The Madison County Murderer.

Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, March 28, 1868.

George Stotler went to Jacob Eisnagle’s house in Anderson, Indiana, on the afternoon of March 7, 1868. He wanted to borrow a horse so he could ride to a Masonic funeral. Eisnagle’s sons, William, age 18, and Issac, 16, told him he couldn’t borrow the horse because they planned to use it that day. This made Stotler angry and, before leaving, swore vengeance against the family.

He returned at around 7:00 that evening, burst into the house, and began verbally abusing the family, especially Eisnagle’s two daughters. William stepped up and confronted Stotler. Their mother held on to Isaac to prevent him from entering the fray. During the scuffle, Stotler drew a pocketknife and stabbed William in the chest four times. The blade penetrated his heart, and he died instantly. Then, pushing Mrs. Eisnagle aside, he grabbed Isaac, threw him on the bed, stabbed and killed him as well. 

Killed With a Cuspidor.

Jerry Shoaff was drinking with a group of young men at Tom Clarke’s saloon in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the night of October 3, 1888. Eight of them decided to go next to Goelecke’s Saloon on East Main Street. Someone proposed that they order drinks there, then leave without paying. They all agreed to the plan.

They stood at the bar and ordered their drinks. As the men finished drinking, they began leaving he saloon. William Goelecke, who was tending the bar, demanded that they pay. Shoaff and his friends, Arthur Hammill and J.W. Hefflinger, stayed at the bar arguing with Goelecke, who was threatening them with a seltzer bottle he was holding by the neck.

William Kanning, one of the entourage, was outside smoking a cigar when he heard a large crash sounding like breaking glass. A moment later, Jerry Shoaff ran out of the bar saying, “Run boys, I have hit him.” They all ran down Main Street and turned down a side street.

During the argument inside the saloon, someone picked up an iron spittoon and hurled it at Goelecke. It hit him on the head and then shattered the bar mirror. Goelecke fell to the ground unconscious. His skull was fractured.

Bloody Butchery.

Robert Kever and William Lowman were walking together on Mississippi Street in Indianapolis around 10:00 the night of January 15, 1880. Without warning, a man jumped from behind a tree and plunged a butcher knife into Kever’s throat. The perpetrator was a butcher named Louis Antenat.

“Aha, God damn you, I’ve got you now!” Shouted Antenat, and with one slash of the knife, he severed Kever’s carotid artery and jugular vein. “He never cut the throat of a hog and drew the dripping knife away more deliberately and with more complacency.” Said the Indiana State Sentinel.

With his dying breath, Kevers said, “I’m gone. Go, Billy, I’m killed.”

Antenat tried to stab Lowman in the chest, but Lowman dodged it and fled down the street. Antenat chased him for half a block, then turned back the other way and went to the home of his employer, Frederick Grafenstein. 

He told Grafenstein what he had done, and Grafenstein advised him to go to the police station and turn himself in. Antenat agreed. On his way downtown, he was overtaken by Police Officer Minor, who escorted him to Central Station.

Lowman told the police that the attack had been unprovoked. He and Kever had stopped into Sprandel’s Saloon to get a beer. They saw the murderer in the saloon but had no difficulty with him. Antenat told a different story. He said the two men had tried to make him pay for their beers, and when he refused, they abused him for being a butcher.

The victim, Robert Kever, was a 23-year-old grocer of German descent. His reputation was generally good, but he was quarrelsome and known to be a bully. “In short,” said the Sentinel, “he was full of expressive bluster and made enemies thereby.” 

40-year-old Louis Antenat was a French immigrant from Alsace-Loraine who had been in the country for seventeen years but had trouble speaking English. He was said to be of a quiet yet sullen disposition. But when excited, his fury knew no bounds. His wife had divorced him for drunkenness and cruel treatment, and he was arrested twice for assault.

He told reporters his version of the story:

I tell you how it was. I left the butcher shop, expecting to get me a bottle of beer, went to the little saloon at the corner of Second and Mississippi Streets and stopped up to the bar and called for me a bottle of beer and "pony whisky." The saloon keeper put it on the counter, when two fellows that I don't know stopped up and said they would take a drink too, and told him (the saloon keeper) that the butcher would pay for it. I said no, and the saloon keeper ( he is a good man) told them I was all right and not to make me no trouble; that I paid for my drinks and go about my business. Then one of them said to me, " You are the butcher what whips five men," and said I was no game and would not fight, and began to punch and kick me around...They kept pushing me around, and I left, and they followed me. When I got down to the corner of First and Mississippi Streets, one of them, I did not know any of the men, jumped on me and choked me, and another hit me on the back of the head. I was so mad I don't know what to do, and if I had two revolvers, I would shoot them both.

