Nestled in the basement of a boutique in the heart of SoHo in New York City, is a brick well that is so discreet, you’d barely notice it. The well is surrounded by $250 cashmere sweaters and vegan leather Chelsea boots. There’s no placard denoting its history, no rope asking people to stand five feet back. If you didn’t know better, it appears to be merely an architectural oversight.
But the history behind this well is much more important and sinister than it appears. It‘s where the body of 22-year-old Elma Sands in 1799 was found. Her murder underscored the shady side of New York’s elite, and the sexist foundations of the American criminal justice system.
The Elma Sands case, the first formally recorded murder trial in the United States, pitted a young woman with no connections against some of the wealthiest and most influential men in America, including lawyers Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr for the defendant, Levi Weeks. But because so much of history has been written by the victors, Elma’s story has been all but forgotten.
That’s exactly what the Erased: The Murder of Elma Sands podcast hopes to reverse. The Lava For Good Podcasts production created by writer and director Allison Flom, stars Allison Williams (Girls and Get Out) and Tony Goldwyn (Scandal). Williams, who is also an executive producer on the show, is passionate about criminal justice reform—one of the reasons she was so drawn to this project.
“[Her story] has been rendered to two lines in Hamilton,” Williams tells Teen Vogue. “And this well is just in the basement of a store. There’s no marking.… Finding and uplifting a story that’s been lost to history feels so vital. I love the mission of trying to amplify and elevate any story, no matter how big or small, and just say it is possible to bring it out of the dark into the sun.”
Here, Williams breaks down the importance of the Elma Sands murder trial, the story of Elma’s cousin Catherine who refused to let only one side of the story be told, and the reason why it’s so important to continue talking about it all these years later.
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