The Ghost and Mr. Koett

Fred Koett, circa 1927

According to numerous newspaper reports from 1927, a prosperous farmer named Fred Koett, who lived near Ellinwood, Barton County, Kansas, acquired a new, highly undesirable tenant: A very cranky ghost.

Early that year, the forty-one year old Koett, who was recently widowed, married a very pretty young woman who was less than half his age. After that event, his farmhouse, where he had lived his entire life without incident, became a nightmare.

Mayme Koett

The liveliness started on the very first day he and his bride returned to his family farm. That evening, Mayme, the new Mrs. Koett, was upstairs with the year-old baby of her predecessor. Mr. Koett was in the kitchen. He was about to blow out the lamp when he saw a face looking in the window. He hurried to investigate, but by the time he got outside, the Peeping Tom was gone. At the same time, he heard, from the direction of the woodshed, his dog barking madly. Then, in the barn, the cows and horses all suddenly became frenzied. The inmates of the chicken coop quickly followed suit. The increasingly irritated Koett could find no reason for the uproar.

The Koett farmhouse

Then, he saw a very tall, dim figure in the distance. “What are you doing there?” he shouted. The strange intruder said nothing, merely drifting quickly away. As the puzzled farmer watched, the figure appeared to float over a fence and disappeared into the orchard.

Koett, who had a firm disbelief in “spooks,” merely laughed and called after the figure, “That trick is a corker. Come back and do it again some time.”

He would soon regret that invitation.

When he returned to the house, he was baffled to find that during his absence, all the furniture had been rearranged. When he asked his wife why she had taken to redecorating in the middle of the night, she replied that she had done no such thing. She had been asleep all the time he had been gone.

Koett let the subject drop, but he did not sleep very well. The animals outside kept up their restless, noisy protests at…something. The night was further disturbed by a loud moaning noise outside the window.

When he got up the next morning, he found that someone had turned his first wife’s picture to the wall.

Koett continued to try to persuade his bride—and himself—that nothing abnormal was happening, but as the disturbances continued, he finally had to concede that something beyond his comprehension was invading his farm. At night, he and his wife would hear footsteps coming up the stairs, pausing to give three loud knocks at their door. One time, when Koett got out of bed in time to quickly throw open the door, he caught a glimpse of a tall, black shape moving down the hall. The climax came one eerily moonlit night, when both the Koetts both saw the portrait of his late wife slowly turn its own face to the wall.

That did it. The farmer held a private family meeting to come up with a plan of action for dealing with this…whatever it was. Figuring there was safety in numbers, Mayme’s mother and brother moved in, and Koett hired three tough, no-nonsense farmhands. One of these new employees, Charles Ammonds, was particularly scornful at the idea that there could be ghostly mischief afoot.

That attitude did not survive his first night in the place. At about ten pm, he woke up to strange moaning sounds in his bedroom closet. When he yanked open the door, the dark figure emerged. Ammonds tried tackling the intruder…and the next he knew he was flat on the floor.

The three farmhands gave their notice the next morning.

Still trying to tell themselves that all the menacing phenomena was the work of a neighbor, perhaps jealous at Koett’s wealth or his remarriage to a beautiful young girl, the family went to Wayne Lameraux, the county prosecutor, for help.

The official was probably not accustomed to being asked to arrest a phantom, so perhaps he can’t be blamed for not taking the matter very seriously. “Bring on your ghost,” he laughed, “and I’ll have him put under bonds to keep the peace.”

Not knowing what else to do, Koett wrote the Governor, who was intrigued enough to order the local sheriff, James Hill, to investigate. When Hill heard of Ammonds’ TKO, he scoffed, “anything that has two fists can be made to wear handcuffs.” He sent five armed deputies to Koett’s farm to guard the barn, the chicken coop, and the farmhouse itself.

A little after ten at night, the three officers camped outside the farmhouse saw the all-too-familiar blurred dark shape slowly moving in their direction. When the apparition ignored their orders to halt, they pounded it with six charges of buckshot. The whatever-it-was let out an eerie, highly offended wail and drifted back into the orchard. The next morning, the deputies left in triumph, assuring Koett that they had scared the trespasser off.

Those men did not know their ghost stories. The Thing was back that night, louder, busier, and obviously angrier than ever.

