The Troubles At Euston Square

"Illustrated Police News," June 7, 1879, via Newspapers.com

Evil and depravity can have a certain fascination if they are cloaked in a benign or attractive exterior.  It is doubtful that true-crime researchers would still be talking about Ted Bundy if not for the fact that those who knew him thought he was perfectly normal.  And there is a reason why the Devil is often depicted as a handsome man.  Similarly, the following Victorian-era scandal would probably be long-forgotten if it had not happened in a seemingly respectable middle-class household blighted by one or two small oddities, like corpses turning up when least expected.

Matilda Hacker of Canterbury, England, embodied a classic Victorian stereotype:  a rich but miserly, highly eccentric spinster.  In August 1877, Miss Hacker took affront at the rates Canterbury charged her.  In protest, she split town--leaving the rates unpaid--took on the surname of “Huish,” (presumably to avoid the tax authorities,) and engaged a room in a lodging house owned by Mr. and Mrs. Severin Bastindoff at No. 4 Euston Square, London.

So far as is known, life at No. 4 went on quietly enough until Sunday, October 14.  The Bastindoffs were away for the day, leaving Matilda alone in the house with the maid, 24-year-old Hannah Dobbs.  That day, something very terrible happened within the walls of the lodging house, although we are fated to never know exactly what that was.  The following morning, Severin sent Hannah to Matilda’s room to collect her rent.  The maid returned with a five-pound note that she said “Miss Huish” had just given her.  Two days later, Hannah informed the Bastindoffs that their lodger had moved out.

Well, people do abruptly come and go out of rooming houses.  Mrs. Bastindoff dismissed the old lady from her mind and went to clean the room for their next tenant.  She noticed there was a large stain on the carpet that someone had done an inexpert job of trying to wash away.  It looked a bit like blood.  Odd, that.  (Before you ask, much later in our story, when life began getting pretty interesting for the Bastindoffs, it was proven that the stain was blood.)

Life went on.  Miss Huish/Hacker was completely forgotten by the world until May 9, 1879, when  the cellar at No. 4 was cleared so a lodger could store coal there.  The workmen were surprised to find that the cellar contained something more than the usual junk and debris:  a human body, with a rope around the neck.  Police soon determined that the corpse was that of the former lodger, Matilda Hacker.

It did not take Hercule Poirot to immediately focus on Hannah Dobbs as the chief suspect, and she was swiftly arrested and charged with murder.  She was the last person known to have seen the victim alive.  Soon after Hacker “moved out,” (which, in the spiritual sense, I suppose she did,) Hannah gave one of the Bastindoff children the former lodger’s now-empty cash-box.  The maid began wearing a watch and some jewelry her employers had never seen before.  She said they had been bequeathed to her by an uncle who had recently died.

Investigators easily determined that Hannah had no uncle, alive or dead.  The same watch and jewelry were later found in a pawn shop.  The shop’s owner identified Hannah as the person who had pledged the items.  All in all, it was looking like as pretty a case of circumstantial, but conclusive, evidence as any detective would like to see.

Hannah stood trial at the Old Bailey in July 1879.  Her defense relied almost solely on the unlikelihood that a slender young woman could single-handedly, in a relatively brief time, kill a grown adult, hide the body in the cellar, and tidy up the crime scene.  (The implication was that some unknown stranger had sneaked into the house, murdered Hacker, carried the corpse to the cellar, and exited without Hannah having a clue that anything was amiss.  Very Lizzie-Bordenish.)  As a side note, the proceedings were considerably enlivened by testimony suggesting that Severin and Hannah’s relationship had been much more than mere master and servant--something, naturally, that Mr. Bastindoff stoutly denied.

At the end of the trial, the judge, perhaps surprisingly, summed up for acquittal, and the jury obliged.  Hannah was given her freedom, and it looked like Matilda Hacker’s murder was destined to become a mystery that would be quickly forgotten.

Well, not forgotten by everyone.  George Purkiss, proprietor of the “Illustrated Police News,” published a pamphlet about the case that was a defamation lawyer’s dream.  Not only was Hannah Dobbs described as a murderer who had, no doubt, committed other crimes, but Purkiss alleged that she had been Severin’s mistress both before and after becoming his household’s maid.  Severin wasted no time applying for an injunction against further distribution of the pamphlet and suing Purkiss for libel.  Just to show that life is full of odd coincidences, the libel suit took place in the same courtroom, and before the same judge, that Hannah Dobbs had recently faced.

Unfortunately for Mr. Bastindoff, his experience at the Old Bailey was not as fortunate as his maid’s had been.  When Hannah was cross-examined, she was forced to admit that she had previous convictions for theft, as well as other peccadillos that caused the judge to call her “a most infamous person.”  She also confessed to having been Severin’s mistress.  It was demonstrated in court that Severin and Hannah had stayed together at a Redill, Surrey, inn, posing as man and wife.  (Severin argued unconvincingly that the man who had been with Hannah was actually his brother Peter.)  Insinuations were made that Severin was the real murderer, with Hannah being merely his accessory.  In short, Bastindoff came off as such a sordid figure that not only was Purkiss acquitted, Severin was found guilty of perjury and sentenced to a year of hard labor.  

Sadly for the ghost of Matilda Hacker, this was the last word on her murder, but you could say she at least got some small measure of revenge.

The Case of the Parlous Parlor

"Owensboro Messenger," January 29, 1911, via Newspapers.com

Early in 1910, American newspapers breathlessly carried the story of what appeared to be a particularly shocking double homicide.  This account comes from the "Republican News Item" for January 6:

The mystery of the death of Miss Grace Elosser, of Cumberland, Md., and Charles E. Twigg, of Keyser, W. Va. her fiance, appears as deep as it did shortly after the bodies of the couple were found on the settee in the parlor of the Elosser residence on Saturday, when the mother of the dead girl went in to speak to her.

Twigg and Miss Elosser were to have been married Sunday night. It is suspected that a jealous woman rival was the poisoner, carrying out her plot in a most crafty way.

The mystery begun with the discovery on Saturday afternoon of the pretty girl and her fiance sitting together, hand in hand, on a sofa in the parlor of their home—both dead.

So swift, so instantaneous had been the action of the poison upon them that they sat as if in life.

The girl's mother went into the room, wondering only at the very long silence that she had noted between the couple. She saw her daughter and the young man sitting in apparently the most natural fashion. They were holding hands and looking into each other's eyes.

Then the mother suddenly gasped and stepped back. There was something uncanny, she saw, in the intentness of the gaze the young man and woman had fixed upon each other. There was that which gave a silent, vague alarm in the fixedness of their pose. She spoke to them. They did not answer. She went over to them. She spoke again and received no reply.  Then she put a hand on her daughter's head and spoke again.

"Grace —Grace," she said. And there was still no reply, so she gently shook her daughter by the shoulder. The mother screamed then and ran from the room. The girl's head had lolled to a side and the other woman had seen that the girl's jaw was dropped and her eyes fixed in the piteous gaping of death.

Then when others came it was found that the man, too, was dead; that both had been suddenly and absolutely stricken. The deadliest of poisons had been the medium.

This was established by the autopsy of the coroner's physician, Dr. Thomas W. Koon. They had both taken cyanide of potassium. The man had more of the poison in his system than the girl.  In the holiday season there had been several boxes of candy in the house.  But the medical examination showed conclusively that neither Miss Elosser or her fiance had eaten candy.  He had, however, in his mouth a stick of chewing gum. He had taken scarcely more than two or three bites on it. It had not been masticated into a pulp. In Miss Elosser's mouth was no chewing gum.

The strange likelihood is being considered by the authorities that the stick of chewing gum contained the deadly cyanide. Also that the young man, with the gum in his mouth, had leaned forward to kiss his sweetheart and that the kiss communicated the poison to her lips--a kiss offered in love that was deadly—the kiss of whose tragic character the ardent bestower was in all ignorance.

This is the only evidence that the authorities have so far secured to aid them in the way of solving the amazing mystery.  It has been by no means proven that the chewing gum contained the deadly poison. But it seems to be the only possible source from which the young man and his sweetheart could have taken into their systems the deadly chemical. The candy that was in the Elosser home had been partaken of by all the members of the family without ill effect. Moreover, chemical analysis showed all this confectionery to be harmless.

The tips of the tongues of both Twigg and the girl who was to have been his bride were red and inflamed, quite as if they had been burned or bitten. Cyanide, of course, takes immediate action. The mere touching of a grain of it to the tip of the tongue will cause death instantly.

The newspapers did a great deal of speculating about the tragedy.  Twigg had initially courted the dead woman's sister May before transferring his affections to Grace.  A third sister admitted that May had been "terribly broken up" about losing Charles--so much so that she stopped speaking to Grace.  Could the "scorned woman" have taken this rejection so hard that she poisoned, not just her ex-flame, but her own sister?  The first doctor at the scene of the deaths testified that he also found May Elosser unconscious with "decided symptoms of cyanide poisoning."  It took him fifteen minutes of work to revive her.  Was this evidence that she had planned the deaths of all three members of this love triangle?

Or could Charles Twigg, for some as-yet-unknown reason, have poisoned himself and the woman he was about to marry? Or was it a double suicide?

