A Balance of Probabilities.

The morning of December 11, 1859, eleven-year-old Priscilla Budge carried a cup of tea to her mother’s bedroom, where she found her mother, lying on the bed with her throat cut. Mrs. Budge was known to be mentally unstable and her husband, the Reverend Henry Budge, immediately declared that his wife’s death must have been suicide. The coroner’s jury agreed and Mrs. Budge was soon buried—a quick conclusion to an unpleasant event. But as it turned out, it was not the conclusion, just the opening argument of a debate that would go on for years.

A Bender Family Album.

The Benders were a family of serial killers living in Kansas in the 1870s where they ran a general store and restaurant out of their home. While travelers were eating their meals, the Bender men would hit them from behind with sledgehammers. The bodies were stripped of all valuables then shoved down a trapdoor into the basement for later burial in the yard. They abandoned the house before their acts were discovered, leaving behind the bodies of ten victims.

The story of the Bloody Benders was originally posted on Murder by Gaslight on November 6, 2010. I recently came across a book entitled History, Romance and Philosophy of Great American Crimes and Criminals with some fascinating depictions of the Bender family, along with a floor plan of their house and an illustration of how the murders were done.  So as an addendum to the original post, here is the Bender Family Album:

The elders of the Bender family. Old John was also known as William Bender, his wife was better known as “Ma” Bender. Thomas and Katie were the other members of the family, but it is unclear exactly how the four were related. Most accounts say that Katie and Thomas were son and daughter of Old John and his wife. Others say Katie was Ma’s daughter and  Katie and Thomas, aka John Gebhardt, were husband and wife.

The Borden Murders, 120 Years Unsolved.

120 years ago today, August, 4, 1892, the bodies of Andrew Jackson Borden and Abby Durfee Borden were found brutally hacked to death in their Fall River, Massachusetts home. The prime suspect of this brazen, daylight axe murder was Andrew’s daughter and Abby’s stepdaughter, Lizzie Borden. When a jury found Lizzie not guilty the following June, it raised a question that has been hotly debated ever since: did Lizzie Borden get away with murder?

The Borden murder was one of the first posted on Murder by Gaslight, and the question of her guilt has been the  subject, directly or indirectly, of several more:

Fire in the Swamp.

The morning of June 9, 1874, a two-story house burned to the ground in a section of Rutland, Vermont known as the “swamp.”  Amid the rubble was the badly burned but recognizable corpse of Mrs. Ann E. Freese; she had been stabbed in the throat before the fire started. Finding her killer promised to be daunting since Mrs. Freese’s house was a well-known brothel with men coming and going at all hours. But circumstances quickly pointed to John Phair, a local ne’er-do-well whose relationship with Mrs. Freese was closer than that of a paying customer and who had conveniently left town the morning of the fire.

Murder Pamphlets.

Americans have always loved a good murder story. The first book published in Boston, in 1675, was The Wicked Man’s Portion, a sermon about two men who were executed for murdering their master, and for at least the next two and a quarter centuries the public’s desire to read about killing was satisfied by cheap, sensational, paperbound murder pamphlets. The earliest examples, following a tradition that began in England, were one page broadsides sold at the murderer’s hanging, containing sermons relating to the crime or the transcribed confession of the condemned man. They were often decorated with images of coffins or the hanging man, and their sale was justified on the grounds that they served as a warning against living an immoral life.

Three Wounds - The Rest of the Story.

The Boston Daily Globe followed the story in the previous post, “Three Wounds” for two more days.  It turns out the Willard Nesbit was, in fact, the missing Dedham bridegroom, and on August 13, 1892, the Globe printed a picture of Nesbit’s disappointed bride-to-be, Miss Bridget Hanlon. Nesbit did recover from his wounds, but it was not a case of assault or attempted murder; for whatever reason, Nesbit’s wounds were self-inflicted.

Three Wounds.

Little Murders

(Two possibly related stories from The Boston Daily Globe, Boston, Massachusetts, August  12, 1892.)

Three Wounds.

Willard Nesbitt Was Cut in the Breast.

He Was Found in Medford in an Unconscious State.

He Remembers Nothing of the Occurrence.

Doctors Fear that he Will Not Recover.

Is He the Man Who Disappeared from Dedham?

Medford, Mass., Aug. 11. – Willard Nesbitt of Dedham was found in the yard of the Medford House here this evening with three stiletto wounds in his breast, from which his death may result.

The manner in which he received his wounds is a profound mystery, as the man himself either cannot or will not account for them.

The 50 Best American History Blogs

Murder by Gaslight is proud to be included in Online Colleges' list of 50 Best American History Blogs:

The 50 Best American History Blogs

More Murders in Maine.

Here are the murders that were left out of the post “Murders in Maine” on 6/2/2012. Insert the text of this post between paragraphs two and three of the previous post to get the entire article published in the Boston Daily Globe on July 9, 1888.