It never pays to irritate a spirit.

The weird goings-on continued.  Items around the house were mysteriously disarranged, at times when no one--well, no one human--was at home.  The strange spectral figure continued to drift in and out around the residence.  A ghostly face was often seen peering into windows. The final straw came when life at the farm went from merely unnerving to horrifying. After one encounter with the Thing, Koett’s dog was found stabbed with a pitchfork.

The farmer conceded defeat. He sold his animals and furniture and took his family to a location he kept secret, fearful that his phantom enemy might follow them. “I couldn’t stand it any longer,” he told a reporter. “I don’t know what it is that has caused so many mysterious happenings, but I’ve experienced things that are barely believable and I have stood it longer than any other man would.”

Koett had vowed he would return to his home and find some way to deal with the poltergeist once and for all, but he eventually realized that discretion was the better part of valor. The last we know of him records that he deserted the farm and moved to Arkansas. The Ghost of Barton County had the last laugh.

Ghosts usually do.

Weekend Link Dump

This week, Strange Company's again gone completely to the dogs.

On to the latest link hijinks:

What the hell happened to Mary Boyle?

What the hell goes on in Arkansas?

What the hell is this distant planet?

What the hell happened to the Roanoke colony?

So, where the hell did those bloody paper towels come from?

So, what the hell did Kenneth Arnold see in 1947?

Meet the 30,000 year old Hell Cave.  If you dare.

"Right now, we've basically generated a big question mark."

The time Alva Vanderbilt turned herself into a walking Christmas tree.

Now, this is what I call a half-time show.

The time a statue of a dog caused medical students to riot.  Of course, if Anna Kingsford had still been alive, she could have instantly calmed the rioters by simply vaporizing them.

Hello, Peggy!

A roundup of some Weird Things Entombed in Ice.  If we don't get spring soon around here, I'll be one of them.

W.B Yeats dishes on Madame Blavatsky.

Alexander Graham Bell, you were badly upstaged...1,200 years ago.

Remembering the Outcast Dead of London.

Twitter cryptography?  Or the world's dullest spambot?  You make the call.

Russian Roswell Redux.

Start Worrying!  There probably is an afterlife.

I Have Met the Ultimate Enemy, and Yes Of Course It's Us.

A child's-eye view of medieval Russia.

Another glimpse of Onfim's world.

Everything's relative:  At one point, the earth was holding both mammoths and the Great Pyramid.

Good news:  E.T. has joined the NSA!

It's time for one of Strange Company's favorite holiday traditions:  Dave's Crap Tree!

Aaaaand, I think this deserves the last word:

Good lord... *choke* pic.twitter.com/B4LESZjzOn
— The Anomalist (@anomalistnews) December 10, 2013

Over and out, gang. I'll be back Monday with the tale of a Kansas farm that found itself invaded by a very, very unfriendly ghost.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Here is a 1908 newspaper report about a socialite's death that practically reeks of The Weird:

New York. June 19--The strange death of Miss Miriam Frances Bloomer from cyanide of potassium poisoning on Wednesday evening is a sealed mystery, along with the story of how she was burned with acid a year ago. Her brothers were permitted to start for Cincinnati with the body yesterday.

No further information was given regarding the tragic accident, which occurred in the apartment of J. Ralph Bloomer, a brother, at 40 East Twenty-Sixth street, than the statement issued by Coroner Acritelli that the poison had been left in a glass by Miss Bloomer's maid, who had been cleaning jewelry.

The reticence on the part of the family, the physicians, and the coroner to discuss the case veils the death of Miss Bloomer, who was at one time the fiancee of Congressman Nicholas Longworth, in almost as much mystery as was created just a year ago, when it became known that she had been strangely burned about the face and body by an acid.

J. Ralph Bloomer, who is a prosperous broker, with offices at 20 Broad Street, and Martin B. Bloomer, who is connected with the Link Chain Belt Company of New Jersey, accompanied the body, which will be buried from the Bloomer home at the Hotel Arms, Walnut Hills, Cincinnati.

Yesterday Coroner Acritelli, who issued a permit for the removal of the body on Wednesday night shortly after he was called into the case, gave a slightly different version of the facts from that which was supplied to the newspapers on the night of the tragedy. While discussing the case, the coroner exhibited the glass from which the fatal draught was taken, and which still contains as sediment a quantity of cyanide of potassium sufficient to kill a dozen people.

