Introduction:

On January 11, 1902, fifteen-year-old Nora Fuller disappeared after she left her home. She told her single mother of three that she was going to meet with a man about a job as a nanny after she found his advertisement in the local newspaper. She didn’t come home that night or the next, and the search for Nora Fuller began. Her nude body was found one month later in an empty apartment.

The careful planning and attention to detail by her cunning killer is what makes this case so intriguing. Added to the mystery is that Nora may have been secretly meeting with a much older man, confiding to one friend that he was her boyfriend.

In a story that was on going, with front-page coverage in San Francisco newspapers between January and March 1902, the city was captivated by the mysterious murder of Nora Fuller. This extreme level of publicity put enormous pressure on the San Francisco Police Department to solve the case.

Beneath this introduction is a 3,000-word feature story written by retired San Francisco Police Captain Thomas A. Duke in his book, Celebrated Criminal Cases of America, published in 1910.

According to Duke’s story, the police were eventually able to identify a strong suspect, or so they believed at the time. Unfortunately, he left town before he could be arrested and was never seen or heard from again. What is most fascinating about Duke’s story is the long-running account of circumstantial evidence that police believed connected the murder to this man.

The pressure to solve the case also meant that dozens of other men who were rounded up and interrogated had their names published in the local newspapers as well. With the public’s fear and anger already inflamed by those same dailies, the lives of these men were effectively ruined.

At the end of the story is a link to download a three-page .pdf file containing the front and two interior pages San Francisco Call published on February 11, 1902—three days after Nora’s nude body was discovered. Nearly every square inch of those three pages is devoted to the Fuller murder.

The information within those three pages may not match up with Duke’s account, who wrote it years later and had a more complete view of the crime.

I have also added a link to an October 17, 2016, sfgate.com article.

I will add more links to this feature story, including links to more pdf files, in the near future.

The Nora Fuller Case

Eleanor Parline, better known as Nora Fuller, was born in China in 1886.

In 1890 her father was an engineer on the Steamer Tai Wo. One night he was sitting asleep in a steamer chair on the deck of the vessel while at sea. Shortly after he was seen in this position his services were required in the engine room, but when a helper was sent after him the chair was vacant, and Parline was never seen again. A year later Mrs. Parline married a man named W. W. Fuller, in San Francisco, but seven years later she obtained a divorce.

As she had four small children, Mrs. Fuller experienced much trouble in getting along. In 1902 she lived at 1747 Fulton Street. At that time Nora, who was then fifteen years of age, decided to quit school and seek employment.

On January 6 she wrote to a theatrical agency, and after stating that she had a fairly good soprano voice, asked for employment. Two days later the following advertisement appeared in the Chronicle and Examiner:

“Wanted—Young white girl to take care of baby; good home and good wages.”

At the foot of the advertisement was a note directing anyone answering to address the communication in care of the paper the advertisement was found in. Nora Fuller answered it, and on Saturday, January 11, she received the following postal:

“Miss Fuller: In answer to yours in response to my advertisement, kindly call at the Popular Restaurant, 55 Geary Street, and inquire for Mr. John Bennett, at 1 o’clock. If you can’t come at 1, come at 6. ‘ JOHN BENNETT.”

Mrs. Fuller sent Nora to the rendezvous, and the girl took the postal card with her. About one hour later Mrs. Fuller’s telephone bell rang, and her twelve-year-old son answered.

A nervous, irritable voice, which sounded some like Nora’s, told him that the speaker was at the home of Mr. Bennett, at 1500 Geary Street, and her employer wanted her to go to work at once. (It was subsequently learned that 1500 Geary Street was a vacant lot).

The boy called out the message to his mother, who instructed him to tell Nora to come home and go to work Monday. The boy repeated the message, and the person at the other end said: “All right;” but before any more could be said by the boy the receiver at the other end was hung up. Nora Fuller never came home. A few days later the distracted mother notified the police.

F. W. Krone, proprietor of the Popular Restaurant, was questioned and he stated that about 5:30 on the evening of January 11, a man who had been a patron of his place at different times during the past fifteen years, but whose name he had not up to that time heard, came to the counter and stated that he expected a young girl to inquire for John Bennett, and if she did to send her to the table where he was seated.

The girl did not appear, and Bennett, after waiting one-half hour, became restless and walked up and down the sidewalk in front of the restaurant for several moments. He then disappeared.

This man was described as being about forty years of age, five feet nine inches high, weighing about 170 pounds, wearing a brown mustache, well dressed and refined appearing.

A waiter employed at the Popular Restaurant, who frequently waited on “Bennett,” stated that the much-wanted man was a great lover of porterhouse steaks, but the fact that he only ate the tenderloin part of the steak earned for him the sobriquet of “Tenderloin.”

On January 16 lengthy articles were published in the papers in regard to the mysterious disappearance of the girl.

On January 8, [three days before Nora’s disappearance] a man giving the name of C. B. Hawkins called at Umbsen & Co.’s real estate office, and, addressing a clerk named C. S. Lahenier, inquired for particulars regarding a two-story frame building for rent at 2211 Sutter Street. The terms were satisfactory to Hawkins, but Lahenier asked the prospective tenant for references. He replied that he could give none, as he was a stranger in the city, but as he had a prepossessing appearance the clerk let him have the key after paying one month’s rent in advance. The man then signed the name “C. B. Hawkins” to a contract.

He stated that he was then stopping at the Golden West Hotel with his wife. The description of Hawkins was identically the same as the description of Bennett.

On the following day the real estate firm sent E. F. Bertrand, a locksmith and “handy man” in their employ, to the Sutter-Street house to clean it up.

Many days after this a collector for the firm named Fred Crawford reported that the house was still vacant—judging from outside appearances. He went to the Golden West Hotel to inquire for Hawkins, but he was not known there.

On February 8 the month’s rent was up, and a collector and inspector named H. E. Dean was sent to the house.