Antenat was tried for first-degree murder in March 1880. He was easily convicted and sentenced to life in Indiana State Prison North.

His attorney moved for a new trial on the grounds that one juror was asleep during the defense’s closing argument. The juror, Mr. Wakeland, filed an affidavit saying that he felt drowsy and had closed his eyes during the defense argument, but he was not sleeping. He heard every word of the argument. The judge overruled the motion. Antenat was taken to prison to serve his sentence.

In 1889, Indiana Governor Gray commuted Antenat’s life sentence to sixteen years. His good behavior in prison also reduced his sentence by six years. He was released in October 1890.

---

Sources: 

“Another Murder,” Indianapolis leader., January 17, 1880.
“The Antenat Case,” Indianapolis Daily Sentinel, April 13, 1880.
“The Antenat Homicide,” Indianapolis leader., January 24, 1880.
“Bloody Butchery,” Illustrated Police News, January 31, 1880.
“City News,” Indianapolis leader., March 13, 1880.
“Home Notes,” Indianapolis Daily Sentinel, February 9, 1880.
“Indianapolis,” Cincinnati Daily Star., March 4, 1880.
“Stabbed to Death,” Indiana State Sentinel., January 21, 1880.

What Lust Will Do.

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.

The Willis-Hultz Tragedy.

W. C. Hultz left his law office in Sullivan, Indiana at around 8:30 on the morning of December 24, 1893. He did not notice a tramp, with long hair and whiskers, wearing a long, ragged overcoat, a slouch hat and rubber boots in the doorway across the street.  The tramp walked toward Hultz, and when he was about six feet away, he drew a double-barreled shotgun from his coat and fired a charge of buckshot into Hultz’s back. He ran into a livery stable, and the tramp fired the second barrel into his shoulder. Hultz  staggered and fell onto the floor. Luke Lucas, a stable employee, ran to his aid.

 

The tramp was in disguise. The hair and whiskers were false, but Hultz recognized him right away.

 

 “Luke, Lem Willis has shot me,” said Hultz. “Turn me over on my left side.”

 

Luke turned him as requested. Hultz tried to rise but fell back and died. 

A Fiend and a Shotgun.

On the morning of April 25, 1896, Alfred “Pete” Egbert, of Rockville, Indiana, went suddenly and inexplicably insane. He murdered his neighbor, Mrs. Haske (or Hasche), with an axe, then took a shotgun and killed two of her children as they ate breakfast in their kitchen. Egbert’s shotgun took two more victims before a large, heavily armed posse surrounded him in the fairgrounds outside of town.

Read the full story here: The Rockville Tragedy.

The Moody-Tolliver Feud.

I am pleased to introduce this week’s guest blogger, Bob Moody, author of The Terror of Indiana: Brent Jones & The Moody-Tolliver Feud. Bob is the great-great-grandnephew of Tom Moody, who was murdered during the Moody-Tolliver Feud.  He is a retired radio personality, programmer, and corporate VP.  Bob served on the board of directors of both the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music.  He was inducted into the Country Radio Hall of Fame in 2007.  Bob and his wife, Karen, live in Jeffersontown, Kentucky.

The second edition of The Terror of Indiana: Bent Jones & The Moody-Tolliver Feud is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

For more information: http://www.bobmoody.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bobmoodybook/

 THE MOODY-TOLLIVER FEUD

Date:  March 2, 1875

Location:  Orleans, Indiana

Victim:  Thomas Moody

Cause:  Shotgun blasts with poisoned buckshot

Accused:  Alonzo “Bent” Jones; Lee Jones; Parks Toliver; Tom Toliver; Eli Lowry

In 1868 the Moody and Toliver families owned adjoining farms in Lawrence County, Indiana, just north of the Orange County line.  William Toliver (some family members and most newspapers preferred “Tolliver”) was the father of thirteen children, three of whom were living at home when his wife died that year at the age of 53.  The Moody farmhouse was shared by four elderly bachelor brothers and their 51-year-old never-married sister, Mary Ann, known as “Polly.”  The Toliver family was shocked when William unexpectedly married Polly and put her in charge of his household.  Matters got considerably worse when he was killed in a wagon accident eighteen months later.  William Toliver did not leave a will, meaning that Polly – who quickly moved back in with her brothers to avoid the hostility— was entitled to at least one-third of his property.