J. Ralph Bloomer has figured strangely in the life of his sister, who was tall, queenly, always exquisitely gowned and described as being a splendid type of the American beauty. Until he moved into the apartment at 40 East Twenty-Sixth Street, he occupied a part of a house at 35 Madison Square. It was at the latter address that the first accident occurred.

One morning in April 1907, Ralph Bloomer was notified by his sister's maid that Miss Bloomer had been seriously burned with acid during the night. He went to her bedroom, but was unable to get an explanation of the strange state of affairs. Miss Bloomer was in a semi-hypnotic state, but marks on the side of her face, her body, one hand, and a leg, showed that she had in some strange way been the victim of acid.

"The glass did not contain water when Miss Bloomer rushed into the bathroom of her brother's apartment to relieve a choking sensation caused by eating a cracker," the coroner said. "She evidently took no heed of what she was doing as right by the side of the glass which she took was another glass, which either she or the maid, Joanne Pierre, had filled with pure water for the purpose of rinsing a belt buckle which had first been placed in the glass containing the cyanide solution to remove tarnish."

The coroner said there was not enough of the poison in the untouched glass to have seriously harmed the young woman. The statement of Dr. Forbes Hawkes, who lives in the adjoining house and who was summoned immediately after the accident, with the circumstances as related by the maid and J. Ralph Bloomer, convinced the coroner, he said, that he would not be justified in holding a formal inquest.

The doctors who were called in could not rouse the patient, and were unable to make a diagnosis which was even satisfactory to themselves. Finally a clairvoyant, Mrs. Pandora, was taken to the sick room with the hope that the beautiful girl might yield to the influence of mystics, but this, too, failed of satisfactory result.

To the newspapers the family alternately denied and confirmed the story of the burning, but the true circumstances, if known to the immediate relatives, were never revealed to the public. As soon as she was able to be removed, Miss Bloomer appeared at Saranac Lake, where she remained in practical seclusion until September.

Yesterday Ralph Bloomer was almost prostrated by the shock of his sister's death and remained all day in the apartment where the accident occurred, until time to leave on the Pennsylvania Limited, by which the body was conveyed to their former home.

"I can make no explanation," he said through a friend. "It was such a terrible accident that I am not yet over the first shock. My sister was in the happiest frame of mind when I reached home Wednesday evening, and had for a number of days been making arrangements to go with a party of friends for an outing on Lake Erie. Before the close of the summer she intended going abroad with other members of our family."

Mr. Bloomer and his friends declined to discus the mystery of the burning.

Methinks it was a great pity that the coroner failed to hold that inquest.  There was obviously a great deal more to this death than meets the eye, but this polite disinterest ensured that it was uninvestigated and quickly forgotten.

So far as I know, none of the myriad oddities of poor Miss Bloomer's end--including how J. Ralph figured "strangely" in his sister's life--were ever publicly explained.

Nicol Muschet: Murder By Committee

Current location of "Muschet's Cairn," via Wikipedia

I fully agree with Thomas De Quincey’s declaration that “something more goes to the composition of a fine murder than two blockheads to kill and be killed, a knife, a purse, and a dark lane.” Although I confess to a deplorable interest in true crime, I have no desire to read about deviltry notable only for its brutality. (I avoid such horrors as the Moors Murders or Frederick and Rosemary West, for example.) I only like reading about human wrongdoing if it has a strong element of mystery or weirdness to it, preferably both.

This preamble serves as my excuse for today’s topic. Nicol Muschet’s ugly murder of his wife would not normally be a subject I’d care to write about. Muschet was a banal young creep, and his remarkable clumsiness as a murderer ensured that he rapidly got the punishment he so obviously deserved. His guilt has no nagging question marks around it.

The sole interesting factor of this case is that he was one of those rare murderers to work with an advisory committee. With no effort at all on his part, Muschet gathered around him a large group of people eager to offer counsel and practical aid for ridding himself of his spouse. The fact that several of these people were among Edinburgh’s more distinguished citizens just makes things all the quainter. This remarkable example of “team spirit” justifies, I hope, my presenting this curious little peek into the social life of early 18th century Scotland.

