The Mysteries of Pearl Bryan

Someone with a knowledge of American murder ballads would likely notice a serious omission at Murder by Gaslight—the 1896 murder of Pearl Bryan that inspired three distinct ballads, each with several variations. The reason I haven’t yet posted on the death of Pearl Bryan is that I have written a book on that murder and was hoping to publish the book before the post.  But at the moment, I have no idea when that might happen.

In the meantime, an article I wrote some time ago on the death of Pearl Bryan was recently published by the magazine, Kentucky Explorer, and I have decided to reprint the article here. “Pearl Bryan: Headless Corpse Found on Northern Ky. Farm” –originally titled “The Mysteries of Pearl Bryan”—explores some of the unanswered questions in a case that today is usually presented as open-and-shut. It is longer than the average post, but it is a complicated story and still just the tip of the iceberg.

And here is a version of one of the ballads, “Pearl Bryan,” recorded in 1926 by Burnett & Rutherford:

"Pearl Bryan" - Burnett & Rutherford

 The Mysteries of Pearl Bryan

When the headless corpse of a young pregnant woman was found on John Locke’s farm in the Highlands near Ft. Thomas, on February 1, 1896, the shock was felt far beyond the Ohio Valley.  For the rest of that winter and most of the spring the Ft. Thomas Tragedy unfolded in daily newspapers across America and, for a time, rivaled the murder of Lizzie Borden’s parents, four years earlier, for the dubious distinction of “Crime of the Century.”  The woman was Pearl Bryan, from the little town of Greencastle, Indiana and the mystery of how she had come to Kentucky, and there met such a gruesome fate, seemed as unfathomable as it was incomprehensible.

The Veiled Murderess.

In 1854, a woman calling herself Henrietta Robinson stood trial in Troy, New York, for poisoning a neighbor and his sister-in-law. Despite the judge’s admonitions, she sat through the trial with her face covered by a black veil, hiding her appearance from the throngs of spectators who had come to watch. Everything about the defendant was a mystery—her motive for murder, her behavior before and after the crime, and even her true identity. It was well known that “Henrietta Robinson” was an assumed name, but who she really was has never been determined.

Alfred Taylor

Little Murders:

From Defenders and Offenders:

Alfred Taylor.

In July, 1888, Alfred Taylor of Lapeer, N. Y., killed Melville Frieze of Richford, in same State. Taylor had a wife, while Frieze was a single man. They lived for a while near each other and Taylor became jealous of Frieze’s attention to his wife. Taylor and a companion who had been out hunting and who had a loaded rifle in his hands, were sitting a grocery store at Hartford Mills, when Frieze entered the store. He jumped up and snatching the rifle out of his companion’s hand, fired at Frieze. The bullet struck his victim in the breast, just above the heart, and passed through his body. The wound was mortal, and death followed a few hours later.

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

He Knew Too Much.

Winfield Scott Goss was a chemical experimenter with a well-known fondness for intoxicating spirits. When his workshop, in a cottage outside of Baltimore, exploded in February 1872, no one doubted that the badly charred corpse found inside was his. No one, that is, but the four insurance companies who had sold policies on Goss’s life totaling $25,000. They had many questions, and Goss’s friend and brother-in-law William Udderzook had all the answers. But rather than quelling their doubts, Udderzook’s “plausible stories” only fueled them—he seemed to know too much.

A Bloody Christmas Eve

Little Murders

(From The Galveston Daily News, Galveston Texas, December 26, 1885.)

A BLOODY CHRISTMAS EVE.

SHOCKING BUTCHERIES AT AUSTIN.

Another Chapter of Crime form the State Capital That Makes the Blood Run Cold.

Austin, December 25—Of all the murders that have been committed within the annals of Austin those of last night (Christmas eve) stand out in bold relief. Just one year ago this month the first of the series of murders was committed and since that time the assassins have

STRUCK BLOW AFTER BLOW

Thrown Out the Window.