Using a pass key he entered, but finding no furniture on the lower floor, he went upstairs, where he found the door to a back room closed. This he opened, but as the shade was down the room was in semi-darkness. He discerned a bright-colored garment on the floor, but as he seemed to know by intuition that something was wrong, he hurriedly left the building, and meeting Officer Gill requested him to accompany him back to the house. The officer entered the room, and upon raising the shade found the dead body of a young girl lying as if asleep in a bed. On the bed were two new sheets, which had never been laundered, a blanket and quilt. An old chair was the only other furniture in the house. Neither food nor dishes could be found. Nor was there any means of heating or lighting the house, as the gas was not connected.

The girl’s clothing was in the bedroom, also her purse, which contained no money, but a card with the following inscription thereon:

“Mr. M. A. Severbrinik, of Port Arthur.”

(It was subsequently learned that this man sailed for China on the Peking three hours before Nora Fuller left home on January 11.)

On the floor was the butt of a cigar, and on the mantle-piece in the front room was an almost empty whiskey bottle. There were no toilet articles in the house except one towel.

Many letters were found addressed to Mrs. C. B. Hawkins, 2211 Sutter Street. They were from furniture houses and contained either advertisements or solicitations for trade. A circular letter addressed to Mrs. Hawkins and bearing a postmark of January 21, 11 p. m., or ten days after the dis-appearance of Nora Fuller, had been opened by someone and then placed in the girl’s jacket, which was found in the room. Mrs. Fuller identified the clothing as belonging to her daughter, and subsequently identified the body as the remains of Nora. No trace was ever found of the postal card Nora received from Bennett.

Dr. Charles Morgan, the city toxicologist, examined the stomach and found no traces of drugs or poisons. Save for an apple, which the deceased had evidently eaten about one or two hours before death, the stomach was empty.

There was a slight congestion of the stomach, possibly due to partaking of some alcoholic drink when the stomach was not accustomed to it. Mrs. Fuller stated that Nora ate an apple shortly before she left home on January 11.

Dr. Bacigalupi, the autopsy surgeon, found two black marks on the throat, one on each side of the larynx, and as there was a slight congestion of the lungs, he concluded that death was due to strangulation. But the child had been other-wise assaulted and her body frightfully mutilated, evidently by a degenerate. Captain of Detectives John Seymour took charge of the case.

B.T. Schell, a salesman at J. C. Cavanaugh’s furniture store, located at 848 Mission Street, stated that at 5 p. m., January 9, a man of the same description as “Hawkins” or “Bennett,” and wearing a high silk hat, called and said that he wanted to furnish a room temporarily. He purchased two second-hand pillows, a pair of blankets, a comforter and top mattress. He insisted that the goods be delivered at night or not at all. This Schell promised to do. The customer then wanted to know what assurance he had that the salesman would not substitute another mattress, and Schell suggested that he put his initials on the mattress as a means of identification. Acting on this suggestion Hawkins used a large heavy pencil and wrote the letters “C. B. H.” on the mattress. After leaving word to deliver the articles that night to 2211 Sutter Street the man departed.

Lawrence C. Gillen, the delivery boy for this firm, stated that he had to work overtime in order to take the articles to the Sutter Street house that night.

When he arrived the house was in darkness. He rang the bell and a man came to the door, and from what he could see with the lights from the street lamps he was of the same description as the man who made the purchases, and he wore a silk hat. Gillen asked him to light up so he could see, but he said, “Never mind, leave the things in the hail.”

Richard Fitzgerald, a salesman employed at the Standard Furniture Company, 745 Mission Street, stated that a man of “Bennett’s” description bought a bed and an old chair from him on January 10, and that he engaged an expressman, Tom Tobin, to deliver the same to 2211 Sutter Street.

Tobin stated that this man was present when he arrived, and requested him to set up the bed in the room where it was found. This man he described as being of Bennett’s ‘appearance.

It is probable that the sheets, towel and pillow cases were purchased at Mrs. Mahoney’s dry goods store, 92 Third Street, which was just around the corner from the Standard Furniture Company. These articles were carried away by the purchaser.

On the floor of the room where the girl’s body was found was a small piece of the Denver Post of January 9, upon which was a mailing label addressed to the office of the Railroad Employees’ Journal, 210 Parrott building.

When this paper arrived at the Parrott building it was given by Exchange Editor Scott to a Mr. Hurlburt, a delegate from Denver to a railroadmen’s convention then in session in the assembly room in the Parrott building. After glancing at it he threw it on a large table, and some other delegate picked it up and took it to Dennett’s restaurant, where he left it on the dining table. The steward of the restaurant, Mr. Helbish, picked it up, and after taking it to the counter began to read it, believing it was the San Francisco Post. He laid it down, and Miss Drysdale, the cashier, glanced over it. She laid it down, and how it got to 2211 Sutter Street remains a mystery.

A seventeen-year-old girl named Madge Graham met Nora Fuller in June, 1901, and they became very friendly. Madge boarded at Nora’s house for a while until her guardian, Attorney Edward Stearns, requested her to move away, because a lawyer named Hugh Grant was a frequent visitor at the Fuller home.

She claimed that Nora Fuller frequently spoke to her of having a friend named Bennett, also she believed that the advertisement was a trick concocted by Nora and “Bennett” to deceive Mrs. Fuller.

John Bennett

She furthermore stated that Nora often telephoned to some man, and that one day Nora requested her to tell Mrs. Fuller that she and Nora were going to the theater that night. Madge did as requested, but she stated that instead of going with her, Nora went with some man. It was also claimed that someone gave Nora complimentary press tickets to the theaters.

A. Menke, who conducted a grocery at Golden Gate and Central Avenues, stated that Nora Fuller frequently used his telephone to call up someone at a hotel, although she had a telephone in her own home a few blocks away.