Most of what we know about Muschet comes from the pamphlet—an almost mandatory feature for all the more notorious criminals of the era—giving a first person account of his life and crimes. It is most notable for displaying a quite nauseating blend of self-justification and bathetic assumed religiosity.

According to this document, Muschet was born in 1695 to parents “eminent where they lived for Piety.” His father died early in his life, but he retained a mother who raised him “in the true Presbyterian Principles of Religion.”

He attended the Edinburgh Medical College, and in 1716 became a surgeon’s apprentice. Free from his mother’s guidance, he gravitated to bad companions, spending his days in “vitious Practices.” He left his job—we are not told why, but it was certainly a fortunate turn for the medical profession—and returned home. However, the lure of observing a public dissection soon brought him back to town. On his return, he met a young woman named Margaret Hall. According to Muschet, Hall was a girl of highly dubious virtue who immediately launched a shameless pursuit of him, even though he found the company of such a wanton creature repellent. It is curious to read that—three weeks after their first meeting—we find our hero marrying the girl. (In his account, Muschet protests—rather too much—against the contemporary, and likely quite accurate, rumor that the marriage was of the shotgun variety, insisted upon by Hall’s father.)

Considering the circumstances—and the character of the bridegroom—it is no shock that the marriage quickly proved a failure, and Muschet made up his mind to leave his wife and go abroad. There was, however, one complication to this plan. Muschet, on top of all his other lovable qualities, was a selfish skinflint who dreaded the idea of having to pay his wife alimony. It was probably at that time that he began to ponder more drastic plans for ridding himself of his new spouse.

These plans kicked into overdrive when Muschet met James Campbell, whom he described as “the only Viceregent of the Devil.” When Campbell heard of his friend’s marital unhappiness, he soon proved that Muschet’s description of him was not inaccurate. He offered a deal—eventually formalized in a written contract—that in exchange for a fee, he would help Muschet obtain a divorce. Campbell promised to acquire legal affidavits from witnesses testifying to “the whorish practices of Margaret Hall.” His “hellish project,” to use the words of his friend Muschet, was simple: He would bring Hall to the home of one of his obliging friends (a town Magistrate,) drug her with laudanum, and while she was unconscious, bring in another crony—a Professor of Languages, no less—to, as crime historian William Roughead primly put it, “sustain the role of Iachimo.”

The conspiracy was aborted, thanks to their legal advisor, a James Russell (this lawyer was also responsible for the contract between the parties.) Russell informed them that unless they could prove some sort of prior acquaintance between Hall and the estimable Professor, their evidence of her “infidelity” would do them little good.

At this point, a kinsman named James Muschet and his wife Grissel enter the picture. “For a piece of Money” they eagerly entered into the increasingly popular game of ridding Muschet of his wife. However, their schemes to prove Hall was a loose woman were increasingly expensive and utterly ineffective, causing Muschet to finally abandon the notion of ending his marriage by legal means.

His good friend Campbell then made a suggestion that had probably already occurred to the enterprising young surgeon. Why not simply give Hall a dose of poison? James Muschet, in return for yet another “consideration,” cheerfully agreed to take on the job. James gave Hall “a dram” liberally laced with mercury, but although she became dreadfully sick, it failed to produce the desired results. On Campbell’s advice, they gave her several more doses of the poison, but their subject showed a maddening refusal to die.

Campbell—certainly a believer in the “if at first you don’t succeed” motto—proposed that James Muschet take Hall out drinking, and when she was sufficiently unsteady, simply drown her in a pond. (He even helpfully suggested two sites he thought appropriate for the deed.) James, however, refused to agree to the plan. Grissel dreamed up an alternate scheme—her husband would “on a pretense of kindness” take Hall out riding on a pillion behind him, and when they came to a river, hurl her into the water.

Campbell rejected the plan as too difficult and overly dependent on chance. He suggested James should simply knock Hall on the head and throw her “into some Hole without the Town, and immediately thereafter to flee to Paris.” Alas, James again declined to do Muschet’s dirty work for him. Matters were at a stalemate until May of 1720, when our merry band agreed to try Campbell’s latest plan: Grissel would invite Hall to her lodgings and keep her there until a late hour “by affording her Meat and Drink, and entertaining her with flattering Discourse.” When Hall walked home, James, lying in wait in a dark alley, would bludgeon her to death. They wound up trying this scheme several times, but every time James was ready to strike, “some Body going up or down prevented it.”