The police finally decided that there was not enough evidence to arrest anyone.  At the inquest, May admitted that she had been jealous of her sister, but vehemently denied that she could even consider murdering her.  There was no evidence of her buying poison.  The coroner's jury returned a verdict that the couple had died from cyanide poisoning, but they could not say how it had been administered.  This ambiguous verdict meant that May Elosser--the only known person with any conceivable motive to kill the pair--was left with a grim cloud of suspicion over her head.  It was looking like she would have to live with it for the rest of her life.

It was a local physician, a Dr. Littlefield, who finally provided a resolution to the case.  He had closely examined the parlor where Twigg and Elosser died.  He noted that there was a small crack in the glass of a gas stove in the room.  He also saw that when all the doors and windows were closed--as they had been when couple died—the parlor had very little air circulation.  He theorized that the couple had died of carbon monoxide poisoning, and he decided to try an experiment.  He placed a cat in the parlor, made sure all the doors and windows were shut, and left the animal there overnight.

By the time he returned the next morning, the cat was dead.  An autopsy found that an accumulation of leaking gas had killed it.  A second cat was left in the room overnight.  This cat also died.  Littlefield pointed out that certain foods create hydrocyanic acid in the stomach, meaning that the traces of "poison" found in Twigg and Elosser's system could have come from natural causes.  The couple's bodies were exhumed, and the subsequent autopsy established that they had indeed died from carbon monoxide, the result of the flue of the parlor stove being choked with an over-accumulation of soot.  He felt that he had proved their deaths were simply a catastrophic accident.

Many townspeople, still stubbornly convinced of May Elosser's guilt, refused to accept that the tragedy could have such a prosaic explanation.  However, in 1913, two women living in the Elosser home were found unconscious from carbon monoxide poisoning in that same parlor.  Fortunately, they were found in time to revive them.  Examination showed that they too had allowed the flue to become choked with soot.

It looked like Littlefield had been vindicated--no one had been murdered, after all.

Except those poor cats, of course.

The Bizarre Murder of Pauline Amsel

"Indian Citizen," November 12. 1914, via Newspapers.com

A frightening and inexplicable tragedy hit the normally peaceful town of Durant, Oklahoma in 1914.  According to Jake and Celia Amsel, a well-to-do, respectable couple, at about one-thirty a.m. on the night of November 11, they were awakened by screams emanating from their home’s outdoor sleeping porch.  They were horrified to recognize the voice as that of their only child, fourteen year old Pauline.  Jake Amsel leaped out of bed, only to be confronted with an intruder.  The man took out a pistol and fired it into the floor, while pleading with Amsel to let him go.  After his gun jammed, the stranger pulled out a small knife, and began to stab at the father.  The two men struggled for several minutes before the stranger broke away and escaped.

While this fight was going on, Pauline walked into the bedroom and announced that she was sick.  While the mother called for help, the girl walked into her own room, and fell onto the floor.

As it happened, Pauline had good reason to be ill.  The entire right side of her throat had been deeply slashed.  She died half an hour later.

What followed was the usual depressing pattern seen in all hopelessly perplexing murders:  Searches were made for the killer, rewards were offered, private detectives hired, the usual suspects hauled in for questioning and quickly released, with no one left any closer to obtaining justice for the victim.  It probably did not help the inquiry that Pauline was buried before an autopsy could be performed.  (Her family was Jewish, compelling them to bury her before sundown.)

Pauline was buried in Corsicana, Texas, where her mother had family ties, and soon afterwards, her parents left Durant for good.

It is rare that such a violent murder provides so little information, or even speculation, to work with.  No valuables in the house appeared touched, so robbery was ruled out as a motive.  It was as if a phantom had picked a house at random, attacked the first person he saw, and disappeared into a permanent fog.  No one could guess who would have wished to harm the girl.

Well, no one guessed in public, at least.  In private, it was evidently a very different matter.  As is always the case with mysterious crimes, the local rumor mill went into overdrive.  Residents of Durant had little difficulty solving Pauline’s murder.  Chillingly, the top suspects were the only witnesses to the crime, the dead girl’s parents.  Melody Amsel-Arieli, an indirect descendant of Pauline's, began to research the case during the 1980s.  She contacted many locals who still had memories of the shocking crime.  According to some, Pauline had fallen in love with a certain boy, and this youthful romance horrified her parents.  The suggestion is that this family conflict somehow inspired her murder.

One hesitates to take such a theory seriously—if it is false, such claims are a cruel disservice to a couple who had surely suffered enough.  However, there is no getting away from it that the story they gave is decidedly odd.  First of all, why would Pauline be outdoors, in the middle of a frigid Oklahoma winter night?  If her throat was slashed so deeply that—according to some accounts—she was nearly decapitated, how could she walk upstairs, announce that she was “sick,” and then go off to her own room to die?  Didn’t the parents notice she was covered in blood?  And if this intruder had a gun, as well as a knife, why didn’t he use the more efficient weapon on the girl?  And why did it take thirty minutes for help to be summoned?  And would a man who had just fatally wounded a girl and was waving around a gun, ask her father to just let him go?  Why, after attacking Pauline, did the intruder go upstairs and do this pointless and ineffectual wrestling with her father, rather than immediately flee?

According to a doctor who examined Pauline’s corpse, her injuries were made with a razor.  So, this intruder came equipped with a gun, a knife, and a razor?  How could it be that blood was found on the sleeping porch and Pauline’s bedroom, but nowhere in between, assuming that she had actually summoned the superhuman strength to walk upstairs with a fatally slashed throat?

I give the Ansels the benefit of the doubt and assume they were incapable of murdering their own daughter.  But there is no question that what we are told about Pauline’s death is disturbingly illogical…which is undoubtedly why it haunts the town of Durant to this day.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Here is yet another example of that popular supernatural staple, “a vision of murder.”  The “New Orleans States,” February 19, 1911:

SYDNEY, Feb. 18. — A most mysterious story comes from Perth, West Australia. The mysterious disappearance of a girl named Ethel Harris led a representative of a Perth newspaper to make an investigation, which had sensational results.

He communicated his discoveries to the police and the developments became still more remarkable. The story is briefly as follows: Some four or five years previously a man who called himself Wilson went through some kind of official ceremony with Ethel Harris, whereby she thought she was married to him. A little time ago, however, she disappeared, and some suspicion was aroused. Her father made inquiries of Wilson, who was now working at a foundry under the name of Smart, and was told by the "husband" that his daughter had gone to Adelaide on a holiday, and was well and happy. Then followed investigations which found that Wilson, alias Smart, had not really married Ethel Harris at all.

It was found also that under the name of Smythe he had shortly before married a girl named Mary Jane Pemberthy, and that he had a wife living in Victoria, and an adult son in Perth. He was arrested on a charge of bigamy, and inquiries into the fate of Ethel Harris were pursued. The strangest circumstance in the whole strange story, however, is that Miss Pemberthy told of a vision she had of an apparition in the bathroom of the house in which she was living with Wilson, or Smart. She declared that she saw the form of a woman struggling in the bath, and gave a minute description of the vision, which appeared to her on two occasions. But the police obtained several more tangible clews to the fate of the vanished girl, with the help of the marvelously clever black trackers, and eventually excavations were made under an old disused smithy in the neighborhood.

The result of the exploration was the discovery of a human body, which was strongly presumed to be that of the unfortunate girl.

At the time the message was sent Arthur William Smart had been sentenced to two years for bigamy. Further developments in the case will be awaited with great interest.

Wilson--or Smart, or Smythe, or whatever you care to call the creep--was eventually found guilty of Harris’ murder, and was accordingly executed.

The Fatal Honeymoon

Our story began like a fairy tale:  At a New York City social gathering, a handsome, suave young Chinese lawyer meets the pretty, cultured daughter of a wealthy merchant prince from Macao, and the pair fall in love virtually at first sight.  Seven months later, in May 1928, the two are married, and go off on a romantic honeymoon trip, after which they live happily ever after…

Well, scratch that last part.

After they were wed, Chung Yi Miao and his bride, Wai Sheung Siu, traveled to Montreal, where they took an ocean liner to Glasgow.  After seeing the sights in Scotland, they headed for London, prefaced by a side trip to the Lake District.

The newlyweds checked into the Borrowdale Gates hotel at Grange-in-Borrowdale, in Cumbria, on June 18, 1928.  Chinese tourists were at the time a rarity in the area, so the young couple attracted a good deal of attention, especially since the new Mrs. Miao was fond of bedecking herself with striking and extremely costly jewelry of pearls, jade, and gold.  The pair seemed to be as happy and affectionate as you would hope to see from any honeymooners.

The day after their arrival at the hotel, the couple had lunch, and then went out arm-in-arm for a walk to enjoy the beauty of their surroundings.  Around 4 p.m., Chung returned to the hotel alone.  When a staffer asked if he wanted to wait for his wife before having tea, he said “no.”  Chung explained that she had gone shopping, and wouldn’t return until six.

6 p.m. came and went.  No Wai.  At 7 p.m., Chung dined alone, seemingly completely unconcerned about his bride’s absence.  Two hours later, the hotel’s manager, a Miss Crossley, asked him about Wai’s non-arrival.  He said calmly that he had a slight cold, and so Wai had gone to Keswick to buy him some medicine and warmer clothes for herself.  At 10:30, Chung casually asked a maid, “What do you think we ought to do?  Should we inform the police?”  Instead, he went to bed.  