Theodore Kytka, the handwriting expert, made an examination of the original slips filled out by “Bennett” for his advertisement for a young girl, and also the signature of “C. B. Hawkins” to the contract when he rented the house, and found both were written by the same person.

On February 19 the Coroner’s jury rendered the following verdict:

“That the said Nora Fuller, aged fifteen, nativity China, residence 1747 Fulton Street, came to her death at 2211 Sutter Street in the City and County of San Francisco, through asphyxiation by strangling on a day subsequent to January 11 and before February 4, 1902, at the hands of parties unknown. Furthermore we believe that she died within twenty-four hours after 12 m., January 11. In view of the heinousness of the crime, we recommend that the Governor offer a reward of $5,000 for the discovery and apprehension of the criminal.

“ACHILLE ROSS, Foreman.”

Believing that the person who committed this crime might have changed his address and sent a written notification to that effect to the postal authorities, Theodore Kytka examined 32,000 notifications of changes of address. Of this number he found three signatures that bore considerable resemblance to the Bennett-Hawkins style of penmanship, and one of these three was almost identically the same.

This proved to be the signature of a man in Kansas City, Mo., and Captain Seymour went east to make a personal investigation. It was found, however, that the man had nothing to do with the crime.

On January 16, five days after the disappearance of Nora Fuller, but three weeks before her fate was known, the papers of San Francisco gave considerable space to the mysterious case. Two days later a gentleman connected with a local paper notified the police department that a clerk in their employ named Charles B. Hadley had disappeared. It was afterward said that he was short in his accounts with his employers.

Detective Charles Cody was detailed to locate the man, and he found that he had lived at 647 Ellis Street with a girl born and raised in San Francisco, who had assumed the name of Ollie Blasier, because of her infatuation for a notorious character known as “Kid” Blasier.

No trace of Hadley was found. Finally the body of Nora Fuller was discovered, and photographs of the signature of “C. B. Hawkins” on the contract with Umbsen & Co., and the “C. B. H.” on the mattress, were published in all the papers.

The Blasier woman had a photograph of Hadley in her room, upon the back of which he had written his name, “C. B. Hadley.” Seeing the great similarity in the handwriting she delivered this to Detective Cody, who in turn delivered it to Theodore Kytka for investigation.

Kytka determined at once that the person who wrote “C. B. Hadley” on the photograph also wrote “C. B. H.” on the mattress, and “C. B. Hawkins” on the contract.

While Hadley had the same general physique as “Hawkins,” it was known that he was always clean shaven. Miss Blaiser stated, however, that she had seen Hadley wear a false brown mustache about the house, and it was subsequently learned that he purchased one at a Japanese store on Larkin Street.

In addition to this, Chief of Police Langley, of Victoria, B. C., made an affidavit to the effect that a Mr. Marsden, a storekeeper in Victoria, B. C., had stated that he had been a companion of Hadley’s, and that while out on a “lark” he had seen Hadley wear a false mustache. Miss Blasier made a further statement substantially as follows:

“I now recall that after the disappearance of Nora Fuller Hadley made a practice of getting up early in the morning and taking the morning paper to the toilet to read.

“On the day of his final disappearance he followed this practice, and after he left the house I found the morning paper in the toilet, and I noticed a long article about the disappearance of Nora Fuller. It was evident that his mind was greatly disturbed on this morning.

“The next day I was making up my laundry, and at the very bottom of the pile of soiled clothing I found some of his garments which had blood on them. I burned them and also his plug hat.

“It is well known that Hadley is partial to porterhouse steaks and that he eats only the tenderloin.

“On the evening of January 16, Hadley telephoned to me that he would not be home. I confess that I suspect he committed this murder.”

Theodore Kytka obtained Hadley’s photograph and altered it by giving him the appearance of wearing a mustache and plug hat. This was shown to different persons who had dealings with “Hawkins,” with the following results:

Tobin, the expressman, said it looked very much like him; Lahenier, the real estate man, said it bore a marked resemblance. Ray Zertanna, who had seen Nora in the park with a man, stated that the picture was a good likeness of this man. Schell, who suggested that “Hawkins” place his initials on the mattress, said it was an exact likeness of Hawkins. Fred Krone, the restaurant man, who had the conversation with “Bennett” on the evening Nora left home, said it was not a likeness of Bennett.

Hadley left his money in a certain bank in this city, where it remains even now.

An investigation was then made as to his past, and it developed that he was an habitue of the tenderloin district, and that he was on the road to degeneracy. His true name was Charlie Start, and his respected mother resided in Chicago.

On May 6, 1889, Superintendent of Police Brackett, of Minneapolis, issued a circular letter offering $100 reward for the arrest of Charles Start for embezzlement.

About two years before the murder of Nora Fuller, Hadley enticed a fifteen-year-old girl into a room and outraged her. He then purchased diamonds and jewelry from a certain large jewelry store in San Francisco and gave them to the girl, who is now a respectable married woman residing in the neighborhood of San Francisco.

The country was flooded with circulars accusing Hadley of this murder and calling for his apprehension, but he was never located.

Many believe that he committed suicide.

Links:

Download 3 page .pdf file of February 11, 1902, San Francisco Call

Read sfgate.com October 17, 2016, article about the case.

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A Sensational Crime and Trial that Confronted Racism, Sexism, and Privilege as America Took to the World Stage

On the foggy, cold morning of February 1, 1896, a boy came upon what he thought was a pile of clothes. It was soon discovered to be the headless body of a young woman, brutally butchered and discarded. She was found just across the river from one of the largest cities in the country, Cincinnati, Ohio. Soon the authorities, the newspapers, and the public were obsessed with finding the poor girl’s identity and killer. Misinformation and rumor spread wildly around the case and led authorities down countless wrong paths.