At the subsequent estate sale one of the Toliver boys shouted, “The black-hearted sons-of-bitches have stolen more than they ever brought here!”  That resulted in a brawl, with Tom Moody being attacked and seriously injured by four Toliver sons and son-in-law Alonzo “Bent” Jones.  Each of the assailants was at least twenty years younger than their victim.  This led to a series of lawsuits that only increased the anger as the Moodys prevailed in court and annexed sixty acres of the Toliver family farm.

Shortly after midnight on Sunday morning, June 25, 1871, as the family was sleeping, the Moody farmhouse was firebombed with jugs of burning benzine.  A group of unknown assassins surrounded the house and fired at those attempting to escape the flames.  Polly suffered severe burns and a hired man was seriously wounded.  Tom Moody was climbing a fence to run for help when he was hit with a load of buckshot.  The next day’s edition of the New Albany Ledger called it a “Dastardly Attempt to Assassinate a Whole Family.”  The attack generated headlines across the U.S. and Great Britain, including a front-page story in the New York Times.  It was reported that there was “no possible chance” that Tom would survive his gunshot wounds – but he did.

The Moody family hired private detectives to find those guilty of the attempted murders and there were more trials and hearings that served only to build frustration on both sides.  Meanwhile, the Moody brothers and Polly sensibly relocated to a two-story house in nearby Orleans.  It was claimed that they rarely left home after dark and turned their dwelling into a virtual fortress.  After more than three years of threats but no additional violence, Tom Moody decided to participate in a card game at a shop in the Orleans business district on the night of March 2, 1875.  After walking home, he stopped to open the gate and someone hiding behind a hedge across the street shot him in the back with both barrels of a double-barreled shotgun.  After hours of excruciating pain, he died the next morning.

The Moody family offered a $3000 reward, while the Indiana governor and local officials added another $1600, resulting in a bounty amounting to a total of more than $125,000 in 1923 dollars.  That enticed additional self-styled private detectives to arrive in the area.  Local citizens were outraged and there were rumors that they might call upon the euphemistic “Judge Lynch.”    

The following year a grand jury indicted five men for the murder of Thomas Moody.  They were: Toliver son-in-law Bent Jones, his younger brother Lee (also married to a Toliver daughter), a young employee of Bent’s woodworking factory named Eli Lowry, local pharmacist Parks Toliver, and his younger brother, self-described “sporting man” Tom Toliver.  Lowry, the only member of that group not related to the Toliver family by blood or marriage, initially tried to escape but soon realized that he had been selected as the “fall guy” and confessed with the hope of a lighter sentence.  He provided explicit details about the plot, including the allegation that Parks had pre-soaked the buckshot used in the murder weapon in a poisonous solution.  According to Lowry’s testimony, Lee Jones had fired the fatal shots (in the company of Parks Toliver), while he, Bent Jones, and Tom Toliver waited outside of town.  When the two killers returned Bent asked if they were sure Tom Moody had been killed.  Parks replied, “Yes, he hollered willfully.”  Eli also implicated some Toliver family members and friends in the 1871 firebomb attack on the Moody farmhouse.  Lowry was spared the death penalty for his cooperation but was sentenced to life at the Indiana State Prison South in Jeffersonville. 

While the remaining prisoners were confined in a common cell in the Orange County jail in Paoli, an apparent lynch mob held the sheriff at gunpoint at midnight and took control of the jail.  As the mob approached the cell, the prisoners fired out at them from behind bars with a pistol smuggled to them by friends of the well-connected Bent Jones, dispersing the crowd.  That episode resulted in a change of venue to Bloomington, where the murder trials began in 1877.  The press reported that nearly five hundred people had been subpoenaed to testify and rooms were so difficult to find that some potential witnesses were provided free accommodations in the Monroe County jail.  It was an event characterized by elaborate Gilded Age legal orations, with some closing statements reportedly exceeding eight continuous hours.  Daily trial updates appeared in major newspapers across the nation.

Bent Jones and his brother, Lee, were quickly convicted of murder in separate trials and were both sentenced to life terms at the Indiana State Prison South, where Eli Lowry was already an inmate.  Parks and Tom Toliver were tried jointly in Bloomington the following year, but the jury was deadlocked, and the judge declared a mistrial.  Their second trial was held in 1879.  Jury deliberations were underway when Parks Toliver was allowed to return to his wife’s rooming house to change clothes, accompanied by a deputy.  While his beautiful wife and her sister distracted the guard, the defendant walked out the back door, mounted a horse waiting in the alley – and rode off into the sunset.  A posse was quickly summoned to conduct what became a fruitless search.  If Parks had waited for a verdict, he would have learned that this jury, too, had been unable to agree, with seven reportedly in favor of conviction and five voting “not guilty”.  The judge dismissed the jury on the grounds that one of the defendants could not be present for the verdict.  Two years later, amidst complaints about the amount of time and public money already spent on the previous trials, all charges were dropped against Parks and Tom Toliver.

It was later revealed that Parks had made his way to Arkansas, where he was a fugitive until it was safe for him to return home.  Now styling himself as Dr. Milton Parks Tolliver, he established a medical practice in Elnora, Indiana, although there is no evidence that he ever graduated from medical school.  He outlived three of his four wives and was arrested for selling illegal drugs and operating a phony diploma mill for medical students before his death in 1926.  Tom Toliver was shot and killed in 1900 following a dispute over allegedly loaded dice in Washington, Indiana.  Eli Lowry worked in the prison office and was on duty when a telegram arrived on Christmas Day of 1890 informing him that he had been pardoned by the governor.  Lowry went from prison to a job with the Vigo County sheriff’s office in Terre Haute.  That ended when he was accused of being involved in a plot to rob inmates.  Lowry died of consumption (tuberculosis) in 1895, less than five years after his pardon.

Lee Jones, who fired the shots that killed Tom Moody, was pardoned in 1893 after serving sixteen years.  He returned to Mitchell, Indiana, and was killed in a gruesome accident at the city new electrical plant less than four years later.  His older brother, Bent Jones, who was regarded as the kingpin behind the murder, was also paroled in 1893.  He joined his brother in Mitchell and bought a saloon.  Called “The Terror of Indiana” by the Louisville Courier-Journal, Bent was constantly in trouble and was finally ordered to leave Indiana permanently in 1898 to avoid prosecution after an innocent young farmer was killed by someone who had mistaken him for Jones.  After a short stay in Louisiana, he used his service in the Union Army during the Civil War to enter the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers outside Los Angeles, where he died in 1918.  His personal effects were valued at thirty-five cents.  Alonzo “Bent” Jones is buried in the Los Angeles National Cemetery.

Pearl Bryan.

So Far From Home: The Pearl Bryan Murder

Pearl Bryan.

Murder victim Pearl Bryan was the belle of Greencastle, Indiana. She was popular among her peers and admired by all who knew her. Pearl was a girl of the most amiable disposition. Too amiable in fact, said her friends, and inclined to yield to the requests or urgings of others. Though friendly and outgoing, Pearl kept her personal life private. When Pearl learned she was pregnant, she told no one but her second cousin, Will Wood.

Will Wood was Pearl’s confidant, but he was not to be trusted. He was a rude braggart who boasted of his sexual relations with Pearl. The Cincinnati Enquirer summed up Will Wood’s Greencastle reputation saying, “The youth is generally recognized as a cigarette fiend of unbalanced mind and of a totally depraved nature.” Many in Greencastle believed that Will Wood was the father of Pearl’s unborn child and was ultimately responsible for her death.

Will Wood

So Far from Home: 

The Pearl Bryan Murder

by Robert Wilhelm

---

So Far from Home.

New Book!

So Far from Home 

The Pearl Bryan Murder

"Yes. they drove far from the city,

To a place so far from home,

There they left her body lying

Headless and all stained with blood"

 Pearl Bryan (Traditional Ballad)

Available at Amazon.

The Mabbitt Mystery.

Luella Mabbitt.

