"Give Me Back My Children."

Margaret Howard learned too late that the man she married was a violent, two-timing gambler. After they separated, he kidnapped their children to be raised by another woman posing as his wife. Margaret snapped and took her revenge on the false Mrs. Howard.  

Read the full story here: Margaret Howard.

Most Atrocious Murder.

On February 2, 1846, Francis Adolphus Muir went to the home of his friend Captain William Dandridge Epes. Muir and Epes were two of Dinwiddie County, Virginia's most prominent and respected men.  They had business to discuss; Muir held bonds amounting to $3,200 against Epes, the balance owed by Epes for a tract of land he bought from Muir. Muir was invited to stay for dinner when their business was concluded.

According to Mrs. Epes, her husband told Muir about a deer he had seen in the woods and asked Muir to accompany him when he went to kill it. Muir agreed, and the two men left together on horseback. Epes returned alone and told his wife that Muir had found it necessary to go to Brunswick and would not be staying for dinner. Muir was not seen again in life.

The Colt-Adams Murder.

The Murder of Samuel Adams by John C. Colt.

An argument over money between bookkeeper John C. Colt and printer Samuel Adams, on September 17, 1841, ended in the murder of Adams in Colt’s Manhattan office. Colt tried to dispose of the body by crating it up and shipping it to New Orleans.

Read the full story here: The Corpse in the Shipping Crate.

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Illustrations from "Trial of John C. Colt", New York Sun, January 31,1842.

Maria Bickford.

Maria Bickford, a beautiful young prostitute, was found murdered in her room in Boston’s Beacon Hill. Her throat was slashed from ear to ear and her bed had been set on fire. 

Read the full story here: The Sleepwalking Defense.

Henry G. Green.

Henry G. Green was infatuated with Mary Ann Wyatt, leading lady of a troupe of temperance players who performed in Berlin, New York in 1844. When the troupe left Berlin, Henry followed and was soon courting Mary Ann. On February 10, 1845, they were married. Eight days after that Mary Ann Wyatt Green was dead from arsenic poisoning.  

There is little doubt Henry Green murdered his wife but his motive in doing so is an enduring mystery.

Read the full story: The Murdered Wife.

Inhumanly Murdered.

 

The morning of October 27, 1845, the body of Maria Bickford, a beautiful young prostitute, was found murdered in her room in Boston’s Beacon Hill. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear and her bed had been set on fire. The prime suspect was Albert Tirrell who had been keeping Maria and who was seen arguing with her the day before. 

Tirrell was represented in court by prominent attorney and former US Senator, Rufus Choate, who won an acquittal with the first successful use of the sleepwalking defense.

Read the full story here:

The Sleepwalking Defense.

Good News! Three Cheers!

 

The Hangman, a newspaper dedicated to the abolition of capital punishment, celebrated the commutation of Orrin DeWolf’s death sentence on September 9, 1845.

Did this young, drunken, diseased, conniving, duplicitous, murderous, libertine deserve mercy? You decide: Orrin DeWolf. 

The Bitter Fruit of a Jest.

Elvira Houghton, a dressmaker in Southbridge, Massachusetts, hired a carriage and driver to take her to her mother’s funeral in the summer of 1847. The driver, 27-year-old Milton Streeter, was instantly infatuated with Elvira. They had a pleasant conversation and when they returned to Southbridge Milton asked if he could see her again and Elvira said yes.

Also 27-years-old, Elvira feared she was approaching “that delicate and dreaded period, when, having out-maidened all her early associates, she would remain alone a withered remnant of the past.” Her fear may have clouded her judgment; After a whirlwind courtship of one month, she and Milton Streeter were married.

The Assassination of Corlis.

Charles G. Corlis kept a bowling saloon on Broadway between Leonard and Franklin Streets in New York City. On the evening of March 20, 1843, several bowlers saw a woman wearing a veil and a straw hat, enter the saloon. They saw her leave the place with Henry Colton, owner of the Colton House hotel, a few doors away on Leonard Street. Sometime later, witnesses saw Charles Corlis talking with the unidentified woman in the doorway of the Colton House.

Around 7:00 a pistol shot rang out on Leonard Street. Witnesses saw someone running from the scene—maybe a man, maybe a woman, maybe a man dressed as a woman. Lying on the ground in front of the Colton House was Charles Corlis, with a bullet wound in the back of his head. Next to him lay a five-barrel pistol with one shot fired. Corlis was carried into the hotel where he died about three hours later.

Andrew Hellman, alias Adam Horn.

Andrew Hellman Murdering his Wife.

(Serious Almanac, 1845-1846.)

Andrew Hellman was 25-years-old when he traveled from Germany to Baltimore in 1817. He had been apprenticed to a tailor, but when his apprenticeship ended, he decided to see the world, after a few years of wandering around Europe he set sail for America. 