The body of Mary E. Hill was found lying outside her Philadelphia home, by her maid returning from church the night of November 22, 1868. She had evidently been killed in her dining room by blows to the head with a fireplace poker, she was then dragged into the sitting room, then Mrs. Hill was thrown out the second story window. Though two people were tried for this murder and one was sentenced to be hanged, there would be no execution.

Cherry Scott

Little Murders:

From Defenders and Offenders:

Cherry Scott.

"Cherry Scott is a mulatto woman, who killed her mother, and was brought to Dallas, Texas, from the Indian Territory where the crime was committed. Her mother, herself, a married brother, his wife and two other children all lived together in Fannin County, and were employed in raising a crop. The sister-in-law would not work and this made Cherry Scott angry, and therefore when she was told to do some work she refused, ordering the sister-in-law to do it. A quarrel ensued and the mother sided with the daughter-in-law. This so angered Cherry, the next morning, while the mother lay in bed, Cherry approached her bed with a rifle and shot her dead."

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

The Six Capsules

Helen Potts, a nineteen year old student at Miss Comstock’s School in New York City, decided not to join her roommates when they went to hear a concert. Helen was feeling ill, but she had a remedy prescribed by her boyfriend, a medical student named Carlyle Harris. When the girls returned, Helen told them of the wonderful dreams she had been having about Carlyle. But she also complained of numbness throughout her body; before long she could not move and her breathing was labored. The dreams soon vanished, giving way to nightmare, revealing a world filled with deceit, betrayal and ultimately murder.

A Weschseter Tragedy Revived.

Little Murders

(From The World. New York, New York, November 18, 1885.)

A WESTCHESTER TRAGEDY REVIVED

Sudden Death of a Man Whose Name was
Connected with a Brutal Murder.

When the announcement was made in Kensico, Westchester County, yesterday that Wesley Stillison had been found dead in his bed there were many inquiries as to whether he had committed suicide. His sudden death recalled the particulars of a terrible murder committed in that village three years ago, in which Stillison's name was unpleasantly connected.

Stillison was the stepfather of Mrs. Mary Montfort, whose husband, Albert Montfort, kept a country store in the edge of the village. Montfort had some money, while Stillison was a shiftless fellow. Mrs. Montfort and her husband did not agree. Her brother Charles J. Reynolds, now in Sing Sing Prison, took sides with her against her husband. Affairs were approaching a domestic crisis when, one morning in August, 1882, Montfort was found murdered in his store.

Stillison was the discoverer of this crime. Montfort had been called from his bed, and when he opened the door he was struck in the head with an axe, knocked down and his head was chopped to pieces. Mrs. Montfort had gone away the day before.The store was robbed of about $300, as near as could be estimated.

Coroner Schirmer’s investigation led him to suspect Stillison and Reynolds, his stepson, and he placed Stillison under surveillance and arrested Reynolds. An axe was found in the bushes covered with hair and blood. Reynolds was locked up and the Coroner informed Stillison that he believed he was guilty. Reynolds had been indicted for burglary and pleaded guilty to the surprise of the prosecuting officer, and was sent to Sing Sing for seven years. Stillison then commenced a suit for $2,000 damages against Coroner Schirmer. The trial fully sustained the suspicion expressed by the Coroner, and the ease was thrown out of court. Since that time . Stillison has been moody and restive. The District-Attorney has been weighing the evidence and collecting such as he could with a view to lay the facts before the Grand Jury.

Death has now put an end to further proceedings, but there is a suspicion that Stillison's death was not due to natural causes and Coroner Purdy will hold an Inquest.

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The World. New York, New York, November 18, 1885.

An Unfortunate Organization

Phrenology, the theory that a person’s character is determined by the size and shape of his head, was quite popular in America during the 1850s. A phrenological analysis of Reuben Dunbar in 1851 found him to be excessive in Destructiveness, Combativeness, Aqusitiveness, Secretiveness and Firmness, while being deficient in Self-esteem and Philoprogenitiveness.  He had “an unfortunate organization” in which his moral faculties were not sufficiently large to balance his animal propensities. While the phrenologist professed scientific objectivity in the analysis of Dunbar’s head, she may have been  somewhat influenced the fact that, at the time, Reuben Dunbar was charged with murdering his two young stepbrothers to protect his inheritance.

Murder by Candlelight

Just three years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, the first settlers put down roots in what would later become Essex County, Massachusetts. If the legends are true, that the Plymouth colonists lived in harmony with one another and at peace with the natives, the same cannot be said of Essex. From the earliest days, life in Essex County reads like an adventure book filled with Indian fighters, highwaymen, pirates and witches. My new book, Murder and Mayhem in Essex County, published by The History Press, tells the stories of these nefarious characters and relates the dark side of Massachusetts history, north of Boston.

Like Murder by Gaslight, Murder and Mayhem in Essex County abounds with murderous deeds and bad behavior, but the stories begin about 200 years earlier— murder by candlelight. The book covers the period between the first murder in the Puritan settlements of Essex County, and the first execution of an Essex murderer by electric chair; 1636 – 1900. While founded as a new world of Christian righteousness, and priding itself on civility and the rule of law, Essex County’s history is as bloody and barbaric as that of any part of America.
Here is just a sample of the stories in the book:

• In 1637 William Schooler and John Williams were hanged together for Essex County crimes. Schooler raped and murdered a young woman and Williams broke jail and killed his cellmate.
• In 1691, Elizabeth Emerson murdered her twin bastard infants; six years later her sister, Hannah Emerson Duston escaped Indian captivity by scalping ten of her captors.
• Essex County had a long history of witchcraft that neither began nor ended in Salem.
• The shores of Essex were plagued by piracy, including the terrorism of Rachel Wall, New England’s only female pirate.
• In 1795, Pomp, an African slave, dispatched his cruel master with an axe blow to the head.
• Highwayman Richard Crowninshield was hired to murder Captain Joseph White, by White’s two nephews, in 1830.
• In 1885, a successful inventor shot his business partner in cold blood, then pled insanity.
• An aspiring young singer was murdered by an obsessed ex-lover in 1894.
• In 1900, a dismembered corpse was found, stuffed into three feed bags, floating in a pond.

Essex is one of the oldest counties in America. In the 277 years between the first settlement and the turn of the twentieth century, murder and mayhem were never far from the lives of its citizens. Establishing a new country in a harsh land sometimes calls for harsh measures, but we can take pride in the fact that, more often than not, justice prevailed.

For more information on Murder and Mayhem in Essex County, go to www.Murder-in-Essex.com.

Anyone interested in reviewing the book, please contact info@Murder-in-Essex.com.

Thomas A. Reese.

Little Murders:

From Defenders and Offenders:

Thomas A. Reese.

"In May, 1888, Thomas A. Reese shot and nearly killed his wife in Kokoma, Ind. He also shot and killed a man by the name of Charles Marx. He had only been married three weeks when the tragedy occurred. One afternoon he saw Marx meet his wife on the street, and accompany her to a spot just West of the City, where he had followed them, and unseen, watched, and at length fired upon them. Two shots struck the woman, wounding her, while Marx was killed."

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

Haunting Homicides

The nineteenth century was a golden age of spiritualism, so it’s not surprising that many murder stories from the 1800s have accompanying ghost stories.

In some cases the supernatural was an integral part of the story:

• After her death, the spirit of Zona Heaster Shue appeared to her mother in a series of dreams.  This prompted Mrs. Heaster to request the body be exhumed, revealing that her daughter had been murdered.
• Peter DeGraff was attempting to communicate with the spirit of Ellen Smith at the time of his arrest for her murder.

Other times the ghost appeared very soon after the murder:

• The ghost of Louise Luetgert haunted her husband, Adolph, in prison after he was arrested for killing her and dissolving her corpse in boiling potash. She haunted Adolph until his death, then she haunted his sausage factory.

Some nineteenth century murder sites continue to be haunted by killers and/or victims:

• In the house where Andrew and Abby Borden were murdered—now a Fall River, Massachusetts, bed and breakfast—guests still report strange visions and weird sounds.
• The Sprague Mansion in Cranston, Rhode Island, home of Amasa Sprague who was murdered in 1843, is allegedly haunted. It is uncertain whether the ghost is Amasa Sprague, or John Gordon, the man who was falsly accused of, and executed for, his murder.
• Savin Rock in West Haven, Connecticut is haunted by the ghost of Jennie Cramer whose poisoned body was found there in 1881.
• The body of Guilelma Sands was found in the Manhattan Well on January 2, 1800. Throughout the century people reported eerie sights and sounds coming from the well. Though the well is long gone, at the Manhattan Bistro, 129 Spring St., where the well once stood, Guilelma has been known to throw bottles off the shelf.

Sometimes the ghost stories seem to be anticlimactic addendums to otherwise interesting stories:

• No one seems to care that the ghost of Helen Jewett still walks the streets of Manhattan or that Mary Rogers haunts the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, though both murders are unforgettable.
• Then there is Lavinia Fisher. Since everything else about her legend is false, of course she has a ghost story. She still haunts the old jail in Charleston, South Carolina—her spirit, no doubt, disturbed by all of the false accusations of murder.

There must be dozens of other tales from the spirit world accompanying the homicides at Murder by Gaslight, but I will leave them to someone else. I prefer the world of flesh and blood.

  

A Deed to Make Mankind Shudder.

Little Murders

(From Bangor Daily Whig And Courier, Augusta, Maine, February 28, 1881)

A Deed to Make Mankind Shudder

A Young Man Kills His Mother.
By Striking her on the Head With A Hammer.

He First Freezes the Body,
Then Cuts it Into Pieces.
And Tries to Burn It.

The Unnatural Son is Arrested.

He Confessed All—No Motive Assigned for the Hellish Deed.

Augusta, Me., Feb. 27, One of the most atrocious murders ever recorded in the annals of crime, has occurred near Weeks’ Mills, China, a beautiful little village twelve miles from Augusta. For cold-blooded wickedness and apathetic indifference, the murder will rank alongside any criminal whose foul deeds have made mankind shudder. One week ago Saturday, a young man named Charles Merrill killed his mother in the barn near the house, by striking her on the head with a hammer. He concealed the body in the hay mow until ti wsa frozen and then cut it into pieces. Part of these he burned as well as possible in the stove and fire place, throwing the charred remains into the manure heap.

Guest Blogger: Anthony Vaver of Early American Crime

Murder by Gaslight is pleased to welcome guest blogger Anthony Vaver of Early American Crime, a blog that documents murder, thievery and other criminal behavior in America’s colonial period. Anthony is the author of the new book Bound with an Iron Chain, which tells the fascinating story of America’s forgotten settlers: the fifty thousand convicts transported from England into servitude in the colonies. The book is available at Amazon.

Today, Anthony will be sharing with us the story of Charles O’Donnel, a particularly vile murderer whose narrative bridges the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.




Charles O’Donnel: His Life and Confession

By Anthony Vaver

On the side of a road in the middle of nowhere Mrs. Shokey begged for her life with “many bitter cries and tears,” but Charles O’Donnel remained unmoved. The unexpected meeting of the two neighbors presented O’Donnel with the opportunity to follow through on his previous threat: that he would kill Shokey if his daughter’s illness did not improve.

Barclay Peakes

Little Murders:

From Defenders and Offenders:

Barclay Peakes.