Initially, it appeared the crime would go unsolved. An autopsy, however, revealed that the victim was four months pregnant, presenting a possible motive. It would take the hard work of a sheriff, two detectives, and the unlikely dedication of a shoe dealer to find out who the girl was; and once she had been identified, the case came together. Within a short time the police believed they had her killers—a handsome and charismatic dental student and his roommate—and enough evidence to convict them of first-degree murder. While the suspects seemed to implicate themselves, the police never got a clear answer as to what exactly happened to the girl and they were never able to find her lost head—despite the recovery of a suspicious empty valise.

Centering his riveting new book, Unwanted: A Murder Mystery of the Gilded Age, around this shocking case and how it was solved, historian Andrew Young re-creates late nineteenth- century America, where Coca-Cola in bottles, newfangled movie houses, the Gibson Girl, and ragtime music played alongside prostitution, temperance, racism, homelessness, the rise of corporations, and the women’s rights movement. While the case inspired the sensationalized pulp novel Headless Horror, songs warning girls against falling in love with dangerous men, ghost stories, and the eerie practice of random pennies left heads up on a worn gravestone, the story of an unwanted young woman captures the contradictions of the Gilded Age as America stepped into a new century, and toward a modern age.

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During the month of November 1975, three armed robberies in the Fort Worth area eventually produced a description of the suspect’s vehicle. On the morning of November 29, a car driven by Henry Martinez Porter was pulled over by Fort Worth Police Officer Henry Paul Mailoux. A confrontation between the two men led to a struggle in which Porter was shot in the left side of his abdomen, and Mailoux was shot and killed. Porter then fled the area to San Antonio (270 miles south) where he hid out on the city’s northwest side.

Officer Henry Paul Mailoux, courtesy of Officer Down Memorial Page

By 1975, thirty-three-year-old Porter was a hardcore heroin addict with a long-history of mental problems, (diagnosed psychopathic personality with indications of paranoid-schizophrenic behavior), who had served terms in a mental institution, reform school, and then prison—dating back to when he was fifteen-years-old. Past charges included car theft, burglary-robbery, assault, and forgery.

Three days later, a tip led San Antonio police to an apartment building in the 1300 block of Donaldson Street. Fifteen police officers surrounded the building, entered the apartment, and found Porter in the bathroom, unarmed and nursing his bullet-wound. He was taken to a hospital where he was treated and released back into police custody.

During his 1976 trial, Porter’s defense argued the shooting was an accident, rather than intentional. The jury didn’t buy it. He was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.

Porter’s case was appealed in state court 1979 and 1981, and again in 1983 in federal court followed by a 1984 effort before the United States Supreme Court. All efforts failed and by July 6, 1985, the Los Angeles Times reported Martinez had asked his lawyer not to intervene or prevent his execution scheduled in three days, July 9.

During the last hours of his life, Porter, forty-three-years-old then, visited with relatives in his holding cell and asked for steak, refried beans, flour-tortillas, salad, ice-cream, and chocolate cake for his last meal.

After he was strapped down, the prisoner, with the words “Love” and “Hate” tattooed across his fingers, was asked if he had any last words. It was from this moment, more than any other moment in his life, that he is most remembered today.

I want to thank Father Walsh for his spiritual help. I want to thank Bob Ray (Sanders) and Steve Blow for their friendship.

What I want people to know is that they call me a cold-blooded killer when I shot a man that shot me first. [This differed from his first trial when he claimed it was an accidental shooting]. The only thing that convicted me was that I am a Mexican and that he was a police officer.

People hollered for my life, and they are to have my life tonight. The people never hollered for the life of the policeman that killed a thirteen-year-old boy who was handcuffed in the back seat of a police car. The people never hollered for the life of a Houston police officer who beat up and drowned Jose Campo Torres and threw his body in the river.

You call that equal justice. This is your equal justice. This is America’s equal justice. A Mexican’s life is worth nothing.

When a policeman kills someone he gets a suspended sentence or probation. When a Mexican kills a police officer this is what you get. From there you call me a cold-blooded murderer. I didn’t tie anyone to a stretcher. I didn’t pump any poison into anybody’s veins from behind a locked door. You call this justice. I call this and your society a bunch of cold-blooded murderers.

I don’t say this with any bitterness or anger. I just say this with truthfulness. I hope God forgives me for all my sins. I hope that God will be as merciful to society as he has been to me. I’m ready, Warden.

Officer Henry Mailloux is remembered on the Officer Down Memorial Page database. He would be sixty-nine-years-old if he were alive today.

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CrimeCon 2017, Indianapolis, Indiana, June 9-11, 2017, at the JW Marriott Hotel. There are lots of different “immersive” programs planned, but from what I can glean, the guest/expert speakers, presenters, and VIP attendees are yet to be announced.

See more at: http://www.crimecon.com/

Price for admission, Standard to VIP packages, range from $199 to $575, depending on when you register. HistoricalCrimeDetective fans and blog readers get a 10 percent registration discount by using the coupon code, HCD10. The $199 “early bird” registration price ends today, which is unfortunate because I just found out about it recently. Military and law enforcement personnel qualify for registration discounts, as well as groups of five or more people.

Description:
“A celebration of all things true crime, CrimeCon brings the cases you love to life through immersive experiences, incredible guests, and a ton of mystery and intrigue. It was created for those of us who binged on Making a Murderer or who spend more hours watching ID and Dateline than we’d like to admit. Made by fans, for fans, CrimeCon’s mission is to bring together thousands of creators and consumers for a weekend they’ll never forget.

“CrimeCon transports fans from the couch to the crime scene and into courtroom. If your idea of the perfect night involves alibis, motives, and a bottle of wine, then this is the event you’ve been waiting for. Grab a few true crime-obsessed friends and join us in Indy for a weekend you won’t forget.”

Specific Detail:
“When many people hear “convention” they think about tens of thousands of people walking around gigantic exhibit halls, but that’s not really what CrimeCon is. This is a far more immersive and individualized program that is much more about creating an authentic experience than it is about walking through miles of exhibit halls.”

