Guest Blogger: Cheri Farnsworth

   Murder by Gaslight is pleased to welcome guest blogger Cheri Farnsworth. Cheri has been a longtime friend of Murder by Gaslight; last year we reviewed her book Murder and Mayhem in St. Lawrence County and today she will be sharing a story from her latest book.

Following is a chapter from Cheri Farnsworth’s Murder & Mayhem in Jefferson County (History Press 2011). The book is a compilation of ten of the most sensational, historical murder cases from that Northern New York region. You may purchase the book online at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com or directly from the publisher at www.historypress.net. For more information about Farnsworth’s other titles, like Alphabet Killer, Adirondack Enigma, and The Big Book of New York Ghost Stories (history as you’ve never seen it), visit www.cherifarnsworth.com. 

 The “Watertown Trunk Murder” – Hounsfield, 1908

Jammed within the narrow confines of a trunk, with her head mashed to jelly, one ear gone and her body mutilated until recognition was almost impossible, the body of Mrs. Sarah Brennan, wife of Patrick Brennan, of Brownville, was found Monday afternoon in a back kitchen at the home of Mr. and Mrs. James Farmer of that village. ~ Watertown Re-Union, 29 Apr. 1908

In October of 1907, Mary Farmer hatched an elaborate plan to criminally acquire the property of her neighbors so that her young babe, Peter, would one day have something of value that she believed she and James Farmer could never provide otherwise. (Heaven forbid that they should have to work for their material possessions like the rest of us.) The fact that a cold-blooded murder might become necessary for her to meet her objective was but a trivial detail the soon-to-be murderess would worry about when the time came. That time was the morning of April 23 when Sarah Brennan paid a visit to Mary Farmer. Neighbors heard the women arguing, and it was the last anyone ever heard from, or saw, Mrs. Brennan alive. One can only surmise that the victim had finally learned of the plot to steal her house and home right out from under them. For that, she had to be silenced…now.

Delia's Gone, One More Round

On Christmas Eve 1900, Cooney Houston shot and killed Delia Green. If that isn’t tragic enough, they were both 14 years old. Their sad story would have been long forgotten, even in Yamacraw – the black neighborhood in the western end of Savannah, Georgia, where the killing took place – if it hadn’t been for a song. The ballad of Delia’s murder traveled from Georgia to the Bahamas, then back to the States during the folk boom of the 1950s. Though the facts have been altered along the way, Delia’s story has been sung by generations of folk singers, and has been recorded by musical icons such as Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash.