Thomas Ryan, aged 88, lived in Chester, Illinois, with his widowed daughter, Julia Smith, her 12-year-old daughter Sallie, and 8-year-old son Arthur. On December 7, 1880, their peaceful morning was shattered when an intruder burst into the house. It was a naked man wielding an axe who ordered them all to kneel and pray as they only had a few minutes to live.
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| Myron Buel. “He possesses an expressionless and almost idiotic countenance.” Illustrated Police News. |
Buel continued to
profess innocence while his attorneys appealed the verdict. His motion for a new
trial was denied, and the governor refused to grant a reprieve. Three days
before his execution, Buel confessed. He was in love with Catherine, the 14-year-old
daughter of his employer. Her rejections angered him so much that he lured Catherine
into the barn and then threw a rope around her neck. He beat her to death with
a milking stool, then ravished her.
Myron Buel was hanged on November 14, 1879.
Read the full story here: The Confessions of Myron Buel.
The prime
suspect in Amy Best’s murder quickly became Mrs. Catherine Stull. Though Amy
Best was a 60-year-old widowed grandmother, Mrs. Stull believed she had been
having intimate relations with her husband, John Stull, for the past fifteen
years. Because of her husband’s infidelity, Mrs. Stull “had endured discord at
home and scandal abroad.” She had openly declared that if she ever caught them
together, she would kill them both.
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| Elizabeth Wharton, in custody, en route to trial in Annapolis. |
Charles
had to go to Highgate Centre on June 6, 1876, and he asked Alice to join him.
She declined, saying she felt ill and planned to go to bed. Charles’s father was
away visiting friends that evening, so Tatro said he would stay and take care
of Alice. Charles left home at about 7:00.
He
returned at about 10:00 and put his horse in the barn. As he approached the house,
he was surprised to see no lights. Charles entered the dark kitchen, and as he looked
for a match, he stumbled over something lying on the floor. He was shocked to
see what it was.
“He
lighted the match, and there met his sight the lifeless remains of his lovely
wife in a pool of blood, in the most mutilated condition,” said the St. Albans
Daily Messenger, “her head beaten almost to a pumice, and her brains oozing out
on to the floor.”
Dr. Henry Clark of Boston was summoned to 11 Hamilton Place at around 7:00 the morning of December 30, 1879. A woman had been shot and needed urgent care. When he got there, she was nearly gone, and there was nothing he could do.
A policeman and a medical examiner arrived soon after and determined that the woman, Mrs. Helen J. Ward, had been shot twice in the head. One shot entered her temple and went through her head, the other fractured her skull without entering.
Her 18-year-old daughter, also named Helen, did her best to explain what happened. Mother and daughter shared a bed. They worried about burglars, so they kept a revolver on a chair beside the bed. Miss Ward believed she had been in a somnambulant state and fired at a moving object that she thought was a burglar. Alternatively, she thought the gun may have discharged accidentally. This took place around 4:00 am, raising the question of why she didn’t contact someone sooner. Miss Ward was considered cold and unfeeling because she did not seem overly affected by her mother’s death.
From the confession of Mary Brown to the murder of her husband, John Brown, by her paramour, Joseph Wade:
When I first went to the gate Mr. Brown was lying with his feet about the middle of the gate and his head towards the buggy, close to the hind wheel. The buggy robe was under him and the blanket over him, so that I could not see his head. After I took the child in and returned Brown was still groaning, as he was when I first come to the gate. I said: "My God, Joe, what have you done?" He said: "Darling, this is what love will do," and threw his arms around my shoulders. He said: "I love every hair of your head better than my own life." Mr. Brown was still groaning, and he (Joe) said: "Shall I hit him?" I said: "No." He said: 'I shall have to finish it now." He added: "I will have to hit him or use my knife." I said: "Oh, my God; no; don't touch him. Let me take him in the house." I had not seen his head and didn't know he was so badly hurt. Wade said: "No, this has got to be finished."
"What Lust Will Do," Illustrated Police News, February 28. 1880.
Read the full story here: The Brown Tragedy.
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| W. S. Forest, of counsel for the defense, cross-examining the expert microscopist Tollman. Defendants (far left) 1. Beggs, 2. Coughlin, 3. O'Sullivan, 4. Burke, 5. Kunze. Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin was a prominent Chicago physician,
and a member of Clan-na-Gael an American political organization formed to
promote Irish independence from British rule. After Dr. Cronin uncovered
corruption among the leaders, his naked body was found stuffed in a sewer with
icepick wounds to his head. In the 1889 murder trial of five members of Clan-na-Gael,
the defense tried to paint Dr. Cronin as, alternately, a violent radical and a
British spy. Read the full story here: Clan-na-Gael and the Murder of Dr. Cronin. |
Later that day, Kildorf’s body was discovered, and the
authorities tracked Wilbur to his father’s house. They arrested him and brought
him before Esquire Simpson. Wilbur waived examination and was committed to
jail.
George Wilbur was from a good family and was “respectably connected.”
Michael Kildorf was a stranger in North Plains, living with his aunt, Mrs.
Burke.
The public sentiment in North Plains was overwhelmingly in
Wilbur’s favor. A correspondent who did not share the “maudlin sympathy for
murderers” commented sarcastically:
Now is the time to commence sympathy for poor Wilbur. Oh! he must be in jail! How unpleasant it must be when Kildorf is so comfortable underground, below the frost. Will poor Wilbur have to be tried? He ought not to be, for he must have been insane—poor fellow. Oh, how easy he whipped out that pistol and drove that bullet into the back of Kildorf's bead! He must have been ready at any time—poor fellow. And then if he had missed Kildorf's head how bad he would have felt. I hope he won't have to be tried. Can't we get him out on low bail, and then let him off—it will be so unpleasant for him to stay in jail and then be tried? And then if we had hanging for murder, how bad the poor fellow would feel when they put the rope round his neck. And then if he should be ten or fifteen minutes in dying, when he slipped Kildorf off in about one minute, and so easy. And then to be hung up and not touch the ground! Oh! horrible! Oh, the poor fellow! He will go straight to Heaven, of course.