John Abt, with his daughter Margie.

When Michael Abt arrived at his family home in Trevose, Pennsylvania, he knew something was wrong. For a family of seven, the two-story house in the suburbs of Philadelphia (in Bensalem Township) had its own current of energy flowing through the walls, the floors, the ceiling and everything in between. But on Friday, March 12, 1976, the twenty-one-year-old couldn’t feel that energy, and as he looked around, he saw why.

“He saw blood stains and bloody rags and ran out of the house,” a United Press International report stated a few days later.

In the basement, Bensalem police found the bodies of six people, all shot once in the side of the head. Five of them were Michael’s family members; the sixth was the boyfriend of his sister. Alongside them lay the family dog, a friendly St. Bernard, also shot and killed.

The Abt family of Trevose was now reduced to two people: Michael, and his wayward brother Clifford, who was in jail on a forgery charge.

Three days into the investigation, the local police gave the standard “were tracking several leads” line, but before the interview was over, even they had to admit that “they did not know who shot the victims, and above all, they did not know why.”

But they did know one thing about the shooter; he was a very patient and determined man. This was no ‘burglary gone wrong scenario,’ it was a cold-blooded ambush. He had sat in the Abt family house for hours, calmly waiting for each family member to walk through the door so he could shoot them in the head. As he sat there, alone, he had hours to think about what he was going to do. He could have easily changed his mind and left.

But he never did.

The first two to die were Cathy, 15, and John Jr., 13, who arrived home from middle school just after three o’clock. He shot the two kids dead and carried them down to the basement, carefully laying their bodies next to the dog he had shot and killed after he broke into the house through the back door.

Two more hours went by until he shot his next victim, Margaret Abt, 46, an employee with the Internal Revenue Service. She arrived home from work about 5:15 p.m. A few minutes after she was killed, her daughter, nineteen-year-old Margie, arrived home from her job, walked through the front door, and was immediately shot in the head. Like the others.

Now, things were happening fast. The father would be home soon and the killer didn’t have time to carry the women downstairs. Instead, he dragged them to the top of the stairs by the back kitchen door and threw them down the steps.

Then, he wiped up the blood trails and waited.

Between 5:30 and 5:45, John, the devoted father and scoutmaster, arrived home from his job with the telephone company. He was shot as soon as he closed the front door.

Margie’s fiancé, Gary Engle, was the sixth and final victim. He was killed around six o’clock when he entered the house. He was there to celebrate the third anniversary of the first date they ever

Michael Abt pictured here during his 1991 interview.

went on.

Then, around 6:30 that night, the killer got up and left. He knew about Michael and Clifford, and wanted to kill them most of all, but the telephone kept ringing and ringing and ringing. It made him nervous.

What if a neighbor heard the shots and was calling to check on the family? he thought to himself.

Ten days later, police arrested Michael’s former childhood friend and neighbor, George Geschwendt. During their pre-teen and teen years, brothers Michael and Clifford were friends with George. Together, the three played pool, rode their bikes around town, and discovered the mischievous kind of trouble that boys their age, growing up in that era, could get into.

“We were real pains in the ass,” Michael said during a 1991 interview. “We were the best of friends.”

Maybe they were, maybe not.

The friendship broke apart after George was sent to juvenile court for vandalism. At the time, he was living with his mother, brother and abusive father who had tried to kill him on several occasions.

According to Michael’s 1991 interview, his mother forbade him from playing with George—fearing he would bring Michael down with him. Michael then claimed that for the next eight years, he and his brother, Clifford, never paid much attention to George, despite living diagonally across the street from each other.

Other reports of the friendship separation declare that Clifford and Michael bullied George by shooting BB guns at him and his house, sent unwanted flowers and taxicabs to his house, and for making fun of his mother who had a foreign accent. Of the two brothers, Clifford, the oldest, was reported to have bullied George the most.

Whether he felt bullied or betrayed by the Abt family in general, and Michael and Clifford in particular, George Geschwendt felt humiliated. His humiliation transformed to anger and a desire to set things right; to get revenge, and in his twenty-four-year-old mind, it was a justified revenge.

So George bought a pistol. He practiced with it. He set his mind to do it and on the morning of March 12, 1976, he put on rubber gloves, broke in through the back kitchen door of the Abt house, sat on the piano stool and waited.

He waited for six hours for the youngest of the family to come home from school.

By some twisted irony of life, the two he wanted to kill the most, were the two who got away.

Sorta.

George’s high school graduation photo.

On March 22, ten days after the murder, George was brought in for questioning by Bensalem Township police. Children fishing in a nearby creek found the murder weapon, which was traced back to George. That night, he confessed to killing the Abt family, calling it a “personal vendetta.”

He would later proclaim his ambush on the Abt family his “only achievement in life.”

When brothers Michael and Clifford found out it was their neighbor, who lived ninety-feet away, they got into fist-fight with each other in front of a newspaper reporter. The cause of the fight between them wasn’t reported on, but the implied message that comes through is—blame.

Breaking it off, Michael then tried to storm the Geschwendt house but was tackled by a police officer just inside the yard.

“I’m gonna kill him when I get him,” Michael Abt said through a swollen mouth. “I haven’t talked to him in eight years. It was senseless.”

Michael described his former friend as “a loner,” and said he couldn’t think of a reason why George would want to kill his family. If he and Clifford bullied George, he never mentioned it. Instead, he only had negative things to say about his neighbor.

“He always stayed at home,” Michael told a reporter after he had calmed down from the fight. “He’s strange…a very strange dude. Very quiet and withdrawn. He never left the house, never dated girls.”

During his confession, George shared his feelings of Michael and Clifford. “I would have stayed until midnight to get the other two,” but the phone kept ringing. He feared someone might have heard the shots.

