The Snell Murder.

Rosa Buckstahlen and Ida Bjornstad, servants in the Chicago mansion of Amos J. Snell, were awakened at 2:00 the morning of February 8, 1888, by the sound of a gunshot from the floor below. They heard someone shout “Get out! Get out of here!” followed by more gunshots, then silence. Thinking that all was well—or more likely, too frightened to do anything else—the girls went back to sleep.

Five hours later, Mr. Snell’s coachman, Henry Winklebook, entered the house to attend the furnace fires and found evidence of a break-in. Snell’s basement office was strewn with scattered papers, his safe was open, and a broken strongbox lay on the floor. Winklebook hurried upstairs to inform his employer and found his lifeless body lying in a pool of blood in the hallway. 

Some Very Cold Cases.

In 2014, Murder by Gaslight posted Unsolved, a collection of 19^th-century murders that had never been fully explained. The list included some famous cases, including the murders of Andrew and Abby Borden, Carrie Brown, Benjamin Nathan, as well as several other homicides that were never prosecuted.

Since then, Murder by Gaslight has posted many more murder cases that were never solved. Either the evidence was too thin to charge the prime suspect, or the entire case was shrouded in mystery. Here are a few of Murder by Gaslight’s very cold cases:

	The Assassination of Corlis. On March 20, 1843, Charles G. Corlis was shot outside of the bowling saloon he owned in New York City. Witnesses saw someone running from the scene—maybe a man, maybe a woman, maybe a man dressed as a woman. Suspicion fell on Henry Colton because Corlis was having an affair with his wife, Hannah. The police arrested both Coltons, but Henry had an alibi, and no one could say conclusively that the woman in question was Hannah. The Coltons were released from custody, and no one was ever charged with the murder.
	A Shrewd Rascal. Samuel Smith and his wife Emma appeared to the world as a happy and affectionate young couple. She was pretty and vivacious with a dazzling wardrobe, and he was energetic with a winning personality. But beneath the surface was a hidden turmoil that did not come to light until 1885, when Emma was found dead in their Chicago apartment, her head blown apart by a shotgun blast. Samuel Smith was the prime suspect, but he left Chicago and was never seen again.
	The Snell Murder. In the wee hours of February 8, 1888, burglars broke into the mansion of Amos J. Snell, one of the wealthiest men in Chicago. They went straight to Snell’s office and opened his safe and a strong box, but when they did not find the fortune they expected, they went upstairs and began gathering silver items. Snell heard them in the parlor and fired his pistol through the closed door. The thieves fired back, killing Snell. Despite a large reward and a massive manhunt leading to more than 1,000 arrests, no one was charged with Snell’s murder.
	The Maggie Hourigan Mystery. The body of Maggie Hourigan was found floating in a pool of water on October 20, 1889. Dr. S. Walter Scott performed a hasty autopsy and concluded she had committed suicide. No one who knew her believed that Maggie had killed herself, and a second autopsy discovered a wound on the side of her head, indicating that she was dead or unconscious when she entered the water. With no other suspects, the New York Sun implied that Dr. Scott may have come to a false conclusion to hide his own involvement in the murder. He sued the Sun for libel and received a settlement. The true circumstances of Maggie Hourigan’s death remain a mystery.
	The Mysteries of Mary Tobin. On May 12, 1889, the janitor of the Clifton Boat Club on Staten Island found the body of Mary Tobin floating in the water. The police suspected suicide. Perhaps she had been seduced and betrayed and had drowned herself to hide her shame. But the coroner found no evidence of pregnancy or abortion. He found no marks of violence and no trace of poison. Mary Tobin’s life was filled with mystery; she was engaged to be married but also contemplating joining a convent. The final mystery of Mary Tobin’s life—did she die by murder, suicide, or accident—has never been solved.
	The Stillwell Murder. Fannie Stillwell told police that around 2:00 am on December 30, 1889, she heard a disturbance and got up to find her husband, Amos, lying in a pool of blood, with a terrible gash in his head. Amos Stillwell was one of the wealthiest men in Hannibal, Missouri, and his wife was 30 years younger than he was. The police investigation was futile, but a year later, when Fannie Stillwell married her physician, Dr. Hearne, the couple became the prime suspects. Dr. Hearn was tried and found not guilty; charges against Fannie were effectively dropped as well. The people of Hannibal would remain appalled that one of their most prominent residents could be murdered without retribution.
	15 Corning Street. The strangulation of Alice Brown in her room at 15 Corning Street in Boston’s South End dominated the front page of the city’s daily newspapers in the autumn of 1897. The Boston newspapers aggressively followed clues and gathered background, hoping to scoop each other and the police in their vivid reporting of the crime. In the end, they may have been too aggressive, adding more confusion than clarity. The case was muddled with rumor and innuendo, but not enough evidence to indict anyone. It remains one of the city’s unsolved mysteries.
	The Medford Mystery. Walter R. Debbins was shot twice in the back, in broad daylight, on Highland Street in Medford, Massachusetts, on the afternoon of Saturday, March 27, 1897. Though no one saw the murder or heard the gunshots, there was enough traffic on Highland Street that afternoon for the police to precisely pinpoint the time of the shooting to between 1:00 and 1:05. But that was all they could pinpoint; everything else about the crime was shrouded in mystery that grew more dense with each new revelation. The mystery was never resolved.

The Fatal Shot.

 

In the wee hours of February 8, 1888, burglars broke into the mansion of Amos J. Snell, one of the wealthiest men in Chicago. They went straight to Snell’s office and opened his safe and a strong box but did not find the fortune they expected. The thieves went upstairs and began gathering silver items.

The noise awaked Snell who came down in his nightshirt, armed with an old muzzle-loading pistol. Hearing the thieves in the parlor, he shouted, “Get out! Get out of here!”  and fired his pistol through the closed parlor door. The thieves responded by firing back through the door. Snell turned to run outside, and the thieves opened the parlor door and fired two more shots, killing Snell. 

The massive manhunt that followed involved the police, the Pinkertons, and many private detectives. The family offered a $50,000 reward for the killer's capture, reported at the time as “the largest amount ever offered for the capture of any human being in the world.”  Despite more than 1,000 arrests and several false confessions, the case remained unsolved until 1910, when a professional thief named James Gillan confessed to the murder on his deathbed. The confession was taken as fact, but there was little evidence that Gillan committed the crime.

Read the full story here: The Snell Murder.

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Pictures from Chicago Daily News, February 9, 1888.