Little Murders

(From The Boston Daily Globe, Boston, Massachusetts, July 9, 1888.)

Murders in Maine.

...
At the State prison at Thomaston more than 30 Maine murderers are imprisoned, nearly all for life. Here are Mrs. Mary Barrows and Oscar Blaney, her son-in-law, the woman who plotted her husband’s death and the boy who was her tool. Here is Thomas J. Libby, the Scarboro man who killed his mistress in bed at a Portland hotel. Here is old Joe Preble, the Androscoggin county wife murderer, who had been behind Thomaston’s walls since 1861. Charles E. Prescott, who hauled his victim’s body up and down the streets of Portland in a cart, is now in the last stages of consumption, and strenuous efforts are being made for his pardon.

On the scaffold in this old stone building Wagner, the Isle of Sholes murderer, Clifton Harris, who killed the two old women in Auburn, and Gordon, the Thorndike murder, expiated their crimes with their lives. Of these, the murder for which Clifton Harris was hanged was most awful in its detail. More than 20 years ago two old ladies lived alone in a little house in the outskirts of Auburn. It was a wild and stormy night in the dead of winter when the crime was committed. Late the next day a neighbor, thinking the absence of all signs of life about the little dwelling to be something unusual, entered the house. The sight was most horrible. There in the little bedroom lay the dead bodies of the two old ladies. One of them had been strangled to death and ravished while dying. To say that the community was wild with excitement is nothing. Men, women and children thirsted for the life of the assassin. In less than a week

The Saugerties Bard.

Sketch by Johyn Hughes Kerbert

Before the Civil War, a prolific balladeer named Henry S. Backus roamed the Catskills in New York State singing original songs about current events. Better known as The Saugerties Bard, he wandered from town to town singing about explosions, fires, prize fights, riots, and of course, murders.

Travelling in a broken-down wagon festooned with American flags and bells, he would enter a town, usually accompanied by a procession of barking dogs, and begin playing popular songs on flute or fiddle to the gathering crowd. He would sing his original songs then sell printed copies for a penny.

Henry Backus had been a school teacher with a wife and five daughters. When his wife died he began drinking heavily and became “rabid” with religion ending up in an insane asylum in Hudson, New York. By 1850 he was back in Saugerties and beginning his career in entertainment. 

In 1941, 87-year-old Johyn Hughes Kerbert, drew a sketch of Backus from memory. He remembered the Saugerties Bard as “rather short, stocky, well built, long grey hair and beard, grey suit, a ‘Grant Hat’ and a wooden leg.”

The Brooklyn Barber.

A farmhand walking through an oat field in Watervliet, New York on August 7, 1873, came across the corpse of a one-armed man at the top of a ravine. Decomposition had set in and the man’s facial features were all but obliterated by the sun. A razor found on the ground near the body inclined the coroner to think the death was a suicide, but a closer examination revealed that, in addition to having his throat cut, the man had been shot nine times in the head and chest. There was nothing on the body to indicate the identity of the man except for a business card from a barbershop in Brooklyn, 150 miles south of Watervliet.

Joseph Sherer.

Little Murders:

From Defenders and Offenders:

Joseph Sherer.

"Two human forms, one that of a young man, the other that of a girl, the latter cold in death, the former in death’s agonies, each weltering in blood, that had streamed from deadly wounds; a revolver empty and harmless, now that its fatal work was done. This was the ghastly sight that met Police Captain Davidson of Albany, N. Y., on the night of June 16, 1888, when one of the doors leading into a bedroom on the second floor of an eating house on William Street, had been broken open. The man’s name was Joseph Sherer, and the woman’s Lizzie McCarthy. Investigation revealed the fact that Sherer shot Lizzie, who was his sweetheart, because she refused to marry him, and then shot himself."

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Defenders and offenders. New York: D. Buchner & Co., 1888.

Murders in Maine.

This article on murders in the State of Maine appeared in The Boston Daily Globe on July 9, 1888. It was quite long, so I edited out six or seven gruesome Maine murders, leaving only the two stories that the author compares to those of Poe and De Quincey.  I may post the rest at a later date.

Little Murders

(From The Boston Daily Globe, Boston, Massachusetts, July 9, 1888.)

Murders in Maine.

A State of Very Many Awful Crimes.

Tragedies That Rival in Horror the Tales of Edgar Allen Poe.

More than Thirty Murderers Now Behind the Bars of Thomaston.

Lewiston, Me., July 8.—It certainly seems as if there were more murders committed in Maine than in any other State in the Union. Every few weeks the papers are called on to describe one. It was but three months or so ago that Chase shot Mrs. Stevens in the streets of Portland  and then tried to kill himself. Then came the killing of old Mrs. Gould at Saccarappa, and then the butchery of the old farmer at Wiscasset by the boy. And now the postal-car murder at Bangor is followed by the tragedy at Monson.