Luella Mabbitt and Amer Green made a handsome couple. 23-year-old Luella was an attractive,   well-formed young lady—“of the blonde type of beauty and very winning in her ways.” Amer Green, 34-years-old, was tall and good-looking with manly features. But Luella’s father, Peter Mabbitt, did not approve of his daughter’s suiter, so, reluctantly, Luella told Amer that they had to break up. She would return his letters and he was to return hers.

On August 6, 1886, Amer Green, with his friend William Walker took a buggy ride to the Mabbitt home in Wildcat, Indiana. Her parents saw Luella leave the house with the letters, but she never came back.

Peter Mabbitt believed that his daughter had been kidnapped by Amer Green. Green and Walker were questioned by authorities, but both denied any knowledge of Luella’s whereabouts. In the days that followed search, parties were organized in the area around Wildcat Creek. Peter Mabbitt hired a private detective and offered a reward of $500 for the apprehension of his daughter’s kidnappers.

The Notorious Mrs. Clem.

The sensational murders of successful businessman, Jacob Young and his wife in Indianapolis, in 1868, exposed a web of financial fraud involving some of the most influential men in the city. Circumstantial evidence soon pointed to Mrs. Nancy E. Clem, mastermind of the fraudulent scheme, as the perpetrator of the murders. The notorious Mrs. Clem, however, proved remarkably hard to convict.

The Lawrenceburg Shanty-boat Mystery.

When John Keys and Eva Dickenson were married in Cincinnati on August 21, 1890, they told their relatives that they planned to honeymoon on the Atlantic coast, but John had another plan. He purchased an Ohio River shanty-boat and planned a slow trip downriver to St. Louis. It would not be their last deception; in fact, what transpired on that fateful journey would remain forever shrouded in mystery.

The Wolf Creek Tragedy.

The Shanks family and the Keller family lived on opposite sides of the border between Fountain County and Parke County Indiana; the Shanks on the Fountain side, the Kellers on the Parke side. During a drought in the summer of 1895, the Kellers gave the Shanks family permission to access water on their property. The job of fetching the water fell to Clara Shanks, the beautiful 18-year-old daughter of Frederick Shanks, and she would visit Kellers’ yard several times a day.

Nannie Keller, the wife of 34-year-old Daniel Keller, kept an eye on Clara and began to suspect the young girl had begun flirting with her husband. Her suspicions grew to the point where she publicly accused Clara of having improper relations with Daniel.

Forgery, Murder, and Suicide.

Anne C. Chapman went to the First National Bank of Warsaw, Indiana, in September 1880, to cash a check for $300. The cashier did not hesitate; the check was signed by her father, the director of the bank. During the course of business that day, her father came across the check and immediately pronounced the signature a forgery. He reported the crime and had his daughter arrested, refusing to bail her out of jail. 

The Rockville Tragedy.

21-year-old Alfred Egbert, better known as Pete, lived with his parents, a brother and a sister in Rockville, Indiana. He was a quiet man who led an exemplary life; when not working as a carpenter he was a voracious reader, often reading well into the night. April 1896, his sister Florence was dying of typhoid and Pete was under considerable stress from worry and lack of sleep.

The morning of April 25, Pete Egbert was outside chopping wood when he saw the next door neighbor, Mrs. Haske walk through the alley to get her cow for milking. Something suddenly enraged him and he attacked Mrs. Haske with the axe. He knocked her to the ground then gave her another blow to the head, killing her. He walked back to the house got his shotgun and left the house again. 

Righteous Retribution.

Shortly after the Civil War, Christian Meiar secured a questionable title to a farm in Ripley County, Indiana and moved there with his wife. The farm was located outside of Elrod, a town so small and isolated it was described simply as a “Post Office located fifteen miles northwest of Aurora.”

Mrs. Meiar was amiable and lived peaceably with her neighbors, but Christian—known locally as Devil Meiar—was regarded as the wickedest man in that part of the state. For twelve years he would bicker and fight with anyone he met, he never bathed and was horribly ugly, he frightened children, and women shunned him, not just because he was ugly but because he could not open his mouth without spewing the vilest blasphemy and vulgarity. When neighbors’ livestock strayed on his property Meiar would attack and kill or cripple the animals. And he would beat his wife, sometimes so badly that she would seek sanctuary at the home of their nearest neighbor, a quarter mile away.

The Brown Tragedy.