In 1820 he was boarding at the farmhouse of George M. Abel in Loudoun County, Virginia and working on neighboring farms. Hellman professed a strong dislike of women and was quite outspoken in his belief that their only role in the world was as servants to men. In spite of this, he engaged the affections of George Abel’s 20-year-old daughter Mary. The Baltimore Sun described her as “a blithe, buxom and lighthearted country girl with rosy cheek and sparkling eye, totally unacquainted with the deceitfulness of the world.” Mary and Andrew were married in December 1821.

Margaret Howard.

Margaret Howard.

Mrs. Lavinia Wolf, who ran a boardinghouse in Cincinnati, was working in the kitchen on the afternoon of February 2, 1849, when Mary Ellen Howard, one of her boarders, rushed in from the hall, gasping for breath. Her hands were on her throat as blood gushed over them.

“Mrs. Wolf,” she said weakly, then fell to the floor and said nothing else.

Mrs. Wolf called for Captain John Howard, who she believed to be the woman’s husband. Howard ran downstairs and knelt over the dying woman.

“Mary, Mary, who did it? Tell me quick," he said, I’m a ruined man.” 

When he realized that she would not recover, ran upstairs to get his knife, saying, “I know the murderer.”  

Charley Cook.

Charles Cook.

The afternoon of September 22, 1840, Polly Cornell was surprised to see her niece and nephew running toward her house crying. The girl, about six years old, and the boy about four were the children of her sister Catherine who lived with her husband Eli Merry, on a farm in Glenville, New York, not far from her own. They told their aunt that Charley Cook, a laborer at the farm, had killed their mother. She took the children and hurried to the house of another relative, Peleg Cornell who sent his son for more help.

They all met at the Merrys’ house, and when no one answered their knock on the kitchen door, they went inside. They found Catherine Merry in the cellar, lying on the floor with her throat cut. She had been beaten as well, and her clothes were in disarray. By now several other people had arrived at the house, and they carried the body upstairs to the kitchen. On the kitchen table, they a found shoemaker’s knife with a four-inch blade; on it were blood and hairs.

Murders, Murder Trials, Confessions of Murder, Discoveries of Murder, &c., &c.

Little Murders

(From Richmond Enquirer November 6, 1845)

The last Chicago Democrat 22d ult., is little better than a continued chronicle of horribles. First comes a confession said to have been made by Birch, one of the murderers of Col. Davenport, in which he discloses all the particulars of that horrible transaction.

“The Redmans, (or Redings,) kept a house which was used as a general rendezvous for the fraternity of rascals in their visits to that part of the country. It was at the house, (on Devil Creek, Lee county, Iowa,) that the plan was devised and conceived of murdering Col. D., and the father of the family, (there are three of them—the father and two sons) was present and assisted in the arrangement for the bloody deed. He has been indicted by the Grand Jury of Rock Island, as an accessory before the fact. A son of this old man (William) assisted at the robbery of Knox and Drury’s office, in Rock Island, about the time of Davenport’s murder, for which an indictment was also found against him.”

The trial of Birch, and two of his accomplices in the murder, was to have commenced last Monday:

“Fox of Indiana, alias Sutton of Illinois, alias Johnson of Iowa, is still at large In the violent indignation of the people against him, woe to the man or woman who secrets him. We fear that any discovery of the kind would lead to Lynch law; and unless he is found soon, some persons who have heretofore secreted him had better leave the State until the excitement is past. There is a point beyond which such knaves as Fox, Big Davis, Favor, Baker , Aiken, Land, Dean, Driskell, Button, &c., &c., cannot go in Illinois.”

Next comes the solution of a mysterious murder, committed some months since:

“It will be remembered that, soon after the two Hodges were hung, one of the brothers of the Hodges was killed in Nauvoo. Among other developments at Rock Island, it has come out that, out of fear of his confessing, he was shot by Jack Reding, or Redman, whose father and brother are now confined at Rock Island. Jack is still at large.”

Orrin De Wolf.

Orrin De Wolf

Orrin De Wolf was a humble hostler in Worcester, Massachusetts in January 1845, but he had prospects for a brighter future. He had a deal with Eliza Ann Stiles—on the death of her husband William they would share his estate. William was a deformed, alcoholic in poor health and not likely to live another year. But Orin did not want to wait and his impatience would be his downfall.

Cup of Affliction.

If Mary Runkle was to be believed, she lived a life of sorrow, made all the worse by false accusations. Her “cup of affliction,” was filled with tragic deaths of three of her children and the suspicion that she was responsible. When her husband John died as well, under questionable circumstances, she lost the benefit of doubt and was forced to pay the price.

A New Year's Murder.

RHODE ISLAND INEQUITY

Amasa Sprague

The body of Amasa Sprague was found shot and beaten on the road between his factory and his mansion on New Year’s Day, 1844, and suspicion immediately fell on three members of Sragueville’s Irish community. Nicholas Gordon was known to hold a grudge against Amasa Sprague; John and William Gordon would do whatever their older brother asked, but it was a conspiracy theory based more on bigotry and class warfare than hard evidence. The arrest of three immigrants would strain the already tense relations between Rhode Island’s English and Irish communities and begin an official injustice that was not rectified until 2011.