The story of the many murders in Maine in the past 20 years is a most peculiar one. It is especially peculiar in this respect—that out of the scores of tragedies hardly one has been the result of drink. In some few instances the murderers have been drinking men, but they were sober when the crime was committed. Another peculiar feature of the story of capital crime in Maine is that almost every murder is marked by some striking and novel feature, something unusual in the motive or in the manner of the crime. Edgar Allan Poe could not have told a more gruesome story than that of the Watson murder in the town of Parkman, and De Quincey, before writing his famous essay on “Murder as a Fine Art,” might have talked with profit to the never-to-be-detected assassin of Tax Collector Elliot of Glenburn.

Love and Law.

The tragic love affair between Charles Kring and Dora Broemser ended in one maddened instant—he asked her to leave her husband, she refused, he shot her dead. The prosecution of Charles Kring for the crime of murder lasted eight years, included six trials and required a ruling by the United States Supreme Court.

Dan Driscoll.

Little Murders:

From Defenders and Offenders:

Dan Driscoll.

Dan Driscoll was without doubt one of the most notorious criminals of his day. He was the recognized leader of the notorious Whyo Gang of the 6th Ward of New York, and he has probably figured in more shooting scrapes and brawls than any ruffian of his age. He was born in the 6th Ward and was never out of it unless in prison. His aptitude for crime became evident at an early age and as he grew older he became more hardened. He always carried a pistol, which he at last used with fatal result, having killed a woman named Breezy Garrity, although it was his intention to kill a pal by the name of McCarty. For this he was hung in the Tombs in February 1888.

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Defenders and offenders. New York: D. Buchner & Co., 1888.

The Car-Hook Tragedy

The night of April 26, 1871, while stepping off a Manhattan horse-car, Avery Putnam was struck from behind and killed by William Foster wielding an iron car-hook. This cowardly and unprovoked attack outraged the people of New York but before its ultimate resolution, outrage over “The Car-Hook Tragedy” would be overshadowed by a bitter public debate on the morality of the death penalty, and allegations of threat and bribery to prevent Foster’s execution.

Forty Years Suspected of Murder.

Little Murders

(From Fitchburg Daily Sentinel, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, November 9, 1885.)

Forty Years Suspected of Murder.

Jonas L. Parker, a resident and tax-collector of Manchester, N. H., was enticed from his home one dark night in March, 1845, and murdered. His body was found the next day near some woods on the outskirts of town, the throat cut and a deep gash in the hip. A shoe knife and razor lay by his side, left by the murderer, who hoped to leave the impression of suicide. A watch and about $2000 were found in the victim’s pockets. The case attracted wide attention and for four years no evidence was found to implicate anybody. Finally in 1849 it leaked out that Parker had visited Saco, Me., a few days before his murder with the object of buying a hotel. There he met Henry T. Wentworth, to whom he explained his visit and showed a large sum of money he had about him. So Henry T. Wentworth, his brother Asa and his wife were arrested on suspicion and tried at Saco in February 1849. For lack of evidence the judge dismissed the case. Suspicious and slight circumstantial evidence, however continued to accumulate, and in May, 1850, the Wentworths were again arrested and taken to Manchester for trial. Gen. Butler and Franklin Pierce, afterwards president of the United States, appeared for the defendants. The trial lasted 12 days. The accused were again acquitted and since then the matter has rested, the Wentworth family being suspected all the same of having done the deed.

Horror!

For several days there had been no activity on the Deering farm, just south of the city of Philadelphia, so on April 11, 1866, their neighbor, Mr. Ware, went over to see what was wrong. He found the house empty, but in the barn, he saw a human foot protruding from the hay. Ware ran for help, and together they uncovered the brutally mutilated bodies of Christopher Deering, his wife Julia, four of their children—ranging in age from eight years to fourteen months—and Elizabeth Dolan, a visiting cousin. Outside the barn they found the body of Cornelius Cary, seventeen-year-old hired hand, similarly mutilated.

The following day, the headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer bore the single word: “Horror!”.

Joseph Crawford.

Little Murders:

From Defenders and Offenders:

Joseph Crawford.

Joseph Crawford is serving a term of seventeen years in Joliet State Prison, for a most cold blooded murder. He was a typical Chicago hoodlum, ready for any deviltry or crime. He, with two other companions were carousing in the streets, making night hideous with their ruffianly revelry, noticed a poor laboring man approaching, when they proceeded to hold him up. The poor man showed he did not have a cent, when the ruffian Crawford out of spite and disappointment, shot the poor man dead.

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Defenders and offenders. New York: D. Buchner & Co., 1888.

Jack-Pot in Alaska

In an old book, recently, I found a story about a murderous 1897 card game in Alaska which featured the notorious outlaw, Soapy Smith. To get an expert’s opinion, I sent the story to Jeff Smith at Soapy Smith’s Soap Box. It turns out, the story is very likely true.

Here is a link to the story and Jeff’s take on it: A Jack-Pot in Alaska: The story of an unknown gunfight.