Mary A. Brown

A wholesale robbery operation was uncovered outside of Irvington, Indiana, four miles east of

Indianapolis. In January 1879, John G. F. Brown and Pressley Miller were convicted of grand larceny and concealing stolen goods and sentenced to one year in the penitentiary. Brown’s wife Mary was also indicted but was released on her own recognizance.

John Brown left his wife with a 40-acre farm to manage and three children to raise. She was 33-years-old—nineteen years younger than her husband—and desperately in need of help. That’s not to say that Mary Brown was helpless; she very soon found the answer to all of her problems in Joseph W. Wade, a 33-year-old Irvington saloon owner. Wade, who was in the middle of a divorce, agreed to live at the farm and manage it for Mary, and even before his divorce was final he was sharing her bed as well as her board.

A one-year prison sentence is not very long. John Brown was released from the penitentiary and returned to his farm to find a domestic situation that was not to his liking. It is not clear what transpired at the Brown farm, but John Brown expected trouble and consulted his attorney. The last thing Brown said to him was, “I may never see you again.” Less than three weeks later John Brown was found murdered.

Joseph W. Wade

At a railroad crossing, about three miles from the farm, a neighbor found a horse and buggy, its cushion and lap rug were saturated with blood. The buggy was identified as John Brown’s and a search of the area found his body lying nearby, beside the railroad track. It first it looked like he had been shot in the head, but it was later determined that his skull had been fractured with a hammer.

I didn’t take long to determine who was responsible—Joe Wade was clearly in conflict with John Brown and Mary Brown had told her friends she would do away with her husband if he ever returned, she had a younger, better-looking man and she didn’t desire to “be tied down to an old fool like Brown.” Both were arrested for the murder of John Brown.

At first, they both denied any knowledge of the murder, but after a brief incarceration Mary Brown weakened and told her story of what happened the night of the murder. She said that Wade had planned to go to Irvington to sell his horse and went out to hitch the buggy.

“I went about attending to my work as usual when I heard a dull, heavy sound, and some groans. I rushed out and saw my husband dying. I had the child in my arms and Wade said, ‘Take in that child.’ I did so, after which I came out again and exclaimed, ‘Oh, my God, what have you done?’ He came up to me and put his arms around me saying ‘This is what love will do, darling.’…My reason for making a different statement before was, Wade threated my life if I gave him away.”

After hearing Mary Brown’s confession, Wade corroborated the story of the surroundings of the murder but said it was Mary who actually did the killing. Both were charged with first-degree murder.

They were tried separately, with Joseph Wade tried first in April of that year. The issue was not whether Wade was involved in the murder, but whether he wielded the hammer and if it was premeditated. Wade could not convince a jury that he was only an accessory; he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to hang.

When Mary Brown was tried in July, Wade testified for the prosecution. He was not offered any clemency for his testimony, he would hang regardless, so had no incentive to lie. He testified that he had been discussing the sale of a horse with John Brown that Friday evening when Mary came up behind her husband and struck him in the back of the head with a wooden mallet. He fell to the floor, knocking his head against a table. Wade grabbed a lamp from the table as Mary struck Brown again, this time in the face. Wade said, “My God, woman, what have you done?” She said, “That’s no more than he has done.”

Wade hurried out of the house and began to unhitch his horse. Mary asked where he was going and he said Irvington. “No, you ain’t,” said Mary, “Joe Wade, if you leave me now, you’ll rue the day—you’re a man and I’m a woman—you’ve been staying here and nobody will suspect me of doing this.”

She wrapped up the body in a blanket and he helped her load it into the buggy. Then Mary dressed in Joe’s clothes and drove the buggy with Joe sitting beside her. Anyone who saw them would think they were two men. They left the body by the railroad track, and Mary turned his pockets inside out to make it look like he was robbed.  Abandoning the buggy, they walked back to the farm.

The jury deliberated for forty-six hours then found Mary Brown guilty of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to hang on October 29, 1880, the same day as Joseph Wade. Two days before the scheduled hanging, Governor Williams granted them a thirty-day respite to appeal their cases to the state Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court reviewed both cases. They found the two of the jurors on Mary Brown’s case were not competent, having prejudged the defendant; she was granted a new trial. The Supreme Court found nothing wrong with Joe Ward’s trial and let the verdict stand.