It does not appear that George Wilbur was ever tried or
sentenced for the murder.
When William W. Place’s first wife died, he married his
housekeeper, Martha Scovoll. It was a whirlwind courtship and William did not
listen to his relatives who thought Martha would bring trouble. Sure enough,
before long, Martha’s true nature came out. She had a quick temper and was
irrationally jealous of William’s relationship with his young daughter Ida.
Martha had violent fits of temper and threatened to kill both William and Ida. On
February 8, 1868, she made good on her threats, strangling Ida to death and
attacking William with an axe. She was convicted of first-degree murder and was
the first woman to be executed in the electric chair.
Read the full story here:
Cobb’s friends and neighbors believed he was murdered, and they had a ready suspect. Wesley W. Bishop was having an affair with Cobb’s wife, Kate, and they were not very discreet. Bishop had purchased arsenic, which he said he had given to Cobb, and Bishop’s wife had died four months earlier under similar circumstances.
In the wee hours of February 8, 1888, burglars broke into the mansion of Amos J. Snell, one of the wealthiest men in Chicago. They went straight to Snell’s office and opened his safe and a strong box but did not find the fortune they expected. The thieves went upstairs and began gathering silver items.
The noise awaked Snell who came down in his nightshirt, armed with an old muzzle-loading pistol. Hearing the thieves in the parlor, he shouted, “Get out! Get out of here!” and fired his pistol through the closed parlor door. The thieves responded by firing back through the door. Snell turned to run outside, and the thieves opened the parlor door and fired two more shots, killing Snell.
The massive manhunt that followed involved the police, the Pinkertons, and many private detectives. The family offered a $50,000 reward for the killer's capture, reported at the time as “the largest amount ever offered for the capture of any human being in the world.” Despite more than 1,000 arrests and several false confessions, the case remained unsolved until 1910, when a professional thief named James Gillan confessed to the murder on his deathbed. The confession was taken as fact, but there was little evidence that Gillan committed the crime.
On April 14, 1885, the manager of the Southern Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri, responded to complaints of a foul odor emanating from room 144. Inside a trunk in that room, the manager found the murdered body of Charles Arthur Preller, one of two Englishmen who had checked in two weeks earlier. The killer left a note implying that the death had been a political assassination, but it was, in fact, the tragic ending of a “peculiar relationship.” The hunt for the killer, Hugh Mottram Brooks, would end 8,000 miles away in New Zealand.
Read the full story here:
On Saturday, January 25, 1879, George Rowell returned home to Montville, Maine, from a trip to Bath, eighteen miles away. He lived in the house owned by John and Salina McFarland, a married couple in their seventies. Rowell, 40, married their son’s widowed wife, Abby, who had a 14-year-daughter, Cora McFarland. She also had an infant son with Rowell. All six lived together in the Montville farmhouse.
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| George W. Rowell. |
“Why, George,” said Abby, “what are you up for?”
“I do not like to sleep alone,” said George, “I want a woman with me.”
He grabbed Cora then and tried to carry the struggling young girl into the bedroom. He told her to be quiet, he wouldn’t hurt her and said their child would be an angel. Rowell carried her into the bedroom, but John McFarland put his foot in the door to prevent it from closing. Rowell dropped Cora, knocked down McFarland, and went for his rifle. Abby and Cora grabbed the baby and ran outside to the house of a neighbor, Alonzo Raynes. John and Salina McFarland followed them.
On May 23, 1875, Thomas W. Piper lured five-year-old Mabel
Young to the belfry of the Warren Avenue Baptist Church on the pretext of
viewing pigeons. There he beat her to death with a cricket bat, then escaped by
leaping from the belfry window.
Read the full story here: The Boston Belfry Tragedy.
Twenty-year-old Mattie was described as beautiful, intelligent and talented. In February 1879, she was engaged to marry John Bast. Some in
Buckner believed Bast was an average young man who would make a good
husband, while others thought he was a ne’er-do-well. Mattie’s family was in
the latter camp and did not approve of the engagement.
On the night of February 8, 1879, Bast came calling and Mattie’s
brother-in-law, Jonathan Dark, met him at the door. He would not let Bast in
the house and told him he must cease his visits. Mattie was livid. She spent
the rest of the night berating Dark, her anger becoming increasingly fierce.
The next morning, she was still angry. She went into a fit
of rage, smashing windows and threatening Dark with an axe. Her mother was alarmed
and sent for Deputy Constable James M. Adams. Mattie left the house for a while.
When she returned, she was still angry but seemed more subdued. Constable Adams
believed the danger was over and left the house.
When Adams was gone, Mattie approached Jonathan Dark.
“I have you now,” she said, drawing a pistol from her pocket. She fired, hitting Dark in the right breast. He fell to the floor.
The second volume of The Bloody Century presents 60 more
true tales of murder. These sensational crimes present a fascinating journey
through enforcement methods and legal procedures in the 19th century. Killers
driven by Jealousy, Revenge, Insanity, and random violence are joined by
remorseless serial killers. Most stories end with justice well served, while
others remain forever unsolved.
Greed, jealousy, revenge, obsession – the motives of America’s gas-lit murders are universal and timeless. Yet their stories are tightly bound to a particular place and time; uniquely American, uniquely 19th Century.
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