By this point, Muschet sighed, he was ready to give up on murdering his seemingly invulnerable spouse, but after a scolding from Grissel Muschet (“Is it reasonable, think you, so to do, when my Husband and I have wared so much Time and Pains to accomplish that Design, and in Expectation of our Reward, now to give it over?”) took up the enterprise anew. James Muschet did not have any more luck as an assassin than before. Always, it seems, whenever Hall was within his grasp, passerby prevented him from carrying out the deed. All that this long succession of late nights in cold alleyways accomplished was to give the would-be murderer “a violent Toothache, which occasioned him to keep his Room for two or three days.”

On October 17th, 1720, Muschet borrowed a knife from his landlady. That evening, he invited his wife for a walk. The original plan was that he would make one more attempt to lead her to the ever-lurking James Muschet, but Nicol tells us he realized that it was “but a light thing who was the executioner.” It finally dawned on Nicol Muschet that if you want something done right, you had damn well better do it yourself. He would be rid of these inept and costly middlemen and just do the deed on his own. He led his wife into the dark, quiet grounds of the King’s Park, near the palace of Holyrood. Muschet records that Hall began to weep, “and prayed that God might forgive me if I was taking her to any Mischief.”

Very soon after she said these words, Muschet launched his attack. Stabbing a woman to death was more difficult than Muschet had thought, and the struggle was a long and gruesome one. Finally, however, this ill-fated marriage reached its bloody end. According to a contemporary “Elegy” on her murder, Margaret Hall was only sixteen years old.

Muschet left Hall where she had fallen, and after boasting of his “horrid Wickedness” to his landlady and the Muschets (the latter demanded instant payment for their earlier participation,) he took himself to bed. One hopes he had a bad night.

Hall’s mutilated body was discovered at about ten the next morning, and the corpse was soon identified. Muschet took himself to Leith, but returned to Edinburgh that night, where Grissel gave him the pleasant news that “all Things are very well,” and that he could return to his lodgings. She and her husband, she assured him, would ably perjure themselves in his defense. However, when Muschet heard that his landlady was being questioned by the authorities, he sped back to Leith.

Meanwhile, Grissel Muschet, displaying the usual honor among thieves—or murderers—decided that the best protection for her and her spouse was to grass on their former employer. They told law enforcement everything they knew about the murder, and Grissel even helpfully led the City Guard to Muschet’s current address.

After his arrest, Muschet initially tried denying his guilt, but either, as he said, “Conscience, that great Accuser” got the better of him, or (more likely) he realized the game was up. He threw up his hands and signed a confession. The jury had little difficulty in convicting him, with the hanging set for January 6th, 1721.

In his published confession, Muschet made a grand show of “forgiving” Campbell, the Muschet pair, and his other partners in crime, whom he described as being entirely responsible for his black deeds. He also took the opportunity to castigate those who had spread talk that he had attempted suicide in prison, that he was a chronic inebriate, and that his relations with his landlady went beyond the bounds of propriety. He ended with the probably overoptimistic declaration, “Welcome Heaven and Eternal Enjoyment!”

Of all Muschet’s little helpers, only James Campbell faced any charges. Two months after Muschet was hanged, Campbell was found guilty for being “art and part” in the numerous attempts to murder Margaret Hall (the indefatigable James and Grissel again turned King's Evidence,) and he was sentenced to transportation to the West Indies for life. It seems, however, that he soon returned to Scotland, because he is next heard of as a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle. He is lost to history at that point, but it is assumed he died in captivity.

The killing of Margaret Hall has left memorials other than her husband’s pamphlet. A cairn was erected over the site of her death, although the monument has been relocated over the centuries. “Muschet’s Cairn” gained fame through being featured in Walter Scott’s “The Heart of Midlothian,” thus bestowing upon a nasty little killer a curious form of immortality.

Weekend Link Dump

This week's collection of links has left strange company positively flattened.

The cats say much the same.

On to the latest Pleasure Trip Through the Trippy:

What the hell is the Waffle Rock of West Virginia?

What the hell did Frederick William Birmingham build?