Meanwhile, around 7:30 that evening, a farmer named Thomas Wilson was walking near a river about a mile outside of Grange.  He saw a woman wearing a fur coat sleeping--at least, that’s what he thought she was doing--under an open umbrella.  Odd, that.  When he mentioned this to friends, one of them, a police detective who was vacationing in Grange, decided to turn his leisure time into a busman’s holiday, and went to see the woman for himself.

The “sleeping” woman proved to be the missing Mrs. Miao, quite dead.  She had been strangled with a piece of string and two lengths of cord from a window blind.  (The cord was established to be identical to those used at the Borrowdale.)  She had also been badly beaten around the head and face.  The expensive jewelry she had been wearing was gone, and the murderer had arranged her legs and clothing in a way to suggest that she had been raped, but the autopsy found no sign of sexual assault.

Despite these attempts to make Wai look like a victim of some random footpad, investigators had no trouble focusing on one particular suspect.  By 11 p.m., the dead woman’s husband received a visit from the police.  When told only that his wife was dead--without anyone relating the circumstances of her death--Chung immediately exclaimed, “It’s terrible--my wife assaulted, robbed, murdered!”  He continued to behave in a strange manner while being questioned by detectives--for some reason, he was anxious to know whether his wife was still wearing “knickers” when she was found.

Chung’s trial, which was held at Carlisle Assizes, was relatively brief and lacking in drama.  The young lawyer insisted he was innocent--that his wife was the victim of Chinese jewel thieves.  (This argument was considerably weakened after the jewels Wai had been wearing were found hidden in Chung’s luggage.  However, Chung claimed that Wai herself had put the jewelry there, for safety.)  The defense pointed to the fact that shortly before the murder, locals had observed two unknown Chinese men around Grange. These men were seen getting on a train for parts unknown the morning after the murder.  Chung claimed that these men had been following him and his bride ever since they were in Glasgow.  He also stated that under Chinese law, Wai’s considerable property reverted to her family, leaving him with no financial reason to want her dead.  His seemingly incriminating remarks to police were, he said, a misinterpretation of his imperfect English.

The prosecution did not bother to offer a motive for the murder--their case was essentially, “We don’t know why he did it, but we know he did it.”  The case against him was largely circumstantial, but such evidence can be remarkably convincing.  The jury had little difficulty delivering a guilty verdict, and Chung was accordingly hanged at Strangeways, Manchester, on December 6, 1928.  He maintained his innocence to the end, bitterly complaining about the police “not trying to trace the real murderer.”

Crime historians generally agree that the jury made the right decision.  What makes this case unique is that no one has ever been able to find a reason why this educated, sophisticated young man, who appeared to have a golden future ahead of him, threw it all away by committing the cold-blooded murder of his new wife.  (And in a remarkably bungling fashion, at that.)  This gaping hole at the center of the story has led to a number of possible theories, each more baroque than the last.  It has been pointed out that soon after the wedding, Wai went to a female doctor with a very intimate problem: she was physically unable to consummate her marriage.  Did this lead Chung to kill his bride in a burst of sexual frustration?  Alas for this proposal, it is also known that on May 25, Wai had minor surgery which presumably resolved the issue.

A newspaper article of questionable validity claimed that after discovering that his wife would never be able to bear children, Chung felt he had no choice but to murder Wai so he could marry someone who could perpetuate his bloodline.  It seems most likely that this story emerged from some reporter’s over-imaginative fancy.

Did the Chinese tongs have something to do with the murder?  At the time of Chung’s trial, there was a rumor afloat that he had belonged to the Chapa tong, which led to the suggestion that the tong had ordered him to marry and then murder Wai, in order to gain her wealth for the secret society’s benefit.

Or did the tong instruct Chung to kill Wai out of some revenge plot against her rich and powerful family?  Or perhaps--just perhaps--did some Chinese tong murder Wai themselves, meaning that Chung was guilty of nothing more than possible prior knowledge of the deed?  After all, no one has ever been able to explain the presence of those two unknown Chinese men in Grange…

A Dog's Life

In the not-so-good old days, it was not rare for animals to be put on trial for crimes, usually witchcraft or murder, and summarily executed.  As dreadful as these events were, one at least has the comfort of knowing that in modern times, we have rejected such barbarism.

That assumption, unfortunately, is not entirely correct.  In 1930s America, newspapers eagerly covered the grim story of a dog who faced a death sentence for first-degree murder.

On July 4, 1936, 14-year-old Maxwell Breeze and some friends were celebrating Independence Day by going for a swim in the Erie Canal in Brockport, New York.  A nine-month-old part-Airdale, part German Shepherd dog named Idaho decided to join in the fun.  The animal leaped into the canal and swam over to Maxwell, clinging to the boy’s back.  Tragically, the dog’s weight was too much for the boy.  Before anyone could come to his assistance, Maxwell, unable to free himself, drowned.

Maxwell’s parents, in their shock and grief, refused to see their son’s death as a horrible accident, but as a homicide.  They insisted that Idaho was a dangerous animal who had to immediately be shot.  The dog’s owner, Victor Fortune, indignantly refused.  He stated that there was nothing vicious about his pet.  Idaho had certainly not meant harm to young Maxwell, or anyone else for that matter.  The Breezes responded by bringing a civil suit against Fortune.

On July 20, all interested parties met to give testimony before Police Justice Homer Benedict.  Donald Duff, one of the boys who was swimming with Maxwell that fatal day, told Justice Benedict that the dog had “Just tried to climb on Max’s back.”  When asked if Maxwell had been playing with Idaho before going into the canal, Donald replied, “No.”  

Donald went on to say that when Idaho climbed on top of Maxwell, the boy became frightened and yelled, “The dog’s after me.  Help.”  Another boy named Paul Hamlin swam out to rescue Maxwell, but Idaho began trying to climb on him.  By the time Paul had extricated himself from the dog, it was too late for the Breeze boy.

A young man named Daniel Houghton testified that on two separate occasions while he was swimming in the canal, Idaho had assaulted him as well.

Victor Fortune, acting as his dog’s informal lead defense attorney, countered by saying that Idaho was just a mischievous, but well-meaning dog.  Victor’s father George asserted that Idaho had not even been the dog in the canal with Maxwell.  He asserted that at the time of the drowning, he and Idaho had been sitting on the Fortune front porch.

Since the tragedy, Idaho, in accordance with New York state law, had been boarded at the Rochester Dog Protective Association, in order for veterinarians to judge for themselves whether or not the dog was violent.  Mary Foubister, the Association’s secretary, asked Justice Benedict for a two-week postponement of the legal proceedings so that they would have time to fully evaluate the animal.  He agreed.

By this time, the fight over Idaho’s life had generated nationwide newspaper headlines.  Editorials were published arguing the pros and cons of the case.  One paper described the dispute as “the most spectacular case involving a dog in the history of criminal law.”  Local entrepreneurs began selling copies of the dog’s paw prints at $100 a set.  Idaho became so famous, the shelter that was serving as his temporary prison had to hire a bodyguard for him.  It was feared that someone would try to steal the four-legged celebrity.  When a Moscow, Idaho resident named Carl Hoisington heard of the story, he became convinced that Idaho was the same dog who had been stolen from his brother-in-law in Idaho Falls.  Victor Fortune, however, insisted that Idaho had been one of a litter of puppies that he had cared for while working at a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in Salmon, Idaho.  Since we hear nothing more of Mr. Hoisington and his dognapping claims, it is presumed that he was proved to have been mistaken.  Another side issue arose when it was speculated that another local dog, a three-year-old named Rex, was actually the canine who had been responsible for Maxwell’s death.  However, this effort to provide Idaho with an alibi does not appear to have been taken very seriously.

Dog lovers across the country had sent Fortune unsolicited cash donations, which were used to hire the services of a real lawyer, one Harry A. Sessions.  In the meantime, dog experts at the shelter subjected Idaho to a series of tests to determine his potential for viciousness.  They concluded that he was just a friendly, playful puppy who didn’t know his own strength.  Under a veterinarian’s supervision, a local newspaper reporter named Martin Gagie joined Idaho in the canal for an experimental swim.  Afterwards, Gagie stated, “Idaho enjoys the water immensely.  I am convinced he meant no harm when he played tag with me in the murky waters of the canal.  However, he weighs fifty pounds and, even in play, is rough.  I got several scratches, but there was no hint of viciousness as he pawed me.  He was just a big, rough puppy enjoying a swim to the utmost.”  It was pointed out that Maxwell’s body bore no scratches or claw marks from the dog.  This suggested that Idaho did not force the boy under water.  It was theorized that perhaps Maxwell drowned because he became panic-stricken, or simply developed a cramp.

Maxwell Breeze’s mother Anne was not convinced.  She wrote to a newspaper, “My boy Maxie is dead, the victim of a dangerous mongrel dog.  I believe that dog was Idaho, and I demand that he be killed.” she wrote.  She added angrily, “If the people of this country who are not parents continue, as they have in this case, to place the life of a mongrel dog above the life of a happy, healthy child, then it is time that all mothers give up the task of bringing up children.”

Both sides in the dispute met again before Justice Benedict on August 5.  Over three hundred journalists and curious spectators joined them.  Idaho himself--thankfully unaware that his life was on the line--seemed bored with the proceedings.  He napped through most of the hearing.

After listening to all the testimony, Benedict did his best to mix justice with mercy.  Instead of the death penalty requested by the Breezes, he decreed that Idaho should be returned to his owner to serve a sentence of twenty-six months of house arrest.  He warned Fortune that if the dog was not confined, Idaho would be killed by a peace officer.

"Palm Beach Post," August 16, 1936, via Newspapers.com

The crowd was overjoyed by the verdict, with the notable exception of Anne Breeze.  Maxwell’s mother snapped to reporters, “They’re going to let that dog around loose and it’ll kill someone else.  That dog killed my poor son, the only thing that I had.  If I had a gun, I’d shoot it myself.”

In accordance with the court’s order, Idaho spent the next two years chained up in Fortune’s yard.  During this period, he made two brief escapes, but both times he returned home on his own before Victor and his mother even had a chance to run after him.  

Idaho may have been a dangerous swimming buddy, but he was at heart a Good Boy.

As a result of a petition filed by the Rochester Dog Protective Association, on September 19, 1938, New York Supreme Court Justice William Love signed a court order giving Idaho a full and unconditional pardon, 12 days before his sentence ended.  Sadly, the dog did not enjoy his freedom for long.  On January 12, 1939, Victor’s brother Jack took Idaho with him for a hike near Route 31.  While doing so, Idaho began chasing after a cat.  He ran into the highway, where he was fatally struck by a car.  The hit-and-run driver was never identified.

Anne Breeze probably celebrated the news.

Help Wanted: The Macabre Death of Samuel Resnick

There are certain people who, for one reason or another, have a way of attracting people who are eager to murder them.  What makes the following case stand out is that exactly the opposite appears to have happened: A man was desperate to find someone willing to kill him, and he had a damned hard time achieving that goal.

Samuel Resnick was a jeweler in Albany, New York, for nearly thirty years until a heart condition forced his retirement in 1959, after which he and his wife Lillian retired to Phoenix, Arizona.  However, he still occasionally dealt in gemstones.  Life went quietly enough until the evening of March 1, 1962, when the 61-year-old Samuel told Lillian he was going for a walk.  That in itself was hardly unusual--evening strolls were a frequent part of his daily routine.  What was unusual is that he failed to return home.

Lillian and their 35-year-old son Martin immediately reported his disappearance to the police.  However, the mystery of Samuel’s whereabouts was not solved until March 4, when a horseback rider found his body on a little-used desert trail 10 miles outside of the city.  He had been beaten and then strangled with a rope.

The coroner estimated that Samuel died about four hours after leaving his home.  To most observers, the motive for his murder seemed obvious--his expensive diamond ring, a watch, his wallet, and a gemstone-studded Masonic ring were all missing from his body.  Neighbors told police that on the night Samuel disappeared, they had seen him talking to a couple of young men.  

The police, however, had reason to believe that something far more complicated--not to mention bizarre--than a mere robbery had happened.  A few months earlier, a man came to them with a startling story:  He had answered a “help wanted” ad that Samuel had placed in a local newspaper.  The man was appalled to learn that the job Resnick wanted him to do was to murder him.

Unfortunately, at the time the police shrugged off the man’s claims, but upon realizing that the jeweler had evidently found someone more cooperative, they began searching the advertisements in back copies of newspapers for possible suspects.  A 19-year-old named Clemmie Jackson caught their eye.  Clemmie was not around when police went to his home, but a search of the car belonging to his uncle turned up a length of rope identical to the one that had been used to strangle Samuel.  They also found a cluster of paper strips like ones found near Samuel’s body.  Clemmie’s brother, R.E. Jackson, told police the strips came from the paper shredding company where he worked.  R.E. claimed he knew nothing about the Resnick murder, and had no idea where his brother was.

On March 17, Clemmie was arrested in Crockett, Texas.  He readily--almost eagerly--told police his version of how Samuel Resnick came to die.  And what a story it was.  Clemmie had placed an advertisement in the papers looking for work.  On February 25, Samuel responded to the ad, telling Clemmie that if he was willing to kill him, the young man could have all the jewelry he was wearing, as well as any cash in his pockets.

I would like to think that if a stranger asked me to murder them, my response would be a polite “No, thank you,” and a quick rush to the nearest exit, but Clemmie was apparently a more accommodating and open-minded sort.  He gathered together a band of accomplices--his brother R.E., and three friends, Jesse Tillis, John Henry Lewis Jones, and Ernest Spurlock--and settled with Samuel that the big day would be March 1.  However, Clemmie said that at the last moment he had “chickened out” and allowed his confederates to do the deed without him.

When these men were arrested, they all confirmed Clemmie’s story, adding that they had agreed to the murder “because Mr. Sam had cancer and had only six months to live and wanted to leave his family some money.”  They went on to say that after meeting “Mr. Sam” at the prearranged spot in the desert, he coached them on how to strangle him, adding, “Do a good job.”  Two of them stood on each side of the jeweler and pulled the rope, but it quickly broke.

Samuel was beginning to get exasperated.  He told them, “Here, let me show you how.”  He doubled the rope for them and got on his knees.  The young men began feeling qualms about the whole enterprise, and tried to talk him out of proceeding, but Samuel was insistent.  “And this time, he helped, too.”  Once Samuel was dead, the confederates stripped his body of his jewelry and money, and then beat the corpse and turned his pockets inside out to make it look like a simple robbery.  

At first, police found their story unbelievable, and one can’t really blame them for that.  But then, yet another Phoenix man came forward, saying that Samuel had tried enlisting him as a hit man.  “I think those boys you’ve arrested are telling the truth,” he added.  Three other men, including Samuel’s barber, also told police that the late jeweler had tried talking them into murdering him.

Samuel’s widow and son, along with his physician and the doctor who had autopsied him, all denied that Samuel had cancer.  However, the medical examiner conceded that the jeweler was in very poor health, suffering from a grossly enlarged heart, an enlarged spleen, and a congested liver.  It seemed possible that Samuel might have preferred a quick end to his physical woes.  It was surmised that his reason for choosing murder over suicide was to enable his wife to get the “double indemnity” benefits from his $50,000 life insurance policy with Lloyd’s of London.

Whether Samuel really wanted to die or not, the law still forbade anyone from obliging him.  The five young men were all put on trial for first-degree murder.  In brief, the defense argued that the ultimate blame for Samuel’s death rested on the victim, while prosecutors insisted that--whatever the jeweler may have requested--the defendants were fully responsible.  

In the end, the jury decided that murder was murder, whether the victim had solicited it or not.  Clemmie, the one defendant who had not directly participated in the killing, was acquitted, while the other four were convicted, with the recommendation that they be sentenced to life imprisonment.

In a final irony, Lloyd’s found the circumstances of Samuel’s death to be just weird enough to justify them refusing to pay on his policy.  You might say that his passing was a tragically wasted effort on all sides.

The Weird Death of Joan Norkot

Sir John Maynard (d. 1690) had a long and distinguished career as a lawyer, serjeant-at-arms, and Member of Parliament.  Shortly after his death, discovered among his papers was his account of an unusually eerie and puzzling murder case from Hereford, England, in 1629.  The manuscript evidently languished in obscurity until it was eventually published in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for July 1851.  It reads like one of the more supernatural-tinged episodes of “Midsomer Murders,” but with an unsatisfactorily enigmatic ending.  Joan Norkot’s death may have been officially “Case Closed,” but it could hardly be called “Case Resolved.”

I write the evidence which was given, which I and many others heard, and I write it exactly according to what was deposed at the Trial at the Bar in the King's Bench. Johan Norkot, the wife of Arthur Norkot, being murdered, the question arose how she came by her death. The coroner's inquest on view of the body and deposition of Mary Norkot, John Okeman and Agnes, his wife, inclined to find Joan Norkot felo de se: for they (i.e. the witnesses before mentioned) informed the coroner and the jury that she was found dead in the bed and her throat cut, the knife sticking in the floor of the room; that the night before she was so found she went to bed with her child (now plaintiff in this appeal), her husband being absent, and that no other person after such time as she was gone to bed came into the house, the examinants lying in the outer room, and they must needs have seen if any stranger had come in. Whereupon the jury gave up to the coroner their verdict that she was felo de se. But afterwards upon rumour in the neighbourhood, and the observation of divers circumstances that manifested she did not, nor according to these circumstances, possibly could, murder herself, thereupon the jury, whose verdict was not drawn into form by the coroner, desired the coroner that the body which was buried might be taken up out of the grave, which the coroner assented to, and thirty days after her death she was taken up, in the presence of the jury and a great number of the people, whereupon the jury changed their verdict. The persons being tried at Hertford Assizes were acquitted, but so much against the evidence that the judge (Harvy) let fall his opinion that it were better an appeal were brought than so foul a murder should escape unpunished.

Anno, paschæ termino, quarto Caroli, [In the year, at the end of Easter, of the fourth year of Charles] they were tried on the appeal which was brought by the young child against his father, the grandfather and aunt, and her husband Okeman. And because the evidence was so strange I took exact and particular notes of it, which was as followeth, of the matters above mentioned and related, an ancient and grave person, the minister of the parish where the fact was committed, being sworn to give evidence according to custom, deposed, that the body being taken out of the grave thirty days after the party's death and lying on the grave and the four defendants present, they were required each of them to touch the dead body. O.'s wife fell on her knees and prayed God to show token of their innocency, or to some such purpose, but her very words I forget. The appellers did touch the dead body, whereupon the brow of the dead, which was all a livid or carrion colour (that was the verbal expression in the terms of the witness) began to have a dew or gentle sweat, which reached down in drops on the face, and the brow turned and changed to a lively and fresh colour, and the dead opened one of her eyes and shut it again, and this opening the eye was done three several times. She likewise thrust out the ring or marriage finger three times and pulled it in again, and the finger dropt blood from it on the grass.

Hyde (Nicholas), Chief Justice, seeming to doubt the evidence, asked the witness : "Who saw this beside yourself?"

Witness: "I cannot swear that others saw it; but, my lord," said he, “I believe the whole company saw it, and if it had been thought a doubt, proof would have been made of it, and many would have attested with me."

Then the witness observing some admiration in the auditors, he spoke further,

"My lord, I am minister of the parish, long knew all the parties, but never had any occasion of displeasure against any of them, nor had to do with them, or they with me, but as their minister. The thing was wonderful to me, but I have no interest in the matter, but am called upon to testify the truth and that I have done."

This witness was a reverend person as I guess about seventy years of age. His testimony was delivered gravely and temperately, but to the good admiration of the auditor. Whereupon, applying himself to the Lord Chief Justice, he said, "My lord, my brother here present is minister of the next parish adjacent, and I am assured saw all done as I have affirmed," whereupon that person was also sworn to give evidence, and he deposed the same in every point, viz., the sweat of the brow, the changes of its colour, the opening of the eye, the thrice motion of the finger and drawing it in again; only the first witness deposed that a man dipped his finger in the blood to examine it, and swore he believed it was real blood. I conferred afterwards with Sir Edmund Vowel, barrister at law, and others who concurred in this observation, and for myself, if I were upon my oath, can depose that these depositions, especially of the first witness, are truly here reported in substance.

The other evidence was given against the prisoners, viz., against the grandmother of the plaintiff and against Okeman and his wife, that they lay in the next room to the dead person that night, and that none came into the house till they found her dead next morning, therefore if she did not murther herself, they must be the murtherers, and to that end further proof was made. First she lay in a composed manner in her bed, the bed cloaths nothing at all disturbed, and her child by her in the bed. Secondly, her throat was cut from ear to ear and her neck broken, and if she first cut her throat, she could not break her neck in the bed, nor e contra. Thirdly, there was no blood in the bed, saving that there was a tincture of blood upon the bolster whereupon her head lay, but no other substance of blood at all. Fourthly, from the bed's head on there was a stream of blood on the floor, till it ponded on the bending of the floor to a very great quantity and there was also another stream of blood on the floor at the bed's feet, which ponded also on the floor to another great quantity but no other communication of blood on either of these places, the one from the other, neither upon the bed, so that she bled in two places severely, and it was deposed that turning up the matte of the bed, there were clotes of congealed blood in the straw of the matte underneath. Fifthly, the bloody knife in the morning was found clinging in the floor a good distance from the bed, but the point of the knife as it stuck in the floor was towards the bed and the haft towards the door. Sixthly, lastly, there was the brand of a thumb and four fingers of a left hand on the dead person's left hand.

Hyde, Chief Justice: "How can you know the print of a left hand from the print of a right hand in such a case?"

Witness: "My lord, it is hard to describe it, but if it please the honourable judge (i.e. the judge sitting on the bench beside the Chief Justice) to put his left hand on your left hand, you cannot possibly place your right hand in the same posture."

It being done, and appearing so, the defendants had time to make their defence, but gave no evidence to that purpose.

The jury departing from the bar and returning, acquitted Okeman and found the other three guilty; who, being severally demanded why judgment should not be pronounced, sayd nothing, but each of them said, "I did not do it." "I did not do it." Judgment was made and the grandmother and the husband executed, but the aunt had the privilege to be spared execution, being with child. I enquired if they confessed anything at execution, but did not as I was told.

A Shooting in Portencross

Mary Gunn

Northbank Cottage was a pleasant little home in Portencross, Scotland, on the Ayrshire coast.  Northbank was a fairly remote place, but surrounded by picturesque beauty, which would have made it a desirable location for anyone who did not fear loneliness.

In May 1913, a family trio moved into the cottage:  Sixty year old retired farmer/evangelist Alexander MacLaren, his wife Jessie, and Mrs. MacLaren’s forty-nine year old sister Mary Speir Gunn.  Mary was arguably the most notable member of the household: She had worked as a telephone operator, at a time when that was a highly unusual profession, particularly for a woman, and in her youth, was so pretty that she was known as the “Beauty of Beith.” She was still considered a very attractive woman.  The little family had a sterling reputation, and seemed quite fond of each other.

On the evening of October 18, the household had their tea, and then settled down around the fireplace in the parlor.  It was a peaceful scene: the two women knitted while Alexander read aloud from a book by W.W. Jacobs, Mary’s favorite author.  They did not bother to draw the blinds in the room, as it was a rainy night and their isolated location ensured they rarely got passers-by.

Alexander’s reading was abruptly interrupted by a frightening noise: a combination of a blast and the sound of glass shattering in the window opposite Mary.  A barrage of gunshots filled the room.  Mary suddenly clutched her chest and cried, “Oh, Alex, I’m shot!”  She dropped to the floor.  Jessie dashed to the other side of the room, with her husband yelling at her to drop to the floor.  It was only then that Alexander realized that one of the shots had shattered his left index finger.  The shots stopped, followed by an eerie silence.

Alexander ran out of the house, but the shooter had disappeared into the darkness.  After a futile search around the cottage, he ran for Portencross, which was about half a mile away.  The first house he reached was of a farmer named Alexander Murray.  He dashed into the house shouting, “Come down!  Come down!  We are all shot!”  Murray and his wife came out onto the landing to find MacLaren standing in the hall, hysterical and bleeding from his hand.  MacLaren screamed at them, “I’m shot, my wife’s shot, and Miss Gunn’s shot!”  He turned and ran back out into the night.

Murray went to the house of the local Laird, where he learned that MacLaren had just been there, after which the Laird--who had one of the very few houses in the area with a telephone--called police.

When officers, accompanied by a doctor, arrived at Northbank, they found Jessie standing in a daze, blood streaming from her back.  The doctor instantly saw that Mary was dead.  She had been shot three times, with one of the bullets piercing her heart.  The doctor led Jessie to bed, and extracted a bullet from her back.  He did not consider the wound to be life-threatening.  Outside the shattered window, police were able to make out several pairs of footprints, as well as a bullet.

At first, police evidently believed Alexander was either the intended victim, or the perpetrator.  However, the footprints found outside the window did not match his boots, and it was soon determined that his shotgun could not have been the murder weapon.  Investigators next assumed that this had been a botched robbery attempt--except, what burglar would fill a room with bullets, and then leave?  A personal motivation made little sense, either.  The three victims lived quiet, inoffensive lives, with no known enemies.  With little to go on other than unidentifiable footprints in the mud and a few bullets, the police were stymied.  They followed a number of leads about the inevitable “mysterious strangers” seen in the area at the time of the murder, but those all went nowhere.  The murder of Mary Gunn began to drift towards the “cold case” file.

"Daily Mirror," October 22, 1913, via Newspapers.com

There was one curious footnote to this particularly odd shooting.  One year after Mary’s murder, Elizabeth Gibson, who ran a Portencross boarding-house with her husband Andrew, sued Alexander MacLaren for slander.  The suit stated that MacLaren “falsely and calumniously made statements to the effect that she had participated in or had guilty knowledge of the murder of the defendant’s sister-in-law, Miss Mary Gunn, at Portencross on October 18th last year.”  The report went on to state that as a result of MacLaren’s statements, “an estrangement has resulted between herself and her husband, and her business has suffered very seriously.”

The trial was scheduled to begin on March 19, 1915, but before those proceedings could begin, Mrs. Gibson suddenly and mysteriously dropped the action, meaning she had to pay all the costs for the case, not to mention losing her hope of getting damages from MacLaren.

That proved to be the last official word on the Portencross Mystery.  As it seems virtually impossible that the murder will ever be satisfactorily “solved,” all we can do is speculate using the few clues available.  Jack House, who devoted a chapter to the case in his book “Murder Not Proven,” suggested that the murderer was Alexander MacLaren.  House theorized that Alexander, maddened by a hidden passion for his fetching sister-in-law, secretly bought a heavy revolver and snuck out of the cottage on the fatal night with the intention of murdering his inconvenient wife.  However, in his excitement, he accidentally killed the wrong woman.  As for why Jessie MacLaren did not turn her husband in, House proposed that the shock of the event caused her to have amnesia.