On November 18, Governor James D. Williams, in his last official act before dying three days later of inflammation of the bladder, granted Wade another respite so he could bring another appeal to the Supreme Court. This time he appealed on the grounds that the judge gave the jury erroneous instructions.

While awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling, Ward testified at Mary Brown’s second trial. This time said that Mary’s intent to kill her husband “was of a sudden conception,” the murder had not been planned. Mary Brown was again convicted of first-degree murder, but this time sentenced to life imprisonment in the women’s reformatory.

In February 1881, the Supreme Court granted Joseph Ward a new trial and in his second trial, he was also sentenced to life in prison.

---

Sources:
“The Brown Tragedy,” Daily Inter Ocean, February 14, 1880.
“In the First Degree,” Daily Illinois State Journal, April 30, 1880.
“An Indianapolis Murder,” Cincinnati Daily Gazette, February 9, 1880.
“Joseph Wade,” Indianapolis Sentinel, July 3, 1880.
“Marion Murders,” Evansville Courier and Press, May 20, 1880.
“Miscellaneous Misdeeds,” Daily Inter Ocean, December 30, 1880.
“To the Scaffold Will Mrs.,” Indianapolis Sentinel, July 13, 1880.
"Wade and His Paramour," National Police Gazette, November 6, 1880.
“The Wade Trial,” Indianapolis Sentinel, April 21, 1880.
“Wade to Get a New Trial,” Daily Inter Ocean, February 5, 1881.

Avenged Her Father’s Murder.

Around 1:00 a.m., the morning of September 7, 1892, Richard Wright was awakened by a man calling his name, outside his farmhouse in Payne, Indiana. He recognized the voice as that of his son-in-law, Dell Judah, and went outside to see what he wanted. Judah told him angrily that his wife had walked out; he thought she had gone back to her father and he had come to take her home. Wright assured him that his daughter was not there, but he had not assuaged Judah’s anger. As Wright turned to walk away, Judah drew a revolver and shot him in the neck. Wright turned and grabbed him and as they clinched two more shots were fired.

Wright’s eldest daughter, Minna, ran from the house then, wielding an axe. Seeing her brother-in-law struggling with her father, she hit Judah in the head with the axe, knocking him off. She continued to hit him until he was dead. When she turned to her father, she found that he was dead as well. Minna walked a mile through the woods to their nearest neighbor to alert them to what had happened.

The Wrights were highly regarded in Payne, but Dell Judah had a bad reputation and was known as a rough character. Many believed that he had gone to Richard Wright’s house specifically to murder his wife and her father. Minna Wright was not arrested.

---

Sources:
“She Killed Him,” Kalamazoo Gazette, September 18, 1892.
“A Terrible Tragedy,” The Topeka Daily Capital, September 9, 1892.
“Too Bloody to Believe,” The Indianapolis Journal, September 8, 1892.
“Two Lives Wiped Out,” The True Northerner, September 14, 1892.

Another Boy Murderer.

Near Rockport, Indiana, on the banks of the Ohio River, the morning of September 29, 1883, a boat was found, burned to the water’s edge. It had been a small trading boat, large enough sleep two or three and carry goods—most notably liquor—to sell along the river. Inside were the charred remains of a man who had been shot to death.

Rockport police soon learned the names of the men lived aboard the trading boat—R.T. Arnett, who lay dead in the smoldering boat, and Francis J. Kelly, the presumed murder, who had fled the scene. Detective Hales of Rockport undertook the task of locating Kelly and after three weeks of investigating he found the culprit in Ashley, Illinois, some 140 miles inland. Hales arrested Kelly and brought him back to Rockport.

Augusta Schmidt.

Little Murders

   

J. Oscar Walton, a tenant farmer in Walton, Indiana, had an argument with his landlady, Mrs. Augusta Schmidt, the morning of October 21, 1893. They shared a house on the rented property, Mrs. Schmidt and her family in one half, Walton and his family in the other. They stood in the doorway between the two halves as they argued. Walton was upset that geese and hogs owned by Mrs. Schmidt had been let loose in his cornfields and were scattering the corn all around. As the argument became more heated, Walton threatened to take his gun and shoot the livestock. Mrs. Schmidt went into her side of the house and returned with a revolver, and while Oscar Walton’s mother and ten-year-old son watched, Augusta Schmidt shot him in the head and killed him.