Who the hell murdered Richard Cornish?

What the hell did Captain M'Quhae see in the South Atlantic in 1848?

What the hell did Russell Yokum see in Oregon in 1981?

What the hell did numerous people see in New Hampshire in 1965?

What the hell did numerous people see in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania in 1965?

What the hell is everyone in Connecticut hearing right now?

What the hell is everyone around the new One World Trade Center hearing right now?

What the hell became of Belle Gunness, the world's worst blind date?

What the hell became of Edward II?  A fascinating historical detective work-in-progress.

What the hell have they discovered in Antarctica?

What the hell is happening on pig farms?

What the hell was in that medieval water?

Martha Marek, remarkably busy evildoer.

One can only say that Fate works in very strange ways.

How a life was saved by the love of a good goose.

And human history continues to be pushed back, back, back...

A 19th-century Nessie hunt.

Mark Twain, ghostwriter.

Why psychic research is not for the faint-hearted.

Why we put orange food coloring in cheeses.  As you may guess, it's a pretty stupid reason.

Scary fairies.

Probably the most beautiful human skull you'll ever see.

Out:  The Wheel of Fortune.  In:  The Wheel of Urine!

In a mood to mainline some pure, double-strength paranoia?  Here you go.

Still not paranoid enough for you?  How about contemplating that we're all just one giant 404 page?

Meet the Matron of Morbidity.

Napoleon and the Great Pyramid:  How a myth is born.

The strange portraits of Mrs. Faber.

Mushrooms and do-it-yourself climate change.

Well, there's no way this could possibly have an unfortunate ending, right?

"The Notification Was Posted on the Recipient's Gravestone Because He Is Deceased." Watch out for those Turkish process servers!

Why do witches ride broomsticks?  Well, because they can!

On a different note, here's a reminder that humans aren't the only ones hoping for a Merry Christmas.

And, finally, the photo of the week. Merlina's eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming!

#ravenpictureoftheday This is a stunning photo of Merlina a Raven from the Tower of London by #Molly_Michelin pic.twitter.com/45lQockOfJ
— Ravenmaster (@ravenmaster1) December 4, 2013

Well, that's this week's serving of fresh, hot links.  See you on Monday, when we'll take a look at an 18th-century surgeon who saw wife-murder as a group effort.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

What can I say?  Mystery Blood Stories are just the gift that keeps on bleeding giving.  This latest one is found in the "Decatur Morning Review" for February 7, 1891.  It falls into the same simple-but-insane pattern we've come to know so well:

WASHINGTON CITY, Feb. 7.--Washington has a sensation over the mysteries in the house of Byron Sunderland, the pastor of the Presbyterian church which President and Mrs. Cleveland used to attend. Dr. Sunderland has been one of the characters of the national capitol for a good many years, but his church had no celebrity until it was selected as a place of worship by Mr. Cleveland because of old associations between his father and the pastor. During the period that it had a presidential pew the church was crowded regularly. Since Mr. Cleveland went away it has fallen back into obscurity.

The blood-stains, however, were in Dr. Sunderland's house and not in the church. He heard a loud noise during the night, but did not go down-stairs to investigate. Thursday morning two large pools of blood were found in the dining-room, while stains on the door and wall gave evidence of the conflict. As far as can be learned the house had not been broken into, and nobody had been in the house either. There were blood tracks from the sidewalk of the house to the square below, where they were lost. The police have not succeeded in clearing up the mystery.

The Broughty Ferry Mystery; Or, The Case of the Lethal Lothario

On the surface, Jean Milne was the quintessential genteel spinster—a sort of non-ratiocinative Miss Marple. This resident of Broughty Ferry, Scotland was sixty-five years old in 1912. Her only close relative, a brother, died in 1903, leaving her a tidy fortune. She lived alone, without even a servant, in Elmgrove House, a large home well-shielded from the outside world by trees and shrubs. Despite her wealth, she generally led a quiet, Spartan life, choosing to keep herself somewhat distant from the town society. Milne was not exactly a recluse, but she was hardly sociable, either.

There were, however, hints that this demure Edwardian lady liked the occasional walk on the wild side. She had a passion for wearing colorful, girlish clothes, and three times a year, she would travel to London, where she would put herself up at a lavish hotel, see the sights, and generally kick up her heels for several months at a time.

She even, during what would prove to be the last of her trips to the capital, acquired a boyfriend, a gentleman she had met at her hotel—information she was not at all adverse to sharing with her friends back at Broughty Ferry. “Miss Milne was so kittenish over the matter,” one of these acquaintances recalled. “She giggled, just like a girl.” Milne even suggested the two would soon marry.

The poor woman’s romance soon proved to have the most frightful of consequences. On November 2, 1912, her postman noticed that Milne had not collected her mail for some two weeks, and he informed police of this oddity. The next morning, some officers went to Elmgrove to make sure all was well. After repeated knocking at the front door failed to get a response, they broke in, to be greeted by horror.

Milne was found dead by the foot of the stairs, fully dressed but partially covered by a sheet. Her head was bloody from several wounds, and her ankles tied together with a curtain cord. A blood-stained poker lay near her. The phone wires had been cut. The hallway was in disarray, indicating that she had put up a fierce fight with her attacker. Other than that, however, the house was in its usual order and nothing was missing, including the valuable jewelry the dead woman had been wearing, which ruled out an ordinary burglary. The autopsy indicated she had been dead for about three weeks. She had been beaten all over her body with some heavy object, presumably the poker. The wounds to her head were by themselves fairly slight, but in total they were enough to kill her by means of a cerebral hemorrhage.

The local police had the sense to realize that such a spectacular crime was rather out of their league, so Detective-Lieutenant John Trench of the Glasgow City Police, a man considered to be the best detective in Scotland, was brought in to handle the case.

Milne had last been seen alive on October 15. However, a collector for a local charity stated that he went to Elmgrove on the 21st, and, on approaching the house, saw a woman standing in an upper window who he assumed was Milne. When he knocked, there was no response. He noted that the cover of the front door’s lock was down. He returned later in the day. He saw no sign of anyone, but saw that the cover of the lock was now up, indicating that someone had recently used a key in the door. This testimony is one of the many irreconcilable oddities about the murder.

Trench found a half-smoked cigar in the dining-room fireplace. This, plus the fact that her table had been set for high tea for two, indicated that she had had male company—presumably her mysterious beau. (This was later confirmed when a local liquor dealer recalled that shortly before her death, Milne had ordered wine and whisky, explaining coyly that she expected “a gentleman friend to dinner.”) Trench also discovered something peculiar when he inspected the clothes Milne had worn at the time of her murder. They were full of small holes that he believed had been made by a two-pronged fork which was found near the murder scene. The autopsy report had made no reference to her being stabbed, so Trench urged that the body be exhumed for further examination, but, rather remarkably, this was refused, leaving the perforated garments an unresolved mystery.

It was obvious that Milne knew her murderer, and had, so to speak, let Death enter her house. All the doors and windows in Elmgrove were locked, and there was no indication of forced entry. Trench was of the opinion that Milne’s assailant had not meant to kill her—had, in fact, assumed she would survive. How else to explain the fact that the attacker had troubled to tie her ankles together and cut the phone line so she could not call police? The detective’s theory was that the two had quarreled, and Milne had reached for the poker—a weapon she had used before to scare off trespassing neighbor boys. Her adversary had wrenched it from her, and used it to—so he assumed—merely stun her enough for him to make his getaway. This is all plausible enough, but even Trench seemed to acknowledge that this still didn’t explain the stab marks on her clothing or the sheet covering her body.

And, of course, none of this helped to establish the crucial point: Who was the “gentleman friend” who presumably was responsible for her death? Milne does not seem to have told anyone anything about him, not even his name. One contemporary newspaper story claimed that correspondence found in the house gave some indication of his identity, causing Scotland Yard to be on the trail of a particular “dashing American.” This vital clue—if it actually existed outside of some journalist’s fancy—went nowhere.