He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

Tried in July on six counts of murder, a Bucks County jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to die in the electric chair. When Pennsylvania’s old death penalty laws were ruled unconstitutional in 1977, his death sentence was commuted to six consecutive life sentences.

By 1983, he had exhausted all of his appeals. However, in February 1991, one of his old appeal arguments took root with a new federal judge who ruled the trial judge erred when he refused to instruct the jurors that “they could find the unemployed landscaper not guilty by reason of insanity.”

Had the jurors known of that option, “there is at least a reasonable possibility . . . they would have returned a different verdict,” the federal judge wrote. On November 8 of that same year, a three-judge panel from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Geschwendt “should get a new trial or be released from prison.”

George Geschwendt, circa early 1990s.

Disappointed county prosecutors appealed the three-judge panel decision to the full panel of judges. Following a second round of arguments in May 1992, the Third Circuit ruled against Geschwendt, reporting that the trial judge’s instructions for a third-degree murder conviction did in fact give sufficient allowance for his insanity claim.

After their family was murdered, brothers Michael and Clifford lost complete control over their lives. Clifford was in and out of jail over the next thirteen years. He died in August 1989 after suffering a bad reaction to an unspecified narcotic.

By 1991, Michael had lost his license, his job, any home he had, and during his Inquirer interview, was living in a motel with his pregnant girlfriend. For a ten-year period, he sold methamphetamines to make a living. During the interview, he claimed he was out of that business. In March of 1990, around the time of the fourteenth anniversary his family was murdered, Michael got drunk and crashed his 1972 Toyota in the back of two cars at an intersection. He was put on probation and ordered to pay $4,000 restitution.

They may not have been killed, but George’s actions led to their wrecked and wasted lives.

Conclusion

I could find no further information on Michael. According to a Topix internet discussion of the case, Clifford and Michael harassed and bullied George because they thought he was strange. It turns out George was a sensitive young boy whose father physically abused him (by 1950s and 60s standards) and tried to kill him on two occasions.

George, 64, is alive and serving out his life sentence at State Correctional Institution—Mahony, a medium security prison in Schuylkill County.

This is still a very sensitive case for many people from Bucks County, and evokes strong, emotional reactions from those who knew or were familiar with George Geschwendt, or the Abt family. Naturally, those connections produce a lot of thoughts and opinions about this case, which I am never going to go into. Every murder story I’ve ever written comes with an encyclopedia volume set of rumors and gossip and opinions. It’s normal. However, HCD is not a message board for rumors and gossip and opinions about old cases. Please don’t write to me about this tragic mass murder unless you have documented information. I’ve outlined the case above and believe it is a short but adequate report.

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On December 6, 1943, twenty-seven-year-old Ann Geist took her three-year-old daughter, Kathleen Ann, to a tavern near Fort Logan, Colorado, where she met up with friends. At the time, Fort Logan was a small, Army-Air Force installation west of Englewood, and eight miles southwest of Denver.

Soon after she arrived, Geist and her friends became preoccupied with playing a pinball machine[1] (new at that time) and she forgot about her daughter. Also inside the tavern was Staff-Sergeant Frank Martz, 33, a cook in the army who had recently returned from South Dakota where he visited his wife on furlough.

When Martz realized the mother had forgotten about her daughter, he went to Kathleen and promised her soft drinks and “a fluffy, stuffed toy rabbit” if she would come with him to his apartment. The girl agreed and she and Martz left the tavern unnoticed. As they were walking home, the happened to pass by a patrolman George Fritsinger who thought they were father and daughter.

According to a statement later given to reporters, once he had her inside his apartment, “Martz struck Kathleen on her head with a blunt instrument…Sometime thereafter, he took a stout cord…wrapped it around the little girl’s neck, choking her. He thereafter ravished and raped the little girl, evidenced by many teeth marks and wounds on the body.”

By the time she was dead, Ann Geist reported her daughter’s disappearance to Patrolman Fritsinger, who remembered seeing Martz and the girl walking on the street earlier. Fritsinger then got two military policemen to go with him to Martz’s apartment where he answered the door drunk and partially clothed. He was taken to the Englewood jail and questioned by detectives. Fritsinger and the military policemen then returned to Martz’s apartment to search for Kathleen “and found her torn body under the sink,” the Associated Press reported.

Martz, who had been a carnival and circus cook before joining the army, said he was drunk on beer and wine and didn’t remember anything about the little dead girl in his apartment. Two days later, he blamed the murder on vampire stories he had read earlier that day in pulp magazines.

“Martz told District Attorney Richard Simon (in an oral statement) he had been confused by reading several detective stories Monday afternoon, including one which described how a vampire sucked the blood from a living body. Then he got so drunk, he said, that there were long intervals during which he could not remember what happened,” the AP reported. “Coroner Ivan J. Foss said the child’s body was nude and bore numerous scratches and teeth marks.”

However, in his written statement, Martz did recall part of his attack.

A July issue of the fiction magazine Detective Tales. This is the type of pulp fiction magazine Martz was reading while drinking beer and wine, and which he claims influenced him to attack young Kathleen. This is just a sample.

“Since I have had time to think over events of Monday night, I cannot state positively that I remember taking the girl into my room and closing the door. . . . I remember striking her, choking and beating her, and tearing off her clothes.”

In another part of the statement, Martz was quoted as saying: “I was scared to death. I undressed. Took all my clothes off. And I got into bed and pulled the covers over my head and I was scared. Then the police came.”

His claim of being under the influence of alcohol and vampire stories did not help his case. During his February 1944 trial, he was convicted and sentenced to death by a Littleton jury.

Because of World War II’s dominance of over other types of news coverage, there are only a handful of newspaper reports still available about this case. His case was appealed, but the Colorado high court upheld his conviction and death sentence, which did not take place until November 23, 1945 at 8:00 p.m. To make sure the state was NOT executing a crazy man, possibly because he was under the influence vampire stories at the time, a sanity hearing was held for Martz on the day of his execution.

