Unsolved.

The most fascinating murder cases of the 19^th Century are the ones that remain unsolved. Their stories have inspired writers and criminologists and seem to bring out the amateur sleuth in everyone. Every new theory brings a new round of debate but leads us no closer to resolution. Here are the Murder by Gaslight cases that will remain forever unsolved:

	Mary Rogers The body of New York cigar store clerk, Mary Rogers, was found strangled on the New Jersey shore of the Hudson River. Police were at a loss but the newspapers published several theories, with multiple suspects, none of which proved true. This unsolved murder was the inspiration for  Edgar Allan Poe's classic detective story, "The Mystery of Marie Roget."
	Amasa Sprague When Rhode Island industrialist, Amasa Sprague was found shot and beaten to death on New Year’s day, 1844, police suspected the Gordon brothers, Irish immigrants with a grudge against Sprague, and John Gordon was executed for the crime. It has since been proven that John Gordon was innocent and he was posthumously pardoned in 2011. Who really killed Amasa Sprague remains a mystery.

Professor Strunk.

Prof. Ira G. Strunk

In 1885, Professor Ira G. Strunk was a model citizen of New Albany, Indiana. He was the Principal of the New Albany Business College, a member of the Episcopal Church, and a happily married man with two young daughters. His wife Myra sang in the church choir, under the direction of Strunk’s friend, Charles V. Hoover. But behind Strunk’s back, the relationship of Myra and Charles went far beyond choir practice. Although the affair was common knowledge in New Albany, Ira Strunk was oblivious until he, quite literally, read about it in the newspaper. A small item in the gossip column of the local paper rocked Strunk’s world and set him on a course that could only end in murder.

Fanaticism and Murder.

Little Murders

(From Centinel of Freedom (originally published in The Troy Times), May 10, 1859)

Fanaticism and Murder.

The Quiet Sabbath was broken in upon yesterday by the commission of a horrid murder, in the town of Sandlake, about fourteen miles from Troy, of a daughter by her father and only surviving parent, a man about 60 years of age named John Belding. The scene of the homicide is about four miles East of Sliter’s tavern, and near the steam saw mill on Sandlake road. The parties lived in a little house, in which the father earned a livelihood for himself and daughter by following the trade of a shoemaker. The daughter’s name as Christina. She is about nineteen years of age, and is described by the neighbors as a quiet and well-behaved girl. She had been unwell for some time, and, it is said, had been under the care of a female doctress residing in Berlin, in this county, named Weaver. Her mind, it appears, was somewhat affected, but whether from religious excitement or from some other cause, we are unable to say. She labored under the impression that the devil had possessed her, and used to pray very frequently for deliverance from his grasp. A day or two before he murder, the old man and daughter went over to the house of David Horton who resided opposite the Beldings, when Christina said she had taken medicine of Mrs. Weaver, and it made her feel as if “the devil was in her, and she would scratch him off; but that she had thrown the medicine away, and drove the devil away too.” The old man had not done much work recently, as it affected the  girl’s head, and it is supposed that in consequence of his care of her, want of sleep, &c., his own mind had become temporarily affected, and while under the delusion that “Dena,” as he calls her, was the devil, he killed her.

The account which Belding gives of the affair is, that he saw the devil lying on the bed and he struck it in the face. The girl, it appears, was lying down in the back room. Belding followed her from that room to the front room, in which the murder was committed with a shoemaker’s hammer. Her skull was completely smashed to pieces. Portions of the hair were scattered about the room, and pieces of the skull were lying over the floor. Her face too was considerably bruised and disfigured, but no marks of violence were discovered on the other parts of her body. Belding says he thought she was the devil—that she appeared to him to be four times as large as “Dena”—and from his previous and subsequent conduct there can scarcely be a doubt that the old man imagines he had a fight with the devil, or he he expresses it, with “three devils, and he had all he could do to kill them.” They lived alone in the house.