Date:	December 31, 1843
Location:	Spragueville, Rhode Island
Victim:	Amasa Sprague
Cause of Death:	Beating, Gunshot
Accused:	John,William, and Nicholas Gordon

Read the complete story, "Rhode Island Inequity,"  in the new book The Bloody Century

Guest Blogger: ExecutedToday

It is always a pleasure to present a guest post from our friends at  ExecutedToday.com who have just competed their seventh year of daily execution reports.   Here is the story of Elizabeth Van Valkenburgh who killed at least one husband and was hanged while sitting in her rocking chair, originally posted on ExecutedToday.com.

1846: Elizabeth Van Valkenburgh, in her rocking chair

Originally posted January 24th, 2013  by Headsman

On this date in 1846, a 46-year-old woman lamed from a fall got noosed in her rocking chair in Fulton, N.Y.

Elizabeth Van Valkenburgh had been widowed at 34 with four children, when her first husband died of dyspepsia and exposure. “There is no foundation,” the prisoner explained, “for the report that I had in any way hastened his death, nor did such a thing ever enter my mind.”

She remarried shortly thereafter to John Van Valkenburgh, apparently a violent drunk, whose depredations eventually led Elizabeth to get rid of him by spiking his tea with arsenic. “To this act I was prompted by no living soul,” she said in her confession. “I consulted with no one on the subject, nor was any individual privy to it.” She may have been keen to clear any public suspicion from her oldest children — they were old enough to try to get mom to move out of the house with them and offer to help take care of the younger kids. She suffered a fall from a barn’s hayloft as she was hiding out, which crippled her leg.

The key original documents from her trial, including the death sentence and the rejection of clemency (a petition to which 10 of Valkenburgh’s 12 jurors subscribed) are preserved here.

Oh, and one other thing. On the eve of her hanging, the condemned murderess produced a germane revision to her aforementioned confession, recalling that there may actually have been some foundation for the report that she also hastened her first husband’s death.

With respect to my first husband I should have stated that about a year before his death I mixed arsenic, which I purchased several months previously at Mr. Saddler’s in Johnstown, with some rum which he had in a jug, of which he drunk once, and by which he was made very sick and vomited, but it did not prevent his going to work the next day and continuing to work afterwards, until the next June. His feet and the lower part of his legs became numb after drinking this, which continued until his death, and his digestion was also impaired.

I always had a very ungovernable temper, and was so provoked by his going to Mr. Terrill’s bar where he had determined to go and I had threatened that if he did go he should never go to another bar, and as he did go nothwithstanding this, I put in the arsenic as I have said.

Right.

Because of the her impaired mobility, the condemned poisoner was carried in her rocking chair to the gallows, and stayed right in it for the whole procedure. They noosed her up sitting in the rocker, and dropped the platform to hang her as she rocked away in it.

Brutal Murder in Middletown.

On September 24, 1843, Lucien Hall murdered Mrs. Lavinia Bacon in Middletown, Connecticut.  I am planning a more detailed post on this murder, but for now, here is a great picture and summary reprinted from the 1844 edition of Confessions, Trials, and Biographical Sketches of the Most Cold Blooded Murderers by George N. Thomson:

Brutal Murder in Middletown.

A brutal murder was committed at Middletown on the person of Mrs. Bacon, by a man named Hall who was one of three taken up on suspicion. Hall confessed himself to be the murderer at the trial, and said he could not let the innocent suffer. He says he entered the house and took some money from a desk, before Mrs. Bacon discovered him. She entered the room where he was, he knocked her down with a chair, and beat her to death. He stabbed her with a large butcher knife several times while she was struggling to save her life. The murder was committed about 11 o’clock, A. M. The jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to be hung on the 20th of June 1844.

Source:

Thomson, George N, Confessions, trials, and biographical sketches of the most cold blooded murderers, who have been executed in this country from its first settlement down to the present time ... Hartford: S. Andrus and Son, 1844.

Poisoners.

Poisoners are the most dispassionate of murderers, killing their victims at a distance, sometimes over long periods of time. In the days when the deadliest of poisons were readily available and difficult to detect, they were used to eliminate unwanted spouses and paramours, and to hide indiscretions. Poison was the preferred tool of a particular type of serial killer. And a poisoner had a better than even chance of getting away with it.

Here, in chronological order, is the Murder by Gaslight poisoners hall of fame:

Lucretia Chapman and Carolino Amalia Espos y Mina - 1831

Lucretia and her Cuban lover were accused of putting arsenic in her husband’s chicken soup.

Robert Mathews (The Prophet Mathias) - 1834

Cult leader Mathias was accused of killing his most ardent follower with poisoned blackberries.

Henry G. Green - 1845
Eight days after their wedding, Henry poisoned his wife Mary. His mother did not approve of the bride.

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.