When Canon City Prison Warden Roy Best appeared at his cell, Martz’s face lit up with hope that his stay of execution was granted. But when Best started reading the death warrant, Martz’s face quickly dropped. The would-be vampire then recovered, and smiled at Father Justin McKernan, his spiritual advisor while on death row.

Martz was then escorted out of his cell and led on the quarter-mile walk up to Woodpecker Hill where the state’s gas chamber was located. Martz, who was calm and steady in his march, received a helping but unwanted hand from one of the guards.

“I don’t need any help. I can walk by myself. He then told Father McKernan, “Pray for me. If anybody needs prayer, I do.”

During the last two weeks, Martz spent most of his time talking quietly with Father McKernan, and reading a bible given to him by death row inmate Charles Ford Stillman who was executed two weeks earlier.

Wearing nothing but his shorts and socks, Martz took his seat on a chair inside the gas chamber.

“As guards strapped Martz into the death chair he held a crucifix in one hand, a St. Christopher medal in the other. The slayer raised the medal—symbolic of a safe Journey—to his heart and said: ‘God forgive me for I have sinned. I’m sorry.’”

At 7:59, the sodium cyanide pellets were dropped into the Sulphur acid and Martz breathed deeply as he was instructed to do. At 8:02, he was pronounced dead. After the chamber was flushed and purged, his corpse was cleaned with chlorine solution. Prison officials waited twenty-hours for someone to claim the body. When no one did, he was buried in the prison cemetery on Woodpecker Hill.

[1] Pinball machines were fairly new at that time. Marble machines preceded the invention of Pinball machines.

Woodpecker Hill Photo Gallery, courtesy of Cemeteries of Colorado.   Frank Martz is buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in this cemetery.

Rusted aluminum markers on steel posts identify the grave sites of prisoners executed long ago at the Colorado State Prison in Canon City.

"CSP Inmate" is how most of the markers are labeled. The man buried here is nameless and forgotten.

A barren landscape is the final resting place for executed prisoners, and those who died while serving out their sentences.

The prison can be seen from the cemetery.

A pitiful reminder of a life wasted.

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Special Guest Feature Story by: Dr. Barry Morton:

At few times in its history has the small town of Crawfordsville, Indiana ever been more regularly in the spotlight than it was between the autumn of 1889 through November 1890. The Pettit murder trial, “the most publicized case in this period,” began with published rumors of the Reverend William F Pettit’s suspicious conduct around the time of his wife’s death in August 1889, continuing through grand jury deliberations and his arrest in early 1890. His lengthy and dramatic trial, held in Crawfordsville between October and November 1890, “attracted attention throughout the Midwest because of the prominence of the families involved in it.”

The Pettit murder attracted widespread attention for two good reasons. On the one hand it was the lurid nature of the case: “the murder for which Pettit stands convicted was one of the most deliberate, cruel, and cold-blooded crimes ever committed in the state of Indiana.” The courtroom was packed daily and local spectators lined up every morning with their own chairs. Even Lew Wallace, the author of Ben Hur and the town’s most famous resident, was in regular attendance (and said to be writing a novel based on the case), as were journalists from Indianapolis and Lafayette—whose stories were reprinted widely.

In addition, the prominent social position of the murderer and his accomplice made it equally dramatic. Not only was Pettit the minister of one of Indiana’s wealthiest Methodist congregations, but he was also one of the highest-ranking Freemasons in the state. His accomplice, the widowed Clemmie Whitehead, came from an upstanding family—the Meharrys—that was easily the wealthiest in the Montgomery and Tippecanoe County area that its landholdings straddled.

The entire Pettit affair also illustrates the tension that existed in America’s evolving justice system. As the legal scholar Elizabeth Dale has so deftly shown, America’s justice system was an evolving, contested arena well into the twentieth century. Even late into the nineteenth century, local notions of popular justice coexisted with the distant, bureaucratic arm of the state. For instance, in western Indiana, the vigilante Horse Thief Detective Agency had a far greater presence than the various county sheriffs and local police. While the vigilantes did not get involved in the Pettit affair, the actions of ordinary citizens were decisive in first obtaining official prosecution and then conviction. Gossip and shaming were central to the affair, and these were classic forms of popular justice. The people of Shawnee Mound were convinced of Pettit’s guilt, but believed his station would enable him to get away scot-free. Their actions, which he sought to counter, led to his demise.

Continue Reading…

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Lemuel Hawkins, Auto Theft (Federal), 1931

Lemuel Hawkins (October 2, 1895 – August 10, 1934) was an American first baseman in Negro league baseball. He played for the Kansas City Monarchs, Chicago Giants and Chicago American Giants from 1921 to 1928. He was 5’10” and weighed 185 pounds. In 1931 he was arrested for stealing a car (which was a federal crime at that time) and sentenced to serve two  years in prison

Biography

Hawkins was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1895. He served in World War I and was also the first baseman for the successful 25th Infantry Regiment baseball team posted at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona. He, along with teammates Oscar Johnson, Dobie Moore, Bullet Rogan, and Bob Fagin, joined the Kansas City Monarchs in the early 1920s.

Hawkins during the 1924 “Colored World Series.”

Hawkins was the Monarchs’ everyday first baseman from 1921 to 1927 and played for the Monarchs team which won the 1924 Colored World Series.

According to George Sweatt, Hawkins and teammate Bill “Plunk” Drake were good friends. “[They] were the craziest guys,” Sweatt recalled. “When we’d go to a different town, they’d just walk through the halls all night, fooling around. That’s all they did!”

Hawkins played for the Chicago American Giants in 1928. He finished his career in the Negro National League with a .265 batting average, three home runs, and 268 runs scored in 2,126 plate appearances.