While we certainly live in a world where anything is possible, I personally find House’s lurid scenario to be unconvincing.  Stephen Brown’s 2018 book, “Who Killed Mary Gunn” offered a more plausible “solution.”  Seizing upon Elizabeth Gibson’s aborted slander suit, Brown speculated that Andrew Gibson was having a secret love affair with Mary Gunn, leading to Andrew’s jealous wife taking violent steps to eliminate her rival.  Brown thought it was likely that Mrs. Gibson dropped her lawsuit after it was privately pointed out to her that suing someone for calling her a murderer when she really was a murderer could lead to unpleasant consequences.

Unfortunately, Brown’s theory is too loaded with “what-ifs” to be the “last word” on the case. Also, neither “solution” to the murder addresses what I find most puzzling: The remarkably messy and slapdash manner of the shooting.  It did not appear to be the action of an assassin with a particular target in mind.  Rather, it looks like someone just stood outside the window randomly spraying the room with bullets.  The fact that Mary was fatally wounded seems to have been a case of appalling bad luck rather than a deliberate “hit job.”  This led me to consider a variation of Brown’s theory:  Perhaps Andrew Gibson had an interest in Mary that was completely unrequited, but deep enough to cause his wife a good deal of resentment.  Perhaps, in her anxiety to cool her husband’s passion, Elizabeth Gibson picked up a gun and went to the MacLaren cottage not to murder anyone, but just to put enough of a scare into the family to drive them far away from Portencross--and Andrew.  Unfortunately for everyone concerned, Elizabeth proved to be a more lethal marksman than she intended.  Or, for all we know, nobody has stumbled across the true solution to the case.

Northbank Cottage is still standing, the last surviving witness to the murder.  What a pity its walls cannot talk.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This evocative tale of a missing person’s ghost appeared in the “Democratic Northwest,” October 18. 1894:

Fully 20 years have passed since Lizzie Clark, an orphan with a heritage, disappeared from a hotel in Dallas City, Illinois., as completely as if the earth had swallowed her up. In all that western country there has never been a stranger case than the disappearance of that girl, and there has never been a greater ghost mystery than has been and still is occasioned by the evidently disembodied spirit of the girl. 

The story of Lizzie Clark has been county history. She was an orphan and had some property and money.  A guardian had been appointed, and Lizzie, being ambitious to add to her little store, set about to work in a hotel hard by the river's edge. Through the dining room of this hotel runs the line between Hancock and Henderson counties, so that often a guest reached from Hancock into Henderson county when after butter.  A country swain and his lass, if seated opposite each other at this board, are in different counties. Many a man wanted for some offense in Hancock county has sat at this table in Henderson county and grinned at the sheriff of Hancock county. 

It was one afternoon about 20 years ago that Lizzie Clark, who had been washing dishes in the kitchen, stepped into the yard of the hotel.  She was seen to leave the kitchen by several working around the house, who paid no attention to the girl, but that was the last ever seen of her. Those who saw her step out into the yard heard no scream, no stifled moan, no struggling, but there are people yet living who believe that the girl was suddenly seized, strangled, concealed in the house until dark, and then cast into the dark river. Be that as it may, the murderers, if they remained in the same locality long, have been amply tormented since. It is said that the murderers did not leave the locality for some time thereafter, and yet, again, others say the girl was never murdered, but drowned herself, and that her ghost is not one of a murdered person, but one of a suicide. All one can gain from the different stories and theories is that the girl was dealt with foully in some manner, and that her ghost still haunts the locality.

Of course every effort was made to ferret out the mystery. Detectives hunted high and low, money was spent to no purpose, and finally the guardian of the girl's estate turned her money and property over to the county authorities, in whose hand it remains to this day because there is no kith or kin to claim it. 

The girl's ghost was first seen in December, 1887, when a party of duck bunters were returning to Dallas City from the islands. An excursion steamer had become disabled late in the season and was lying on the bank of the island across the bay. She was in a rather bad fix.  It was expected to leave her there during the winter. As the hunters neared the craft a form in white was seen to run out upon the upper deck. It was a young girl's figure, and she was evidently being pursued, for from across the water came screams, and then the following words: "'Leave me alone, leave me alone, or I will drown myself!" With that the specter flung itself into the river. There was a splash, and the cold waters closed over the white body. Several times during that winter the ghost of Lizzie Clark was seen at night and at early candle light around the disabled steamer.

When the steamer was taken away next spring, workmen and steamboatmen heard pitiful screams from the willows on shore as the boat moved away. The spirit did not leave the island, and it is believed now that she was buried on the island after the murder.  

Of later years, however, the girl's ghost has been seen in a skiff at night, and it was only a few evenings ago that one of the St. Louis and St. Paul fast steamers ran into the spectral thing.  The pilot did not see the ghostly craft until too late. He says he saw a boat of white that looked more like floating fleece than anything else. In the boat was a young girl in white raiment, but there were blood clots on the white dress. “She was rowing swiftly. When the prow of the steamer struck this frail craft, it cut through it like mist.  The ghostly occupant only laughed a sort of uncanny laugh--a half scream--and when we had passed I saw the spectral craft dancing on the waves behind. I doubt if an ordinary skiff could have lived in the waves of our steamer, right under the paddles." Thus spoke the pilot, and he is a man of few words and sterling integrity. 

"Have you seen Lizzie Clark's boat?" is now the question that goes from one mouth to another during the summer season. The question is not asked so often in winter from the fact that the poor girl's spirit does not seem to roam so much. Hunters have come into Dallas shaking with fright and calling for a dram to brace their nerves, saying that while coming down from the islands above on the ice they had met Lizzie Clark walking rapidly toward them.

She always wears that white dress, and the blood stains on the neck are plain. The girl's eyes are always staring wide open, as if she were being suffocated. Her spirit has been known to step out from behind a clump of dead trees at the head of the island and face passersby. She will give them a terrible look and then scream piteously. In an instant more the spirit has disappeared.- - Chicago Times.

There is a sequel to our little tale:  In March 1915, a skeleton of a human female was unearthed around the grounds of the hotel where Lizzie had worked, leading to the assumption that these were the remains of the long-missing girl.  It was said that Lizzie’s employers had been “bad characters, utterly devoid of decent principles.”  Lizzie was said to have been in “deep trouble” with the hotel proprietors, presumably because she knew too much of their evil doings.  The obvious conclusion was that Lizzie’s mouth had been permanently shut.

After the skeleton was found, Lizzie Clark’s unhappy ghost was never seen again.

The Crossbow Murder

Arlene Hoffman

“Death by crossbow” sounds like something you’d see in medieval records, or an episode of “Midsomer Murders,” not in a modern-day upscale Southern California neighborhood.  But as the following case will show, life is full of surprises.

Arlene Hoffman led a busy life in the background of California’s often-twisted, but admittedly rarely dull, political scene.  She began her involvement with politics  when she worked for the millionaire industrialist and art-collector Norton Simon, who made a failed Senate run in 1970.  She participated in Jesse Unruh’s unsuccessful 1973 campaign to become mayor of Los Angeles, and went on to become the secretary for Fred Harper, a well-known political consultant who disappeared off the coast of Baja California in 1974.

In 1976, Hoffman was called as a witness before the Orange County Grand Jury.  The hospital she was then working for was run by Dr. Louis Cella, who at the time was California’s largest campaign contributor.  Cella was being investigated for billing Medi-Cal for phantom patients, and then steering the money to numerous political campaigns.  Cella was eventually convicted of income-tax evasion, Medicare and Medi-Cal fraud, embezzlement, and conspiracy.  Investigators suspected that Hoffman was assisting Cella in his dodgy political schemes, and then lying about it to try to protect her employee, but apparently they could not prove any criminal activity on her part.  Probably the most notorious campaign Cella and Hoffman were involved in was when they helped to elect Robert Citron to the position of Orange County Treasurer-Tax Collector.  Citron subsequently pleaded guilty for his role in Orange County’s 1994 bankruptcy, which was, at the time, the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history.

One might be pardoned for thinking that Mrs. Hoffman was something of a political jinx.  However, despite her involvement in an impressive list of political misadventures, in December 1994, the 57-year-old Hoffman was hired as personal secretary to Jim Silva, who had just been elected to the Orange County Board of Supervisors.  Hoffman, who was recently widowed (her husband Joel died of cancer in March 1994,) appeared to be getting her life back on track.  The medical costs from Joel’s long illness forced the couple into bankruptcy, but those proceedings had recently concluded, and Arlene had just received a $500,000 life insurance payment.  Those who knew Arlene described her as a kind, eminently trustworthy and dependable person.  She was devoted to her only child, 25-year-old Charles, whom the Hoffmans had adopted when he was in his mid-teens.  (After serving four years in the Marine Corps, in 1994 Charles was a student at Fullerton College.)

On December 30, 1994, Hoffman unaccountably failed to show up for work.  Calls to her cell phone went unanswered.  When nightfall began to arrive with no word from Hoffman, Jim Silva became concerned enough to call Sheriff Brad Gates to have deputies visit Hoffman’s Laguna Niguel condo.  When the officers entered her residence, they found Hoffman’s body lying in the hallway, with a fatal wound in her chest caused by a “hunting-type arrow,” possibly fired by a crossbow.  (The arrow was never recovered.)  Sometime between 7:30 p.m. on December 29 and 7:30 the following morning, someone committed a very unusual murder.

