3 Women Gilded Austin Failed (Mollie Smith, Susan Hancock & Eula Phillips)

Austin, Texas, 1884. In the span of a single year, a series of late-night attacks on domestic servants and their households left a growing Gilded Age city with files that would remain unresolved for generations. Mollie Smith, Susan Hancock, and Eula Phillips were three of the women at the centre of that record — each the subject of an official investigation, each case closing without a conviction that held. The institutional response to each case, shaped by race, gender, and the priorities of the era, is itself part of what the archive preserves. This video traces all three cases in full, drawn from the historical record. 0:00 Austin, Texas and the Gilded Age City 8:15 The Case of Mollie Smith 17:00 The Investigation and Its Limits 25:30 The Case of Susan Hancock 34:00 The Case of Eula Phillips 42:30 What the Record Shows #truecrime #history #historicalcrime #unsolved #austintexas #1880s #historicaltruecrime #coldcase #archivalhistory