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.

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.