Hoffman’s front door was found unlocked, and there was no sign of a break-in.  Nothing appeared to be missing from the condo.  Hoffman’s poodle was found wandering around the entryway, but a previous owner had arranged for the animal’s ability to bark to be surgically removed.  The dog was still wearing a leash, suggesting that Hoffman had been attacked immediately after taking her pet for a walk.  Police found partial fingerprints on a stairway that they believed belonged to the killer, but no match was ever made.

This proved to be one of those murders where the investigation hit an immediate brick wall.  Despite her proximity to some shady political dealings, police found no obvious link between them and her murder.  Everyone who had even the slightest contact with Hoffman was interviewed.  Every archery and sporting goods store in the area was investigated for possible leads.  At every turn, investigators came up empty-handed.  As far as anyone could tell, no one had a motive to kill Arlene Hoffman--except, someone did.

To date, the case remains one of those unsettling mysteries.

The Body in the Mine Shaft and a Strange Miscarriage of Justice

This week, we look at the case of a murder victim who turned out to not be a murder victim.  Even though a murder had definitely been committed.  Throw in a murderer who turned out to not be a murderer, and about all you can say is that Life Gets Complicated.

In January 1925, a 31-year-old man named Condy Dabney left his home in Coal Creek, Tennessee to look for work.  His wife and two children stayed behind in Coal Creek until he was able to resettle.  Fortunately, he found employment in a mine near Coxton, Kentucky.  He impressed everyone as a quiet, amiable, law-abiding man.

Soon after Dabney arrived in Coxton, a 16-year-old girl named Roxy Baker disappeared, under circumstances considered mysterious enough for a Grand Jury to be called in.  Just before the jurors met, three Coxton men also inexplicably vanished.  The Grand Jury found nothing connecting the four disappearances, but they were unable to come to any conclusions about Coxton’s sudden depopulation.

In early July, Dabney gave up his mining job to start a taxi service.  A month later, Coxton was rocked by further disappearing acts:  Two married women and a 14-year-old girl named Mary Vickery.  Although no clue was ever found about the whereabouts of the adult women, two Coxton men--William Middleton and Condy Dabney--had been seen taking Mary for automobile rides, which made them the obvious--indeed, only--suspects in her disappearance.  However, the Grand Jury was unable to find any other incriminating evidence against the men, so they were released from custody.

In September, Dabney heard that one of his children was sick, so he left Coxton to find work closer to home.  The following month, United States Marshal Adrian Metcalf got a tip that an illegal still was operating in an abandoned mine shaft on Ivy Hill, just outside of Coxton, so he went to investigate.

In the course of his search, he found something far worse than moonshine.  In yet another abandoned shaft, he found some women’s clothing and an ominous-looking pile of stones.  He brought in some backup, and the men began digging.  Before long, they unearthed a body.  The corpse was too decomposed to allow identification to be possible, but they believed it was of a girl in her early teens.  This led to the obvious presumption that these were the remains of the still-missing Mary Vickery.  Townspeople--particularly a young woman named Marie Jackson--immediately began gossiping that Condy Dabney was responsible for the girl’s murder.  The stories told about Dabney were considered damming enough for authorities to visit his home in Coal Creek to question him, but apparently he was able to convince them of his innocence.  Unfortunately for him, the Grand Jury felt otherwise.  On March 18, 1926, they returned an indictment charging Dabney with Mary Vickery’s murder.

At Dabney’s trial, Mary’s father testified that he was certain the body found in the old shaft was that of his daughter, largely on the basis of a ring he found in the shaft after the corpse was discovered.  He also claimed that a stocking found at the scene was identical to one Mary owned, and that the “sandy like and bobbed” hair on the corpse matched that of his daughter.  On cross-examination, Vickery stated that Mary had never run away from home before, and denied rumors that she had a bad relationship with her stepmother.  Defense lawyers got Vickery to admit that he had not attended the corpse’s funeral, and allowed the county to take charge of the burial.  When asked about this seeming neglect, he hesitated, which caused Dabney’s attorney, G.G. Rawlings, to declare, “You did not know that was your girl, that is what you started to say, wasn’t it?”

“At the present time I wasn’t perfectly sure,” Vickery admitted.

It turned out that there was a great deal of confusion about the body’s identity.  Witnesses were produced who testified to Vickery’s uncertainty about whether the corpse was Mary’s or not.  Nobody could agree on the color of the corpse’s hair--some described it as brown and fine, others said it was black and coarse.

The chief witness against Dabney was Marie Jackson.  She testified that on the morning that Mary disappeared, she and Mary hailed a ride from Dabney’s taxi.  He drove them to a Coxton restaurant, where Marie got out.  Dabney drove off with Mary still in his car.  Dabney and Mary came back at about 1 p.m., after which the trio drove out to Ivy Hill.  They got out of the car and sat in a clearing, where they talked for a while.  Then Dabney asked Marie to go off behind the hill for a while, so he could talk to Mary alone.  Marie claimed that she obeyed, although she could still see the two of them.  According to Marie, she saw Dabney embrace Mary.  When the girl objected, Dabney repeatedly beat her with a stick.  After the attack, Dabney walked over to Marie, warning her that if she ever told a soul about what she had seen, he would “burn her at the stake.”  As she fled, she saw Dabney carrying Mary’s body into the mine shaft.  Curiously, she willingly got another ride from Dabney the following day.  The topic of Mary’s murder, she said, never came up.

Three young women--two sisters named Stewart and a “Miss Smith”--testified that on the afternoon of Mary’s disappearance, the Stewart sisters and Mary were walking along a road, when Dabney drove by, offering them a lift. They declined, but after they were joined by William Middleton and one Otis King, the three girls rode with them for a short time, after which the Stewarts left, leaving Mary in the car with Middleton and King.  These two men substantiated this story.  All this took place between two and four p.m., which contradicted Marie Jackson’s claim that she had been with Mary and Dabney on Ivy Hill from one p.m. until dusk.

The state brought out a “jailhouse witness”--one Claude Scott, who had been imprisoned with Dabney for a short time before the trial.  He was an old friend of Marie Jackson.  He claimed that he had given Marie a letter from Dabney, and that Dabney had offered him fifteen dollars to testify in his favor.  Claude said that Dabney “tried to make me remember stuff that Marie Jackson should have said through that window to me; while he was sitting there he tried to make me remember stuff I never heard her say and she never said to me.”

When Dabney himself took the stand, he stated that he did not remember ever having Mary Vickery in his taxi, although he admitted that it might have happened, as he often gave rides to people he did not know.  He did, however, occasionally taxi Marie Jackson.  He declared that he had never been on Ivy Hill, and had no idea in the world what had happened to Mary Vickery.

Unfortunately for Dabney, the jurors obviously found Marie Jackson’s lurid tale more convincing than his protestations of innocence.  On March 31, 1926, they delivered a guilty verdict, with a recommendation for life imprisonment.  Dabney faced the prospect of spending the rest of his days doing hard labor at the state penitentiary in Frankfort.

Dabney’s lawyer immediately appealed the verdict.  While the appeal was still pending, a policeman named George Davis checked into a hotel in Williamsburg, Kentucky.  He happened to notice the name “Mary Vickery” on the register.  The name rang a bell with him, although he could not remember why.  When he asked hotel workers about it, he learned that someone by that name had once lived in the hotel, but she went across the Cumberland River to visit friends.  Davis--who had, by then, remembered that Mary Vickery was supposed to be dead--managed to track her down.

Marie Jackson

Mary told him that she had left Coxton on August 23, 1925, because she couldn’t get on with her stepmother.  She took a taxi to the train station.  The driver was a stranger, but the description she gave of him matched that of Dabney.  She said she didn’t even know Marie Jackson.  Mary went to various cities, finally settling in Cincinnati, where she worked in a woolen mill.  She admitted that while there, she heard that a man had been convicted of her murder.  When asked why she hadn’t let anyone know that she was very much alive, Mary replied, “I just never thought about that.”

After Mary was persuaded to return to Coxton, embarrassed officials immediately pardoned Dabney, and appointed a special prosecutor, G.J. Jarvis, to investigate Marie Jackson.  The young woman obviously had some explaining to do.  Despite this official inquiry, it remains uncertain why Marie was so eager to ruin an innocent man’s life.  Jarvis was of the opinion that she concocted her testimony to get the $500 reward that had been offered for information about Mary’s disappearance.  However, Dabney himself said that Marie had accused him of murder out of revenge because “I refused to desert my family for her.”  In any case, Marie was convicted of perjury on March 27, 1927.  Coincidentally enough, on that very same day Mary Vickery was married to a C.E. Dempsey.

After this coda, everyone involved went on with their lives, leaving behind one rather obvious question:  Who was the body in the mine shaft, and who killed her?   It was speculated that the corpse was that of a young woman named Leslie (or Letitia) Cole, who vanished around the same time as Mary Vickery.  Interestingly, Mrs. Cole’s estranged husband Carlo was said to have been romantically involved with none other than Marie Jackson.

It is possible that Marie knew much more about this unsolved murder than she ever let on.

A Family Affair: The Sinister Death of Mary Stanley

[Note: I wrote this as a guest post for the blog "Executed Today" way back in 2011, but I thought this tale of a young woman's mysterious death--with a decidedly weird cast of characters--was definitely Strange Company material.]

When reflecting upon the life and times of Edgar Allan Poe, Edward Wagenknecht once wrote that “One might also say of Poe that he lived in a Gothic novel. Hardly anybody behaves normally in this history.” Of all the names one finds in Poe’s biographies, no one better illustrates these words than Marie Louise Barney Shew Houghton. While there were many players in Poe’s life story who undoubtedly deserved to be put in the dock, (the Reverend Rufus Wilmot Griswold being merely the most famous example,) Mrs. Houghton was the only one of the lot who faced the prospect of being tried, and very possibly convicted and executed, of first-degree murder.

Mrs. Houghton is known to history as having been the nurse of Poe’s wife Virginia during her final illness, as well as an all-around Poe family benefactor. This saintly reputation, unfortunately, comes largely from her own boasts on the matter, made many years after the poet’s death. In 1875, she began a correspondence with Poe’s early biographer John H. Ingram. Her avowed intent was to insure that she—as opposed to other ladies who were vying for the title—would be remembered as Poe’s dear friend and guardian angel. Unfortunately, at the time she contacted Ingram, she was clearly in appalling shape, mentally and emotionally. The numerous extant letters she wrote him—which date from January to June of 1875–are always rambling, usually incoherent, and occasionally quite insane. She related to Ingram many colorful stories about Poe that are completely uncorroborated, patently absurd, and often at complete variance with the known facts. Ingram privately acknowledged that Mrs. Houghton was mentally unstable, and he suspected as well that she was enhancing, or even completely inventing, many Poe anecdotes, in order to keep their correspondence alive. He wound up dismissing her with the euphemism, “imaginative.” In spite of all this, Ingram—who was desperately in need of original source material about the ever-elusive Poe—wound up relaying far too much of her dubious information in his 1880 biography, and, even more unforgivably, Poe’s modern-day historians repeat unquestioningly this same apocrypha to this day.

One wonders what Ingram’s reaction would have been if he had known anything about his pen-pal’s personal life. Marie Houghton was a predecessor to today’s “New Age” devotees. Her first marriage, to the “water-cure” practitioner Joel Shew, gave her an avenue into what were the more extreme circles of Transcendentalist faddism, which embraced alternative medicine, “free love,” “freethinking,” communal living, and disdain for established institutions. Ironically, she represented everything Poe most despised in contemporary society.

In the mid-1840s, Marie Louise separated from her husband and entered into an affair with another member of their circle, Dr. Ronald Houghton, although she continued to live with Dr. Shew. In 1849, she gave birth to a son, Henry, who was probably acknowledged as Houghton’s, although at least one historian has theorized that the father was a third man who was living with (and financially aiding) the Shews. The next year, the Shews divorced and she married Houghton. Although they had several more children, the marriage proved unhappy, and they too separated. She continued to work as a nurse, while indulging in a number of extremely complicated and very dodgy financial and property transactions on the side.

However, it was this son Henry who proved to be the catalyst that brought Mrs. Houghton serious trouble. After a varied and exciting career out west where he was charged with adultery, mule thievery, swindling, and “open and notorious lewdness,” Henry Houghton returned to the family home in New York, bringing with him his mistress, Mary E. Stanley, who had evidently been Henry’s partner in crime as well. With them was a toddler who was understood to have been their child, even though Mary was at the time married to another man.

In 1876, the now-pregnant Mrs. Stanley was living with the Houghton family, although by this point Henry appears to have tired of her. Her common-law mother-in-law, Mrs. Houghton, acted as her sole medical attendant. Unfortunately, Mrs. Stanley died soon after giving birth. The Houghtons failed to summon a doctor until she was obviously at death’s door. Very curiously, she was quickly buried without a death certificate having been issued, apparently at the instigation of Marie Houghton. After her burial, the undertaker prevailed upon the physician who had been at her deathbed, a Dr. Bleecker, to provide him with some sort of certificate. Bleecker was reluctant to do so, as he had never actually treated the deceased, but finally issued one with the noncommittal statement that the cause of death appeared to be “congestive chills.”

Mary Stanley’s death would have passed unremarked had it not been for a collection of letters she had written to a friend, which was soon brought to the attention of the authorities. In brief, these letters stated that Mrs. Houghton wished to perform an abortion on her. (It was alleged that Houghton supplemented her income as a professional—and, on occasion, fatally incompetent—abortionist.) When Mrs. Stanley refused, she attempted to give her patient certain “medicines” which Mrs. Stanley believed were intended to permanently rid the Houghtons of her as well. Faced with this uncooperative attitude, Mrs. Houghton “became cruel to her, and starved both herself and her child.” The question of why she remained in the household appeared to be answered by murky and never-clarified issues regarding the estate of Mrs. Houghton’s late estranged husband. It was said that she stubbornly stayed put in an effort to defend the interests of Mrs. Houghton’s other son, Frank, who was involved with a legal dispute with his mother over a certain piece of property. There was a good deal of nightmarishly complex litigation surrounding Dr. Houghton’s estate, and evidently Mrs. Stanley played some crucial role regarding the dispute over the distribution of Roland Houghton’s properties. According to these letters, Mrs. Stanley was attempting to act as some sort of a roadblock in schemes Henry and his mother were attempting in relation to the matter. 

After the local coroner and District Attorney had read their fill of these missives, their first act was to have Mrs. Houghton arrested.

An inquest was soon held, and these letters, as well as testimonies of friends of the dead woman, were presented to the jury. A lurid picture was painted of Mrs. Houghton’s long career of poisoning (including two alleged attempts against her husband,) abortions both successful and fatal (Mrs. Stanley wrote of seeing “terrible things” in the Houghton’s cellar that related to this practice—other testimony agreed that she literally knew where the bodies were buried,) financial fraud, and all-purpose cruelty. Mrs. Stanley wrote that “I do not think there is another woman as bad as her living,” and if half of what was related about her at the inquest was true, this was a genteel understatement. Mrs. Stanley also declared that the Houghtons wanted her dead, not only for the fact that she “knew too much” about their depraved dealings, but because she was threatening to “swear her child” on Henry Houghton—i.e., hit him with a paternity suit. (The inquest also included testimony that Mrs. Houghton expressed great joy that Mary Stanley’s death freed her son from taking responsibility for his mistress and their child.)

When Mrs. Houghton took the stand in her defense, it was said that she gave her testimony “fairly and with much plausibility.” She simply denied everything the dead woman had written. Mrs. Stanley, she said, was a designing criminal who had robbed her son “not only of his money, but of his good name.” She had allowed the pregnant woman to live in her house out of pure Christian charity. Mrs. Stanley’s death, on September 12th 1876, was of a “congestive chill” that came on so suddenly there was no time to send for a doctor. She admitted that she had practiced medicine from 1851 until the previous year, when she was threatened with imprisonment if she did not cease her unaccredited ministrations. She also conceded that Mrs. Stanley had threatened to “crush” the Houghton family, and that “something disagreeable” had occurred several months before that had inspired Mrs. Stanley to write these accusatory letters. However, it was also revealed that at the time of Mrs. Houghton’s arrest, certain family papers were seized by the authorities which corroborated much of what the deceased had alleged.

When Dr. Bleecker testified, he could say only that an autopsy on the dead woman “could not determine the cause of death satisfactorily.”

After all this, it is quite startling to read that the jury ruled that Mary Stanley died of natural causes, “from hemorrhage and exhaustion while in labor.” The only way of explaining this conclusion (which seemed to have no evidence to back it up) is to note that from the newspaper reports, the jury was clearly on Mrs. Houghton’s side from the beginning. In fact, the jury attempted to halt the inquest very early on, claiming they had heard enough evidence to reach a verdict. The coroner and DA overruled them, insisting that they hear additional witnesses. Also, one of the jurors questioned a doctor who testified, asking if it wasn’t true that pregnant women were often prone to paranoid fancies, where they imagined dangers that did not exist. When the doctor admitted that such things were possible, this obviously sealed the deal for this panel. The reason for this obvious bias in favor of the defendant is, most unfortunately, unknown.

The case was left open for further investigation, but as far as can be ascertained by a search of contemporary newspapers, the matter was closed as far as the authorities were concerned. Marie Houghton left the court a free woman, if not exactly one without a stain on her character. She died less than a year later, at the age of fifty-five, on September 3, 1877.

One of the strangest things about this case is the fact that it has attracted so little attention, from that time to this. The only detailed contemporary accounts I have been able to uncover are a handful of articles from one newspaper, the “Brooklyn Eagle,” and two columns in the “New York Herald” which simply repeated some of the information published in the Eagle. Even though the story contained enough scandal to keep a platoon of yellow journalists in clover for years, it was otherwise ignored. Despite the fact that the central character was a figure well-known to anyone who has the slightest interest in Poe’s life, this grotesque little episode appears to be unknown to his biographers. It is a great pity that deeper investigation in the matter appears impossible at this late date, as from what was reported, Marie Houghton was either the most viciously slandered woman of her era, or a monster Poe himself could not have created in his darkest fits of imagination.