrel here?
So did he take it too far, move too fast for you misunderstand your intent?
Did you push him? Or did you in a moment of fear maybe he's bearing down on you.
Did you pick up a rock and finish that creasy motherfucking yourself?
She wouldn't. Now you're probably right. She was just out for a stroll in the woods with a friend, nothing more. I mean, I guess we'll never know, will we, Julian?
Why don't we talk about something else? The subject doesn't seem to agree with you.
I can't think of anything.
What happened to the olders?
Ah?
Yeah, you want a real devil's prank. This isn't the first house to be built on this property. Guess who the first owner of this land was?
Was it shamous oldier?
Well?
Look at you, Nancy Drew, How damn son you could have been a detective. When he died, it passed down to his only living relative, Nadine, who built a cabin here and lived until the rife old age of ninety before passing it down to her grandson, who knocked it down and built this place.
You find yourself sit right now?
William Fowler Jennifer Fowler's granddad and my own benefactor.
Oh small fucking world.
You ain't kidding.
The only reus what happened to them in the cave.
Navin's story didn't that up. There was no way she could have sabred by herself, and on her.
Deathbed she fessed up.
Seamus wasn't much of a hunter, and one day I was trying to build a snare, Shamus slipped and broke his ankle, compound bone sticking out. Took him hours to hop her back to the caves. Within a couple of days, he'd succumbed to sepsis not a pretty way to die, fever dreams and visions of hell. Poor bastard. They were devastated within it. Eleanor wailed and gnashed her teeth and pulled out her hair. Though she was grieving, she was in a dumb She saw an opportunity to keep her girls alive.
Oh, they ate their daddy.
That's right.
They ate him right up, bit by bit, cutting off parts of him with a rock ILLINOI shope keeping the body cold at the mouth of the cave, hoping there would be a break in the weather so they could try to make it back to civilization. But that break didn't come, and as the days passed and the meat dwindled, they began to lose all hope. Three days later, Milicine got sick dysentery, Daddy's flesh had gone rancid. One night late, the fire had died down. Nadine awoke, feeling that something wasn't right. She looked over to where her sister was sleeping and saw a form huddled over her, shaking and grunting as her eyes had just as she realized it was her mother, smothering the life out of her older daughter to put her out of her misery.
Jesus Christ.
And this is where it gets interesting. Eleanor died in the caves too starvation. Her remains were found along with the others.
So how did Nadine survive?
As a child, she claimed there was someone else in the caves, a nameless and faithless man who led her to safety. Then, when she was older, she denied it, and the truth about what happened in the caves, well, Nadine carried that to her deathbed, and she died right here in this room. Only then did she whisper the story to her grandson, mister William Fowler, same man who left me this house.
You didn't leave town, did you?
What happened there?
It is again?
Let's smell what'd smell?
Apple wood, smoke, lightning struck, makes for damn fine barbecue.
What happened to me?
Take a look around your old all, will you?
No? No, no, no? What happened? Really?
I think I live something over there?
Last? I love this, I appreciate.
Jesus.
Hello, Julia Tyler? Yeah, what the fuck?
You probably wanted grand ship and get out of there?
What where are you?
Seriously? You're five?
What? What the fuck?
What the fuck?
Tyler?
Tyler?
Hello, Tyler?
What the hell?
I looked back at the house and there she was, silhouetted before the bright flames that began to engulf the Fowler homestead. A little girl in a tatter dress standing in the doorway like a whole of blackness, a nothing that's negative space, a paper girl cut out of this world, her eyes barely visible on the flickering light. It was Nadine O'Leary watching me, and soon she was enveloped by the heat waves and smoked it and golfed in front porch of the house.
Breeze.
What hairs right? Sing, Holy, this was an accident. The fuck up? Pick her hairs raised? Turn around, truly, I'm telling.
You that, shut the fuck up. Turn around, Neil, kick your hairs right.
What's the point of you talking?
Yeah, the right to remain silent.
Anything you say can and we'll be held against you.
In a court of law, you dumb motherfucker.
Once it's sixth to radio, I got it, ding car now way.
The mana Walk Caves stars Jonathan Tucker as Julian Sallace, Eddie Gatheggy as James Fincher, Clark Peters as Detective Solomon Smith, Nick Cercy as Sheriff Kirby Hooper, Justin Welborn as Tyler Wilson, Jill Jane Clements as Jill Campbell, Brad Carter as Dooley Tappert, Scott Poythus as Reverend Perkins, Samantha Ashley as Dina Fincher, Justin Matthews Smith as Paul Sawace, Tara Oaks as Laura Sallas, Jonathan Horn as Deacon Hadley, Alden Karanovich as Thomas Hadley, Mike w Anderson as Griff Washington, Body Walter as Jimmy Fincher, Brian McClure as Ian Spinks, Larry Clark as Bobby Hadley, Payden Fallis as ed LeBlanc, Vic Palisis as William Fowler, Nick Takosky as Richard Rydell, and Aileen Loy as The Darkness, with additional performances by Clint McGowan, Dina Dill, Edward Howard, Henry Foster Brown, Jamie Joseph, Juan Monsalvez, Christopher Curry, Bailey Heineman, David Mitchell, and Bernard Sataro Clark. Created by Connell Byrne and Dan Bush. Written by Dan Bush, Zoe Cooper and Nicholas Dakoski, featuring our theme song Killer Inside, written produced and performed by Lera A.
Lynn.
Our executive producers are Matt Frederick, Alexander Williams, Michael Monty, and Courtney du Frees. Our executive producers at Blumhouse Television are Jeremy Gold, Chris Dickey, and Noah Feinberg. Produced by Dan Bush, music by Ben Lovett. Additional music by Alexander Rodriguez. This episode features the song Wayfaring Stranger, performed by Helena Rose, edited by Dan Bush, Chris Childs, Stephen Perez, and David Chen. Sound design by Benjamin Balcom. Additional sound design by Alexander Rodriguez. Dialogue editing and sound mixing by Juan Campos. Recorded at Studio Awesome in Los Angeles, Sound Byte Studio in Atlanta, and Echo Mountain in Ashville. Casting by Sunday Bowling, Kennedy and Meg Mormon. Our dialect coach is Linda Bessesti, Assistant director, Michael Monty, second assistant director, script supervisor and production coordinator Sarah Klein. Supervising producer Josh Than Special thanks to Mary Ellen and Jason Davis, Jonathan Dieter, and Joe Rickman. The Manowalk Caves is a production of iHeart Radio, Blumhouse Television and Psycopia Pictures Us.
The Crows Seltendi.
And enter.
A home way to card.
I'm going there to see my sign who shed for me.
It's precious Bill. I am just going way over toward him.
I am just go