A maid who worked in a neighboring house told police that sometime between October 6th and 12th, she had seen a tall, fair-haired, good-looking man in evening dress walking through the gardens of Elmgrove. John Wood, Milne’s gardener, stated that when she returned from her last visit to London, she talked much about a tea-planter she had met, a “German gentleman.” One day not long afterwards, Wood was at Elmgrove when the doorbell rang. He answered the door to find a man who asked if Miss Milne was in. When she heard the visitor, Wood said she eagerly “skipped along the passage,” “just like a lassie” to greet him. She then sent Wood on his way and escorted her guest to the sitting-room. It was the last time Wood saw his employer alive. Two sisters by the name of McIntosh related that on the evening of October 7th, they saw a stranger emerge from the entrance gate of Elmgrove. As the sisters knew Milne rarely had visitors, they were interested enough to observe the man closely. Several other townsfolk also claimed to have seen “the man” in the vicinity. A taxi-driver, Frederick Ewing, said that on October 15th, he picked up a fare at the local train station who demanded to be driven to Broughty Ferry. Unlike Wood’s “German gentleman,” this man spoke with an English accent. When they were near Elmgrove, the passenger stopped the cab, paid his fare, and exited.  A workman claimed that early on the morning of the 16th, he saw a stranger who generally matched the description given by the maid furtively come out of Elmgrove’s main entrance gate. After anxiously looking about to see if he was observed, this unknown man hurriedly walked away.  “Wanted” fliers offering a reward were sent out, giving a description of the suspect.

One of these fliers gained the attention of the prison authorities in Maidstone. As it happened, they had in custody a Canadian named Charles Warner, who had been their guest for the last two weeks as a result of trying to leave a restaurant without paying his bill. His jail-keepers thought he fit the description given of the Broughty Ferry murderer, and immediately decided that the mystery was solved. They took his photograph and sent it on to be examined by the local witnesses. Their reactions were definite enough for five of them to be sent to England to view the presumed fiend in person.

When they arrived, Warner was put in a lineup. All five witnesses instantaneously and unhesitatingly agreed that this was “the man.” Although Warner himself denounced the proceedings as “a farce,” declaring that he had never been in Scotland in his life, a warrant was instantly issued for his arrest on a charge of murder.

“You’ll be sorry for this in a few days,” he said as he was transported to Scotland. “I’m an innocent man.”

No one believed him. After all, just look at all the eyewitness testimony!

In London, there was another eyewitness parade, this time of people who had seen Milne with her beau in various places around the city. This proved to be a great letdown for the police. Not one of these witnesses recognized Warner.

Well, little matter. Off to Broughty Ferry he went, for further interrogation, and, as everyone assumed, a trial, a conviction, and a hanging.

Well, everyone except Lieutenant Trench. He was evidently not only an intelligent, observant, and honest man, but unusually open-minded. He had ample opportunity to observe the prisoner for himself, and the more he studied Warner, the more doubts he had about the man’s guilt. Warner, he learned, had for the last few months had been traveling through Europe. His brother, who had been providing him with a small allowance, had recently died. This left him stranded, and forced to live as a vagrant. He had last been in the Low Countries, after which he traveled to London, where he had remained until November 3rd—the day Milne’s body was discovered.

Trench questioned him about where he had been on October 16, the presumed day of Milne’s death. (It says much about the quality of the investigation into Milne’s death that apparently no one had bothered asking him this rather vital question before.) Warner replied that he had been in Antwerp. He left that city the next day for London. Unfortunately, Warner had been sleeping out of doors, without any friends or private address that could establish proof of his whereabouts.

Finally, Warner recalled one piece of evidence to back up his story: On the very day of Milne’s murder, he had pawned his coat. In what would prove to be the luckiest act of his life, he still had the ticket. Trench got this ticket from him, traveled to Antwerp, found the pawnshop, redeemed the coat, and presented the authorities with as pretty a cast-iron alibi as can be imagined.

The machinery of justice, which was busy laying the groundwork for Warner’s murder trial, suddenly found themselves stopped in their tracks. After a short period of digesting the highly undesirable news that they had been wasting their time on a demonstrably innocent man, they shrugged, sighed, and let Warner go. In January 1913, he boarded a liner headed for Canada, and he no doubt gratefully disappeared from history. He will always be remembered, however, as not just probably the only man in history whose life was saved by a pawn ticket, but as a sterling example of the grave dangers of eyewitness testimony.

By this point in our narrative, you’re undoubtedly asking, “So, if Charles Warner did not kill Jean Milne, who did?”

Well, after the "sure thing" suspect fizzled out so dramatically, everyone seems to have given up on ever being able to answer that question.