"A young and beautiful girl was shot in the head by an assassin, within a short distance of Mount Holly, N. J., in the spring of 1887. The girl’s name was Mary C. Anderson, who was living with a relative on a farm at Newbold’s Corner. She and Barclay Peakes were very much together, and on the evening of the crime she left her house to meet Peakes. She was afterwards found by the roadside and Peakes’ revolver by her side. Cause, jealousy."

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

Becker Tells All

Little Murders

(from The Renwick Times, Renwick Iowa, March 3, 1899.)

BECKER TELLS ALL.

Kills His Wife with a Hatchet and Burns Her Body.

August A. Becker, the Chicago wife murderer made a second confession to the police Tuesday night. In a detailed statement to Inspector Hant he told of a crime so revolting that for some time even the police officials refused to believe it.

In the presence of Chief of Police Kipley, Inspector Hant, Captain Lavin and Assistant State’s Attorney Pearson the burly sausage maker broke down and said he had killed his wife by striking her on the head with a hatchet in the kitchen of his home. He then cut the body to pieces and boiled it in a large kettle. After watching the disintegration of the remains for several hours, and when nothing remained that resembled a human body, Becker says he took what remained and burned it in a red-hot stove, the fire having been prepared by him. The bones which would not burn, he buried on the prairie near his house.

Becker asserts the crime was not premeditated, but that he quarreled with his wife, and in the heat of passion he struck her on the head with the hatchet. Only one blow was needed to cause the death and after that had been struck the sausage maker says he thought of the way to dispose of the remains of his wife in order to destroy all chance of detection.

August A. Becker killed his wife Jan. 27, but was not arrested for the murder until after he had married a 17-year-old girl named Ida Sutterlin. When Becker brought his wife home it caused gossip which reached the ears of the police, and finally led to Becker’s arrest. At first Becker denied having killed his wife, stating that she had left him and gone to Milwaukee. Under pressure he finally made a false confession in which he said that he had pushed his wife into the lake at the foot of the Randolph Street pier. This was not believed, and until Tuesday night the true story of how Becker killed his wife was not known.

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The Renwick Times, Renwick Iowa, March 3, 1899.

The Indiana Hero

In 1819, when the State of Indiana was still frontier country, Amasa Fuller, a prominent and popular citizen of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, was courting a young lady of that town. While Fuller was away on business, the young lady’s heart was stolen by a younger man, named Palmer Warren.  When Fuller returned to find that his true love had agreed to marry her new suitor, he challenged Palmer Warrant to a duel. Warren refused to fight so Fuller shot him in cold blood. Though guilty of murder, Amasa Fuller was so popular in Lawrenceburg that, when a ballad was written about the murder, the young lady was cast as the villain, and Fuller was “The Indiana Hero.”

Guest Blogger: ExecutedToday

I always like to start the morning with a visit to ExecutedToday.com  to see who was launched into eternity on this day in history. Then, no matter how bad the day gets, I can take comfort in knowing that at least I’m not that guy.

Murder by Gaslight is pleased to welcome as guest blogger, the Headsman of ExecutedToday. He will be sharing the story behind the 1858 execution of Marion Ira Stout, a particularly inept and unlucky murderer from Rochester, New York:

1858: Marion Ira Stout, for loving his sister

Originally posted October 22nd, 2008  by Headsman

It’s the sesquicentennial of a then-sensational, now-forgotten hanging in Rochester, N.Y.

At dawn on December 20, 1857, the city had awoken to the discovery of a mangled corpse by the Genesee River’s High Falls … and more than enough evidence to have the corpse’s killers in hand by tea time.

The Boston Barrel Tragedy

1872 was an eventful year for Boston, Massachusetts. That year the city hosted the World’s Peace Jubilee and International Musical Festival, lasting 18 days and drawing thousands of visitors. The Boston Red Stockings won the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players Championship. The Great Boston Fire devastated 65 acres of downtown real estate. And the dismembered body of Abijah Ellis was found stuffed inside two barrels, floating in the Charles River.