Between the 1923 and 1924 baseball seasons, it was reported that Hawkins spent the Winter driving a taxicab.

In July 1931, Hawkins was with three other men in a car when they were searched by police in connection with a holdup. One of the other men pulled a gun and was shot to death by the officers, and Hawkins was held on an automobile theft charge. He was sentenced to serve two years in Fort Leavenworth Federal Prison. The mugshot photo above is from his time in Leavenworth.

On the night of August 10, 1934, Hawkins and a partner attempted to hold up a beer truck in Chicago. A scuffle took place, and Hawkins was accidentally shot to death by his partner. The bullet that killed him entered his left ear and pierced his brain. Hawkins’ body was taken to the morgue where it went unidentified for approximately one month.

“Identity of Hawkins was made through his war record and finger prints sent to Washington,” reported the September 15, 1934, edition of The Afro American, a national weekly newspaper for African Americans. “It was disclosed that he had served in the Twenty-Fourth 25th U. S. Infantry (Regiment) and in the World War. The body was shipped to Macon, Ga., at the request of his mother, Mrs. Carrie Hawkins, of that city.”

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Australian journalist and true crime author, Emily Webb, has recently released her third true crime book with Suburban Nightmares: Australian True Crime Stories, which features 28 incredible true crime stories most Americans have never heard about. And, of course, the very first chapter is about an American who killed a girl with a crossbow.

Yes, a crossbow. More about him in a moment.

Author Emily Webb

You might remember Webb from her last book I reviewed, Murder in Suburbia, which had 20 great stories about some of Australia’s most horrific, gruesome, and terrifying crimes. (There were some in there I will never forget. Really, really, messed up killers.)

Besides being a true crime author and journalist, Webb is also a busy mum of two, and runs the highly respected blog — TrueCrimeReader.com True Crime Book Reviews, News & Views — which is where I go when I’m looking for a good, contemporary TC read.

You should follow her on Facebook. Seriously. She posts reviews on books I didn’t even know were out yet. If you’re an avid TC reader, click on that link and press like to get info on new books, as well as info about crimes happening a half-a-world away.

Here’s the short but tantalizing description of Suburban Nightmares.

Book Description:

Think nothing ever happens where you live?

Suburban Nightmare is a collection of stories that are hard to believe, except they really happened – and all in the streets and homes of the Australia many of us know and live. The suburbs.

These cases range from recent murders to some historical stories that will shock and surprise.

One of Australia’s best young true crime writers, Emily Webb probes the black underbelly of our towns and suburbs, and exposes the darkness at the heart of Australian life.

• An afternoon of random violence by a nursing student armed with a shovel
• 18-year-old Annette Morgan, murdered in the grounds of Sydney University and still unsolved
• The sad tale of 60 animals slaughtered at the Adelaide Zoo by two 18-year-olds on a murderous rampage
• A series of cases about men who kill their families – sadly, there was no shortage of cases
• The main suspect for the Tynong North and Frankston murders is now in his 80s – will there be justice for the victims of these 1980-81 murders?

Kurt “Crossbow” Dumas

Now, back to that American in Australia. His name is Kurt Dumas and he is doing time in California right now thanks to lenient sentencing laws down under. We had them here, too, up until the mid 1980s when Americans finally got fed up with it.

Here’s an excerpt from the chapter on Kurt Dumas.

Kurt “Crossbow” Dumas

Kurt Michael Dumas and Lyndell Martin were friends. The pair, aged 20 and 19 respectively had met each other around three years before when they were both patients at the Parkville Adolescent Unit in Melbourne in 1982 and kept in sporadic contact.

On 18 November 1985 Dumas popped around to Lyndell’s flat in inner-city Melbourne and arrangements were made for her to come to his place that night for dinner.  It had been several months since they had seen each other.

What went on in the flat that evening is not known for sure but Lyndell never made it home.

She was found dead in the bathroom of Dumas’s flat four days later. It was Dumas’s mother Gail who found her body. There was a 14cm steel-tipped arrow embedded in the victim’s abdomen.

From court records and newspaper archives the picture emerged of Dumas as an extremely dangerous young man. Mrs Dumas told the coroner’s court that her son had suffered severe head injuries after falling from a table at the age of three months. She said that since that accident Dumas had several brain operations.

Mrs. Dumas said he became violent, unpredictable and had been asked to leave three schools because of this behavior.  He also spent some years as an inpatient in mental hospitals including the one where he met Lyndell.

Dumas was born in Michigan, USA, on 12 December 1965. The family emigrated to Australia in 1972. He returned to the United States for short time in 1978 and came back to Australia in 1979.

On 19 December 1986 Dumas was sentenced to life imprisonment but Justice Hampel fixed a minimum term of 18 years before the young killer could be considered for parole.

Justice Hampel said: “The evidence and all the surrounding circumstances, in my view, plainly demonstrate that there is a real likelihood that a crime of the kind committed on Lyndell Martin may be again committed by you”.

Dumas’s sentence was lengthy but he was released after his minimum term, which would have been around 2003.

Dumas ended up back in America, renting a room from a woman called Denise Ann Howes in Redford, Wayne County.

She had no idea how dangerous he was.

When Denise’s partner Todd could not get in contact with her on December 7, 2004 he held grave concerns for her safety. He’d spotted her car – a 2000 Jeep Cherokee – but it was Dumas who was in the driver’s seat.

When police attended the address they found Denise dead in her bedroom. She’d been shot. There was duct tape over her mouth.  At that point The Redford Police didn’t know of the arrestee’s violent past and how he’d committed an almost identical crime almost 20 years ago.

Dumas was arrested and he told police he’d served time in an Australian jail for killing a woman in “similar circumstances”.

He pleaded guilty to second-degree homicide and felony firearms. He was sentenced on 8 April 2005 to a minimum of 43 years (maximum 80 years) for the homicide charge and two years for firearms offense.

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